The Tolai

It's the Tolai 2pac!

OK, I’ve written about the pigs, I’ve written about the tourist attractions, I’ve written about Malaria. Now, it’s time to focus, more specifically, on a little ‘kulcha’. As the dominant group (in terms of numbers) in ENB is Tolai, let’s have a good look at these guys and the kinds of things they get up to. Please don’t take my word as gospel; I haven’t been conducting any kind of anthropological study. Everything you read here is true as far as I know and has been told to me by locals, but that certainly doesn't mean it’s water tight. Here’s what I know about the good people belonging to the Tolai ethnicity.

Had to include this pic and the one above as examples of how some kids have blonde afros. So cute!

OK, kinda off topic, but everyone loves a random cute baby photo. This baby was crying, until it spotted me, then it went into quiet shock mode. 

The Tolai are not really native to East New Britain (ohhh, I’m getting controversial already!). They originally came to ENB from what is now known as New Ireland Province. The beautiful mountains of New Ireland are visible from ENB although ocean separates the two large islands. A few hundred years ago (maybe....time lines are very iffy around here), some of the peeps on New Ireland decided to make a land grab on ENB and drove the Baining people inland, taking over the coastal regions. 

Kokopo is just south of Rabaul, about a 40 minute drive away.

Today, the Baining people are still hanging out inland, some of them living in very remote places and no doubt facing all kinds of problems relating to this (access to health and educational facilities being the big ones). Dedicated readers of my blog (hey, I’m feeling optimistic!) may remember that you met the Baining people, albeit briefly, in a previous entry – they are the dudes who run through flames in crazy big head dresses. Sadly, I know next to nothing about them other than their fire dancing ways. The Tolai have been very successful in inhabiting majority of the coastal region of ENB.

The language of the Tolai is Kuanua, though most people in PNG just refer to their mother tongue as ‘Tok Ples’ (the talk of their place) regardless of which language they speak. In fact, I’ve heard that the word ‘Kuanua’ actually means ‘over there’ in the dialect (language?) spoken in the Duke of York Islands. To me at least, Kuanua sounds really fabulous; they role their ‘r’ like the Italians and their intonation rises and falls in big mountains and valleys. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Kuanua, is that it’s one of the very few languages to have no ‘s’. Apparently they used to have the letter ‘s’ before they came over from New Ireland, but somewhere along the way they just lost it. As a child who suffered with a lisp and has painful memories of a well meaning but patronising speech therapist (I was too young and innocent to point out that there’s no ‘s’ in ‘f%#k you’) I like to think that the benevolent and wise chief of this tribe fell madly in love with a beautiful lisper and so forbade his people from ever uttering the troublesome sound again. But that’s just the romantic in me.

The Tolai are matrilineal. Not to be confused with matriarchal. As in, men still rule the roost and make the decisions, but land is owned by women - they have it and they pass it on to their daughters (which assures them some power no doubt). Women also ‘own’ the children, so if there is ever any dispute, kids go with mum. I’ve also been told that unlike in some parts of PNG, where couples are ashamed/disappointed to have only daughters, the Tolai have no such concerns. In fact, if you’ve got a few hot daughters on the market, you can, as a family, do pretty well with the whole bride price thing. Not every ethnic group in PNG makes the man’s family pay for their bride, but the Tolai certainly do. I’m yet to understand the criteria for being a truly expensive purchase but certainly, a Tolai woman does not come cheap. I’ve heard some people say (both local and expat) that the cultural practice of bride price encourages a man to think of himself as ‘owning’ his wife and this in turn helps him to justify beating the crap out of her when he feels inclined. I don’t think this is the kind of theory that can be easily verified or dispelled but for me, well, I paid for my pet (500 kina for a tick ravaged peeing machine) and yet that certainly hasn’t led me to think it would be OK for me to bash him about the head. Just my thoughts, I guess I’m not big into, ‘let’s blame a ceremony for the fact that I’m an arsehole who bashes women’. And yes, domestic violence is a big problem in ENB, and it seems to be so throughout the country, regardless of diverse cultural practices.

Before I get too bogged down in stuff that makes me angry, let me go back to Tolai specific things I have learnt. I have previously mentioned that Tolai shell money makes nice jewellery. I should also point out that in ENB, shell money is legitimate currency. You can use it to pay your school fees, to pay bride price, it’s given out to mourners at funerals (by the family of the deceased), and is used as payment for initiation into the so called secret men’s society. Now I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I just pop down to the beach and scoop up some cash? I could start a scholarship fund! Unfortunately it doesn’t quite happen like that. The shells that are used are very specific and there aren’t too many to be found these days lying around on the beach, waiting for an eager shopper. There’s believed to be about 6 million Kina worth of shell money in the possession of people in ENB and that sort of circulates. To be used as legal tender, the shells are strung onto cane, a prescribed distance apart from each other so they can be made into ‘fathoms’, a unit of currency. It’s all rather complex and a bit beyond me but needless to say, other parts of PNG do not use shell money or ‘tabu/tambu’ as it’s called here.

I mentioned before about the secret men’s society. In general, when I want to know about something cultural, I just ask around, but I haven’t asked about this one as I figure me not knowing is kind of the point. So, I only know what I can sneakily sniff out. In fact the only thing I can be 100% sure about is that there are groups of men who do secret stuff. Those who aren’t initiated into the Tabuan society don’t even know who is in it (supposedly). The members do cultural things.  At funerals, for example, they dance around, wearing pointy hats and lots of leaves (they are then called ‘dukduk’) so that no one knows their identity. 

Example of a Dukduk, I saw one of these guys
walking down the street in my first week in the
country,
from http://www2.popul8.com.au/clients/gti/png/ 

I took the photos below recently at the welcome (this is surely not the right word) of the body of the recently deceased Member for Kokopo (he had to fly in from POM and in true PNG style, he was late for his own funeral). They’re not great photos as there was a big crowd and I didn’t want to get up in people’s faces. 

So until this event, I was pretty sure that ‘secret men’s business’ probably involved arm wrestling and peeing contests, but it seems there’s a bit more to it. There’s participation in rituals, the passing on of traditional knowledge, and intimidation. Allow me to explain.

The plane which carried the body, dukduks dancing on the tarmac.

Last Wednesday (just after the member for Kokopo passed away) the ENB provincial government suddenly announced that there would be a day and a half of public holiday. Starting the next day. First it seemed that the day off would be for everyone, then the government put the word out that it was just for government employees. Needless to say, many people just took the day off and I noticed that the Catholic schools all shut down. The supermarkets and the banks however, planned to stay open, which was actually what the government intended. In the morning, on the Thursday, the businesses opened as planned and this, it seemed, angered the family and friends of the recently deceased who thought that the shops should close out of respect (you may recall that most of these businesses are not owned by people who are ethnically Papua New Guinean). So they went around to the stores, with the Dukduks, to intimidate the owners into closing. It seems in PNG, when a group of men turn up to intimidate you this is usually a raging success – even if you wear a pointy hat and a leafy dress whilst doing so. All the stores, and the banks closed and Kokopo was like a ghost town for the two days. 

Dukduk at the airport, before visiting the stores for some stand over man tactics.

The truck which took the body into town. Along the way, people came out from neighbouring villages to throw flowers at the coffin. 

The last thing I’ll add about the secret men’s societies is that although I can’t really get a sense of their numbers, or their current importance, government health officials seem to think that one way of reaching men with messages about health and family planning, is through such organisations which leads me to think that they must still be considerably active and important. Also, when the year 11 students that I taught last year watched ‘Whalerider’ (they were studying film as text), and we came to the scene where the little girl is peering through a window to spy on the boys who are learning ‘secret men’s stuff’ from her grandfather, all the students gasped – some put their hands on their faces. When I watch this scene, I feel the tension, and I worry that she will get into trouble, but their reaction was something else. They seemed to sense danger, they were shocked by her recklessness. Watching that film with them (they LOVED it) made me see the story, and the perspective of the old man, quite differently. It also made me think that this idea of ‘secret men’s business’ and such things being taboo to women is still very strong even in the minds of mobile phone wielding, Chris Brown loving Tolai teenagers.

The last thing I’d like to write about for this entry, is kind of off the topic of the Tolai culture, but whilst I’m thinking about ethnicity in PNG and cultural groups, it seems a good opportunity to get this down. From what I can see around me, and from what I’ve read in the papers, people from the Highlands (on the mainland) have spread everywhere throughout the country. It seems that in general, the coastal regions of PNG are more prosperous and stable (greater opportunities for trade, tourism, transport by sea to other places, etc) than are the central, generally much more remote places. I’m guessing this is why so many ‘Highlanders’ as they are called, have settled all around PNG and especially in the coastal regions.

I haven’t been to the highlands, I’ve only met (briefly) people from the Highlands, so I don’t really know anything about the place or the people, but what I do know, is that it’s not at all uncommon to hear things like ‘oh, you shouldn’t go there, lots of Highlanders live there’, or ‘oh Lae’s a terrible place because of the Highlanders’. Some Australians I know have tried to hire a Highlander for a job, only to have their other local staff say that they don’t want to work with them. I even heard these sentiments about Highlanders, (and sometimes people from other mainland regions like Sepik) echoed by other expats who live here (and have never been to the Highlands). On hearing such things, my bullshit meter has of course, gone literally off the charts. It does seem true that ENB is much more peaceful and stable that many areas in the Highlands. It also seems to be true the world over that employment and educational opportunities lead to a stable society and the lack of these things breeds instability. In PNG, a lot of the problems seems to relate to geography, where the more remote you are, the harder it is to get on board in the cash economy. I don’t doubt that it’s true that people squatting in settlement areas on the outskirts of towns, without their own land or support groups are more likely to be involved in criminal activities but so far I'm strongly resisting the ‘Highlander Boogeyman’ theory. What’s said about the Highlanders in PNG is said the world over about so many different minorities, struggling to prosper when the odds seem against them. I guess it just seems sad that when people are looking to understand the causes of violence and unrest, ‘those marginalised and disadvantaged individuals who are motivated to commit illegal acts largely as a result of a lack of opportunity’ just doesn't seem as catchy as ‘Highlanders’.

So, I hope this blog entry has provided you with at least a brief overview of some of the things that I find interesting about the Tolai culture. I guess I also hoped to convey that whilst Kokopo is full of people from many different ethnic groups (there are 6 different ethnicities represented in Geoff’s small office alone) and that they do largely get along happily and harmoniously, underlying tensions and suspicions do occasionally surface. In that sense, it seems rather like home.  Funny how despite our vast differences, globally, all communities seem to have a sound capacity for name and blame and stereotyping. On that cheerful note I leave you, and may I ask, if anyone has a suggestion for a future blog topic, that would be most welcome. Lukim yu, or as they say in Kuanua, YORO! :D

So why the bloody hell would you go there?

I’ve been here for about 6 months. So far, no visitors. Now I’m not surprised, it’s not as cheap to get to as say, Indonesia, the food is better anywhere in Asia, it’s not as safe, and basically it’s an unknown quantity. Actually I’ve never met anyone who has said, “I’ve always wanted to go to PNG!”. So, with this blog entry, I don’t expect to singularly boost sales for Air Nuigini (please repeat: I will never never fly Airlines PNG), but I still feel that it couldn’t hurt to promote the country a little. If only as a means to put up some nice pics of all the good things here (in the small part of the country I call home). And also, some of you have been requesting more pictures (a subtle call for less prattle? not likely!) so here you are…..

The Tourism slogan for PNG for a long time was “The Land of the Unexpected”. Of course, this became the basis for much sarcasm amongst the expat community. No medicine in the hospital pharmacy? More potholes in the road than road? A boat has taken you to a small island and now there isn’t enough fuel to get you back? Two Prime Ministers? Ha! Surprise, you’re in the Land of the Unexpected. The trouble is, it doesn’t take long for one to start assuming that things will go slowly/not to plan/not happen at all/happen in a way that is completely ridiculous and so it all becomes very predictable, and, well, expected.

Maybe that’s why they changed the slogan to ‘Land of a Million Different Journeys’. I think this might refer to what happens when you try to find out what’s going on (when something that’s supposed to be going on isn’t going on) and you hear a million different incomprehensible stories explaining why things have gone to shit. I propose that the next slogan be simpler, “PNG – it’s never boring”. And this, I can assure you is true. It’s also really beautiful, so let’s get started with the photo display.

One popular thing to do is to climb one of the many volcanos. This is an activity not to be undertaken lightly, a few years ago an Israeli man died after he fell into the volcano. (I’m not very good at this tourist promotion thing am I?) I’m told that it’s perfectly safe to climb if you don’t try and go leaning in near the edge. I haven’t climbed any of them yet but we plan to climb Turvavur soon, (the little one that’s smoking in the pictures) I certainly won’t be trying all that hard to get a look in. Of course, you don’t have to climb the volcanos to enjoy them. I see them every day, and never tire of doing so. They look so different, at different times of the day, with different weather patterns. They truly are remarkable geographic wonders. You can also visit the volcano observatory if you arrange to do so beforehand and see the work they do there (which may involve watching them watch volcanos?).

That's not all cloud - that's smoke!

At the base of the volcanos, and really, all around the island, are the tunnels constructed during WWII by the Japanese who occupied Rabaul at the time. Or, as was pointed out to me, the tunnels dug by local people for the Japanese army. The Japanese army used the tunnels for storage, accommodation, even for hospitals. One underground tunnel hospital could accommodate 800 patients. Today, you can visit these tunnels and walk through them. John Lau, a prominent man around town who is known to us through his generosity to all the volunteers who live in ENB, was born in one of these tunnels (many PNG born Chinese were interned there). I guess that’s the amazing thing when visiting ‘historical sites’ around town, you can then easily talk to people whose lives were shaped by related events.

Entry to a tunnel system, a not too tall person can stand up in here

This may just look like a rocky formation but the gaps at the base are storage tunnels.

Still on the subject of ‘historical sites’ the Bitapaka war cemetery (just out of town) is a strangely beautiful and contemplative place. Many of the Allied troops who died here (including many from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) lie in graves marked ‘soldier known unto god’. The grounds of the cemetery are huge and immaculately kept. The truly paradise like surrounds somehow make the senseless deaths of many young men all the more sad. It also seems somewhat bizarre that so many men, from such different parts of the world were united in fighting in a place so remote and foreign to them where the local people had absolutely nothing to do with the war other than it landed on their doorstep.

Yes people really dress up like this - will explain
 in later blog entry

For more war related stuff, there is a museum which has a collection of war remnants, cultural artefacts and a few unfortunate ‘pets’, namely a crocodile in a small pool of water and a cassowary in a cage. Not perhaps the highlight of the tourist itinerary. When Geoff and I went there, the sign said it was open, but the gate was locked. We just yelled out to the gardener who let us in and took our 5 kina ($2.50Aus). Apparently this is always the case and many people go and leave, thinking that it’s closed. Some of the records of the old town and some of the items salvaged from Japanese war wrecks are worth a look, but the museum certainly could do with some love and attention. Then again, this is the price you pay for what some tourists consider the holy grail of tourism – there aren’t any other tourists. Of course, you could skip the museum and just walk along the main street. There are literally abandoned and rusted WWII tanks just lying by the side of the road.    

What else? Ah, the market. I've written about the market before, so I’ll just include these two photos and add that the market has some things which make good souvenirs like earrings made from Tolai shell money, bilums (colourful woven wool bags from the highlands) and woven grass products, (mats, purses, baskets). There aren’t really enough tourists to support the crafts at the market but the products aren’t fake artefacts made to attract tourists (like so many of the awesome things for sale in China), local people carry bilums, use woven purses and wear jewellery from the market too. 

Basket, bilum, coin purse, earrings

The market is also a great place to talk to people. Everyone at the market is super friendly and you can practice your Tok Pisin. For those of us who love languages, this is fun, and for those of us who claim they ‘can’t learn a language’ will find that suddenly they can! Tok Pisin is certainly not as intimidating as Mandarin or the like, eg: displa i kostim hamas? = How much is this? Easy right?

Lastly, but most importantly, the beaches. Let’s be honest, it’s all about the beaches. Some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen are the beaches around the Duke of York Islands (about 40 mins away by boat). You can arrange a boat ride out there and a village stay with a local dive company or if you know someone with a boat, (as we do) you can just head out (though you may need to pay a small amount to land owners if you come across any – fair enough). Also beautiful are the beaches at Wata Plantation (sorry, some FB friends have already seen some of these photos) where we went for a boxing day party and Kabaira (where we often dive) is a stunning place too. Little Pidgin island is also a beautiful place and last year we went camping there with some friends (it’s uninhabited and only a 20 min boat ride from Kokopo). Our friends caught a tuna on the 20 min ride out there and ate it sashimi style for dinner. Awesome.

Wata Beach

Wata Beach

Little Pidgin Island - where we camped

Rapopo Beach, Kokopo

The Beehives in Simpson Harbour, Rabaul (many wrecks lie in this harbour)

The Duke of York Islands

The Duke of York Islands

The Duke of York Islands, kids playing

The beaches are amazing for just relaxing and swimming but also the diving or snorkelling is top notch. There are even some war wrecks in about 5 metres of water which you can easily see just snorkelling. Pods of dolphins (the largest I’ve seen was uncountable, hundreds) also regularly swim near Kabaira and the Duke of Yorks and they are amazing to watch. My friend Mike has some great videos of them leaping, twisting and balancing on their tales (kind of like Seaworld without the sadness) which I will endeavour to get my hands on once he’s back in the country. 

dolphins race the boats

clown fish

some kind of slug?

awesome evil-eye fish

 sea slug (they are thicker than your arm)

My absolute favourite, the Frogfish. He has a permanent home on an abandoned
metal frame on the Kabaira house reef. 

He even has little fin-feet to walk around on!

This fish stalked us for 45 minutes. You can't tell here, but it's  the size of a small TV.

Big lion fish (sorry, not good light)

OK, it looks like a lump on the wreck, but it's a Stonefish in camaflague. 

The other thing I love about the beaches here is that whenever you're on one, you can see mountains or volcanos as well. There are some truly spectacular views around. Oh, and just because I want to include some pics - I've never been anywhere before where there are so many colourful flowers blooming. In the six months that I've been here, the trees have continuously bloomed in stunning pinks, reds, purples and white. 

our street

our street, taken from in front of our house

frangipani are everywhere and they smell so nice

Lastly, the great thing about Kokopo, and this probably goes for other parts of the country, is that as there aren’t huge numbers of foreigners (though there are certainly a lot more than I expected) if you are new in town, it’s easy to get in touch with people right away. Everyone gets how difficult it is to access stuff and so people become very generous with their things, their time and their knowledge. You can be in town for a few weeks and people will invite you to their parties, take you out fishing on their boat, give you a lift to a nearby village, etc. And if you walk around, greet people in the local vernacular, carry a billum or – gasp – wear a ‘meri blouse’ (like a muumuu) you’re in like flyn with the locals. (If you’re a man though, I don’t recommend the meri blouse plan, maybe a laplap or a bush knife?) Walking around, not driving, attracts positive attention, people are very happy to see that you’re not scared of them (they hate the rep they get from the troubles in places like POM). You also win friends in abundance if you’re seen drinking from a coconut and eating locally prepared food at the market. (I’ve heard, countless times – “you can eat PNG food”! Lovely to be congratulated for knocking back some banana, sweet potato and freshly caught tuna!)

It’s often said in tourism brochures that the warmth of the local people is the thing you’ll remember, blah blah blah, but what can I say? It’s true here. In the picture below, Geoff and I were walking through bushland (for only about 40 mins), with our colleagues and local people from the centre of Watom Island to the coast. We all had to carry diesel and cargo and the path was quite treacherous. I kept slipping around in my thongs (jandles, flip flops, whatever) and nearly losing my heavy load (oh OK, I was carrying the life jackets – but they were awkward). All the other people wanted to help me, including the women you see here who are balancing much heavier loads on their heads. You can’t see it in the picture, but one young woman even had a load on her head, a bag in one hand and a baby balancing on her hip in the other hand. They all still tried to help me. Everyone was smiling and laughing and when we got to the sea, they all just ran in in their clothes (as did I). 

Watom Island

We met some fabulous people on Watom Island that day; in PNG, people love to ‘stori’, just sit around and chew the fat and they are genuinely pleased to have international visitors on their little island paradise. Somehow, they make you feel happy you just turned up.

So, anyone in? Oh sure you need so many vaccinations you’ll feel like a pin cushion. You’ll need to fly through POM. You could get Malaria. Or Dengue. It’s hot. There are no fabulous dining spots. We don’t have any ‘atmospheric laneways’ (that’s for you Melbourne). Yet somehow, I have a feeling, you’ll feel happy you turned up too. (awwwww- admit it, you kinda wanna come now don't you?) 

PIGS

This entry is a collection of amusing stories I have heard and things I have witnessed about pigs in PNG. In PNG, pigs are important. They’re cheap to feed, easy to look after and delicious (so I’ve heard) when the time is right. They’re also very expensive once fully grown and therefore highly prized. I’ve heard of people here buying a piglet when they have a baby and fattening the pig as the kid grows. By the time their kid is ready to start school, the pig is ready to pay for the school fees. Kind of like a college fund, only smellier.

In Australia, I never thought about pigs, or heard funny stories about pigs. They don’t come up really, as a topic - well not for the average Australian. Unless you’re dad has a pig farm or something, which leads me to amusing pig story No.1.

Amusing Pig related story No. 1

This story comes from an Australian volunteer working in PNG who has done a particularly fine job of getting to know everyone. Truly everyone. She has done this just by being her sunny self, always willing to chew the fat, find out what’s going on, and of course, she has learnt Tok Pisin. Not so long ago, she told me a story about when she first arrived in Moresby. Keen to get to know people and to practice her language skills, she had a good chat with some young lads working in security around the compound she was staying at in POM. They talked about all the usual stuff, where they were from, and about their families. It therefore quite naturally came out, that her father has a pig farm. A commercial pig farm. With about 10, 000 pigs. Being very new to PNG at the time, this volunteer had no idea what that might mean to a prospective beau (I sincerely doubt she considered herself on the market). The very notion of marrying into a family with 10,000 pigs! Well, I think it was a bit much for the lads to handle. Needless to say, she received a lot of attention from the security boys as the story of the prospective pig rich father-in-law spread and she now keeps the specifics of her father’s business out of introductions with PNG’s eligible bachelors. 

Amusing Pig related story No. 2

This one comes from another volunteer who works in juvenile justice. She hasn’t been here very long but seems pretty handy with the Tok Pisin already. But no one’s perfect. This story shows how funny a little language error can be.

The volunteer had heard that there was a boy in the cells. She went to have a look and saw an angelic looking 14 year old boy who was apparently in for murder. She was naturally shocked to think that one so young could kill. She asked the boy, in Tok Pisin, about his motive and her inquiry was met with something along the lines of:

“Em ikam long gaden bilong mi na em ikaikai sampela kaukau na kumu, olsem mi kilim em.”

He came into my garden and ate some sweet potato and greens so I killed him.

Of course she was shocked. She spoke with a friend who is a more advanced speaker of Pigin and found out that ‘kilim’ doesn’t always mean ‘to kill’. It can mean to fight with some one. Now feeling somewhat optimistic, our volunteer returned to the boy in the cell and sought clarification:

“Yu paitim em o yu kilim em na em idai pinis?”

To which the reply was:

“Em idai pinis.”

Well, I think that one needs no translation. Trying to make sense of what seemed to be such a senseless death, our heroine had a conversation with a local co-worker about land rights in PNG and the importance of land and land ownership. She tried hard to understand how trespassing on someone’s land might enrage them to kill. She later heard that the boy had been released and that things had been ‘sorted out’ and all was OK. Shocked again, she wondered how he’d been allowed to go free after committing murder to which she was assured that compensation for the pig had been settled. A PIG.

He killed a pig for eating all his families veges! In Tok Pisin, he/she/it is all one word, ‘em’. Somehow, the fact that he killed a pig and not a man had not been apparent. Which brings me to say, it wasn’t so very nice to kill the pig either, but can you believe he was imprisoned – for killing an animal on his own land. Yep, don’t mess with people’s pigs in PNG. Big trouble ensues. Ahhh, what a lovely lead into Amusing Pig related story No. 3.

Amusing/disturbing Pig related story No. 3

OK, this one’s not really a story. But I’ll just ignore that and get on with it. When expats come to live in PNG, they are usually given some very hard to follow advice, namely; if you are driving and you hit something – keep going. Yep, we are all encouraged to ignore the good Samaritan laws we’ve been told to follow all our lives and instead, hit and run. I could go on at some length about this one, but to keep things short, let’s just say that if the general idea of stopping at the scene of the accident is to assist and you wont be able to offer much assistance if you’ve been killed in retaliation then stopping is only adding to the body count (not saying that I agree with this advice though). We’re told to keep going, get on the phone or radio, seek assistance for them but don’t stop your vehicle if you hit a person. Or a pig. If you hit someone’s pig they’ll be pissed off big time and apparently you don’t want to be around to see it. Pigs are prized and killing someone’s pig means big bad news for you.

Amusing pig related story No.4

In general, pigs can be given as compensation for loss of property, general bad behaviour or just to smooth things over. In his book on PNG, Tim Flannery talks about how he offered a pig to a village in the highlands so they would abort their plans to murder him (it worked). Paying with pigs happens in other Pacific countries too (see Figure 1 for evidence that a pig fine can be issued to anyone!). For this reason, I have come up with an awesome recommendation for the Australian volunteer program to ensure the safety of those in PNG on assignment. I like to call it the ‘Back Up Pig’ program (although others claim that ‘Dial a Pig’ is catchier).

Figure 1.

Basically, everyone in PNG working as a volunteer should have speedy access to a pig should the need arise. I mean, it’s fine for locals, they’ve got vast networks of peeps with pigs, but what about us? If I piss someone off how am I gonna produce a pig in a timely fashion? How would I know how to choose an appropriate pig and know what to pay? In the ‘Back Up Pig’ program, all volunteers would have a pre-organised pig provider, who, for an agreed price could deliver a pig where it was needed pronto.

My plan was to convince Hannah, (who does a stellar job of co-ordinating the New Zealand volunteer program in PNG) to include in a presentation she was giving to Australians on her work, a farcical power point about the importance of the ‘Back Up Pig’ program in the security plans of the NZ vols. Sadly professionalism triumphed over what could have been comedy gold. I would have loved to see the faces on the attentive bureaucrats present :)

What’s that? You’d like another amusing tidbit about pigs in PNG? And a visual? Oh all right then.

Amusing pig related story No.5

Recently, Andersons, a supermarket in Kokopo, had a competition for which first prize was – yep you’ve really got the hang of this – a PIG!! I like how in the picture, it looks like a dirty black bush pig, which is probably what it is…

Amusing pig related story No. 6

When the Australian Navy were here recently, blowing up unexploded ordinance, a couple of villages were particularly helpful in locating bombs, mines and other such wartime nasties. I believe these villages were also inconvenienced as the Navy moved in to do dangerous exploding-y things. To say, ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry for the trouble’ the Aus Navy bought the villages a pig. Would love to have seen how they wrote that into their expenditure.

So, I hope I have painted an accurate and well rounded picture of the prized place the pig (or pik) has in PNG. If I hear any more great pig related things, I’ll be sure to up date you. Who can ever have enough pig stories!!

Gutpela Nui Yia long yupla na noken lus tingting – sapos yu spak na yu draivm, yu long long.

(my personal Tok Pisin version of ‘if you drink and drive you’re a bloody idiot’ but not sure how good it is :)