Asperands

The highlands highway - Goroka - Kundiawa - Mingende

2011-07-23T12:05:00.001+10:00

Between Goroka and Kundiawa

View from Daulo lookout

Dusty trees beside the highway

Weighing coffee in Kundiawa

Mingende catholic station

Mingende station kids

Mist along the highway


entering Kundiawa

At the local super

2011-03-11T16:40:00.002+10:00

The local super is called SVS and is located on a piece of primary real estate land right at the edge of the harbour. It's in a building called Harbour City. Which it ain't, although it does have a Japanese restaurant and spa upstairs. The parking lot has recently been expanded (see photo below in the other direction) because this place overflows between 5 and 7 pm, and you really don't want to go there on Friday any time after lunch at all. They are building something here too, like everywhere else in town.

They were already posing in the shot above, these two parking attendants/guards. A bunch of them stand around the parking lot all day - a bigger bunch after someone got hit up in the parking lot a couple of months ago. Hot work. They'll stand behind your car to waive you out of your spot too. Which is sometimes helpful, sometimes not.

Below is the entrance, with another two guards, in different colors. Not too sure what these guys do, but judging by the look on their faces it's serious. But then, they may have been slightly concerned about this weird lady standing in the middle of the zebra crossing taking photos.

The other day I drove in and the white toyota in front stopped and parked diagonally across the road in front of the entrance. Frantic waving by said guards: I had to make a detour. When I walked up I saw that the car was one of three identical vehicles, all parked the same way across the road, the two on the outside protecting the middle one, which was parked with its back doors open to the entrance. Two more guards, these ones with bulletproof vests and automatic weapons, came with the cars and stood watch. No one was allowed in and out. Money bag collection.

This looks from the parking lot to the Poreporena freeway (one of two freeways) which was hacked through the hills to allow better access between Waigani and the city centre, know as Town. It's very, very steep, so much so that your ears pop, and you learn to hit 70 before going up otherwise you slow down to a crawl halfway.

Two views down my street

2011-03-08T19:25:00.000+10:00

These are both views down my street (that is: down from the hill on which our fortified Australian fortress is located). It may be hard to tell at first glance, but if you focus on the curves in the picture you can see it.

In this first photo I carefully composed to capture the rhythm of the lines, leading you from the front hedge, to the beautiful tree, down to the containers and the sea in the distance. I pushed all the colours and the shadows under the tree.

In this second photo I like it how the three curves make you feel like you are falling down the road, down behind the bushes. The barbed wire in the corner makes in even more ominous, but all this in a very abstract way. I pushed the contrast and brought out the texture details.

PNG conflict news digest: searching for conflict management capacities in Port Moresby

2011-02-08T18:49:00.005+10:00

Arriving back in Moresby recently, I put my sim card back into my phone and was greeted immediately by two messages from the security dispatch, warning to avoid areas where large crowds had gathered. The next bit of news was that one of the main markets had been closed due to recent ethnic clashes between Engans and Hulis. I was back in Port Moresby alright.

The trouble started with a small scuffle between drunken youth. This escalated into four days of fighting between Huli people from Tari basin, and people from Enga. Gordons market was turned into a battlefield and had to be closed. Five people were confirmed dead, and many others seriously wounded. Police worked with community leaders to stop the violence from spreading to other areas in the city, and to work towards reconciliation. This involved getting the immediate relatives of the deceased to renounce retribution killings two days after the violence. This undertaking was made publicly at the police station in Boroko under the supervision of the Mayor, the Foreign Affairs Minister and high-ranking police officers. Police Commissioner Yasaka expressed surprise at the swift settlement, which was aided by the work of mediators.

This clash followed earlier fighting this year near Koki market, where there are often ethnic clashes between the Goilala people, who are from Central province not too far from the Port Moresby area, and Hulis. Although such clashes are triggered by small incidents, they are grounded in competition over locations to sell goods at the markets in Port Moresby, and occur regularly. An exasperated NCD Police Commander pointed out that ‘the city is fed up with ethnic clashes by the same old groups and the same old undertaking when the situation is tense and then they do nothing and the cycle is once again repeated, putting fears back to law abiding citizens of the country” (Post Courier, 4 Feb 2011). Another concerned citizen wrote to the newspaper asking where the leaders were when the first incidents took place, so that this kind of escalation could be prevented. (S)He referred to the past, when leaders and senior police officers took the lead to quickly step into such situations to calm matters down (Sunday Chronicle 6 Feb 2011). And yet others pointed to the cultural bonds between the Engans and Taris, who are traditionally seen as brothers from one ancestor. A Tari community leader explained that this bond went back generations, when the groups used to trade and barter in the Highlands.

Mediation, appeal to cultural bonds, the role of community leaders in cooperation with police, support from MPs - these are all pieces of what, in my jargon, is called conflict management capacity. What are the ways in which such mechanisms can be supported and strengthened?

The incentive to do so is clear from another letter to the editor of the Post Courier, in which 'Fed up No.3' wrote: 'to law abiding highlanders, we are sorry but enough is enough and I am calling on all the Papuans from the Northern Province to Western Province to rise up and support the Goilalas...it's about time you get regional autonomy to look after yourselves (...) (

How many layers lie between local level clashes and national level politics, and are they holding?

Tari in Hela land

2010-12-04T18:19:00.003+10:00

I just spent a week in Tari, the capital of the soon-to-be province of Hela in the Southern Highlands. This is where it's all happening - Exxon Mobil's biggest natural gas project in the world in the middle of one of the most underdeveloped parts of one of the world's poorest countries. The Huli people of Hela are short but fierce, famous for the yellow and red face paint that is reflected by the Hela colours on churches and fences. Until four generations ago, these people had no contact with the outside world. They lived a subsistence life style without hierarchical leadership - instead the different clans traded and fought over pigs, women and land. To this day, tribal fighting is common, and the Huli households live in fortified hamlets, behind tall, immaculate mud wall and deep trenches. 'When you cross the wall, you are an enemy', my hosts tell me. No kidding.

This is the wild west of Papua New Guinea. Until a couple of year ago, near endemic tribal fighting after the 2002 elections had resulted in virtually all services pulling out from the Southern Highlands. No shops, school teachers, doctors, banks. But things are looking up with the arrival of the LNG project. Tari and its airport are being developed as a major supply centre for the project, and the town is to be transformed into the capital of the new Hela Province, including an international ariport and a ring road. It's hard to imagine that right now - for the moment Tari remains an airstrip with a few shops and some grubby market places, where people sell mostly store goods, not surplus garden produce.

Here cars are still a novelty even when the big machines that are digging out the new airstrip are rolling around the two main roads. Stop and a huddle of kids gather, hopefully staring. When my colleague tells them to get on the back, there are hoops of excitement and every passerby is being waved at. The women that pass our car as it is parked outside the airport touch the chassis with looks of admiration. I am an aberration here, probably barely considered a woman, being taller than all the men, asking pesky questions, riding in the front. Huli women are hidden underneath gigantic bilums full of kau kau leaves, pulling big fat pigs around on strings tied to their front trotters.

But their are exceptions of course, formidable ladies rearing goats and chickens to earn money to send their kids to school, and helping other women to do the same thing. One of them is scheming to get women together to produce garden foods for the LNG expat camp once the gas gets flowing. Another shows me a card with her photograph, designating her as a 'peace warrior', a group set up by the women in her community against tribal fighting. Despite a pervasive cargo cult mentality and a basket case reputation in Papua New Guinea, these people want development, and it was great interviewing a number of them who are the forefront of pushing for change, debating the hand-out mentality, thinking through ways to pull their people into a cash economy. This small intelligentsia looks at the LNG project with a great deal of ambivalence: they understand the services it can bring to Hela, but fear how the land-related payments will reinforce the cargo cult, working against their efforts to get their people to earn, save and invest their cash.

More photos here in this album.

Walking from Mount Wilhelm to Madang

2010-10-25T00:21:00.003+10:00

Actually, the walk is from the base of Mount Wilhelm - which is already some 3000m above sea level - down to the flats of the Ramu river plain. Once you reach the plain, you catch a ride to the highway intersection, and then bus it to Madang on the coast. So technically, you are ‘only’ walking down the mountains, for three days, until you reach the flats of Madang province. But semantics aside, if you’re not a hardcore hiker (I’m not) but you would like to do one hike in Papua New Guinea, make it this one. The variety of scenery, staying in villages, chatting with Chimbu people as they are carrying their goods to the nearby mine for sale; the exposure to this part of the fantastic highlands is amazing. And the walk is not hard. Although, I have to admit, I severely underestimated what it means to walk DOWNHILL for three days.....
You start walking from the beautiful Betty’s Lodge. At the base of PNG’s highest mountain this formidable lady has set up a small accommodation, along with a trout farm, which means you get served a star class meal (‘how would you like your trout?”) by Betty and her niece. We also arranged to be picked up by her from Mount Hagen, but others have caught a PMV and been fine for about 1/10 of the price. The road trip is worth it too, from Hagen to Kundiawa for about 3 hours along the Highlands Highway - if you have a good driver you can learn lots about the politics surrounding the creation of the new Jiwaka province.

After a stop at the Kundiawa coffeeshop/bakery - it was Independence weekend, check out Beatrice’s home-knit dress! - we drove up from Kundiawa to Kegesugl. This is a ride you don’t want to miss. The landscape of the Chimbu mountains is extraordinary, with great slabs of rocks jutting upwards nearly vertically, but still showing signs of being gardened. This results in the impression that they’ve only yesterday been thrown up by some giant earthquake.
After the fabulous trout at Betty’s we started off early the next day with our three guides/porters Toby, Augusta and Otto. The first day is easy going, walking around the mountains on a well maintained dirt road. We met lots of people on their way to the nearby mine to sell their potatoes and other goods. We arrived at Snowy Pass - not really snowy, more misty - around 4 pm. A wantok connection through Augusta secured us a sleeping place just before the afternoon rains set in. We slept in the family’s hut, along with the family, the dog, and the fire in the middle of the floor to keep everyone warm. We were given the family’s matresses, and blankets showed up from unseen corners of the community. After a meal of noodles, we slept like logs.
The second day began with the piercing of my gigantic big toe blister, to the great hilarity of our hosts. We set off at about nine for another six hours walking. The hike was more challenging here. In places, landslides had taken entire swaths of road down to the bottom of the valley, so that we had to find our way over the top, or across the rocks. We took a shortcut through a small village which was fun with lots of waving, stares and gaggles of small children running behind us, until unfortunately one of the local drunk boys tried to hit us up for money. The extreme local diversity of people and the propensity to try and extract easy money in every way conceivable lead him to argue they should now carry our bags further down the road. We had been prepared for this by our guides, and insisted these were our friends and needed to come with us all the way. The next excuse for money was much less creative; we had to pay for passing through the village. One of our guides paid him off with 5 Kina, but we were pretty disappointed being used as a walking cash machine. The second days’ walk ended at Bundi. Here another one of our guides met a wantok, and we stayed in her house for 20 Kina each.

Our guides wanted to avoid the same kind of trouble early in the morning. We also needed to take the long road down, as the usual road was being blocked by raskols according to our host family. So we stumbled into the dark at 5.30 am and eventually found the shortcut track through the gardens down the cliff face. We walked for about ten hours this way, taking four or five shortcuts down the steep cliffs, and then hiking on what used to be a road, but had become a completely overgrown track. We got to the edge of the mountains and swam and waited by a bridge whilst two of our guides went to find transport. The pick up of the local ex-President arrived soon enough, and it was great standing up at the back as we drove through forest and along the edge of green grass hills, to the Ramu river and the highway crossing, for the bus to Magang.
I stumbled about like an old woman for three days afterwards, that’s how shot my quads were, but it was well worth it. Don’t be put off by the money grabs or other security issues either. That’s why you pay your local guides, and they were excellent, each long term employees of Betty. This is a great way to experience the highlands. My travel companion Harry has also written about this walk, including some more logistical details, here.

Walking around Goroka

2010-10-23T11:37:00.001+10:00

Goroka is one of the main towns in the PNG Highlands. The jungle clad mountains that run the length of the island hide some huge fertile valleys, with the highest population density in the country. All of the main towns - Lae, Mount Hagen, Tari - are reputedly unsafe places with high rates of crime.

Walking around by yourself is not recommended for expat folk. In Goroka I found different viewpoints. The expats seemed to think it was safe enough during the day around the main streets. I was keen to walk around, because there’s no better way to experience a place, and in Moresby it is really not advisable, so I was really hanging out for a stroll.

So I readied my toea and jumped on a PMV to town. Interestingly, the driver insisted on dropping me where I needed to go, making an extra detour. The next day too, the Oxfam guard caught wind of my plans and insisted on accompanying me to the bus stop. The bus driver then again dropped everyone else at the bus stop, but insisted on driving me up the gates of the Yanepa building.
I went and walked around anyway, talked to the women selling bilums, bought the newspapers from the street vendors, and caught another PMV back. I sure got lots of stares walking around town, but no one tried anything. If they had, it would have been bag snatching at the worst - not really the end of the world either. Perhaps it’s the constant gossiping of people that creates this picture of a more dangerous place than it really is. Anyways, I really liked Goroka with its throngs of highland people, busy-beeing trying to make money in a dozen different ways, and its concerned bus drivers ferrying me around.

Lost and found in PNG: The Secretary for National Planning and Monitoring

2010-10-12T15:19:00.001+10:00

Yesterday a Post Courier journalist with the unusual name of Mohammad Bashir posted an article in which he alleged that National Planning and Monitoring Secretary Joseph Lelang had been ‘missing in action’ for the last two months. It was not known whether he was overseas on travel duties, in his village, or elsewhere. Bashir cited interviews with various departmental staff who expressed concern about Mr Lelang’s wellbeing.

Part two of the story was published today. A press release titled ‘Lelang says I am alive and well thank you very much’ was published in the rival newspaper the National. Leland stated that he was ‘deeply touched by the Post-Courier’s Mohammad Bashir’s concern about my health and welfare’. He was ‘still alive but a bit annoyed because people keep ringing me trying to find out if I am not dead, a bit of a distraction’. The press release included an elaborate description of the Secretary’s travel schedule over the past two months, as well as the assertion that he had taken recreational leave only once, in 1995, during his 20 years as a public servant. Clearly offended, Lelang concluded by saying that ‘not once have I left work and get paid for doing nothing as what Bashir, Post-Courier and their cronies are trying to portray’.

The PNG LNG project - who gets the money?

2010-10-11T20:51:00.002+10:00

The whole of PNG is in the thralls of the PNG LNG project. The billions of Kina that are set to flow into the country over the next 30 years would more than double the GDP. The early construction works began last year, after the signing of a number of agreements to set up the broad arrangements for the benefit sharing. Money will flow to national government, provincial governments, local level governments, and landowners directly.

Organising the latter will present a major challenge. It is often unclear, or at the very least disputable, who the real landowners are (see this earlier post). Therefore, the problem for ExxonMobil and the PNG government has been how to get the money to the rightful beneficiaries, in a way that precludes future disagreements and potential legal challenges.This is not a new issue to the resource extraction industry in Papua New Guinea. Indeed, benefit sharing is carefully thought through in advance, as a part of elaborate social and economic impact studies. In the case of PNG LNG, a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) study was executed by an impressive group of local and international academics, many of them with more than a decade of experience in resource management in PNG. They procuded a 1500 page document, which amounts to a detailed anthopological study of the different ethnic groups in the areas impacted by the project.

Moreover, the question of landowner representation has been investigated in Papua New Guinea for a number of years. In 1974, a law was passed to enable landowner groups to set up Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs), as a way in which landowner groups can achieve legal status and thus engage in formal agreements, and make decisions on behalf of the whole group. The SIA identified 700 to 800 registered ILGs in the PNG LNG impact areas. Some of them work and distibute benefits successfully. But it has been pointed out by many observers how the practice has led to an ever increasing fractionalisation of ILGs. As such, it can be argued that it leads to, or at least contributes to, an increase in divisions in society. People have been cleverly manipulating their own oral histories, splitting ILGs into ever smaller groups, to maximise benefits. In practice, ILGs are not used for anything other than the distribution of benefits.

The SIA suggested three options for landowner representation in the PNG LNG project. Firstly, the company could bypass the ILGs, instead registering the landowners directly through a massive census. A second option involved a continuation of existing practice of engagement through ILGs. A third option suggested the establishment of another layer of representation on top of the ILGs. A number of social units, which could include clans, sub-clans, or even ILGs, would be placed under an ‘umbrella zone’. Zones would be made up of units that are linked through various customary relationships like economic exchange and inter-marriage. The responsibility of deciding who is a rightful beneficiary then falls to the zone, not the government.As yet it remains unclear which one, if any, of these options it will be.

War Games

2010-10-06T21:08:00.000+10:00

No, not on your X-box/Playstation. War Games is the title of a recent translation of the book Crisis Caravaan (‘crisis convoy’) by Dutch journalist Linda Polman. War games is subtitled ‘the story of aid and war in modern times’, which sums it up nicely. It runs through the beginnings of humanitarian assistance, right up to the present day, presenting one of the major dilemmas of humanitarian assistance - aid can have negative consequences when it falls into the wrong hands or otherwise prolongues conflict - as Linda describes in vivid eye witness accounts of refugee camps in Goma, Freetown and other places.

Linda is a harsh critic. This is exposure journalism, not measured debate. She does not engage with the theory and practice that has developed around the dilemma of ‘Do no Harm’ since the mid 1990s. But this book has its place, in particular to draw attention to these issues from people who know little about humanitarian aid. It’s an interesting read as well, and deserves admiration for investigative courage in difficult circumstances. Linda does not suggest we should stop all humanitarian assistance, but argues that more people should be asking questions about its impact. Absolutely.

The PNG LNG project - an introduction

2010-10-06T16:36:00.002+10:00

It’s been about a decade in the making, and it’s big. The direct profits of the PNG liquefied Natural Gas project to the PNG government and landowners are projected to be 114 billion kina - that’s about 31 billion US dollars - over its 30 year life cycle. It will more than double the GDP of the entire country, from the 8.6 billion kina it was in 2006, to an estimated 18 billion kina per year. On a flight from Brisbane to Moresby, an LNG employee told me these were in fact conservative estimates, kept low ‘so as not to raise expectations too much’. I nearly choked on my peanuts and pointed out that it’s certainly too late for that.

The expectations are sky high. The doubling of the GDP, the project needing more truck drivers than are available in the entire country, the need to expand the current port and build an entire new airstrip: the scale is mind boggling. The PNG LNG project (there are other LNG projects in PNG, but this one is simply known as ‘THE’ LNG project) is to be the largest LNG project ever undertaken by its main proponent Exxon Mobil. It’s the talk of the town in Moresby, and the country more broadly, especially in the Highlands, where much of the project will be located. Already, armies of expatriate advisers have moved into Port Moresby, pushing up the already inflated rental prices. They are being moved around in a fleet of white vans, clogging up the road in front of the international terminal any time an international flight arrives.

But there’s trouble. Resource extraction in Papua New Guinea is a very complicated undertaking, because almost all land is held under customary title. This means that, instead of land being divided into neat parcels, registered in a central place, and owned by an individual or entity, most land is not registered, does not have clear undisputed boundaries on a piece of paper, and does not ‘belong’ to any one person in the Western sense of the word. Instead, ‘ownership’ of land lies with a group of people. ‘Ownership’ needs to be placed between inverted commas because it does not really translate. Senior decision makers within the group allocate land to families so that they can use it for gardens or to build a house. Land is not really ‘owned’ and certainly almost never sold to outsiders. The vast majority of people live a subsistence lifestyle, supplemented by cash income generation where they can find it. For the people of Papua New Guinea their rights to land are the one guarantee they have for shelter and food.

This means that, under Papua New Guinean law, resource extraction projects on customary land must pay not only the government, but also the landowners directly. The state does not own the land - the people do. And this brings us to a crucial and problematic question: who are the rightful landowner beneficiaries of the LNG project, and how are they to be paid what is due to them? Here we need to bring in two other key aspects of Papua New Guinea. Firstly, its people make up of over 800 different language groups. This extreme ethnic diversity means that details around customary title vary. Secondly, customary title, along with all other customary elements of societal organisation, have been changing since people came into contact with a monetary economy, and continue to change. This means that in many villages and communities, there is constant dispute over who has the say over what. In particular when it comes to free money. Because despite their traditionally egalitarian lifestyles, an overwhelming majority of people wants to receive cash payments from the LNG project, on an individual basis.

Is the picture becoming clearer (or rather, more complex)? Next, I’ll look at some of the consequences of the PNG context for the LNG project related to conflict

The rise of Wilders

2010-10-01T16:40:00.002+10:00

'Netherlands to ban burka', runs the UK Telegraph headline yesterday. The Dutch Christian Democrats and Liberal parties have finally come to an agreement to form a minority coalition government, but they need the support of Wilders' Freedom Party to achieve the requisite majority to pass decisions through parliament. What has happened to that small but shining beacon of tolerance, the cute country with dikes and wind mills and happy people on bikes?
There is a personal side to this story. Not just because I am originally from the Netherlands, but because this man's last name is only one letter removed from my own. His hometown, where he gained 18 percent of votes in the recent elections, is 25 kilometres away from mine. So an explanation is in order. Here's my take on the background to the rise of Mr Wilders.
The main reason behind his popularity is the fact that he presents a radically different kind of politician to the one usually seen in the Netherlands. And he's very good at it. He talks in a way that is completely 'not done' amongst the establishment in the Netherlands. And here lies the crunch. A sense of dissatisfaction with politics has been building in the Netherlands since 2002. With the introduction of the euro, prices went up, followed by a general economic downturn. There is an widespread feeling that politicians are not listening to their constituents any more. And that is what is being punished with the votes for Wilders. It is a kick up the butt of the politically correct consensus-based government. He is a first class politically incorrect provocateur who calls a spade a spade (the way he sees it) in a country where the correct way of spelling the national language is so convoluted that it's beyond most people.
But of course, his stance on islam does play a role. In the extreme politically correct climate of the eighties and nineties, nobody was allowed to raise questions about the integration of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants - it was just not done. Wilders is raising the issue in a horrifically extreme way, calling Islam 'barbaric' and the koran 'fascist'. He's even made a short film about his radical views, which has been banned from Dutch television. He's being prosecuted for inciting hate crimes and has been living under permanent police guard for the best part of 3 years.
It would be almost farcical if it wasn't so dangerous. Because in his assertion that he has the right to say whatever he likes, he feeds the radical islamists that he rails against exactly what they need, and further disempowers the moderate voices arguing against extremism.

Taurama bushwalk

2010-09-30T17:16:00.001+10:00

These photographs are from a bush walk near Port Moresby a few weeks ago.

Koki market

2010-09-30T16:39:00.002+10:00

This is Koki, a small village that is part of the great(er) city that is Port Moresby. Looks nice hey? Apparently, looks are deceiving. Koki market nearby is notorious for carjackings. There is a zebra crossing off a nearby roundabout, where you are better off not slowing down politely. Especially after 5 pm, when it's getting dark.
Such are the stories about security concerns in Moresby. The expat world in particular is rife with the latest carjacking tally, relegating every spot where there has ever been an incident to the 'unsafe/try to avoid' list.
I intend to dig into these matters, and find out more about this city that is my home for the next foreseeable while. And take photographs whilst going about it, of course.