How about that? I was invited to a PNG meeting with all my friends of that particular time in my life. It’s just great to reminisce about stuff you did together and you saw together. Marcel left together with me back in 2005 and he is still going strong. He has just decided to take up another two year contract. He’s going to live in Banz and work within the field of CBR.
Banz is about an hour’s drive from Mount Hagen where I lived.
When I was in Papua New Guinea I saw Watna in the only bar in Mount Hagen called the Waipa zone. She told me she had been reading my blog and recognised me from pictures. In march she told me she was going to do an internship in The Hague at the International Criminal Court. That of course meant she had to come over to Nijmegen so I could show her the place.
That she did with a friend of her.
When I left the Netherlands to go to Papua New Guinea Marcel was one of the people in my group. When I decided to go back to the Netherlands Marcel decided to stay and really get involved in community work. Charley Boorman from BBC2 did an interview with him regarding his work. The cool thing is that what they are showing was exactly what I was doing there.
I’ve told you before about this special lady in Mount Hagen by the name of Maggie Wilson. Born and raised within the Penambi tribe close to Mount Hagen, educated in Queensland Australia, filmmaker, journalist, hotelowner, philanthropist, leader, all around cool woman and friend. I just received word from Joanna that she passed away April this year. And just like Joanna says; people like Maggie aren’t supposed to die. Women like her are supposed to keep history alive, help PNG go to the next era, advocate woman rights by example and be a friend to all the newbies in PNG.
Joanna to the left, Maggie in the middle and Dylan to the right.
Back in PNG I did some kickboxingtraining with some Southern Highlanders. Why is kickboxing big in PNG? Because they have Stanley “the Headhunter” Nandex. And what do you know, I trained with his tribe back in Mount Hagen.
I just read on a blog from a friend of mine that he won another title!
This is how I would some up life in PNG.
1. You can trust a man with your life but not with 50 bucks.
2. Lovers will not hold hands in public but good mates do.
3. Order and chaos are one and the same.
4. A person’s wealth is measured by what they give away rather than what they accumulate.
5. There’s no such thing as PMV timetables but as a rule of thumb one does not have to wait longer than a few minutes for a passing bus.
6. There’s no such thing as a free gift even though the locals give freely.
7. It’s much easier to raise money for the dead than what it is for the living.
8. Papua New Guineans will patiently hang around for hours but when it comes to queues they lose all sense of courtesy.
9. It’s totally acceptable for a man to have close body contact with a young lass whilst riding on the back of a PMV other times it’s probably best not to have eye contact.
10. There is no word for paradox in Tok Pisin!
Serious request is a Dutch initiative whereby 3 DJ’s stay in a glass house for a week and play music 24/7 to raise money. This time the money is intended for the war fugitives in Kenia. It’s a noble enterprise I think. Last year an amount of 5,2 million euro was collected for the red cross.
I’m just thinking about Papua New Guinea again. I lived in Mount Hagen and there was constant strife between tribes. And so you’d see two warring clans fight on the streets with a lot of casualties. People are displaced all the time. What can you do to help people on such a small scale in a setting that cannot change yet?
Never knew you-tube would have PNG video music. Some pidgin to sweeten up my day.
Papua New Guinea always had a lot of people coming over trying to exploit its natural riches. You name it and PNG’s got it. Unfortunately like history has seen so often people just take what they want and don’t mind the locals. In fact they are seen as nuisances. This article is from a Dutch newspaper.
The article does not mention that papua-new-guinean politicians made this happen by inviting them in. A certain amount of money and privileges in the right pockets even exclude these foreign companies from paying taxes. Guess which country benefits from the profits? Guess where the money goes these chinese workmen earn? Guess how much pollution is exuded from a nickel mine? Etc, etc, etc…
Raphael is my follow-up in Mt Hagen. He only came out to PNG in February so I never got a chance to meet him. So it is nice to sometimes speak to him to see how things are going. The department is still there, the colleagues as well and there are still some good old PNG dilemma’s.