The Far Side of the World, Part 10

February 1976: after spending Christmas in Tasmania, Tony Reavley's back to the jungles of Asia, and finding it a bit of a culture shock...

23-02-76

Wewak, Papua New Guinea

On the 21st January we flew to PNG and over the Barrier Reef which looked quite spectacular from the air over the Coral Sea. Around lunchtime we arrived in the capital, Port Moresby, which must be unique as it's the only capital city in the world I know of which cannot be reached by road. The surrounding countryside is covered with jungle and mountains and the only way in is by boat or air. Two days later, we flew north to Lae, [where] we stayed with an English couple who were members of the Church of Christ. One of the local white missionaries was getting married and we were invited to the wedding and a sumptuous reception afterwards. No booze allowed but plenty of food including cold beef, ham, chicken, prawns, cheese, fresh pineapple, egg with caviar, clams, oysters, salad etc - our best meal for some time.

After three days we left for the Central Highlands where the weather is cooler and more bearable. There are very few roads in PNG and those that exist are all dirt and potholes. The tarmac always ends about a mile outside the big towns, of which there are only six in the whole country. We'd heard hitching was possible and managed to get a lift from an Aussie road-worker up to Goroka in a beaten-up old Holden. We stopped a night and the next day hitched a lift with one of the few Papuans who own their own private car. This fellow was a professor in a local college and took us up to Mount Hagen, the central town of the Highlands area. He spoke good English but the official language, believe it or not, is "pidgin". It's a sort of bastardisation of English, very amusing and the foreign language I'd most like to learn. What other language, for example, could define "useless", "ruined", or "no good" as "buggerup"?! If something's no good one says, "him buggerup". Barrie's beard is officially translated as "mouth-grass". We've got to learn a little pidgin and if one works at it for six months or so, one becomes fairly fluent.

We stopped in Mt Hagen for 8 days, using it as a base to visit some of the more interesting tribes-people in the surrounding mountains. Hagen was an incredible place and some of the people and events we saw were unforgettable. PNG was once two separate countries - Papua and New Guinea - and only received independence from Australia last September. The indigenous people comprise several hundred different tribes and over 700 different dialects are spoken! These people are still some of the most primitive in the world and have literally had to adjust from a stone-age to a modern existence in less than 50 years. Some tribal people haven't seen white men and although the more civilised local people are ashamed to admit it, head-hunting and cannibalism still take place amongst some of the remoter areas. The occasional white missionary still gets gobbled up but only if he's been "very naughty" or "done something very bad", I was told.

A rather frightening phenomenon still exists even amongst the more civilised. This is the system known as "pay-back" and means just this only too literally. If a man is murdered, the murderer is immediately singled out and killed - instant reprisal! Not always pleasantly either. I quote from a local paper: "A man was shot dead with arrows then hacked to pieces during tribal fighting near Kerowagi in the Chimbu Province on Wednesday." Unfortunately, with pay-back, no one is safe. If the murderer escapes, his wife may cop it, and if she's not available the "pay-back" may extend to a child, sister, brother or any distant relation of the murderer.

We actually saw an example of this whilst we were in Hagen when a lorryload of chanting tribesmen appeared in the town. They were brandishing stone axes, spears and bows and arrows and were daubed from head to foot in dried, ochre-coloured mud as a sign of mourning. Naked, apart from the arse-grass that all these tribal people wear consisting of bunches of leaves worn hanging from a bark-belt to cover the more vital parts. A man driving a lorry had accidentally run into one of these warriors and killed him and the others were demanding "pay-back". Usually, the person concerned is given the option of paying money but this is usually fixed at an improbable, astronomical amount. The men held their meeting in town on a nearby field. We watched and took photos; the warriors were very friendly and would pose for the odd cigarette or so, but they undoubtedly would have killed the driver had they found him.

We hired a car for a few days at Hagen as we'd found a Swiss couple and with six of us, car-hire became a viable proposition. We were advised to keep going if we knocked anyone down as if the local people didn't get hold of whoever was driving, one of the passengers would do equally well! From all this you've probably got the impression that the people generally are very hostile which simply isn't true. Inter-tribal battles still occur but towards us the people were very friendly and hospitable, especially in the remoter parts. As we drove along people would wave, especially the children, and we'd be greeted with cries of "apernun" ("afternoon" in pidgin).

Tomorrow we leave for Djayapura in West Irian Indonesia, a short flight over the border after five weeks in PNG. This has probably been one of the most interesting countries we've visited so far.

Best wishes to everyone

Tony

P.S. Read an Aussie paper and notice Wolves are in the last 8 of the cup with Albion still in as well. Hope to see an all Black Country final when I reach Hong Kong!