Welcome to PNG!

Hello friends! No, cannibals haven’t taken me captive yet. Turns out I am too skinny for their taste, despite my big butt. They said I won’t yield enough oil to fuel their lamps, hehehe. It’s just that broadband Internet hasn’t reached this part of the world yet. For reasons I cannot explain, the office of the programme, which I am a part of, is just a stone’s throw away from the main headquarters and yet we do not have access to the local area network and have to subsist on dial-up connection. The connection is painfully slow that you can finish a cup of coffee, take a nap, jog around and do a hundred push-ups before a page would completely load, hehehe. Anyway, I’m optimistic things will improve as soon as I could hook up to the Internet from my house this week.

I arrived in Lae City (pronounced as Ley), Papua New Guinea on Wednesday morning, January 17 after traveling for almost two days from Davao City. Upon arrival at the Lae Airport, I was immediately taken to the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) headquarters, which will be home for the next few months? or years? Who knows…

My house turned out to be pretty, a typical Australian-style two-storey cottage where the ground floor doubles as a garage and a laundry area. The house has two bedrooms and is almost fully furnished. The settling in allowance of 6000 Kina or roughly 2000 USD has also enabled me to buy almost everything that I needed in the house, including a TV (we have cable by the way). And!! I have hot and cold shower too. The house is within the NARI compound with guards roving round the clock to ensure security. My office is very basic but comfortable enough. The Institute staff has been more than accommodating to ensure that I am settling in well. There are a number of expatriates too at the Institute. The Director General is an Indian, and a couple of scientists are from Australia, Ethiopia, and New Zealand. There is also a team of young Taiwanese scientists from Sinica who have taken me in as a refugee. I also now have a self-proclaimed guardian named Mrs. Endo Guaf who looks after me, takes me shopping and treats me like one of her daughters. Come to think of it, I must have done something good to deserve all these blessings.

Lae City is pretty much laid back. No tall buildings and stuff but very cosmopolitan. In fact the plane from Singapore to Port Moresby was packed with expats from all colors and races, and well, as expected, the air was filled with all sorts of scents and odors too, name it. Climate is very much like the Philippines, albeit less humid and more comfortable. Airports are heavily guarded with almost all houses and establishments fenced and heavily entwined with barbed wires, a result of recent incidents of robbery and hold-ups. There are big supermarkets too, mostly owned by Australians and Chinese. However, poverty is everywhere. You see people, some barefoot, just staring blankly at goods in the supermarket wondering perhaps how in the world do they taste like, or worse, how in the world could they afford to even buy one. There are also a lot of people just walking around aimlessly as if waiting for some blessings to fall from the heavens. Old timers here always re-live the good times when PNG was still under Australia, all prosperous and peaceful, but things have turned for the worse after it got its independence in 1975. I wish something could be done.

As to the local food, I haven’t sampled the local cuisine yet but I will exercise caution when placing orders next time, as servings are usually very generous and huge. I made the mistake of ordering fried chicken from room service at the hotel in Port Moresby and having been accustomed to the small Filipino serving sizes, my jaws dropped when I saw the waiter carrying half a bird on a platter!! And it wasn’t just a bird, it was a huge stuffed bird sitting on a bed of French fries, mushrooms and lettuce!! It took me a day to finish everything.

The Papua New Guineans are rather a friendly people. The locals here at the Institute greet me “Hello Doctor!!” every time they see me. They wave and they greet strangers with smiles, with teeth all red, thanks to the habitual chewing of betel nut (nganga in Tagalog, the fruit of a typical palm in the tropics believed to make teeth stronger, oh yeah???). In fact, the HR person who fetched me at the airport began chomping away at the husk of a betel nut as soon as we were settled in the Nissan Patrol (yay!!!) and he did so with such precision, chomping, chewing and spitting away and talking as he drove and it was barely 7 in the morning! At that moment I thought I might need a raincoat. Also, men and women almost look alike, hahaha! You will need to look closely to find out who is merely cross-dressing or isn’t. And the flight attendants were huge too! So who says that fat people can’t work as flight attendants anymore??? This side of the world, it’s the “in” thing. Here there is no such thing as fashion. Women just walk around in dusters and mary dresses all day (long skirts and cotton shirts introduced by Australian missionaries long time ago). This means you can walk around the city wearing clothes you slept on last night. Hmmm, I might try it out one of these days just for fun (I should have borrowed one of my moms’ had I known).

I have also gotten in touch with the local Filipinos at Lae where they work around town as pharmacists, store managers, teachers, etc. A couple originally from Bulacan, now PNG citizens, with whom I have exchanged e-mails with before I flew in have been my constant visitors at home and insisted I call him Tito Nap. Hopefully I could get to meet the other 994 Filipinos next week as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Lae Filipino Association.

Well, that’s all for now. Obviously I have more time to spare now to write down my thoughts. There isn’t much to do anyway. Well, at least not yet. I have started work but the next few months will be spent writing proposals. In parting, let me just give you a sampling of the local pidgin English. Should you wish to say Do Not Disturb, you can just say, Yu No Ken Kam Insait! Understang???!!!