Four months after accepting our placement (and having
overcome a few visa hitches) we have arrived in Madang, one of the larger towns
in Papua New Guinea. We’ve been here doing some training at the country office,
which has been a great opportunity to meet some of the staff and volunteers
working here. Staying at the very lovely Madang Lodge hasn’t presented too many
opportunities to experience local life in town, but with a culture and country
this diverse and wonderful you can’t help noticing a few things as you spend
your time here.
So, our top ten first impressions of PNG (and Madang in
particular!):
1)
Tok Pisin
We’re already very fond of this language as
it makes a lot of instinctive sense to the English speaker- ‘Nem bilong me
Mary’, anyone? The language a hybrid of English, German, Portuguese, Malay and
other local languages and is the lingua franca of the country, although with
another 800 odd Tok Ples (local languages) it seems to have a differing status
as a used language in different communities. It goes without saying that we’re
hopeless at speaking it but there’s a lot of comfort in being able to decipher
what people may say to you, or to read it aloud and work out what some of it
may mean.
2)
PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles)
This is the way most locals get around,
usually an old van of some description, not overcrowded and really cheap, not
wise to travel them alone though so we tend to catch them in groups, as we
become more confident and known around town a bit we will be able to travel a
bit more freely. They’re a different experience when in conjunction with 3)
below, and walking alongside the road you need to be careful as flying balls of
Buai spit (10) come flying out quite regularly.
3)
Potholes
The road outside our office requires a
‘zig-zag’ approach as it’s fairly impossible to drive in a straight line due to
the condition of the roads. I noticed our driver had to shift back a gear to
get out of one of the potholes! If you did get stuck only a 4-wheel drive would
rescue you. It can be quite the adventure travelling as drivers tend to just
swerve the potholes which tests both oncoming traffic and pedestrians.
4)
‘Apinun’
We’ve found the local people to be incredibly
friendly, our walks around town are accompanied by constant calls of ‘moning’
and ‘apinun’ and smiles from people we encounter. You will find small children
follow you out of interest and people will yell or wave hello to you from
passing vehicles or across the street. This has made us feel very welcome and
possibly given us a slight false sense of security. You still need to be very
alert and aware of what is going on around you at all times.
5)
Expatriates
There is a sizeable ex-pat community in
Madang, and having been for nights out at the local Country Club we can see
that quiz nights, casino and DJ battles are popular with local families as well
as the expats who dominate the venue. To be fair there haven’t been too many
other social outlets suggested to us, after dark there are limits to where you
would go to in town, particularly as newbies.
6)
Second-hand stores
We’ve heard PNG called the second hand
clothes capital of the world, and the few stores we’ve seen in Madang attest to
this. A huge range of clothes and bargains such as 80toia t-shirts (about 30p)
to be had. It kind of represents a shopping nightmare to me, like a massive and
heated TK-Maxx. It is a great place to pick up cheap unwanted rugby jerseys,
the first store we went to had 2 All Blacks, a Welsh and French rugby Jersey!
7)
Markets
The food market is astonishing, so many
varieties of fruit and veg and enough varieties of sweet potato to keep you
happily cooking for months. Lots of the smaller veg, nuts etc are sold in heaps
and there’s etiquette about stepping over or near the produce.
8)
Coconuts and their dangers
Walking across the local golf course on the
way home a coconut fell from a 30ft tree and thumped down next to us. They didn’t
mention this in our safety briefing as they are mainly focusing on tsunami and
earthquake warnings however James remembered hearing once that falling coconuts
were one of the main causes of death on Pacific Islands!
9)
Flying foxes
In Madang, you look up to the sky to check
out the flock of noisy black birds, and it turns out there are hundreds of bats
flying over you instead. There are bats everywhere from the afternoon, hanging
out in the trees and flying to the feeding grounds. They have to shut the local
airports during these times because of the dangers.
10)
Buai
One of the first things you might notice here
is the brilliant red-stained teeth and lips of the local men and women. Betel
nut, or what the locals call buai [boo-eye] is the cause. Buai is the
cultivated fruit of a local palm tree with a seed inside. The husk is peeled
away and the seeds are chewed with mustard (daka) and lime (garden lime),
chewing it is meant to give a mild stimulant. Some people will chew and swallow,
and others will spit the resulting red mess out (often indiscriminately) on the
footpath.
We were wondering what we will blog about and we think we
will aim it towards other volunteers or people travelling to PNG. We will try
and limit personal things and try and make it more informative about the
diverse and wonderful culture PNG has to offer. If people want to know more in
particular post a question on here and we will try our best to get them
answered.
