The good ol' Five-Finger-Discount

Ok, so I’ve never been robbed at knifepoint here in the street but I’ve had at least four items belonging to me stolen since arriving in PNG. The first two items were jumpers – taken from my bag either in the accommodation I stayed in during in-country orientation in hot, humid Madang or in transit between the airports of hot, humid Madang and hot, humid Port Moresby. Either way, both places were hot. And humid. Hardly the kind of places one finds the need for owning winter woollens.
The third item was my favourite shell – collected from a beach in Alotau, Milne Bay, during my Christmas holidays. I had carefully packed all of my seaside finds from that trip as hand-luggage to take back to the Highlands for decorating my hotel room. And, of course, of the 110+ shells that almost all survived, only my favourite seemed to go missing from the kitchen shelf after the cleaning ladies came through one afternoon in the subsequent weeks.
The fourth and latest theft revealed itself in fabulous fashion on Monday afternoon.
A workmate, Andreas, was driving me around town to visit a couple of NGOs – for the purposes of inviting representatives to a community development meeting I had planned for this Thursday. After finishing up at our last stop, I got back in the vehicle and we headed for my hotel. As we rounded the first corner, I noticed the usual throngs of locals sitting on the side of the road chewing buai (betel nut), smoking and talking. And that’s when I saw it.
“Andreas! That’s my hat!!!” Two women were sitting on the corner, deep in conversation. One wore a beanie, the other wore my boldly-marked volunteer program hat. Confused, Andreas kept driving.
A little background information… A friend from Alotau who had shared in the Christmas holiday with me noticed after I had gone that I had left my hat behind. She promised to post it up. Well, that was more than three weeks ago. And though I knew the PNG mail system could be notoriously late, I had decided in the past week the delay was getting ridiculous. Well, the reason for the parcel’s tardiness was quickly disappearing in the car’s wake. I knew it was my hat because it was the limited issue (and not particularly fashionable) fisherman’s hat produced by my program – and emblazoned with that very name on the front. But also, I was the first volunteer on this program ever to visit Mt Hagen, so the chances of some random Highland meri getting a hold of one of my colleagues’ hats – who are all stationed in other provinces – were practically zilch. Back home – mouth agape – I ran into my hotel’s manager (and surrogate Mum) whom I told the story of my hilarious find. With a twinkle in her eye, she said, “Let’s go find her. We need to teach her a lesson.” And so, before I knew it, Andreas, Maggie and I were driving through the streets of Mt Hagen, back to the spot where the two women had been sitting. Unfortunately it had started to rain so when we got there, only the beanie-clad local remained. But, undeterred, my proponent got out, asked a couple of questions in her tok ples (local language) and was back in the car giving us directions and the description of a bus to chase! Apparently the culprit (who just might’ve been an unwitting participant in this whole ordeal) was in a blue bus with white stripes and heading for the village of a tribe known to her. Well, after a 40-minute mobile game of Where’s Wally, we never did find our quarry, but I did get to see a whole new part of Mt Hagen. We hugged the hillside and took the back way around to the airport, taking in derelict tea plantations, makeshift rugby pitches and scores of naked children who all seemed to scream out “Wait Meri!!!” when they caught a glimpse of me in the passenger seat. Oh, and we saw this precariously balanced tray-load of labourers...

who didn’t seem too perturbed about traveling with a huge, unsecured load on some of the worst ‘sealed’ roads of PNG.
As for the hat, well my companions have promised to keep an eye out around town. Meanwhile, all postal instructions given to friends and family back in Australia are now under review…

Apinun olgeta!

I’ve been in PNG for a little over four months now and seem not to have had a minute to offer this little piece of cyberspace. But having visited another Mt Hagen volunteer friend’s blog, I thought it was time to get off my fast-expanding Highlands backside…

So… welcome to Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea! A land of rolling green hills, red-stained teeth (the locals chew copious amounts of betel-nut) and random acts of violence and kindness. It is, indeed, the land of the unexpected. This is a place where a person you have just met might commit to making you a bilum (EXTREMELY time-consuming, hand-woven string bag), bring you food, or rob you of your possessions – and don’t be surprised if all of this happens in the one day.

Mt Hagen is the capital of the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea – and is pretty much positioned right in the middle of the thick part of the mainland. It’s about an hour’s flight from the nation’s capital, Port Moresby, and is the central hub of trade in the Highlands provincial region. Its biggest industry is coffee production and export plays a huge part in this trade. Many families run small coffee plantations as cash crops and despite large squatter settlements in many of the cities, most villagers can and do grow their own food and often live quite comfortably on subsistence farming.

As for me, well, I live in a hotel in the centre of town and am working as a volunteer for a local media outfit. Of course, when I say – local media outfit – the whole outfit pretty much consists of me and my laptop. But we also have a video camera for filming local docos and news items as they come to hand. With a bit of luck, we’ll get some funding soon to expand our media capabilities.


Tea plantation: A typical Highlands scene