They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll stay
*
that is of course the postal service. other aussie vols have been around for the past week, and last night there was a great housewarming party with a lot of dancing and tunes. going to be hard to come back down and return to the normal quiet life. maybe we won't; maybe we'll stay

we're here for the birds*

on sunday afternoon a friend and i passed these meris in town, hanging out with their pisin.

*this is a bumper sticker on my mum's car which always makes me laugh

it was some type of kingfisher-something-or-other... a baby.

release the hounds

this past weekend, we had an incountry meeting for the australian volunteers (at a conference centre in goroka; not quite a dream location - would love a weekend out of the mountains - but great company made it fun). this was one of the rules. and it was serious. and they were.

my friend is coming down today. a bit of madness is about to hit the highlands; can't wait!
*
she brought down some Buka buai. now i don't actually chew, but this is special stuff (and huge! hadn't seen buai this big) and last night after some drinks it seemed like a good idea to try it. kids, this meant serious sweats and dizziness. i had to lie down. i would feel more embarrassed if one of my friends - a national, who chews - hadn't done the same thing. this is not to be messed with!

He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about, yet he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions?…For his hopes for the future?…Yes and no. The chief reason for his wanting to weep was a sudden acute sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing within him, and the narrow material something which he, and even she, was. The contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she sang.

I have finished – amid interruptions – books one and two of War and Peace. I feel a bit let down by the translation (from the 1950s; “Pass me a cup of tea, old chap” etc); at times I know a certain passage or line stretches towards beauty and truth – but it doesn’t always get there. Still, beggars can’t be choosers – that I found the book here is surprising enough.

but i'm enjoying it. will write more when i'm through. some of the writing surprises me though; it's snappy and sharp, not elongated and classical as i somehow expected.

She rose and smoothed her hair which was, as usual, so extraordinarily smooth that it might have been made of one piece with her skull, and varnished.

it was hot. canoed out to the right of the pic, to a beach, disappointingly rocky - no metaphors this time - paddled back right smack bang in the middle of the expanse of glittering water = and lept out of the pale blue cusp into clear warm water; a wonderful swim. i love holidays.

early morning swim at restort, then canoeing and swimming at jais aben; nicely followed by sunday brunch (bbqd red snapper! still licking my lips) at j.a., in the big open-air haus kinda pictured...(shame i caught that blue-bottomed man, it wasn't nearly as bad as that; in fact it was quite close to a tropical paradise)

my (other) bosses are in town. i received an email warning this morning:

"This is a GOROKA BASE general alert: AVI Country managers have been spotted in town and have been reported to be striking at random, visiting AVIs without prior warning. Just this morning, xx of yz was surprised at her desk by the sudden appearance of an AVI Country Manager.


You have been warned. BE ALARMED, NOT ALERT!"

still laughing at pal who got caught.

downpour of sweat, damp cotton clouds

(brighteyes again)
came back this morning. from hot to cold. freedom to work. swimmers to shirt and jeans. i'm tired and the kitchen smells of mould. but i've escaped the office and brought some instant packet food + work home instead, so the plan is: eat, couch, and...sneaking a snooze.

take it easy (love nothing)

underneath the radar

this week Goroka hosts the Melanesian Spearhead group (leaders from the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia mingle with Somare - png's pm - & co). In Friday's paper there was reassurance from the police that peace would be kept. Their diplomacy was amusing: "Eastern Highlanders are hospitable and peace loving people but the government is not taking any chances because we are going to receive some very important people" the deputy police commissioner said.

This means: roadblocks - all week long - on the one big road in and out of town "to monitor vehicles and people" (rumour: people not from goroka aren't going to be allowed in; rumour 2: 6pm curfew to be encouraged); loiterers subject to police searches; "Bootleggers and drunk and disorderly people who disturb the peace" will be "confronted" by police (bootleggers! the only such loot is for sale under counters in supermarkets).

and it's meant cleaning up the town: prisoners are brought out from jail to cut, with bushknives, the grass growing at the airport (i love that story), the darts disappear from the markets, the bus stop is moved from town (and bilum stealing becomes rife). also, the road i live on - one of the bad ones in the urban area, painful potholes even in 4wds - was leveled on sat and sunday and i think might even be resealed. all because this saturday the five prime ministers' wives are coming to my work, not quite sure why, perhaps a morning tea and cucumber sandwich.

and sellers like the one pictured (outside the bird of paradise, the big hotel in town; note the ubiquitous ice cream) have been moved on and pavements swept. in fact, half of the main road was closed yesterday afternoon, police with their guns roamed around, and a plane landed with some heavies - who ran straight into waiting vehicles, drove the 50m up the road to the bird, and presumably arrived without incident at the hotel. the road was still closed today.

the funny thing is, this town is pretty safe. all of this is just polishing the surface, even - especially - the security measures. there won't be a serious security breach, not because of our high-grade defences, but because these guys aren't so heavy and the conference is just a talk-fest. still, we finally get a bit of a road!!! (the hospital road, which mine comes off, remains in its dusty, rutted state)

the interpreter - david and margaret liked it; read some review from the guardian and the cat tore it to shreds.

i can see how you might feel all cynical and world wise and not like it, but - i totally enjoyed it. love sean penn. and ok nicole too. have a friend who wants to work in africa and for u.n.; can understand it, not exactly from this film, but in general.

but i am not finishing in png and moving to africa. that would be to utterly, irrevocably, turn to the dark side, to the world of the life-long aid worker.
*
and otherwise had a really nice weekend. as well as watch movies, did some clothes shopping, went swimming, watched a plane take off, had dinner cooked for me. and now it's late and dark and raining. and time to stretch out and pick up war and peace again. oddly, it's world makes a lot of sense here: all the social rules, the etiquette, the duels, the affection and affectation; the fighting, the incompetent and the great leaders, the fear and love and violence of battle. the life, the living of it, and the questions.

boats and islands

Back of library building; top = the upstairs I am talking about. pigeons - vermin of the air - nest and poo up there. Not sure what that ladder is for.

At work we have an upstairs, attic-style section to the library. This is off-limits to everyone but staff, and special researchers. (And this volunteer.) It houses rare books and journals, mainly relating to PNG.

It’s a wonderful place. You climb a flight of slightly-too-small steps to reach a tiny landing and, on your right, the first door. Unlocking this one (it is always kept locked), you enter a long rectangular room, with a high a-frame ceiling. The area is divided by big bookshelves into three bays; the last one, the largest, has a long narrow table for scholars to scribble their notes on, but all of the bays have a low bench up against the far wall for the same purpose. The two long walls that make the room are not really walls at all, but porous places: louvered windows line them, taking the place of something more solid. The louvres are always open (despite the fragility of some of the old books). You look out on the campus and the greeny-blue mountains not too far away. It is a light and airy space, usually warm, and somewhat dusty.

It is beautiful when the afternoon light creeps slantwise, along the wooden floor. But I like it best when it’s been hot (well, as hot as Goroka gets), when thick clouds have stormed the sky and in a fury begin to pelt those fat raindrops down on the earth. When all you can hear is the roar of the rain, up here it feels like you’re in a boat, safe and dry. A boat with books.

At the far end of this room is another door, also kept locked. There are more anthropology journals and bibliographies; long benches line two of the walls, and here is a little multimedia centre where we convert aging videos to digital formats, and where I sometimes muck around trying to teach myself how to edit movies, dreaming that I am actually an independent filmmaker just polishing my latest feature on some important and risky project, getting ready to file it with the office in London where staff I email but never see will distribute it to worldwide acclaim whilst I am back in the field chasing up the next important and risky project…

Lately, however, this door’s been open, and someone else has been working at that desk. Not making films, but translating some Dutch manuscripts. He seems almost fictional to me: he’s a Brother, originally from Australia; gaunt, fiercely intelligent, and a bit lost in the world. He is interested in ancient civilizations, has an incredible memory, and knows about a thousand different languages – but his pronunciation is terrible: all his learning is from books. He is abrupt and uncomfortable with people, at times harsh; he reaches out to others with an almost desperate need, and yet repels any consequent personal response. He has given me some of his own writing to read; it is crammed with information, yet there is no easy flow to how he writes: it almost bristles. And in amongst it, unexpectedly, are painfully acute personal revelations, bitterness and a great sense of loss. Secretly, I find him like a bit of a warning, a sad one. So much knowledge, but so ill-equipped for living.
**
(last night was another movie night - war of the worlds: shockingly bad. didn't even watch the second half; still shaking head that it could be so terrible. and mr and mrs smith, which was more entertaining. is it true she's having his baby? good gossip anyway)

they call me on and on, across the universe

this is here, kitchen + country, for now. sorry bougainvilleans; that strip fell off the wall. no symbollism intented.

took a big breath and had some work people over for dinner tonight (i once knew how to cook, but coming here, forgot everything. by myself, i tend to get on to one thing and eat it over and over. last week = guacamole. week before = scrambled eggs. week before = packet soups + noodles. yeah, it's pretty dire. i say yes to every dinner invitation; everyone else seems to know how to cook, so they can cook for me.) there is a new volunteer at work, a vso (british). she was asking a thousand and one questions, and it was funny to find how much i'd adapted to only half-consciously, how much this place sneaks under your skin. before coming here, i hadn't lived in a foreign country before, just travelled, so this is new to me.

having said that, i kind of wish i had a one year contract, rather than two. i'm used to moving about the place every six-twelve months, moving house if not heading off to another dot of light calling me from another map. the challenge in coming here is not the overt one, it's learning to be satisfied with the everyday, becoming a bit more patient.

ugh. it's a struggle i tell ya. Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox. mundane - shouldn't i be struggling more with existential dilemmas? ethics and economics? human rights as a colonising discourse? - but true.

**

Book Meme: I’m not really sure how these games go, but because it’s from a blog worth reading – sepikmom! – and because it’s about books, here goes:

Total Books Owned:
Let’s make it easy and say “right now in house in PNG”: actually…about 75. And these are ones I own. God; how quickly I accumulate…And there’s: Library books: over 25. Books from friends: 7 I think.

Last Book I Bought:
1. Another Rebus novel (the late ones are excellent; ‘black and blue’ is really, really superb.)
2. “The Greenest Island” (paul theroux) – acute. Good.

Last Books I Read:
-“The Line of Beauty” (alan hollinghurst) – the first two thirds of this 1980s-thatcher-upper-class-london novel, the writing skates along smoothly – a bit too much so; I wasn’t sure that it hadn’t won the booker just because the main character’s gay and everything’s so stylised. But then suddenly hollinghurst puts a bit of muscle behind the slide and the narrative flies ahead and everything “goes black and glittering”, like ice at night. I would have liked a bit more politics, but impressive.

-Thesis on raskols in Lae, PNG (submitted to work but read for interest): young-man-hanging-out-with-the-bad-boys anthro piece, and analysis is at times a bit light, but not many other people have lived with raskols and written about it, so was definitely worth a look.

- “The Perfect Spy” (le carre) – yep very “dad’s bookshelf”, but in desperation one night I picked it up and ended up reading far too late into the night. Surprisingly, it’s not stupid! Gripping, totally indulges in all of that romance around spies and spying.

-“The Sky Travellers” (bill gammage) – first Hagen – Sepik patrol in 1930s. fascinating historical detail, but what’s most impressive is that it tells of events and how they were interpreted from all parties’ perspectives: it’s a “two sided” history; haven’t read much png history like it, and to give gammage credit I actually don’t think it’s been done with such seriousness before.

- “jamaica inn” (d du maurier) – hm, ok; maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. Don’t pay for this one.

Books I [Would] Like To Read:
1) War and Peace; half way through, but it doesn’t count until I’ve made it to the end.
2) Actually this is one I feel I ought to read: Hakluyt’s “Voyages and Discoveries”: someone lent me this, notes and journals from early dutch exploration around the world. Interesting in the abstract (“request to be advised in the killing of a whale”, “266 christians delivered out of Turkish slavery”), but don’t think I’ll actually get far.

Books that Mean[t] A lot to Me [at the time]:
This is a bit random. It’s hard to say, without seeing your books lined up before you. For each “…” read: “…at the time”
- eight months on ghazzah street, Hilary Mantel
- no road (muecke) (not really for content, but for what it does, how he moves)
- Ulysses (joyce) (such a discovery…)
- seth’s suitable boy
- the death of William gooch (dening; just for the prologue)
- portrait of a lady (james) (…this was a long time ago)

- meg and mog; yok-yok; and all those beautiful books my lovely aunt sent to us in the antipodes over the years. each of the above books actually make me remember people, more than the books themselves. From words to the world, to the words and back and forth again. This is the only pattern to life I know.

...coming home

She said you're like a disease without any cure
She said I'm so obsessed that I'm becoming a bore, oh no

I locked you out, you cut a hole in the wall
I found you sleeping next to me, I thought I was alone

...I'll be coming home for christmas, to that city that thinks she's so pretty.
Adelaide echoes in my head (or maybe i mean heart). I can't wait. And this time I get to be one of those (envied) people who, when all ho-ha gets tiresome and the fun stops, flies away, back to another life.

party like it's goroka 2005

saturday night = screening of this as a fundraiser for local medical research institute. which meant: 60k ticket gets you as drinks at rick's bar pre-show; which meant take in a bottle of champagne to drink as you eat pop corn and dream like it's ww2 again (and look out for those tricks of "perspective", like bogart standing on boxes, and midgets running around aeroplanes); which meant come out and hang out at rick's bar again for a while; which meant dance till three and dare a friend to dance as if on a podium (and she does, to warrant's cherry pie! such a classic) (mind you, i believe we were all dancing with great enthusiasm to paradise city - to leave a light on for me - did flashdance really play or was that just the feel of the night?) and then there's a finale as the bar is cleared and someone lies across it and sings us goodnight -

now i paid for it yesterday but pictures cames alive! we were dancing right through our lives

stars of track and field are beautiful people

and so are gym bunnies. yesterday i ... officially joined the gym. the idea of the boxy room doesn't tempt me, but i've joined with some friends so hopefully it won't be too bad. other than that there's not a lot of physical things you can do around here. some people play tennis (but at a rather intimdating level), and oh there's the rifle range i suppose, or the golf course, but hey one step at a time.

more exciting: today i introduced lan messaging at work and the excitement! you can feel it - and hear it! everyone has to laugh loudly at lame comments and still shout out responses from room to room. it's hilarious. forget all the talk about capacity building etc; this may be my legacy.

boys

Boys on the street walk close, touching. They hold hands, they whisper in each others’ ears. They giggle. Relationships between men are central, valued, special.

A girl and a boy – friends or lovers – won’t hold hands in public, and although it’s not uncommon for a girl to hold hands with another girl, it’s not nearly as common as boys doing so. Women are secondary. Homosexuality is overseas – is something laughed at about notorious celebrities, generally in Moresby – is for sissies – is unnatural, against God’s law – is nothing to do with friendship between boys, between men.

Boys also carry bags (like my existential friend above), or bilums – what westerners would call handbags. Here there’s nothing unmanly about it. There’ll be tools inside, or a cheque book, or buai. i love it (but i've always loved bags too. not shoes or makeup for me; just the bag.)

The closeness between men, the value given to it, the opposite of self-consciousness – the pride in parading this boys’ own intimacy – is not like it was in India (where you grow out of it). It would be so touching, if it wasn’t accompanied by such intolerance (re women).

But that’s up here. I don’t know what a matriarchal society would be like.

as it reaches its azimuth

Today word was spread that Mars will come its closest to Earth in somewhere between 5 000 and - err - 60 000 years on August 27. Looking like a full moon, the National Weather Office here in PNG says here is the place to view it. "No one alive today will ever see this again. Stay awake to witness this unique experience," said a senior weather forecaster (best view = 3am).

Can't find any verification for this, and these type of things are always disappointing (tired, outdoors and cold, see a tiny pin prick somewhere which might just be an average star, is everyone else seeing something more than me? etc), but suspect will still check. wouldn't want to miss that once in 60 000 year-chance now, would you.