In this entry, I’d like to give you a little snapshot of how one aspect of the
modern world settles in to a place where many people are subsistence famers,
still practice customs that have been handed down for countless generations and
have never heard of youtube. I’d like to talk about how mobile phones are used
and indeed embraced in PNG.
If you’re like me (I’m 32) you aint no spring chicken but
you’re not entirely over the hill either (yep, that’s what I’m telling myself).
Your parents were young in the 60’s. They had home phones, television, and The
Beatles and they watched as man landed on the moon. They lived with the threat
of a nuclear war. In the same decade, there were whole communities of people in
PNG who had never seen someone outside of their own cultural group. They’d
never seen a pasty white person or even the ocean. Amazing. I have one
colleague here who is also around my parents’ age (actually a little younger)
who grew up in a village where electricity was unheard of and who remembers
that the first time she ever touched a computer was 2006. This same woman is
now a confident and competent user of things like powerpoint and gmail. Also
amazing.
PNG is a diverse country. It’s something which is said over
here often cause it’s true. It’s usually said in relation to the hundreds of
languages and cultures which co-exist, but it could also be said about the
population’s exposure to countries and cultures outside of PNG and familiarity
with modern technology. Some peoples, especially in coastal areas such as East
New Britain where I live, have been exposed to missionaries and trade ships for
a few hundred years. They’ve also seen Germans, Brits, Australians and Japanese
come and go (and wreak havoc) and therefore have a recent history of relations
with external ideas and influences. Yet even within East New Britain, tradition
and modernity blend and at times clash in spectacular ways which I find quite
fascinating. To be honest, the same was true (albeit in a very different way)
in Japan and it’s still something which draws me in.
The most obvious nod to modern ways in PNG is the mobile
phone. Here, like in Australia, it seems that everyone has a mobile. The
largest provider is a company called Digicel and the coverage they provide,
even in pretty remote areas seems impressive. In many ways, the system here is
a big improvement on what I’m used to. Everyone has a pre-paid phone (and
pre-paid power and water) and you buy little credit coupons from the
supermarket which have a code on the back. You just plug the number into your
phone and it’s done. In Australia, with Vodaphone at least, you have to ring a
number and listen to crappy advertising messages to do the same thing. In PNG,
you can also transfer your phone credit to your power or water meter. Genius. 
Also, Digicel has a system where people can, for free, send
texts to others on the same network asking to be called or asking for credit if
they run out. Clever huh. Of course, this is Digicel’s way of encouraging you
to use the phone more and spend more money - but Papua New Guineans are
incredibly savvy about taking advantage of this and using the phone for free.
They have an awesome system.
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| This leftover from WWII lies directly under the Digicel billboard above |
Here, people use the free ‘template’ texts to send real
messages to their friends. For example, Digicel allows you to plug a number
into a text template such as ‘please send me _____ kina in credit’ and you just
put the amount in. People agree on what each number means, so sending a request
for 2 kina might mean you’re on your way home, sending a request for 3 kina
might mean ‘I’m ready to be picked up’, etc. In this way, people use the phone
company’s plan to try to make you spend more on credit, to cleverly send free
messages. I love it.
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| Phone credit |
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| People using their phones to capture cultural performances |
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| Can you see the guy sitting down in the centre? Filming with his phone and chanting at the same time :) |
Entertainment aside, mobile phone technology is such a
wonderful thing for a place like PNG as it doesn’t require services to reach
your individual door (like a landline) and there aren’t the same maintenance
costs involved (I guess satellites aren’t affected by earthquakes and humidity
like everything else is here). Of course, it’s not all rosy and some people can
and do use phones to film and disseminate pornography
which is a big concern
for a society which strongly promotes Christian and conservative values. I’m
not sure how widespread the problems are but certainly the advantages of mobile
phones mean that they are here to stay.
Of course, a phone to an Australian doesn’t necessarily mean
the same as a phone to a Papua New Guinean. I could theorise that most people here
have never had a landline and still don’t have internet access and that this
combined with the fact that people can be very isolated and it’s human nature
to want to seek out others = a situation where people use their phone to meet
people and try to make new friends. Just a theory - I don’t really know the
reason why, but, at times when it’s cheap (or free) to call, people will dial
random numbers and see who’s there. You’ll be sitting at home, watching a DVD
and suddenly the phone rings and someone asks ‘yu husat?’. At first, it seems
pretty bizarre to be on the receiving end of a call and to be asked who you are.
OK, I admit, it still seems pretty odd to me. I tend to reply with ‘yu kolim mi
na yu husat?’ and they usually tell
me and sometimes ask me where I am. (At least they don’t ask me what I’m
wearing….) It’s hard not to find these calls irritating even though they’re not
threatening at all. Once, I called a wrong number by accident. I apologised and
hung up. Then, they began texting me, telling me that they lived in Moresby and
asking how I was and that they hoped God would bless me, etc. I became engaged
in a bizarre and pointless text conversation before I finally convinced them
that although they were probably very nice, I wasn’t going to become their
phone friend. I know. I’m so mean.
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| The Conference Centre of Kambubu |
As I’ve mentioned, mobile phone coverage is pretty decent in
East New Britain but there are some unlucky spots. I few weeks ago I visited a
wonderful school called Kambubu, which is right on the coast of the Pomio
district. This is the kind of place where you look out from the staff room to
see impossibly blue water and swaying palms. You know you should be thinking of
the kids and their grammar troubles but it’s hard not to think about how good
some rum would taste in your coconut. Anyway, there is next to no mobile
coverage in Kambubu, except for a large guava tree which, if you dance around
it and wave your phone, you will, eventually, be able to send a text. The kids
at this school refer to the tree as ‘the conference centre’. (I know I said in my last post that kids
weren’t allowed to have phones at school. It’s been true at every other school
I’ve been to except this one.)
Mobile phones, and not computers, also give some people access
to various forms of social media. Adults in the more urban areas, and kids in
general, know about facebook and twitter. Some of them actually use these
sites, others just know of them from Digicel’s far reaching advertising (in
some places, the company paints tree trunks with Digicel red and white). But,
as the vast majority of people don’t have general internet access, I’ve yet to
meet a teenager who has heard of youtube. It seems somehow more bizarre when
you hear them talk about twitter…..
Next week, I’m
running a session for the great staff at my base school on using powerpoint.
Most of these teachers are, like many Papua New Guineans, very engaging
speakers with a real sense of flair and I’m actually mindful of crushing their
public speaking mojo with powerpoint so I gotta find a way to show them how to
use it for pictures, graphs, etc, without tempting them to read off it (as so
many people do in the places I’ve worked at before). At least I know they won’t
be to insert pointless cutesy videos which they downloaded from youtube, so
they’re already ahead as far as I’m concerned.
Lastly, one thing I have learnt from my colleagues here, and
it’s something which we often say in Australia, but rarely have the guts to
practice, is that ‘you’re never too old’. To see a woman in her late fifties,
who grew up without electricity (it gets dark here at 6:00pm) slowly but surely
learn to use the internet to search for and download images and then use them
to create a presentation is humbling and impressive. I’ve known people in
Australia to shy away from (actually in some cases loudly have a temper tantrum
because of) frustrations with having to use new technology. Yes, I also admit
to having a sook when I had to rub two brain cells together and get used to
using a mac (scroll you stupid mouse pad scroll!). I now accept that my only
significant first world problem is the total lack of beach front at your
average Australian school (shocking but true), and not the fact that the
computers are sometimes a little slow to load. To those of you who lack a view
of swaying palms and white sandy beach from your office, I say ‘sori tru’ - that
really sucks and yes, you definitely deserve better. To those of you who
complain cause you have to submit something electronically I say toughen up.
Then again, those people wouldn't be reading a blog cause they think a blog is
some sort of plumbing problem.
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| The view from the staff room at Kambubu Secondary |
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| The beach front of Ramoiana Technical School |
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| Frolicking in front of the school on the Duke of York Islands |
Lukim yu olgeta J
