Over the mountain

I seem to have been quite heavy, in my choice of topics for this blog over the past few weeks. Yet, most of the time, the beauty of this place and the friendliness of most of the people most of the time is what makes up life here.

Yesterday I joined the VSOs I work with here - Bill Oliver, Paul Beaumont, and Jeff Pilgram - to go on a lengthy walk. Lengthy, at least, for me, probably 16 km, but not a lot of that was on the flat. Things aren’t flat here: the whole landscape is like a tissue on top of the enormous forces generated in this region of the Ring of Fire. It folds and shifts, and nothing, certainly not roads or waterpipes, can be counted on to stay where they were put.

We left at 8:30 am, went up past the Lutheran Day High School and the old Lutheran Church, built of corrugated iron sheet back in the 1930s when the first missionaries arrived. The road comes to an end, and then there's a path that goes more or less straight up the mountain. A times a bit of a scramble, mostly just a tough walk up. My breath got, as they say, short. Strange phrase for the length of feeling: ‘I will never be able to catch my breath again,’ I thought. My legs began to complain, too. But overall, I was pleased with me old body. I could keep going, and did.

The view over Kundiawa, with the amazing airport at the back

The view over Kundiawa is amazing. What made that even more notable was that, while we were on the last third of the climb, we became aware that a fight was going on in the town. We could see crowds in the market area surging back and forth. A couple of shots echoed up the mountain - police firing in the air, we learned later. I’m beginning to see that ‘tribal fight’ is a misnomer. This was one gang of youths from a village west of Kundiawa coming to seek retaliation against another, from the east of town. One of their number had been beaten up the night before. Pay back time.

We got a text from Reynante Cruz, the other VSO in town; he works with the Provincial AIDS Council. Rey was in the market, and was worried, because the police weren’t able to control the kids. Another text a few minutes later told us he was OK. Things quietened down for long enough that he got out. We heard a rumour later that an old man had been hit on the head by a stone, and was in hospital. (Interestingly, the Tok Pisin phrase “Em i dai.” translates as “He was injured.” I thought the poor man had been killed, but that would be “Em i dai pinis.” Anyway, all was long over by the time we got back, some 4 hours later. And Rey is OK; everyone is concerned to keep their VSOs safe!

Bill, Paul and Jeff

So, we got to the top of the mountain. Now my idea from Britain is that you climb a mountain, and there's a bare peak. Here, of course, there were villages and trees and gardens. A youngish woman passed us, going down. She gave us each a sugar fruit, then hopped off down the slope, almost running with about 30kg of sugar fruit in her bilum, on her way to market! Took her shoes off to do it! Wow! Jeff commented that it’s their ‘hobbit feet’ that allow them to do this - large feet, splayed toes, toughened from a lifetime of going barefoot over stones and the loose, grainy soil, and even over the red clay that, when wet, challenges bearing grease for overcoming friction.

At the top of the mountain, we encountered Mondo, an old man with a mahogany face carved out of time. Many children gathered around him in front of his beautifully kept bamboo house. He told us he was a descendent of Jim Taylor (one of the Australian Kiaps, and a real legend in these parts. Mind you, I seem to have heard a lot of people claiming that he was their father. Either the man spread more than the law here, or this is legend in the making!)

We walked along the top of the mountain ridge, then asked and were guided to a little path that turned right down the other side, through grasslands and strangely shaped limestone rocks.One stone reminded me of the Birthstone on the West Penwith moor in Cornwall, but this was more elaborately carved by the wind and water. 

Melanesian Birthstone?

Endlessly we made our way down the slope, trying not to slip on the dry and dusty crumbled rock. I didn’t take my shoes off! Luckily my ankles and knees didn't complain as much as I thought they might at the down hill walk. We got down to the bottom, and crossed an iron bridge. There were hordes of children, their smooth brown skins shining with drops of water from the river which rushed by below us. As always, they were curious and suspicious in equal measure, but as we talked to them, took a photo, etc, they warmed and were delightful. As always!

Mangi on the Bridge

Now we were on a dirt/stone road, and we met loads of old papas and a few susas from the Nazarene Church, who made a great point of saying how welcome we were on their land - no roadblock or charging us for the privilege, they said. Much handshaking and the usual asking where we were from, where we'd been today, etc. Finally, we came out on the dirt road that goes from Kundiawa to Gembog (Mt Wilhelm), and turned downhill towards Kundiawa, about another 2 hour walk away. 

The problem with this road, apart from it's being rutted and full of huge boulders, or the landslides which regularly block it is that it's got lots of people walking back from Kundiawa to their villages. On a Saturday afternoon that means lots of spakman (drunks). However, this time we only encountered one group of boys obviously the worse for wear, and they were friendly. One lad, Ali, wearing tracksuit bottoms, bare chested, and shaved head, wanted Jeff’s phone number! (I guess that in this country avowedly Christian, calling yourself Ali is an act of rebellion.) For the rest, we met a number of people who know Bill, and the walk was slowed down by the handshakes.

Vero welcomes you to The Coffee Shop - and a cool SP

Eventually we got to Kundiawa. I dragged myself up through the market, and we made our way to the TNA Coffee Shop. That first SP almost sizzled down! There followed a well-earned relaxation. Gerard, the French ex-pat who owns most of Kundiawa, joined us for local and international political discussion. Most of that is a story for another time, but it’s worth ending this with the picture he painted of himself, when on a previous occasion there was a fight in town, and he appeared with revolver in hand, firing over the heads of the youths. Apparently one of them had managed to  buy or steal a carton of SP beer. Dropped it and ran! This really is a frontier town!

Counselling and International Development: the White Parrot Sings no Answers

A draft of an article for Therapy Today - please give me your comments!

When I left Britain to spend two years for Voluntary Service Overseas in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, I thought the skills I would need would be those of the English or TEFL teacher, or those of the Professional Development Trainer. And no doubt, without those skills I could not have been effective. But, in fact, I have relied far more on my Counselling Skills. Without those I could not have crossed the cultural boundaries and made some sort of contact.

Not, in fact, that any of us really cross cultural boundaries. It’s more a matter of love than movement. More a matter of a sudden unconscious glimpse, like a dream image that suddenly breaks upon consciousness. In an instant I find that something that has, until now, been puzzling or different or foreign, suddenly is ‘of course!’ It’s very like, if not exactly the same, as the experience we as counsellors wait for and work for in the room: suddenly we see what another human being has been experiencing, and how they’ve made organic sense of what they’ve experienced. And, when we have such insight, then sometimes we can share it, whether in words or body language or imagery, and the person we are with may choose to grow and change, because he or she now knows they are not alone, and not ill or the victim of ‘issues’ or ‘problems’. It’s a kind of psychic evolution, born always of those moments when we realise we are not isolated and individual.

The whole experience has left me reconsidering what Counselling Skills are, and realising that Development - personal development, group and community development, or international development - only happens when the core conditions exist. I will, in this article, use slightly different terms for what I consider the core conditions to be: empathy, certainly; compassion, so much more resonant a term for me than unconditional positive regard; and honesty, lack of professional front, and a transparent but sensitive presence which is always focussed on the other person and his or her needs - this means more to me than congruence, though that is a vital term too. To these, however, I need to add a bit of ‘magic’, the creative component without which human growth is stifled. Whether this comes from dream, the ability to listen to our core metaphors making sense of our state of being, or from myth, or just from an occasional level of communication in which unconscious processes are acknowledged and valued and listened to, is often a matter of serendipity. But being open to it is a sine qua non.

I’m writing this looking out at the 2000 metre mountains of Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. The beauty of the peaks is stunning; the settlement at the foot of the mountain is a no-go area. The ground between me and the settlement is stained with bouai, the blood red betelnut juice of this country’s favourite addiction. I’m back here on my third placement with the Simbu Education Division as a VSO volunteer. And today is Independence Day: PNG became an independent country 36 years ago.

I’m thinking back to my first contact with counselling skills,  a Berkshire County in-service course entitled Education in Personal Relationships, and led by the inspiring Moira Dunn of Marriage Guidance, as it then was. I’m remembering how it was counselling skills that led me to re-evaluate how I approach teaching. I’m remembering Mechanical Techicians 1 on that Friday afternoon when I returned from the EPR Course: the relationship was somehow all different because I was not preaching and arguing and telling; we were exploring together. Somehow, I had begun to learn to listen.

But let me tell you about another ‘first contact’. It was less than 80 years ago that the first contact between ‘Whitemen’ - the Leahy Brothers prospecting for gold, on the one hand, and Fr. Schaefer, a German Catholic priest exploring for souls to save, on the other - and the indigenous people of this region was made. Prior to that time, the Europeans who made colonies of the coastal regions understood the interior, cut off behind high and apparently impenetrable mountains, to be uninhabited. In fact, it was the most densely populated part of the island, and had continued, as far as we can make out, in its way of life for perhaps 50,000 years. The people - hundreds of  tribes speaking hundreds of different languages - used no metal, digging their ‘gardens’ (small agricultural plots) with wood, and defending and attacking with carved arrows and spears. The first Europeans to meet them thought them primitive, ignoring the fact that these were among the first people on earth to use agriculture, and use it so successfully that change since had rarely been forced upon them. They had a way of life; it worked; why change it? But then, ‘First Contact’, and psychic evolution could not be avoided on either side.[i]

Now my job, as a VSO Volunteer in Simbu Province in 2006, was to help teachers to improve English Exam results for Grades 10 and 12. In their final exams, at these important school-leaving stages, students were on average achieving in English Language two grades below their results in Maths and Science. I had two main questions during my early months of research into what was going on: firstly, were the exams fair, valid, and reliable; secondly, were the teaching strategies effective for the students involved? The answer, in short, was obvious: no, on both counts.

But that scarcely begins to deal with the weight of impressions which were borne in upon me during those first months. Here are some pieces of anecdotal evidence which may give you some flavour of what those impressions were:

The Principal of the school we were based in came one day to talk to us about what he chiefly wanted us to teach his staff: time-management. He wanted us to tell his staff to manage their time better, and come to meetings on time. Yet he himself was constantly late or absent for staff meetings because he was tied up with important people from the neighbouring communities. One day, he kept all his staff, four VSOs, the Pacific Region Co-ordinator for VSO, and the Education Programme Manager from Madang waiting for more than 3 hours while he dealt with a Board of Governors problem. It was not that we saw him as wrong, though what he did and what he preached were so far at odds. The problem was that he was caught between two different ways of doing things, school and traditional. That conflict, I’m afraid, led him, a good man, to an early grave. But at the time, our chief emotion in dealing with him and other staff was frustration: if you don’t want what I have to offer, why did you ask me here?! But, as always, within the frustration was the nub of the matter: our conflicts were as nothing, compared to those of the people we were getting to know. No wonder that they didn’t even attend their classes half the time!

English, we were told, is the language of government, education, and business within the country. There are about 850 different languages spoken in this country - not dialects, but separate languages. Many of these are now dying out, despite attempts to teach all early years in Tok Ples, or the language of the place in which the Elementary and Primary School is located. The main lingua franca used between tribes and in almost all daily dealings, is Tok Pisin, or Pigeon Talk, an amalgam of English, German, Dutch and other words, with its own syntax. Educated PNG Nationals call it, often, broken English, but it is a curiously alive and interesting language. On the other hand, its roots as a slave drivers’ way of giving orders to workers from different tribes are all too clear, and I am convinced that its limited grammar and vocabulary stifle conceptual development.

So picture, if you will, a Grade 12, very intelligent class, and my wife and myself helping them revise for their final English Language paper. One of the readings was, for some reason, about poverty in a district of New York City. We went over every sentence with them. They clearly understood all the words. Yet there was an air of complete bafflement in the class. My wife realised first what was going on: “What do you understand ‘poverty’ to mean?” she asked. “It’s lack of resources,” a student answered. “Right! And why is there a lack of resources in this place?” “They don’t have enough land for their gardens.” For these students, food is what is grown in the family ‘garden’. South of Kerowagi Secondary School, the Silku Tribe does not have enough land for this traditional pattern to support the population. All the facts in their exam passage, about drug addiction, AIDS, and food welfare for primary school children, were being filtered through this basic mind set about the problems they were faced with on a daily basis. And there’s no criticism in that; in an English school the filter might have more to do with consumerism or ‘gangsta’ youth culture, which might be existentially a good deal more removed from their realities than those of a Silku youth.

It became clear, then, that the problem is not just inappropriate exams and poor teaching methods (most classes in 2006 sat in silence while their teacher talked at them and wrote notes on the board; this has already changed a great deal.) The problem is that whole patterns of thought, emotion, and values are tied up in language.

Now you may well be asking why these students should be learning English at all. In fact, the Secondary School Inspector for Simbu, Mr. Pinaga, makes this point frequently. “The Australians won’t take us as workers,” he avers, “so why do we need to learn their language?” And I have great sympathy with his point of view. But it still leaves a major question: in the land of 850 languages, and with Australian, Chinese, Malaysian and other international interests exploiting the fantastically rich natural resources of the island, what linguistic skills will help these people take control of their economy, let alone their destiny? The simple, if rather unfortunate fact is that English is not only the language of international business, but is also a complex, rich, and unique amalgam of ways of expressing human experience. It does not even belong to the English. Nor the Americans. It is, at the moment, the nearest to an international language that we have.

So, fine, I decided, we need to improve English Language teaching, and have fairer means of assessment. And I began work with a group of English teachers in Simbu Province. I found that they were anxious and worried, not only about poor English results, but about the new, ‘reform’ syllabus which was to begin in Lower Secondary Schools in January, 2008.

Now it is at this point that my wife and heart partner, Demeter Kraaij, reminded me that I needed to walk my talk. It was no good preaching student-centred learning using teacher-centred methods. I should have known that, as a trained counsellor, but my mind set was as closed as any of theirs! Anyway, I managed to hold back trying to  give answers, and instead asked the teachers: ‘what are you doing now that you don’t want to lose?’ And I reflected to them the anxiety and depression which was stopping them from teaching better and being confident about what they were doing. Like the Principal, they were desperately trying to find a way through their conflicts.

To cut a long story short, we held a series of meetings and workshops (and to my amazement, they did attend!) and those teachers wrote down their best ideas for exercises and teaching strategies for the new Grade 9 syllabus. I edited what they wrote, formatting and correcting and suggesting ways of saying things which might help students and teachers begin to think about what they were communicating, and how they chose to communicate it. The result was a complete book of resources for the new course. It was, at that stage, in a ring binder, printed from my laptop on a portable inkjet printer. Then came a surprise: one teacher, Matilda Dimo, virtually hijacked the binder - it found its way to local administrators and political figures, instead of to the Education Division printshop. As a result, money was raised to print it as a proper textbook. Matilda has gone on to sell the book to the National Department of Education, and AusAID, so that the book that the Simbu English Teachers’ Association created is now the official Grade 9 textbook for the country, distributed to all schools, more than 26000 copies.

The latter success is down to Matilda’s entrepreneurial skills, but the actual creation of the resources was made possible because I was able to listen and to hear, first from students, then from teachers. My compassion for the teachers’ conflicts and frustration led them to have more compassion for themselves and their students. My presence was congruent enough that (thanks again to Demeter for this) what I did and what I said added up to an example of how development works. And together we, the teachers in the Simbu English Teachers’ Association and I, created a bit of magic that still amazes me. A dream, as it were, grew amongst us. That dream, perhaps, is best summed up in another small anecdote: one of our teachers, Peter Kepa, had written a short story, when he was a student, and it had been published in a book by his teacher. Peter brought the story to me during a workshop. I had been feeling lost and unsure where we were going, this roomful of teachers working in small groups, generally apparently quite lost. The central image in Peter’s story, “The Wind”, is a white parrot. I found myself saying to Peter, “It seems that you realised that parroting the whiteman’s ways led your hero to disaster.” Peter claims that I was the first person to have correctly interpreted his image (I guess whether that is literally true is not the point!) The image and the interpretation spread around the room: I think it helped the groups realise that the resources they were creating had to reflect and make sense of their own reality, not ‘do it right’ according to some whiteman’s version of reality.

The problems faced by both teachers and students in this place are daunting. Last night I went to a pre-exam meal for Grade 12 students in Kerowagi. Probably only one or two at most, out of every 10 of the 292 students there will find formal work. The others will have to make a way of life that fulfills them, and serves their community in this ‘consocial’ society. Many will fall, and ‘steam’ (a lethal local form of moonshine whiskey) and drugs will lead many into crime and fighting and quite likely madness or death. But Simbu is a place of intelligence and resourcefulness, and some students as well as some of their leaders are coming up with answers. Those answers are not imported from Britain or Australia or anywhere else: Papua New Guinea is, as all of us are, unique. It must find its way to survive and develop and yet retain its identity. The White Parrot sings no answers. I wonder, in fact, if PNG is not doing a great deal better in its psychic evolution than England or America. Have we even realised that our way forward, socially and communally depends on a psychic evolution, on the core conditions being recognised and valued?

So, I have come to believe that Counselling and Psychotherapy is not a branch of medicine or social work. It is, quite simply and no matter what belief system you espouse, spiritual good sense and good wisdom. Without such wisdom, we cease to grow and develop, personally, in our families, communally, or politically in our global village.

So, I submit this to you all, counsellors and therapists and teachers and just folks: let us continue to grow and develop. And let us listen to the supposedly primitive spaces within and around us, to help us do so.

---

[i] Obviously, from an anthropological point of view, this account is over-simplified. But I would suggest that it catches the esssence of the shock of ‘first contact’. For a fuller account of what ‘first contact’ meant to both sides, see

 Like People You See in a Dream (First Contact in Six Papuan Societies) : Edward L Schieffelin, Robert Crittendon et al, Stanford University Press 1991: ISBN 0-8047-18997

, which documents the evidence of what initial contact meant to Australian and Papuan tribespeople during the Purari Expedition in the 1930s.

The Way of the Rainbow?

I’m deeply troubled tonight. Angry, sorrowful, exacerbated, shaken up. I’ve just been to Kundiawa Hospital, A&E, having got a call at 8:00 pm Saturday night. Matilda’s husband Joe has been in another fight, only this time the guy he punched went back and organised a gang of his tribesmen, young and drunk - maybe 3 or 4 dozen of them. They set about Joe, and Matilda thought they’d killed him. When she first called me, that was the news. But he’s regained consciousness, and doesn’t seem to have any life-threatening injuries.

Now I’m all too aware that the last post on the blogspot was about Joe having got into a fight. And now, it all feels to me like gang warfare; I guess that’s exactly what it is. In LA someone on the street feels insulted or gets punched, and he goes and gets as many of his gang members as possible, and there’s retaliation. Which leads to retaliation back, and so on. At this point, I am caught between respect for traditional tribal ways, and a complete hatred of the childish and pointless cock-fighting (why mince words? - I’m not talking about roosters here!) which may have had a function in the past, but now causes nothing but grief and short-circuits so many of the attempts at development, nation-building, and peace and harmony which we work so hard to create. So, although Joe has been described to me as a ‘bighead’, and clearly has a habit of annoying men from other tribes, I don’t think that is enough to explain why the violence happened today.

Now, at this point I don’t know the whole truth, only Matilda’s perceptions after a terrifying day (they were down at the Simbu River, when a truck load of yobs arrived and set about Joe.) Susan, who has been working as the Accountant for SETA, is married to Kulame, who is something important in the Department of Works. It was Kulame that Joe seems to have insulted and punched recently. Matilda describes how Susan and Kulame drove up while she was desperately hunting for Joe, who had run off when the youths attacked. Matilda asked whether they intended to murder Joe. They said nothing, and drove off.

But wait a minute, Susan is someone I’ve been working with closely. Someone I trusted and thought I knew. Someone who has been trying to get the accounts for SETA together, and, given the rumours in the past about misuse of funds, and the necessity of making sure that SETA is an honestly and transparently run organisation that I am willing to work for next year, someone I have listened to carefully. She is articulate, with good English, a quick mind, and apparently a real sense of values. What the hell is going on here?!

I would guess that it’s the story I’ve told a hundred times. The women are fairly grounded, because they give birth and are the main food-growers; the men whose role for generations has been to be warriors defending tribal boundaries and pride may adopt ‘professional’ or ‘civilised’ ways, but are driven by more or less unconscious forces which are, quite frankly, those of gang mentality. But the women are, equally, deeply attracted to men who fight and are aggressive. The dark side of the animus knows little and cares less for civilisation.

Well, yesterday I shot some video footage of Joe dressed for a sing-sing in his traditional warrior adornments, his bilas. I stood beside him and Matilda took our picture. Tonight he was hunted down, not for one-to-one combat, but by a pack of baying drunks who presumably thought they were being warriors. Whether I can ever get through to Joe about how he  invites trouble - or whether that is even fair - and whether in the days to come I can help in the peace-making and ensure there is no attempt at retaliation by Joe’s tribe, I don’t know. But, as my comparing the process here with LA gangs tries to point out, this is something which we have tried, in our ‘civilisation’, to repress out of existence. It needs more than that, and more than education and professionalism to change our warlike psyches; it needs a deep psychic shift, owning our own dark side. God and Goddess, grant me the wisdom to own my dark side, and help that process in others.

Joe in Traditional Simbu Bilas, Ian in happier mood

A Lesson in Justice?

Above:Warrior, Goroka Show, pic by Anthony Jones, VSO; Right, Matilda and Uncle at her place

]My lessons on what makes a culture tick continue apace. Each time, it’s as if something that really annoyed or horrified me has changed shape, and I suddenly glimpse ways that are quite the equal of anything I’ve known. My eyes change a bit, and nothing will ever look the same again.

This week Joe was beaten up. Some drunks (Spakman) were terrorising the market in Kundiawa. The market is a place where women come to sell produce from their gardens - fresh broccoli, peas in their pods bound prettily with grass, carrots small and large, and, of course, kaukau, the sweet potato which is still the staple diet of most people in the Highlands. The women are     quiet and friendly and seem grateful for what they can sell me, but they are never pushy, never loud or aggressive salespersons.

Anyway, something had riled the men, some not so young. I think it was to do with thwarted political ambition, not having won the recent by-election in the town. So they got drunk and took out their feelings on the town that had rejected them. They kicked and threw the market womens’ produce. And Joe was there.

Joe tried to reason with the men - these were innocent women trying to make a living; why take your anger and frustration out on them, etc, etc? So they beat Joe up. Matilda, his partner, had to get him to hospital. He wasn’t really badly injured, but Joe is a large, strong man, and it had taken some serious intent to knock him out. It was serious. Later, the drunks came outside the SETA office, on the road. Some came into the compound of the Education Division, and for some moments we wondered if our offices would also come under attack. I, as resident VSO and high profile ‘whiteman’, was locked into the office with my female colleagues. I felt a bit embarrassed, as well as more than a bit relieved, believe me. In the end,  the drunks went outside the gates, and they were locked out, and things cooled down. Willie, a local Youth Worker, walked me down home later.

Now, my reaction to this is fury and frustration. I’m angry that Joe got beaten, angry that the women who are so poor were victimised, and angry that the police not only didn’t show up, but also didn’t even answer the telephone when we rang them - the Police HQ is not more than a 10 minute walk away. I’m not quite sure what the police do do in Kundiawa, but keeping the peace isn’t in it.

So what would happen in the UK? Arrests? Lengthy court cases? Fines paid to the state? Jail sentences? Would justice have been served? Maybe, sometimes.

So, the next day, Matilda took time off work and went to the wantoks of the perpetrators. By late in the afternoon she phoned me to come to the back compound of the Education Division. There, Joe and Matilda and myself and other SETA folks and wantoks met with a number of the young and older men who either had had something to do with the violence, or who were related to them. The mediation had already taken place; this was the public show of bel kol, of cooling the emotions and making peace. So there were speeches, and the Bigman who had knocked Joe out made his apologies, and there was angift of money to Joe, and I was introduced as an example of what SETA is doing for PNG, etc etc. In short, this ins’t one clan against another; it’s something for the future of us all. Handshakes all round.

Now, of course, a lot of this was show. The formality of an English court is also show, I guess, and certainly I expect humans to make excuses when they see that not making them will cause even more trouble. But what impressed me about the whole process was that really it was based on finding answers. People have to live together, and fighting causes damage and wastes lives and generally is no answer. This was mediation in the best sense, and I actually believe that it brought the disappointed politician closer to Matilda and Joe and the clan, but also SETA and the Education Division. It’s as if, here where democracy really doesn’t exist yet, the people are making it up, and though the results may seem bizarre and even childish to us sometimes, the fact is they are doing, at present, at least as good a job as we are. Yes, we are experimenting with Restorative Justice, and may those experiments go far. but mostly, what I see of English Justice seems to demonize wrong-doers. Yes, I heard David Cameron spitting acid nonsense and making things worse, about the riots, before I left.

I wonder if the thing that we get so wrong in Britain is that we really do not know how to deal with anger and frustration. Nice people just don’t express those emotions, do they? And yet every one of us has anger and frustration to deal with. We suppress. We repress. We deny.

I can’t say I like the way those emotions are taken out on the innocent, here. But at least, when mistakes are made, the traditions of restoring justice can still be used. As the country develops, may those traditions grow and develop, and not be lost. And maybe this can bring something back to Britain - as usual, so-called civilisation has much to learn from people we call primitive.

Pasin Jelus and Development (Personal or International)

Yesterday I held a somewhat belated housewarming party. All my VSO Colleagues from Kundiawa were here, and most of my Simbu English Teachers’ Association colleagues as well. We had a great time -  I made a pasta bake, which was a new experience to most Nationals, and others brought chicken and salad and pineapple, and even some ‘Lamington’ cake from our local PNG-French entrepreneur’s bakery (Gerard owns about 85% of the business real estate in Kundiawa.) And the SP (South Pacific Brewery lager beer) flowed freely, and, I’m pleased to say, moderately.

We toasted the wedding of Andrew and Kim in Canada, we told tales of who we are and where we’ve been, and it was great to see the mutual respect and friendship. When Dee and I were here in 06-07, we so often felt we were whistling in the wind (is that the phrase - oh, never mind!), so much did what we said or did not seem to have any effect. But, in fact, though the frustrations for volunteers are still daunting, I’m amazed at the differences I can see among teachers. Or maybe it’s my perception that has changed, I really don’t know. But last week I attended the end of a workshop on facilitation skills led by Bill Oliver. The participants were from both Primary and Secondary schools, teachers, deputies, and Headteachers. And the final presentations/facilitations they led! So interesting, and so person-centred. Little of the ‘stand in front of class and rabbit’ style I was so used to. Even the young PE Teacher had us running up to him, with two seconds to take in what was on a piece of paper and go back to our team, to see who could get a form filled in first. Laughter, embarrassment, and a chance for the unlikely ones to shine in the exercise!

And how about the SETA side? Matilda and I talked generally in August 2008 about establishing a self-sustaining business, publishing and resource creation. She has outdone even my wildest words and encouragement at that time. The book that she and I edited, and that I got Simbu teachers to write, is now inm every Grade 9 classroom in the country. OK, AusAID put ther money up, but it was Matilda who went and sold what we had created to the National Department of Education and AusAID, etc. Now we’re working on a business plan to consolidate the business and make it a fully self-sustaining entity.

Now, there’s an amount of resentment in the province about SETA. Teachers resent not being a part of it. English Teachers who said they’d create such and such a unit for one of our texts, and who failed to deliver the goods when they said they would, are now saying (I quote one), “I think there must be something wrong with Matilda.” Now, there is something in Tok Pisin called pasin jelus. It means ‘jealous behaviour’, but it means a lot more - the whole attitude which tears down something which someone else has created if you can’t get some share of it, however undeserved. It has been borne in on me recently that this is not something confined to PNG. It runs through Britain as well, though in a different way. I recall D.H. Lawrence commenting on a relative he visited in 1925, after he was an established, even notorious writer. Something to the effect that to her, sixpence was precisely sixpence, and god help anyone who stuck their head up to say some things mattered more. Oppression by the oppressed, we could say.

So, I am delighted to have come here initially as a VSO volunteer. A VSO initiative led to this success; should it now leave it to wither, or grow wrongly because those core teachers who made SETA do not have the financial and planning skills to take it to the next level? And I am delighted to see Susan Dua become the accountant for SETA now. She has the financial savvy, the honesty, and the vision needed. She understands both the Melanesian Way and the ways of International Business, and seems to know when to bend her plans one way or the other, creating a coherent system with respect for her people as well as the transparency without which I won’t be a part of SETA.

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So, I’m walking a fine line, but the bridge seems solid enough, at least at present. With which, and a photo of me on such a bridge, non-metaphorical this time, over Wara Simbu, I’ll close!

Weddings, Pigs, and Dreams

Sat. 10 Sept., 2011

Seems to be a day when I’m thinking about weddings. My nephew Andrew Cameron is marrying Kim Brooks next weekend in Canada. Last weekend I went with other VSOs to a Brideprice Exchange Celebration at the village of Onkalai, near Gumine in Simbu Province. I know little about the couple in Onkalai, but the contrast in the ceremonies could hardly be greater. And, to add a bit of spice to all that, one of the Bigmen of the groom’s clan has been suspended by the Schools Inspector for marrying one of his students at Boromil High School. Since he’s someone I know well - he has been a central and vocal if not productive member of the Simbu English Teachers’ Association from its beginning - I find myself looking at the cultural clashes and differences. I’ll try to explain what I mean:

                                              Margaret and her Onkalai wantok women

Supposedly, marriage in Western Society is based on monogamous values. As far as I know, bigamy is still a crime in Britain, and adultery is as worthy of headlines as it is common. In most Papuan Tribes, Polygamy was possible. (Some, mostly Coastal and Island Tribes were matricentral, but even there, I think polygamy was normal.)

These days, the breakdown of traditional ways affects both the West, and traditional culture here. Sex seems to have become a spectator sport in the West, but what D.H.Lawrence would have referred to as the deep and central blood connection between man and woman seems even more distan to us than it was in his day - part perhaps, of our disconnection from ourselves. In Papua New Guinea, not long ago, the National Head of the Police published a full page newspaper statement outlining what he expected from his officers - lack of corruption, a public sense of duty, and definitely only one wife. (He didn’t address the fact that police officers here might be more conscientious if they were paid!) But it seems clear that traditional polygamy has been replaced by opportunistic use of women. Traditionally, only a Bigman could support several wives; now multiple wives are common, but many find themselves unsupported. Although, in this country, casual sex is not really recognised - have an affair, and you are considered, by the woman’s ‘brothers’, to be married - it is, of course, common. Talk to any of the AIDS groups!

So, all this is going through my head, while at the same time I’m thousands of miles away from my dear wife, and missing her like hell. But the deep, blood connection is there for us, I’m so grateful, and it connects us across even this distance.

Kim and Andrew will have their community of friends and family (minus us, unfortunately) around them for a weekend at Camp Pinecrest, in Torrence, Muskoka, in the beauties of Northern Ontario. There will be canoeing and, no doubt, other sports. There will be a campfire, perhaps, and the chill September night in Northern Canada will warn of the long winter to come. I don’t know what religious ceremony, if any, will take place, but looking at their website, I get a strong sense of spiritual connection being celebrated. And my spirit will certainly be there.

The brideprice celebrations featured mostly negotiations about how many pigs should be given to the bride’s clan, how many should be killed and cooked and eaten that day to celebrate the marriage, and how much money should be given for the bride. In the end we watched three pigs being bludgeoned to death with a large club - I won’t go into that! But, of course, the big thing from a Western view was that the bride, though she had chosen her husband freely herself, does not belong to herself. She belongs to the clan. In a way, theoretically, the groom belongs to his clan. And the whole ceremony was not about the individual love, but about exchange in order to keep peace between these neighbouring groups. When we walked from the bride’s clan to the boundary of the groom’s, we had to wait, and call. Then a man began what sounded like loud pained moaning, and a woman started crying - members of the groom’s clan. Finally we were allowed in, and sat for the negotiations and pig-killing. These are not primitive people; they are highly intelligent, some are well-educated. Matilda Dimo, who is my close colleague and who has achieved the selling,printing, and distribution of 26000 Grade 9 textbooks all over this country, is a major member of the bride’s clan. A Senior Inspector of Police from Mt. Hagen is a member of the groom’s clan, and spent a long and very thought-provoking time explaining the brideprice negotiations to us. No, this is as civilised as any Christian or Muslim or Buddhist ceremony; it’s just that, from an outsider’s point of view, it’s easy to see the ironies. Then again, our human nature means that ironies have to exist!

                                               Matilda views the Waghi River from her place

I think back to mediaeval and renaissance Christian theologians; they might have spoken in terms of the earthly and the angelic sides of our nature; I think about the Buddhists who might speak of our owning, but then transcending our desire for earthly things; and I think about the thing I keep learning by being in this incredibly beautiful and complex country, with its 1000 tribes and its myriad cultural ways: we narrow our conception of what it means to be human at our cost.  No one religious or cultural template can do justice to our flesh or our life force, our spirits or our energy, or call it what you will. To try to do without religious metaphors is to deny the way that symbolic thinking lifts and carries us  in a way that could be described as “forward”, or “inward”, or “towards integrated being”. What ever one calls it, I think again about how human beings - indeed, apparently, all animals - have to dream. We cannot live without our inner spirit guiding us forward or inward or towards integration of our being and our potential.

So, to my wantoks Kim and Andrew I wish above all that they continue to explore their dream together, in the most natural and universally human way. And to the young couple here, I wish the same. In Canada the Cult of Conspicuous Consumerism may thus be transcended, and more meaningful spiritual being achieved. And here, “development” may come to mean so much more than “Adopting Western Ways”. Mind you, I’d feel good if the pigs had an easier time, but then again, at least they spend what life they have roaming free, cared for by human “mamas”. And Western pig-rearing? - let’s not even go there...!

Ian’s Blog from PNG - Here in Kundiawa

Well, here I am at the end of my first working week in Kundiawa. It’s been a strange and disorienting process, meeting new and old friends and colleagues, trying to work out how to get online, settling into my huge house (three bedrooms, no less!) and trying to decide where I’ve put my things - I get up in the morning, waking an hour before sunrise at 6a.m., and forget where I’ve put my phone charger or the bag of laundry I was going to do, etc.

The scenery is even more stunning than I remember, the mountains green and powerful, clouds floating half way up, trees reaching right over the peaks, which must be over 2000m. Even here, at 1500 m., the air is thin and I puff a bit climbing up the hill on the way to the Education Division in the morning. The mornings are cool, maybe 16 or 18C. Midday the sun is intense, but the heat here isn’t often above 25C. Unlike Madang, last week, where 30 or 35C is normal.

I’ve spent most of the week working in the Simbu English Teachers’ Association office. I can even close the door to my own little office, and it says “Editor in Chief” on the door! Since AusAID has paid for our Grade 9 textbook to be distributed to all High Schools in the country, SETA has been able to build a modern office at the back of the Education Division buildings, and equip it with modern computing equipment.

I’m here half time worrking for SETA to edit the Grade 10 text, which is all but completely written, and half time for the VSO programme Strongim Tisa, Strongim Sumatin (Strong Teacher, Strong Student). So for the latter I’m a member of a team of five volunteers from Britain, and we’re meeting groups of subject teachers from all over the province, looking at what they nbeed in the way of teaching resources, ways in which they can improve classroom practice. And one member of the team, Bill Oliver, is specifically working with Headteachers and Principals on management issues - schools lose control of staff and students, and have precious little ability to manage their budgets. In addition, local politicians who have not been elected are taking revenge by cutting water supplies to schools, etc. So managing community relationships is vital - today the Schools Inspector, Mr Pinaga, has had to suspend two high schools which are in remote areas and are not able to continue teaching for such reasons.

It’s a country of enormous contrasts. On the one hand, it is rich with natural resources, rich in intelligent human resources; on the other it faces such huge problems - no roads, or roads broken by earth tremours and washouts and other disasters (the road to Gembog, half way up Mt. Wilhelm, our tallest mountain at 4800metres, was blocked yesterday, following rains, when a massive boulder crashed down a cliff and landed on the clay road. Peter Dua, of the Works Dept., shook his head: “I had to turn back,” he said. “I’ll try to get a jack hammer up there tomorrow.” So imagine being on the other side of the blockage, at Mt. Wilhelm High School. Food for the students would have to be transported by 4WD bush vehicle up to the boulder, carried by hand around the rock, and then reloaded onto a truck on the other side.

Well, I’m fortunate. I don’t have to solve that. Today I met the Provincial Administrator, and many other  officials. They are very proud that it is Simbu Province that is leading the country in producing high quality and truly Papuan learning materials. I contrast their enthusiasm with the cynicism and over bureaucratic politicking of Britain. Well, Britain has trained its youth well: Greed is Right. The riots showed what we have been taught by public officials and the media, and above all, by business. And we dare to talk about the corruption in a country like PNG! (Mind you, the PEA for Education today told me that corruption in PNG makes him literally sick. He thinks that officials like one Mr. Wotoro from East Sepik, who stole millions of Kina from schools budgets in his province, and bought some airplanes from Holland to start a new airline here, should literally be shot! Well, he is at least in jail, without bail, at present. I guess what’s different here is that his corruption is visible. In Britain, unless there’s an Expenses Scandal or something, most of our corruption is hidden. Anyway, working with some idealistic and honest people here seems a good thing to be doing!

Tomorrow I’m being taken to a village wedding - one of Matilda’s wantoks. That will make a nice break from the keyboard!

OK, prens bilong mi, mi gat bikpela ammamas long raitim yu. My dear friends, I’m happy to write you. I look forward to receiving emails if you would like to write: try my two addresses; one usually works:

            iancameron43@gmail.com

or            dee_n_ian@mac.com