Trisha
An older adventuress, bowing down to the Goddess of Travel, I offer you through photographs and words what is like the world in Papua New Guinea but not the world. I invite you to explore encounters in Papua New Guinea. Plants grow, insects thrive, fish swim and people multiply. Global Adventuress
This world is flat, framed and high contrast. Like the patterns of the billums, colours fight each other for attention making it impossible to identify features in the glaring sun. Eighteen months amongst brown eyes has left me unsteady, with limited depth of field, and many images slightly out of focus showing you what a Canadian is able to see.
As a ‘meri bilong longwe ples’, (woman belonging to a longway place) the camera is handheld and I am wobbly as we proceed through the stories of this world. PNG is economically, physically, and spiritually declining with the increase of population, unemployment, disease, and crime. Failing state or merely disorganized country? It is a country with minerals, oil, fertile soil, forests and fishes. People do not starve here (well, not many). Most of the land is traditionally owned and farmed by the women.
And there is a wantok system; people in your tribe are obliged to help you out and vice versa. However this is frequently exploited and abused. The country’s strength and weakness. People become successful and then all their wantoks turn up expecting handouts. Your wantok will get you out of jail as well as put a roof over your head in times of hardship. Your land feeds your people but how do you extract minerals? A Gordian knot of country size.
This is not a travelogue filled with positive images of island paradise, however they are there. Over the 18 months the novelty of diving 28 degree Celsius warm water grew repetitive. As I looked closer the prints of the women’s meri blouses became stained with beetlenut spit and the limited opportunities came to the foreground.
Your mission should you accept it is to spend two years as a volunteer working with Divine Word University. Who would do this without faith or at least idealism? In this, and many cases in PNG volunteering is synonymous with missionary work. In villages community services such as school, hospital and church are in one "bus haus”.
For many of the non-believers are placed in positions having to pretend religious belief. After all, if you are a doctor and someone dies it could be the ‘heathen’ doctor’s fault. For some it is an opportunity to proselytise. The west’s separation between church and state is artificial here. But come to think of it, maybe it is a façade in the US as well, with God giving the military directives.
Travel Blog Posts
April 10th 2005
PNG News: Just Visiting April, 2005 This is the last PNG News! To anyone who read each and every one of these, congratulations welcome to my snakes and ladders experiences. If you have been more discriminating in your reading you will be aware of the varied quality of the reports depending on my moods. I am not of this place, and my time here has been a collage of bright meri blouse encounters. Ways of being in the world- the laughter, the young men holding hands, the strong women carrying billums hanging from their foreheads. On this tapestry, which are in fact colonial remnants there are beetle nut stains. Thoughts and words are whispered and swallowed instead of being spoken out loud. Bigman actions are corrupt and patronizing. Dependency and cargo cult are well rooted into ... read more
March 25th 2005
PNG News Up the Lazy River March 25, 2005 It was like you would imagine it- floating on a log (in truth it was a long dug out canoe with a 25 hp engine) visiting dusty cathedral proportioned haus tambarans (sometimes called haus boys) with earth tone painted shields and totems. Planti of crocodiles, marsupials and insects in the swamps and amazing birds including white and black herons, and birds of paradise. The ever changing Sepik River is fast flowing, silt coloured and meanders. Air Nuigini transported me to Wewak to rendezvous with my English fellow explorer Sue Baker (www.lastfrontierarts.com.pg), followed by MAF delivering the two of us to Ambunti to our two guides with the dugout canoe. “Pilots flying for MAF- the Mission Aviation Fellowship- had the worst crash record. They had a reputation, it ... read more
February 18th 2005
PNG News - Baa February 18th, 2005 Baa Baa Black Sheep Have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir Three bags full One for the master One for the dame And one for the little boy Who lives down the lane. Just down the lane from my official work at Good Shepherd Seminary, senior statesman and PNG’s current governor general, Sir Paulias Matane spoke at the Fr. Peter Secondary School. (February 6, 2005) At the podium, amongst Western Highland’s bigmen, he told us that when he was 17 year old boy he went to school for the first time and memorized this rhyme. He asked his teacher ‘what is a black sheep? And what is wool? What is a dame? And a lane?’ He didn’t ask about the word ‘master’. His teacher, who he suggested had ... read more
January 24th 2005
PNG News : Understanding Contrasts January 24, 2005 :“What” is not to understand and “what” is to understand or not is not to understand that even when “what” is understood, it is not understood, for “what” is to understand and “what” is not to understand, “what” is “what” and “is not” is “is not”, and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why “what” needs to be understood or whether “what” can be understood; and also it is not understood whether “what” is really not understood or that it simply hasn’t been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then ... read more
December 20th 2004
PNG News - Three Countries December 20, 2004 Summer Solstice I want to reassure you all I am fine and wish you a fine summer/winter solstice and a happy 2005. I am at no risk. A month in Brisbane allowed me some perspective into the tight hot world of my Madang existence. On arrival back, brother Andrew told me the news- brother Hugo, the Swiss religious farmer come DWU driver, killed a local who was passed out on a one-way bridge near the RD Tuna plant. This is just about the worst thing that could happen to this gentle, conscientious driver. This fellow takes his time, he is willing to spend weeks burning stumps of dead trees just to clear the grounds. The silver lining in this dark cloud is that the university has stepped up ... read more
November 5th 2004
PNG News # 19- Liklik longway Just got back from trying out a crackers idea that two English volunteers had. They figured it would be possible to bike from Bogia all the way back to Madang. The road hugs the coast all the way southwards. Only an Englishman and a Canadian woman would actively seek hardship and pathos by trying to cycle 200 kilometres in the tropics in one weekend. On the crappiest bikes on Earth. Friday began with an endless wait for Richard's wanwok’s open backed truck to haul us up to Lupabisa (the school he worked at in the summer which is about 10km outside of Bogia, so strictly speaking not all the way but near enough). I was pleasantly surprised when we left a mere 3 hours after the appointed time. We picked ... read more
October 4th 2004
PNG News #18: Nigerian Independence Day (October 4, 2004) This week is exam time and so far I have spared you the inevitable tests of learning. Life has become slow motion for me and fast-paced for instructors. An article in last week’s National newspaper outlined how in the cycle of financial crunches, students have turned against the administration for not allowing them to take their exams. The administration (that includes me) says that they have not paid their fees so of course they cannot take their exams. The students are responsible to pay for the governments’ supposed-to-be sponsored money. And since this is the end of our academic year we have the awful prospect in this awful economy of next year’s fees needing to be raised. Some students want to complete their degrees as fast as ... read more
September 12th 2004
PNG News # 17: Like every Place you have never Been (Air Nuigini slogan from David Millar’s time) (September 11, 2004) Firstly, you need to note that the above is how people Capitalize letters here. It drives me bananas. And related to going ‘bananas’, this morning a man came to my house selling bananas from my own garden. Two trees had recently fallen due to the heavy weight of the fruit and the lack of rain. ‘Why did you take the bananas?’ ‘Because they were there.’ Any Way, back to the punctuation that thanks to sister Janet who bought me the book Eats, Shots, and Leaves, puts the whole stickler problem into perspective. But does the Panda eat bananas, you ask? Overwhelming does not last forever. No matter how astonishing my initial contact in the land ... read more
August 26th 2004
PNG News- #16 The Road to Bundi (August 26, 2004) Well it should have been the road to Bundi, however the policeman’s truck was bugarap and he turned back at 5:15am. So Jamie, my 24 year old British fellow trekker and I went back to sleep at the Catholic Mission and then spent yet another day walking to Brahmin. On this final hike, six members of the Warriors- Brahmin’s under 21 rugby team saved the day. They showed us shortcuts down steep mountains, bought us bananas, and most of all carried my pack. Surrounded by a circle of young beetlenut chewing men we waited for the PMV to take us to the Highlands Highway. Where after a flat tire, a lots of watermelon we negotiated a ride back to Madang. So the trip to the highest ... read more
July 18th 2004
PNG News #15 Under (July 18, 2004) This week's theme simply under Under surfaces; my counter, PNG culture, and the Pacific ocean Under my counter Under my counter is a half dozen canned products from Australia In my fridge most things come from Australia Except if it is from the Philippines or Singapore My shopping basket is a lesson in the high cost of AID This is a country where people fed themselves for 30 centuries This what remains in the mouth After swallowing the wisdom of the west for 40 years All is left is the taste for processed food Stomach slaves to distant shopkeepers Let's just have another Coke and forget it about it. Under the surface PNG is the dependent on aid and the attitude of the cargo cult fights movement towards self ... read more
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