ponderosa

tom decko, png artist

Last Friday I went to an art exhibition opening in the local uni’s infamous-new-library-with-no-books (the story gets more farcical the more I learn about it. The building, for instance, has been sitting there for 2 years, but there were disputes about payment – the compensation – and so someone “hid” the keys and no one had access…for 2 years?!!!).

You’ve been to one opening in your life then you’ve been to them all. Basic ingredients: cheap wine; a few pretentious geezers wheezing their way around, either muttering Very Important analyses to themselves, heads bent in close, or throwing out comments designed to intimidate; a few people uncomfortable, not sure how to “properly” look at “art”; a few hovering near the wine and/or food; a boring speech. If you are at a “contemporary” exhibition opening, then there’s gotta be at least a few pieces of welded-sculpture or the like. And if you’re at a “cultural” opening, then there’s gotta be a few people in costume, singing or doing a welcome dance etc.

So we had all of these. But most of the art was really good, and it was a chance to explore the library (every single shelf on the ground floor bears a big sticker saying: “Donated by the people of Japan” and bearing the J flag). (And yes there were a lot of empty shelves. And a LOT of very old books.). And I had forgotten until today that there was a photographer around who’d taken photographs of myself and two friends looking at a particular painting. All terribly posed but it was funny at the time; we thought the photographer was from some island newspaper. But no: The National, it turns out. There is P with glasses on looking reasonably intelligent, but next to her is someone with a big white face staring rather vacantly – me.

I can still hear everyone at work laughing.

Yeah yeah yeah.


The night before I went to the final in a public lecture series at the local uni, on gender and leadership. A very worthy topic here in the highlands, but … well a bit of a yawn. My boss got me to go to two, I skipped another, but went to this one; attendance (mine) specifically requested by coordinator, but I wasn’t doing her any favours by going: a friend was taking part as a panel member in the final session, and went to support her; my workplace was officially thanked for attending each time I went, and thanked first, before all others who’d actually helped in some way. Coordinator has submitted her phd thesis to my work for publication and is trying to curry favour (thesis is unpublishable; won’t stand on its own, not matter how much flattery). Realised two other things:

- I loathe powerpoint; whether your content is good or bad it turns everything into dot-pointed superficial fluff. I don’t think I’ve really come across a situation in which it was a useful tool. It ought to be banned; someone send out a bug disabling it, please…
- I would never take on an academic teaching position in a uni in a developing country. Ok, not quite never: if radical changes were allowed, then it might be possible. But not…well, not in the current PNG. (Something I will only elaborate on off-screen.) It’s work for some, but not for me.

a few lines of people sat back to back and, admist singing, threw their heads around and leaned back and forth at a dizzing speed. (sorry; i can't remember where they are from). must be designed to produce some feeling of disorientation; and the heat helped - they were sweating.

the grass men warming up

these guys you don't often see (some are regulars on the performance route)

The Coffee Festival on last week is like the royal show. There are stalls with businesses displaying their wares (machinery, pest controllers, fish farms, to the local jail - selling stuff from rehab programs like chairs prisoners had made and seedlings they had nursed; I even bought some jam from another stall: marmalade, “made to a traditional english recipe”.) But the big attraction are the singsings, the performances by various clans. They dress up, make up, and sing and dance. I knew some people who were participating, like Maria. She is our beautiful haus meri at work; she is gentle and very sweet; people call her mumsie. She was part of a Highlands women's katolik group.

yum. this was lunch: fried crunchy bones + salt = lip-smacking good.

there was lots to see at the coffee festival. including fish, but the singsings were what i was watching. will post some things tomorrow.

the ball

preball drinks: some flapper, some glam, travolta and newton-john, and a cowboy

predrinks - mia farrow, eva peron, uh...guy in shirt, sarah j parker, and apparently that is grasshopper (means nothing to me)

we meet for predrinks at um 5 actually, on a friend’s balcony. more and more people arrive arriving, dressed to the nines as they say, until the balcony’s full and people flow on inside around the makeshift bar –

But I preferred it outside: you can see from there that we're circled by mountains. With the soft blue triangles as the background, for a moment it’s as if it’s a set and the stage is the balcony and we’re all caught up in some bigger drama – the mountains sometimes lend you that sense of largess, of life from a greater perspective.

There was time for a few drinks actually and I meet two ticket-less guys who we later sneak into the ball, one jokingly poses as a photographer but somehow it works; then the sun's popped down and the inside lights shone out brightly - and then in cars and cars we went into town, to the Bird (the local hotel), to the ball.

Inside – a drink in the downstairs bar. It’s packed full of people and hot and bar service is slow – then upstairs and to tables.

Somehow I am sitting on a table next to the Governor. He sits at a table of similarly important men; none of them look like they’re having much fun over dinner; maybe they cheered up later, when the dancing started. I am sitting next to someone whose name I immediately forget, but I keep that quiet and find out that he’s a bit of a (self-called) wordsmith and we have a bit of a rave. And on my other side is a volunteer mate, the cheeky cowboy, who somehow later on gets voted best-dressed male. (he has fake pistols, and is warned not to muck around with them – people will think he’s serious. He laughs and tries it – and suddenly it’s no joke: people are not amused. A few nights ago I was driving through town late at night and saw a security guard with a bow and arrow; presume he wasn’t joking, but you never can tell.)

And we eat and chat and there’s some entertainment - most of it I saw the night before at the uni’s dramatic arts performance or at the coffee festival during the day, so unfortunately I am not overly taken in. instead, what grabs my attention is the dozen beers that turn up at the table, donated by an anonymous person, so before any mistake is realised (serious? Joke?) we are ripping them open. Ahaha: tinnies!

And somehow later on I am at the bar and there are tequila shots lined up. We down them and someone goes off onto the dance floor, someone else disappears, and I remain at the bar with a mate having a debate about something insignificant (highly unusual behaviour of mine…). At 3ish we head off; my neighbours (and with them my lift) have already left, so I stay at a friend’s. (Of course I don’t go straight to bed but instead stand in the kitchen raving to another person whose name I immediately forget, but I keep that quiet again.)

The next morning I pop in to a friend’s and find him with a hooded sweatshirt on. This isn’t a joke: the hood hides a thick white bandage around his head. After the tequila – within 5 minutes of being on the dance floor – another fella had smashed a bottle on his head. He’d seen it coming, and turned, so that it caught the top of his ear and left a jagged cut down his hairline. He knew who had done it, but didn’t say much more than that. Maybe he’d stepped too close to someone’s lady; unlikely (he’s married), but too much too much to drink and it’s possible someone saw it that way. I hadn’t noticed anything the night before – but it wasn’t just my goggles, no one else had either. He’d been bundled up quick and taken to the hospital for 33 stitches. He was glad of that tequila, he said; didn’t feel a thing.

all morning the morning has been blackening

we had a stunner of a morning yesterday.
**
sister organised sending flowers for mothers' day.
sis: Tulips and 'stocks' - does anybody know what 'stocks' are? and apparently very pretty.
me: stocks? hm...sounds like a lie - that's not a flower! it's a bulb. it's what they called flowers in 1944 in germany
sis:...in hovels under grey german skies with the smell of Berlin burning, singing german folk songs to ward away the Russian tanks. Yes, 'stocks' really official flower of misery...the combination of dutch tulips and stocks is now seeming scarily macarbe...

sorry mum.
**
and sorry for lame post. am battling with fever/flu at the moment. yesterday's morning started beautifully but ended up with sweats and aches and self-pity. awww. almost never get sick so am not good at behaving well.

i would like to tell you a funny story about a lady's camera getting hit and damaged by one of these phalluses as she tried to angle for a good shot - but it's not really my story to tell & i suspect someone else will write up about it...these guys performed at last night's ball

The ball was – let’s face it – pretty much like a school formal, only everyone drinks openly at the former. But the predrinks were great, it was fun to see the kids dressed to the nines, and the company was good (even tho someone gave it one star).

went to the coffee festival this morn. lots of pictures and fun. art opening and drama production last night. it's all happening in goroka this weekend. time for an afternoon nap...

And you must be...

...and i quote direct from the brochure: "The Red Carpet will be rolled out on the evening of May 7 for all visitors and residence...Ball goers arrive at 7:00pm and are led to their tables by Hotesses..." Spelling is original. Ah, png. It is going to be an experience. I am looking forward to meeting my Hotess.

mail!!! some of the local rag - and even NW - all very exciting! And the phones are back in working order after the storm on sunday (our lines are underground, and after sunday's massive, violent downpour, they cut out; not unusual apparently. even em tv was down! and whilst we lose sbs and 7 (our other channels), em tv is like the bad penny, it never - or almost - goes; yep, that's how bad it was.) but mail! thanks girl!

softly suspended

I saw a lone, low cloud tonight, softly suspended behind one hill and in front of another.

It was just after the sun had set; just after the sudden, thunderous downpour had stopped. A photograph couldn’t capture it. The camera grabs the instant, but not the moment. One thing I love about taking photographs is that it reminds you of the wonder of the experience of seeing: there is so much that doesn’t fit in the lens – wrong light, obstructed, position, timing – but that we see. That mysterious conjunction of eye, heart, mind. Place.

Like sheep in fog

People have been asking about the weather. Yesterday I woke up and made my morning coffee, went outside and saw "The hills step off into whiteness" -

(mind the cable)

People were like little sheep. The trees were left standing, silent like silhouettes.

(of course, after 2 hours the sun emerged, victorious. Whatever happens at the start and end of the day, the solid part of the day is always warm and bright. I'm still waiting for a sense of "season"; not convinced it changes much up here, though they tell me there's a "wet" and a "dry".)

png birthday pt.2

on friday night we stay up late preparing food for the mumu. one of my jobs is to peel bananas - and this was serious work, there were loads (3 different types, all savoury ones). along with chickens (2), taro and various sweet potoatoes (of course), the food was then placed, carefully, layer by layer, into a pot.

saturday, we get up at 5am (ahm) to finishing preparing (coconuts were scraped, their meat pressed into a strainer, and the milk we got from that went into the pot so everything was cooked in a coconut cream). then when it was getting light we went down to the 'mumu pit' (ie. the tin drum) and set it up.

wood was crammed into the drum until it was full, then kindling on top, then - just there, in the middle, where you can't see - the mumu stones (non-exploding fire stones) were heaped on top. we added paper and set the whole thing to burn. someone watched it and as it burnt and caved in, made sure the stones stayed ontop and inside, heating. meanwhile i ran down to the markets to pick up some more pumpkin tips and ibaika and some other greens. these were cooked much later, the old fashioned way, on the stove.

when the stones were considered really really hot, they were taken out, pot inserted, and stones placed around and ontop. and then it was left for a few hours, for the food to steam cook.

later, we gingerly take off the stones and take out the pot. it smells so good! it's about 11 now and i'm tired and hungry. but people were coming early afternoon so had to push on, clean up, make cake, wash self...

and eventually we had a pretty good party. this is some of the mumu food: right in front is some chicken, the purple rather uh phallic looking things are bananas. it was delicious. after everyone left we sat down for a few hours - oh yes and then the power went off too - and had a beer or two and people 'told stories'. and kids in png, there are stories! fiction pales in comparison to life here. it was a great birthday.

a: picture me like this, ah in days of old, when i was more glamorous and hung out with aviator-wannabes at cricket grounds...

-

birthday 1.5

post arrived. 5 parcels. count that: 5. (yellow box - winnie the pooh, thanks mum! - full of chocolate. couldn't believe it - packed full!!!) very happy. have only opened two; am savouring the experience. it's enough just to look at them.

cake at work with mary and lawrencia; whiteskins - longpelas

(denim imprints/threads)

“The stories are mostly about the life spent at home…Yet life is mostly lived by timid bodies at home, and since we see life as deeply in our pleasures as in our pains, we see the differences in lives as deeply there too. The real differences among people shine most brightly in two bedrooms and one building, with a clock ticking… [x] years [your assignment length] to find out how and why. Not just how and why and in what way [x] is different from [y], but how [someone] with the normal “universalist,” antinationalist reflexes of the kind, might end up feeling about the idea of difference itself – about the existence of minute variations among peoples: which ones really matter and which ones really don’t.” (Adam Gopnick)

Bought some jeans recently from the secondhand. (Came over without any. And now there’s no going back. I love them; I live in them.) As Johnny Cash played on the Christian radio, I flipped through the books: The Diary of Adrian Mole; the Best Eats guide to Melb 2004; Othello; Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House; Who Moved my Cheese; James and the Giant Peach; something by Satre, by Christie; scripts of the Goon show; Mongolian cookery; Mills & Boon.

(I came away with a some essays by that New Yorker writer – ah! That NYr style: one of my addictions. Just not the same reading it online – and Robert Drewe’s The Drowner. Sadly, the books are usually more expensive than the clothes – you’d get a good shirt for 60 toya (30 cents), a book for 1.50 k (75 cents) (uh, and what is this – am I complaining?!)).

I’m the only female who looks at the books; the others are always males. Here it’s men and boys who loiter around the book area, and they pick up and read anything – ANYTHING. From Judith Kranz to Ian Rankin. There’s a voraciousness about it, they seem to devour words, any words. Unsure about this: men in clothes shop reaction? Maybe. But suspect it’s also a display, being seen as reading. (Noticed it at work too; there’s a guy who I think might be illiterate, but who I’ve seen quite publicly pick up a paper (English) and peruse it carefully, knowledgeably.) Literacy isn’t taken for granted here, and so it carries more performance.

But life itself is more performative here, more public, more shared. “More” of course meaning different from how I am used to living, in my little town. I like this, the textured quality of learning: as much as I learn about here, I learn about where I came from. And me: I’m a thread in there somewhere too.

how to do a birthday in png pt I

Begin with the night before, after hanging out with a Sepik friend who knows how to tell a good story, you’re up late. You go to bed at 12 hits, and you’re listening to Highlander-calls. You’ve only heard them on anthro-docos; but now you drift off listening to the intonations (you don’t know what they’re calling), and their whispered replies. You’re in PNG; it’s your birthday. You smile. You sleep.

Then: start with a beautiful, sunny day. (Like a gift, the day was clear! When you live up in the mountains, at or slightly above cloud level, it’s warm always but cloudy almost all the time. Realistically, you live in clouds: you’re clouded in when you wake up, and can’t see the surrounding ring of mts; the clouds thin approaching noon and scenery becomes noticeable, but thicken mid/late afternoon; evening usually rains, but always there are solid clumps of clouds which gather. Clear blue sky and unfettered sunlight are rare; hence exclamation. And last week too with monsoons down south we had solid downpours for several days in a row.)

Work: unavoidable. Fun at first but let’s face it it’s work; people are excited too and great, but it’s the birthday and want-to-get-out-of-here feeling grows. After lunch, trying to explain smiles to someone who doesn’t know his birth date, month, or year: you shrug and give up. It’s not a conversion you want: you want oughta here. Finally, at 4.06, it’s time.

And so you do: you grab a bottle of wine and a cake and jump in your friend’s ute and you’re on your way. Soon enough – or eventually, finally – you end up where you want to be: having a glass of wine, sharing some good cheese (good cheese! Not kraft singles! Like direct sunlight, rare here), enjoying friends’ company. Smiles return. 6ish more people come and you walk up the hill to the Flintstones’. (Really. There’s no mistaking the Flinstone-style; there are only two or three here and you’ve never been inside one, or even near one. You take photos; yo, it’s ya birthday. The bathroom is like a grotto; next time will definitely take shots of the little bubble carved out of stone which is the shower.)

flintstones'

And there’s more wine and more good company. And … phad thai! (Not as typical a dish as you’d imagine; when you’ve tasted a very fine version, you know how good it can be. This was up there with nat nhoj at his best, tho sadly no Phil and no turntables. But thanks goes to Su. This was GOOD.) “Freedom yells, it don’t cry”; it’s all good feelings. The cake you made is celebrated too. (Relief it worked.) It’s a great birthday.

And this weekend there’s part II – a mumu for a birthday.

it is dudley moore's birthday today; this one goes out to you.

spinning wheel of colour.

**

sunday evenings carry with them that possibility of returning you to that feeling of night-before-school doom. but when you're tired and happy after a good weekend, they're just right.

guava from tree at work. delicious - but frustrating, want to scoff it down but those stupid seeds always get in the way. (before coming here hadn't eaten fresh guava; now i wonder just how many it takes to make guava juice; bucket loads for a few glasses; no wonder so cheap - 5 for about 5 aust cents)
**
After work finished at 4, P and I went into town. It was govt payday (fortnightly), and town is packed when this rolls around. We get paid next week, which is good because that way we can usually avoid the massive bank queues (atms close at 7pm every day; and the lines are like nothing else I’ve known: if you go at lunch time it’ll take 40-60 mins to get to the machine. And I bank with ANZ, which is quieter than the local bank (BSP, bank of south pacific); the numbers who line up for that are astounding, 40-70 people from early morning until late; crazy.)

The govt paydays don’t create a bad situation, but being out in town I feel…alert I suppose is the word. And every one is. It’s like we’re all watching out for…nothing as it turns out; but there’s something in the air. Extra people, extra money, extra police. You’re just a bit more cautious and get your business done and head home.

Later, after town, went and ate with some women from work who'd prepared a mumu for a women’s group they belong to. Turned up to the backdoor of a hall, and there was a table laden with food: about 5 different types of bananas cooked different ways, some sweet, some sweetish but eaten as mains, some definitely savoury; and sago; and the mumu-ed food: chicken (I got a breast – thankyou T! You get the choice bits when you work with the server; it's all about connections...), greens, sweet potato (a white one and the orange kind you get in Australia (like bananas, there are lots of versions)), purple banana (savoury tasting, a bit like a version of potato) – all of this is steam cooked in coconut milk over hot stones (the stones are “cooked” overnight) – this is what ‘mumu’ refers to.

We sat on a bench and ate off paper plates with fingers (though some were more fussy and insisted on forks), talking about the weirdness of Michael Jackson and one of the strange greens that we’ve seen at the markets but no one had eaten before (its leaves are densely rippled, it has a reddish spine and tastes almost like meat) and about the people passing before us. A lot came, but the mumu food was almost gone by the time we got there – and we thought we were early. Gotta love mumus. I couldn’t finish everything; I’d bought a lot because all the food is new to me and I love not having to cook, and it was dinner time and I was starving. And i was the novel white skin so everyone was happy to instruct me on what everything was and what i had to try. brought home some sago – the way it's cooked has made it semi-sweet, but not convincingly so; it would be more a main dinner item, not desert. There were sweet bananas and sago going around for one kina (50cents) towards the end, but by then I was stuffed so I missed out.

Tomorrow I go secondhand shopping, looking for a dress for the coffee ball. Yes – I am Scarlett O’hara and I am going to a coffee ball! Very excited about this – when (and where) else will I ever get such an opportunity? It’s a wild colonial dream…

no comment

...one of the planters remarked that the New Guinea Highlands grow almost as many PhDs as it does coffee trees, and that the number of beautiful women who devote themselves to anthropological studies of the stone-age male suggests that there is a fundamental discontent with the present civilisation among women of the Western world.

We returned to the dregs of our claret...

(M. Williams, "Stone Age Island")

the ethnographic experiences aren't restricted to one colour of people; hanging out with other volunteers and expats is another experiment. so far it's been pretty good; i've made some new friends, and heard some interesting tales...it is a funny situation, really: the other night i looked around the table and there were people i would not ever meet otherwise, or get an opportunity to talk to; it's like a social experiment, throwing together these white people, from all over the world, with a language and - momentarily - geography in common.

(oh yeah; the cake - a week or two ago another austn had a a non-vegetarian dinner party - seems majority of volunteers are vegos too. it was a great night; someone brought home brew - pineapple wine with a hint of chilli; yum. i had to bring something for desert, so i braved my old gas oven for the first time and actually made the most delicious banana cake ever. later on we sat on the balcony as it poured with rain and cigars came out. and i don't know if these were particularly refined or i'm getting older, but ... you know, cigars aren't necessarily a bad thing. in fact, can be pretty good.)

yesterday's news

my snakehead is fine says mother

who is...

sir iambakey okuk? he keeps popping up in stories i hear and now at work i'm editing a book which mentions him, and need to verify what is says - but i'm finding it difficult to verify anything about him. a simbu politician. but when did he die (sometime in the 1980s), how (brain cancer? if so were there really 7 tumours? liver cancer? suddenly?) and details about where he's buried: did his family really camp beside the grave for a year? Is there really a fence around his memorial? Did the govt really pay for it? He was a big politician; I didn't think it would be this difficult to find out.

There was rioting after his death, I've found that out. And I think this one is true - that he bought 92 000 bottles of beer to try and buy his way through an election; it failed, and he was furious. As you would be: all that beer! What did the people do, just drink it?!

the correction, when it finally came..

I have read The Corrections.

It started out a duty-read, one of those books that inspires vague unease. “I should have read that,” says the voice in your head; “everyone has read it but me.” It feels like they all know the world it invokes, the ideas it plays with, whether it’s any good. You shamefully don’t understand; you have missed out on some cultural reference point (like…uh…not having read or even seen lord of the rings…).

These type of feelings prompted me to buy The Corrections last july. I saw it at the Adelaide uni library booksale, and decided now was the time to bridge that gap of ignorance. For 2 dollars I could become in-the-know, belatedly; the book’s moment had come and gone, so it was a pretty fair price, a reasonable exchange. I handed over my coin and took it home. And I placed it on a bedside table and I looked at it. And I looked away.

And then I went away, 7 months later, and took this talisman of my ignorance with me – for now, I thought, surely I would have time to read this and many other things, and patch together a bridge to enable me to scramble over that gap.

And, unexpectedly, I actually did pick up the book, and open it, and begin. And now I can say:

I liked it. I liked its ambition; it clearly wanted to be one of the great American novels. And that it doesn’t quite hit the mark does not make it a failure: the book doesn’t collapse for its flaws, it is strong enough to carry them.

(The explanation given for Denise’s attraction to drop out of college, for instance, and become a chef was not convincing – it was too abstract and didn’t read as if from experience. Denise altogether was somehow not quite believable; you could see Franzen imagining her, even fantasising about her a bit – you were aware of that, instead of forgetting the artifice and becoming immersed in the character.

The critics quoted on the blurb say it’s a generous book, written with generosity. But that was also something I wasn’t quite convinced by: with Alfred, yes. But not – despite the end – with Enid. The scene in which she sits alone on the cruise ship, a little drunk and crying in despair at her situation – until she finds a $10 note and cheers up and forgets it all; this seemed pretty damning, if not scathing. She had plenty of flaws, but this didn’t seem deserved. (And the ending with its Go Enid cheer seemed a little forced.))

What I did like though was the way that Franzen gently, even masterfully, let go of the main model for the book. Think about Jekyll and Hyde: the model there is of the split self, of the double; you find examples of it everywhere in the story – and it’s what gives the story meaning. Franzen sets up his story with a model – corrections to behaviour of financial markets etc – but very gradually shifts away from it, until you get to a beautiful moment in the book where he writes, ‘The correction, when it finally came …’ – well I’m not going to write any more in case there is anyone else out there who also has not yet read the book. But it’s a moment when the book opens and different possibilities are allowed in. So skilfully done.

And the start is excellent – tightly written, not a word or image out of place. That unease: “Ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly. It was the alarm bell of anxiety…By now it had been ringing for so many hours that the Lamberts no longer heard the message of “bell ringing”…except at certain early-morning hours when one or the other of them awoke in a sweat and realized that bell had been ringing in their heads for as long as they could remember; ringing for so many months that the sound had given way to a kind of metasound…”

***

When we left the men’s haus on the Mt Wilhelm trip, the sun was just rising. Everyone inside scrambled out of bed and came out to shake hands and say goodbye. I was given two bunches of dried flowers. Martin had picked them on Friday and hung them upside down under the haus’s eaves to dry.

They managed the trip back down to Kundiawa ok, with me in the back of the pmv/ute and about 18 other people + baby + child + bags of market goods. (This is a normal sized ute, not a big one. I’m not even going to pretend it was comfortable, particularly on the rough roads; but it was definitely bearable: you develop a certain kind of intimacy with your fellow travellers when you are together like this for 3 hours.)

And then from there they came with me in a comparably luxurious coaster/mini-bus ride down to Goroka (seats. Inside. Relief. And our bus wasn’t hijacked by raskols. All good.)

Today some hang from my bookshelf, in a bunch like a crowd of faces, each one a hustler, seeking out my eye.

s

today found out i won a prize for my phd. i won a prize for the bastard!!! can't believe it - submitted it in 2003! (didn't enter; this is a surprise) and am over here and can't attend the stupid ceremony and snatch a moment of glory! not really people to tell here, so i shall tell you: i climbed a mountain and ... a prize doesn't justify the years it took, but it is a good feeling that someone saw me do it.

post arrived today - all over the country it seems - 3 people at work got parcels, and one of them was me. you can't quite read the fine print on these stamps, but they're scenes from jane eyre. All the way from me mate 'eafcliff 'n mrry ol' 'nglnd. And inside the package was …

thank you hc!

Basket market, Rongo, PNG highlands

On Saturday, I went with some people from work out to Rongo, about 1.5 hours drive away.

the area in which i live, through which we drove

We bumped along at first in the 4WD, but soon the road improved (it was actually a remarkably good road; and yet, only leading to a mission station…Roads around Goroka tend to be pitted, muddy, shoddy; and the road I live off is one of the worst in town (it can be a little embarrassing, getting a lift home from people who live on the east side of town (which now has a nice smooth road): their horror and disbelief as the car lurches round the corner and hits, right on target, that sneaky metre-wide pot hole. “My god the road…” they wince, and you can see them thanking their lucky stars that they don’t live out west). The highway – the Highlands Highway – is good, and exists through Ausaid – which is true for many of the good roads, if not AUSaid then sponsorship from a private company (ie. Logging/mining)).

Anyway, we couldn’t get into the actual town because of a mudslide, so we pulled over at a wide stretch of road instead, and got out of the car on a gravely clearing. The locals knew we were coming, and in about 15 minutes at least 50 people – probably more – had arrived, coming in from surrounding areas. They were there to sell woven baskets and trays.

an arc of the basket market

People spread their gear out on the ground and sat behind it, making an impromptu market. Altogether they formed a loose circle.

With a few shouted words from one of the community’s big men, the business began: Ute – the woman I went with who was doing the buying – slowly and intently walked along the circle, looking at each person’s goods, picking out from one here and one there what she wanted to buy. First off she wanted small bread baskets; the man picked one up, held it above his head and yelled to everyone that this was the type she was buying first. She would find something she liked, then ask the price from the sellers (mainly women; the men often stood back or walked around with Ute). When a fair price was agreed to, she would take cash out of a box – quite visibly – and exchange the money for the baskets.

She walked around about 6 times (at least), each trip buying a different kind of item.

crowd

She spent a LOT of money, and seemed to buy a thousand and one woven items; Ute sends them back to Germany and they are sold in a Lutheran-run shop, raising money for her church. This might sound dodgy, but she pays the Rongo people fairly, and indeed well; several times she rejected named prices as too low; she’d insist on the hours spent making it etc and make the woman accept a higher price. (Ute explained later that this was also because the woman’s husband afterwards, in private, would be very cross at the small price and there’d be consequences.)

The whole thing was quite an experience. I must admit that I hid behind my camera a bit. For the obvious psychological distancing (standing inside that crowd, being an object of so many different stares for about an hour and a half, you need something to forget you’re a white git), but also because I’m finding it also works the other way around: when people can see you occupied with an activity, you are less threatening/offensive: you are not simply staring at them as if they are freaks.

(I realise that taking photographs might sound like a more final version of exactly that, but I find being out with a digital camera very interactive: you might ask to take photos of people and begin talking to them, you might try and get them in some type of position with gestures or words, then you can show them what you have taken, and it is always the cause of great interest and laughter and a bit of shy pride – and often you then have to take another one because Michael reckons he wasn’t visible enough etc etc…)

(an eg: kids i played with. men in general and kids are easiest to talk with; without some type of introduction, women tend to be more hesitant, more wary. two white kids who came with us - who've been raised in png - were freaked out by the states of the locals; they used the baskets to build up a bunker in the car, and hid in it until we left.)

The woven stuff from Rongo is well-known and unique. The men of the area weave these things from what they call rope plants (I guess some type of reed). They place the rope strips in different muds to get different colours, and they get ideas for designs from books.

It will take 2-3 weeks to make a basket, given that usually weaving is done after working during the day on fences or in the gardens. Sometimes though men will go off walking for a few hours to get to a particular rope plant, and spend a few days out there dying the strips and starting to weave. This I learned from the fellas I was talking to. I also learned that they had electricity – hydro powered – but only the local missionary knew how it operated. Unfortunately, the aforementioned missionary was on holidays; though the power had lasted for a few days after he left, it soon died away, and no one here has the knowledge to fix it, or turn it on or off or whatever needs to be done. So they hope he will return one day. (missionary must have skipped the capacity-building seminar…)

Ute did her thing for about an hour and a half. Then we squeezed back into the car. To get into the car we had to get through a small mob of people waving baskets in the air and shouting: ‘you didn’t buy any from me’, ‘buy this, you must buy this’ etc etc. Cash can always cause tensions. But Ute had kept all of her money in the box, and it was always very visible when she paid people, and everyone could see when the box was empty. It was empty; she held it up one more time to prove it. Em tasol. A few people cursed her, but, she said, this was the normal end to things, and we drove back down the hill without incident.

the incident of the prime minister's shoes didn't, i hear, make a big splash in australia, but last week it was all anyone at work was talking about. two people i know wrote letters to the national papers about it, and it made the front pages twice.

another weekend, another mountain...this time mt michael (and by car) (and not making it to the top either, landslide in the way). these are some new mates i made in rongo.

4.

Leaving Martin’s, we crossed the stream I’d heard in the night, and began to hike upwards through rainforest, along a little trail. Although this was often muddy, it wasn’t too slippery – we were really lucky that it hadn’t rained too much during the week. Sometimes there were rough-hewn steps – a foot-long shard of wood rammed into the earth, say, where it was particularly muddy, or particularly steep. Although walking through the rainforest was beautiful, there wasn’t much time to look around; attention was mostly focused on the next step up.

Luckily, for those of us who are not mountain goats, there were a few rest breaks along the way with wooden benches to pause on. As we breathed at the first one, Thomas lept away into the bush and cut down a walking stick for JCD (and because he got one well I had to get one too). Although it was a bit cumbersome at times, it was really useful when you needed to propel yourself upwards.





We went through rainforest for about an hour or a bit longer, before arriving at this point (j’s stick above). There was an impressive view from here (and again it was nice to have a pause…).

You can see the village we had arrived in yesterday; that faint line in the green field slightly to the right of the buildings is the airstrip. Looking at this now, I notice how very high we already were; but there was a lot further to go, so after photos we kept on moving.

The ferns soon disappeared and the major climbing was done. The land flattened out into a plain; we walked along the edge of it. At the next rest point, I heard voices coming from behind – and was rather surprised when a group of 10 or so people chugged up to us. The day before we’d met a German tourist who was planning on coming up with his wife, but I hadn’t heard anything about a big tour group. And I confess I was somewhat horrified – and amused: you should have seen the hiking gear they had! They had been shopping: ankle-to-knee braces, plastic walking sticks (one for each hand), huge backpacks (though they were only staying, like us, for a few hours of one night; some had hired local women to carry the backpacks up, j has a classic shot of a woman bearing the weight of a backpack in a bilum over here**), one woman was wearing lycra hotpants which frankly just covered her buns, several had those specialised drinking-contraptions-with-hose (that, what, professional bike riders use?!), and I think it was lycra-shorts who had a gps and only paused to shout out how high we were before power-walking onwards.

They said hi but didn’t pause, and so we began walking at the end of their line. J was itching to overtake them, and soon enough we did, reaching the huts before them. The huts were at one end of a large lake. The tour group were staying in the a-frame hut (yes it was an a-frame and on its side, in case you couldn’t analyse that visual information, was written ‘a-fram’), and we were staying in the second hut, which was a couple of hundred metres away from the a.

This was the view from our hut. It had taken us about 3 hours to get here, and the rest of the day was free. We took it easy, later meeting some of the tour group people (who were actually very nice and had a good sense of humour – laughing at people who would not buy black and gold, for instance [available in supermarkets here], or who wore mossimo hats). It was only much later – too late – that I realised I was sunburnt. It happens quite quickly, up so high, and with intensity; J soon had a few blisters appear on his hand.

As the sun began to go down, it got cold quickly. The sky clouded over, but it didn’t rain. Thomas and some of the tour group guides had a fire going in a little shed; it was a tiny shanty-thing, with hay on the floor and a fire in the middle: very biblical. Although it was smoky it was also warm, and we huddled in there for a while. The plan was to get up early am and hike, so after another dinner of noodles it was bed time. The alarm was set for 12.15am, but I was awake for a while before it went off. I went outside to the toilet (away from the hut, around a hill) (and it’s a practical detail but a girl has to use it when it’s there; it’s so much easier for boys!), and found that we had been really lucky with our timing: the sky was clear, there was no wind, and it was almost a full moon (that’s right, easter…).

It was very light, and hushed. I felt a hum of excitement. The tour group had actually left at 12; looking to the lake’s left, I could see a little moving trail of flickering lights. They softly inched their way forward. I went back and woke up j and after a bush biscuit (I ate them all weekend; so good!) Thomas came in, and at 1am we left. Everything was quiet and alive.

Looking at the photo above, we walked around the left of the lake, and up the left side of the waterfall. Above the waterfall was another lake, which we also skirted, before climbing up and along ridges, moving rightish, waaayyy out of shot. (note: don’t use these directions; hire a guide). Just after the second lake I think it was that we caught the tour group, and overtook them – not to see them again until dawn.

The climbing from here was mainly on or between clods of grasses. This changed as you approached the top of a ridge, where it was a lot rockier. Gradually the grasses became more infrequent, and rocks dominated. I had borrowed a little torch, and whilst it was helpful in the early stages (lower down there were more shadows), when the batteries went flat after 3 hours I no longer needed it: the moon light was strong and clear.

Whatever the terrain, Thomas was bloody nimble! At one point he startled me by suddenly leaping forwards, running up ahead and then running down behind. Was he mad? Were we going way too slow? Nope – he’d been chasing a kuskus, a possum-like animal. He’d caught it – with his bare hands! I was impressed – and borrowing j’s stick he rapped it hard but quick on the head three times to kill it (after someone took some photos). Good kill, I thought; not too painful or prolonged. But then we walked a bit and Thomas roughly whacked the thing on a rock a few times, to make sure it was really dead, and I swallowed my words. He tied it to a bush, and on the way down hours later he collected it to take back for cooking.

The climb went onwards, rockier and rockier. At one point I appeared to reach a critical altitude, and started shouting out the names of best bands and albums and songs of all time. I didn’t get much encouragement, so I soon quietened down – but if there had been a response I could have done that for hours! Thinking otherwise helped me to just keep on walking, I guess.

Sometimes we had to scramble up rock faces, make a few leaps, watch out for ice (as we neared the top only), but it was quite an accessible mountain to climb – because your movement kept changing, sometimes you’d climb hard upwards, other times you’d skip along a path, then you’d pick your way gingerly through landslide-threatening rubble before getting toeholds in big rocks and pushing your way from one to another. There was never too much of one type of climbing to feel too exhausted – not to say I wasn’t very tired, but a much smaller mountain (huashuan; china; 2000something m) I found a lot harder.

And soon, much sooner than expected, we were there: at the peak of Mt Wilhelm. J and Thomas graciously let me stand on the top first, and I was full of smiles. Getting to the top of a mountain is so satisfyingly literal – it ain’t no metaphor. Look around! And I did; it was clear, but, unfortunately, still not very light. We had arrived at 5am, instead of 6. And so we got off the very peak and sat down behind some rocks, and waited, and quickly got colder and colder. I fantasised about a bowl of coffee made by Gianni. J, on the other hand, had reached his critical altitude and was making some rather inflammatory comments which won’t be repeated here.

Last year J had made the climb, but it took him and the fellows he was with 5.5 hours. This time we’d done it in 4. I think there are two reasons for this: one, the competitive streak: always just behind us was the tour group; we had to beat them! Two: hiking with a girl. We weren’t hurtling along at top speed, but slow and steady wins the race. I will take credit for that.

Just before six, the first of the tour group haggle climbed up to the top, and the rest came in dribs and drabs. [my camera was flat but j has posted some photos.] We could see an amazing amount of PNG.

And the rest, well, it wasn’t really the sweetest decline. Climbing down was fine for an hour or so, but then I simply wanted to get off the mountain, and energy levels sagged, and we walked on and on, getting sunburnt again.

Eventually, by some type of miracle, we reached the huts, and stopped and had a nap for an hour. Ate the boiled kaskas (the prime bits we were given had claws attached; I tried not to look; meat ok, bit like underdone lamb). Then we resumed walking, going down another few hours until we reached Martin’s. I took one more photo before the camera quit; j was about ready to punch me at the idea of a photo, and that was why I couldn’t resist doing it.

Reaching Martin’s place, we sat for a few hours, ate, and slept. And then on Monday it was up at 5.30am in order to walk down to the local shop to catch the first pmv out. Martin and Thomas came too. The PMV was almost set to go – only it didn’t have a front left wheel. So we kept walking on the road down the hill, passing the cab of a truck that had slipped off the road and was parked (perched really) part-way down the muddy hillside, head-first; it had been there for a week. Its egg-yolk yellow colour was cheerful against the brown of the slope, but I didn’t like its chances.

3.

cloud vs sun

This is Saturday morning (later there was a 3 hour-ish hike up through rainforest to base camp, a hut by a lake. Didn't have to rush, and so naturally we woke up at about 6 or 6.30am. Packet noodle breakfast - some photos when the sun crawled up over the mountains -Thomas arrived and we left around 8).

low cloud, saturday morning. mid-shot you can see the outline of a curving ridge.

Andy put out the solar panels when the sun rose. (They used the power for that spot light you put on a car when you go hunting at night - but when we were there, they used it to charge a light bulb inside, and for music: crappy dance music, apparently something from reservoir dogs sndtck...and some strange abba track. yes, it was a relief when the battery went flat.)

see? look at this and tell me you don't think john glover

nightime. You can see the woven walls here (they had woven it themselves). Oh, and the tiger rug. It was rather smoky inside and this was the best shot I could get.