OuttaSiteOuttaMind

Occasionally anthropologists and archeologists would show up at the boarding school and ask for one of us kids to translate for them when they went to a village or site.  I went along one day with two such scientists and a local guide to explore a cave the scientists had heard about.  This cave supposedly had a hidden entrance and ran from one side of the mountain to the other. It wasn’t that the cave was a secret to any of the local tribes: rather it was the river that ran through the cave that often made it inaccessible and dangerous.  New Guinea is famous for its bi-seasonal weather: the wet season and the wetter season and flash flooding was a real possibility.

The local man walked us on a well worn path, barely wide enough for one person to pass.  We walked several hours into the bush and up a gentle slope towards the mountain.  Our guide stopped short suddenly and parted some foliage exposing the entrance to the cave. We stood at the entrance, per the guide’s instructions, and listened carefully. We could hear the sound of water running deep in the mountain.  We secured our torches (flashlights), wrapped in plastic bags, slipped long sleeved shirts on over our bare skin (to protect our hides and prevent leeches from getting on us), and entered the cave.

The water was ice cold and at its deepest we were wading with it around our waists. The cave, it tuns out, ran the length of the diameter of the mountain–several miles deep with little change in elevation from the initial decent into the cave opening.  It didn’t take long before walking became difficult as our legs were numb from the cold. We’d pause on the occasional boulder and sit above the water level, trying to warm ourselves. During these pauses we played with sound (listening to echos) and darkness (there is NOTHING as dark as when you turn your flashlights off while spelunking).

At one point, approximately half way through the cave, the guide stopped us and had us climb up onto a large ledge. The cave opened up into a large room, and the guide pointed up to the ceiling and had us shine our lights onto the rock walls.

The scientists inhaled sharply. The walls were covered in cave man drawings.  They immediately jumped up, reenergized, and began shooting photos, filling the cave with blinding flashes of light.  Our guide was startled and frightened by the sudden onset of inexplicable lightening.  I quickly explained the camera and flash and asked one of the scientists to ‘flash’ us on cue.  Soon we were all laughing.

I listened while the anthropologist and the archeologists explained the nature of the drawings, including what various symbols meant.  It was then I remembered our guide was local–perhaps he knew some of the folklore behind this ancient artwork.

The guide seemed puzzled at my question, then described a lengthy ongoing battle between two local tribes.  “We carried our pigs and children here. The women came too so the men could fight without worrying about them. These drawing were done while the women waited.”  How long ago was this, I asked?  “Oh… I think two or three Christmases ago.”

These ‘cave men’ were outside in the village, planting gardens, telling stories, and laughing. They were not ancient tribes. They were contemporaries.  I explained this to the scientists, who sat in silence. There was no good way of explaining their initial interpretation to the guide. There was no way of explaining to him, as he shone his flashlight in our faces, that he was from the stone age.

My eleventh birthday, April 7, 1982, was a remarkable day. I’d gone to school that morning as usual, in my blue and white uniform and patent leather shoes.  On and off during the day, I’d experienced pain.  I mentioned it to my teacher, who in the best of the British educational tradition, told me to “steel yourself and carry on.”  By 2 pm I was miserable.  My family lived about a mile away, and the pain became such that I finally just walked out of class and out the front gates under the threat of a caning by the head mistress–I walked home.

Mom said I was blue/green around the mouth by the time I climbed the steps of the front veranda. I could barely stand upright. Mom and dad immediately bundled me up and drove me down the road to the general hospital in Port Moresby. Upon arrival it became clear that my appendix was hot–if not ruptured already, then just about to.  They handed my mom a razor and a bottle of Phisohex and told her to prep me for surgery.  Dad ran out to the car and got the blanket they’d earlier bundled me in.  He held me up in the shower while mom prepped me.  They dried me off in the blanket from the car.

Dad carried me to the gurney, and laid me down.  The doctor indicated one of them should accompany me to the operating theater.  They carefully instructed my dad to take his shoes off prior to entering the ‘sterile’ environment.

For reasons my family never quite understood, the doctors gave me a very mild sedative but no anesthesia.  They strapped me down to the bed and removed my appendix under the sedative effects of Benadryl. When I rose up in pain onto my elbows, they instructed dad to hold me down.  He leaned over me with his full weight, and talked me through the surgery by describing the equipment in the room until I finally passed out.

I came to in a general surgical ward which consisted of eights beds, four on each side in rows on a concrete pad, surrounded by mosquito netting.  There was a sink at the end of the aisle between the 2 rows of beds.  Mom laid on a bamboo matt under my bed, waiting for me to wake and ensuring my safety. I was in severe pain, and mom wasn’t able to convince anyone to give me any pain medicine–they had left my belly open with a drain intact, out of fear of infection.

Mom stood by the bedside and we watched rats climb the mosquito netting. After a few hours, the doctor came to the bedside and suggested that my folks take me home, as “it is likely cleaner at your house, than it is here”. Dad bundled me up in the same blanket we’d earlier used as a towel, and trying to be as gentle as possible, laid me in the back of the car. We drove the long bumpy ride home slowly and painfully.

I believe my parents were more traumatized by all this than I.

Expatriates don’t buy land in Papua New Guinea.  Instead you can make application to the government for a 99 year renewable land lease.  You can request specific locations, but it is up to the government’s current agenda for development as to where they parcel out a lot.  Such was the case when our denomination applied for land in the capital city.

The land grant the government designated for our mission was located in an underdeveloped part of the city which consisted of several acres of tall kunai grass (6-8 ft tall and razor sharp) and a grove of rain trees.  This area was crime ridden–the grass hid a prostitution ring. Each fortnight there was excessive drinking and gambling under the rain trees while men lined up, freshly minted paychecks in hand, and waited for their turns with the tu kina meris (or in English, two dollar women).

The denomination received a grant for three acres and promptly built a fence around its parameters to protect the property. This security fence was 8 foot tall and had 3 additional feet of barbed wire strung along the top angled outwards to keep the undesirables out.  As it turned out, the property line shifted the prostitution ring out from under one set of rain trees and pushed them over to another row just outside the fence the church erected.

The displacement resulted in an underlying hostility between the pimp, the prostitutes, the ‘customers’, and the mission.

The first thing the mission did after erecting the fence, was to construct a house on the property.  The domicile then served to house the mission workers while the church building was under construction.  My family lived there.

Because of the underlying animosity against the mission for displacing them out from under the comfort of the rain trees, the prostitution ring began practicing right outside our front gate under a few trees just outside the fence.  Drunken brawls were not unusual, and on occasion, my father had to phone the police to ensure our protection: drunken threats were made towards those within the safety of the fence; beer bottles hurled against the house; etc.  We hired a security man to live onsite, and had guard dogs which roamed the property.

One fortnight was particularly memorable: my folks counted over 300 men lined up outside our gates.  We watched one prostitute get beaten bloody. Dad phoned the police to help break up the crowd.  The police sirens scattered the crowds into the kunai grass, long before the constable arrived onsite.  They picked up the women, put them in the back of the paddy wagon, and drove off down the lane.  About 1/2 a mile down the road we watched the paddy wagon pull to the side of the lane, the police take turns in the back with the women, then drop them off and head on their own merry way.

The anger levels of the crowd, now returned to our front gate, escalated to levels previously unseen.  Men attempted to climb the fence; threats were hurled against me and my mother; my father’s life was ‘marked’.  We could do little but pray for the alcohol to wear off, and things to calm down.  Our security man sat on our veranda with the porch light on, a machete in hand, in full view of anyone who might try to get to the house.  I spent the night under a bed, shoved back against the wall, being told to keep quiet.  Dad and mom armed themselves with boat oars and sat there in stoney silence.

The next morning, when things calmed down, Dad went out and introduced himself to the pimp, offering him and his women water to drink.  He hired Wi to be our ‘gardener’–thus giving Wi a legitimate role to play should the police arrive again.  Wi’s whores were deemed his ‘wives’, and they continued to hawk their ‘wares’ just outside the gate.  Thus we lived in a symbiotic relationship–the church and the prostitution ring–offering mutual protection and a strange circumspect form of respect.