When I woke up this morning I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water – and with my poor bare feet I stepped on a giant bug. Disgusting squishing crunch and then goo sensation.
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Last week at work, we finished the production of a book we have been working on for six months. It isn’t a good one – accepted before I arrived – but it is concerned with sanguma in the Highlands. When we finally sent the book off to the printers in India, I felt relived: enough of witchcraft and sorcery! But today we had a bit of a tok save at work about it. The issue, it seems, is getting worse up here, rather than better. By which I mean more people are being accused and killed for practising sanguma.
Two weeks ago in a nearby village (Kamilaki) three women were killed and their bodies dumped in the Kamilaki river. One was a human rights activist; her family is educated – she has a few brothers and worked and paid for their school fees; one went on to join the provincial government, another filmed for the local news for awhile. It is rumoured that the brothers were involved in the killings.
It is alarming, to say the least. Once you have been accused of practicing, there is little you can do to clear your name; mud sticks. In Morobe I know men have been accused – usually the situation relates to power struggles – but I don’t know that many men have been victims in the Highlands; generally it’s those without a secure position in the community: single women, old men or women, maybe a young teenager, but typically a widow, who might be seen as a drain on resources when resources are scarce. It is pretty frightening that women with powerful positions are being affected; this is a patriarchal stronghold anyway, and there are so few women in public roles that this type of loss reverberates very negatively. It also indicates that things are getting worse within communities; what people value, what makes them feel secure, is shrinking.
It’s not easy to get a hold on PNG. From Australian foreign policy prats, PNG is considered either a “failing state” – or a failed one. I don’t think either are true – and anyway Australians have an excellent historical record for getting PNG wrong – like about 95% of the time. So we’ll watch and see. This is your faithful correspondent, reporting live, as it happens, from Goroka, Papua New Guinea…
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