Little goes a long way in the Pacific
Despite daily struggle to access basics for living, education and health, community spirit in PNG is palpable
During special village welcoming ceremonies the custom in parts of PNG is for women to rush forward smearing visitors’ faces in paint made from plants and other material. I certainly won’t forget one welcome where the colour of choice was black and the application liberal.
Here I was standing in a very remote village, deep in the jungle, covered in black face paint, while all the village kids pointed and yelled “whiteman, WHITEMAN!” at me. All of us laughing hysterically.
The more time I spend in the Pacific, the more I realise how little I know. The demarcation of regional borders from PNG through the Solomons to Vanuatu is a clunky way to define the incredible array of cultures contained within this mottled stretch of Melanesian islands — where a village of humans might look completely different to neighbours, might have different rituals, rules, regulations and speak an entirely different native language.
And yet as out of my comfort zone as I was, everywhere I went I witnessed familiar human moments.
Parents wanting the best for their kids, wanting better than they had, worried for their children’s future. Communities discussing ways to find self-sufficiency and helping each other to do this. Local doctors and health workers consistently working many extra hours of unpaid overtime because of that human instinct to help. People just wanting a break.
At one point in a remote village I had a surreal juxtaposition where I was listening to a village teacher, Fabian, passionately telling me of the importance of his students learning, to give them the best chance. How he carries on despite having no pens, books, desks, chairs or even pay after being cut off with no explanation.
Meanwhile beeping through on my cellphone was news that NCEA results were now available for NZ students online. And it struck me, the uneven playing field that these people have to deal with, where just getting access to basics is a daily struggle. PNG has a 63 per cent adult literacy rate, and 36 per cent of primary school graduates leave school unable to read. With difficulties like this it’s not hard to see why.
I’ll not ever forget the medical centres either. None we visited had power, very little medicine, most had no doctors. Even the buildings were dying, heavy objects moved off wooden floors so they didn’t fall through, roofs barely holding on.
Hearing doctors rattle off patients’ diseases like TB, Malaria, HIV and Leprosy so casually. Seeing unsterile bloodied equipment sitting in cloudy shallow baths. Meeting a nurse who just wanted a stethoscope, the hospital had none. Patients having to pay upfront for fuel for an ambulance ride, other health workers jealous that that clinic had an ambulance.
But despite these living conditions, the resilience, humour and community spirit of the Papua New Guinea people was contagious. World Vision staff were particularly well received into remote villages where they were almost the only support from the outside. Here in this hidden Pacific a little goes a very long way.