Chapter One

Bettina felt every bump as the bus she thought was probably as old as she was hit the pot holes and swerved its way through the streets of Port Moresby. Two weeks after arriving in Papua New Guinea she was beginning to wonder if she would ever grow accustomed to the staring faces. Darren said she was crazy to be using the buses , but then what did he know about it? The closest he had ever come to Papua New Guinea was a drugged out weekend he and his mates had spent lost in the bush of North Queensland. One thing she knew she would never get used to was the smell of the people crammed up next to her. She knew they had different standards of bathing, but the smell made her slightly nauseous, particularly when combined with the overall lack of oxygen and the wild driving style of most bus drivers.

She tried to take her mind off of herself and concentrate on the voices around her. The local “tok pisin” was fascinating from a linguistic viewpoint. She felt like she was observing a language in its early stages of formation and only wished she was enough of a linguist to appreciate the richness of what she was hearing. Just grasping the meaning would have been a good start. There were definitely English words in the vocabulary, like ‘here’ and ‘long’, but they had completely different meanings. Long appeared to be a general purpose preposition, as in “big man come up long here” or “em go long store”. It made her think of programming languages. It was as if Papua New Guineans were all doing variable replacement every time they opened their mouths.

But everything in PNG was like that. Nothing was what it appeared to be on the surface. On the one hand it was a post-colonial country struggling to turn itself into a modern nation. On the other, it was an ancient land full of hundreds of cultures that had spent thousands of years developing in total isolation. Now the cultures were thrown together in a big molten teaming mess that spread out around the various congregating spots like Moresby. Many of the groups hated each other, which was why it was such a dangerous place.

Bettina had been warned by everyone she knew, her husband Darren being the most vocal, not to take the contract. But it was only six weeks, and after the year they had just finished she was desperate for a break. Naturally she was scared although leaving Jessica in Darren’s hands was almost scarier than anything she might face in PNG. But still, he was her father, and she might as well learn about his limitations now rather than waiting to be disappointed as an adolescent.

The PMV came to an abrupt halt. Everyone began shouting and pushing towards the front of the bus. Bettina felt someone push up behind her, and then a hand reached up under her loose blouse. Before she was really aware of what was happening the hand grabbed her breast and began squeezing. She turned and saw a young man, his red stained teeth grinning through parted lips, and his eyes full of the slightly stoned look that the locals often had due to the beetle nut. She grabbed his hand, pulled it out of her blouse, and pushed further into the crowd.

The bus was emptying and on the street she could see a pile of broken metal mixed with what appeared to be the remains of a pig. A crowd of men surrounded the pig and two of them were shouting violently at each other. Fortunately it was only a short walk back to the compound. The heat was brutal this time of the day, but there was a slight breeze up off the ocean and she was relieved to be out of the crowded bus and away from the grabbing hands.

She was almost home before the full impact of the assault started to hit home. What an idiot she was? Why didn’t she slap him, or call out to someone? But who would have come? She had been warned that this was an everyday occurrence, so she really shouldn’t have been surprised. If anything she should count herself lucky it hadn’t happened before, although that wasn’t really much consolation.

Arriving home she soon put the event out of her mind as she found her ‘hausmeri’ lying on the ground in front of her door. Iris was the young girl who was attached to the house when Bettina moved in. Although strictly speaking she was not obliged to pay her, she had also been advised that declining was not a good idea. Employing a local person was seen as the expatriate’s duty.

She approached Iris with some trepidation. The girl appeared to be in a daze. Was she dead? No, she was breathing. Seeing her lying there in the sunwith parched lips Bettina worried that she might be suffering from malaria or some other fever. She tried raising her.

“Iris, Iris, can you hear me?

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“I sick.”

Iris turned her large brown eyes towards Bettina, but she seemed to be having trouble focusing them. As if she was looking into the distance. Then Bettina realized what it was. Iris was terrified. It reminded her of the look the sheep would get just before a shearing. The poor thing must have seen something that frightened her. But there was something more. She was clearly unwell.

“Iris, did something happen? What is it?”

“No, I OK.”

“Let’s get you up off the ground. Are you sure nothing happened?”

“Yes, wanpela Glassman, em kam up na paitim mi.”

“A Glassman? I don’t know what that is.”

“Em kam up wanem mi slip. na, mi no lookem.”

“Iris, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Iris tried to raise herself up out of the dirt, but she fell into Bettina’s arms. Sure enough, she was burning up with fever.

“Right, we’re getting you to a doctor.”

The doctor was a Fijian named Dr. Taki Taki. Bettina secretly suspected that couldn’t be his real name, but he had a certificate on the wall and she had been referred to him by the University consortium office, so she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wanted to go in with Iris, who was slowly recovering her senses, but the doctor smiled and said “We won’t be long.” In fact they were long, and Bettina was left stewing, thinking about the work she had to do, wondering why she had let herself get into this situation and calculating how much it would cost her to simply get on a plane and fly home. There she was in the run-down office of a South Seas quack doctor looking after a young girl she was only dimly associated with while her four-year-old daughter was left behind in Tasmania with her ne’er-do-well father. It really was absurd.

After what seemed like hours Dr. Taki TaKi emerged with Iris, who he instructed to sit. He led Bettina back though a dim hallway to his office which was covered with papers. A large wooden mask decorated with cowry shells and boars’ teeth hung on one wall. Dr. Taki Taki’s hair poked out from his head like a stuffed rag doll, and sitting behind his desk with his white coat covering a flowered shirt he looked more like a parody of a doctor than the genuine article. Bettina fought off what she knew was a horrible impulse to burst out laughing. He began.

“How long are you going to have her?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The girl, how long are you planning to keep her?”

“Well, I’m only here six weeks or so, so I imagine she will work throughout the duration.”

“Oh, yes, six weeks will not be any problem, I reckon she’s only just one month gone anyway.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, these girls, they get pregnant at the drop of a hat. And that’s what’s happened.”

“Oh, pregnant. Really? She can’t be more than fifteen or so.”

“Seventeen, but you’re right, she is young looking. Maybe that was what the boy thought as well”.

“And the talk of the Glassman. What was that all about?”

“Probably just silliness. They also don’t know much about reproduction, these girls. She probably doesn’t really even know what happened.”

“She looked so ill when I found her. And more than that. She looked, I don’t know, I guess I would have to say, terrified.”

“Oh, I’m sure she is. You see, she’s involved with the wrong boy. He’s from Manus Island.”

“So?”

“They don’t believe in bride price. Her father is furious. He had been counting on her fetching a nice sum. She’s a lovely girl, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but what will happen to her?”

“Oh, nothing, I don’t imagine. The father will make some wild threats, no doubt, but in the end, I’m sure it will all work out.”

“But what about the fever?”

“She does have a touch of malaria as well. I’ll give her something for that. It will pass.”

After the Iris ordeal Bettina felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and quite ready to chuck the whole thing and go home. She missed her little girl and just wanted to be home in bed reading her stories and drinking cocoa. Unfortunately, giving up was not in her nature, so she decided to do the next best thing and headed for the Sheraton swimming pool and the Saturday afternoon barbie she had heard was quite popular among the Port Moresby ex-pat community. To even spoil herself further she elected to take a cab rather than the bus, however, in a token gesture to her resolution to work over the weekend she also took along the laptop. Besides, she thought, what could be more glamorous than checking e-mail from the side of the Sheraton pool?

Once ensconced by the pool with a cold drink by her side Bettina began to feel normal for the first time in weeks. A nice dip in the pool and she might just begin to believe the contract in Port Moresby would work out. Deciding that it would be an interesting experiment to see if her wireless modem actually worked, she turned on the laptop and dialed in. The modem sang its friendly little song, and within a minute or two her glamorous vision came true. E-mail by the pool, ah, she thought, this is the only way to work. And to top it off, the one person (besides, of course, Jess) she was dying to hear from was there at the top of the inbox.

From CDavenport@microsoft.com

To BDavis@kookooblogs.au

Bettina, well, you probably thought you’d seen the last of me when I stormed off in a huff. No such luck. I’ve got your e-mail. Now you’ll never be rid of me, unless, of course, you change your address without telling me. As you can see from my new return address I’m now settled in behind the firewalls of the evil empire. I told you I was headed for the big time, so I figured you can’t get much bigger than this. I managed to convince some people here that a PhD in computer science, even if it is twenty years old, is still worth something. So, they’ve given me some grunt work and are humoring my post-forty worldly wise persona. Little do they know that I’m just as much of a raver as any of these punks, eh?

Not much going on in the romantic area. As you know women my age always make awful assumptions about my preferences (if they only knew how boring I am, I know, too much information) and younger women here seem even more suspicious. But I’m not complaining, really I’m not. How are Jess, and Darren? He isn’t really such a bad sort, I guess, but I don’t have to live with him then, do I? Say hello to the gang in Tassie, and if you want any free software, just let me know.

CD

Hearing from Charlie was just what she needed. She needed to think about how to respond, so she dove into the pool. The slow even rhythm of her laps began to numb her mind, as she counted the blue tiles along the bottom of the pool surrounding the stylized S for Sheraton. This was a part of Moresby that Iris would never see. Not that the pool was segregated, but there was that invisible barrier between the local and expatriate community which prevented many local people from venturing into the Sheraton’s international jet-set ambiance. She would never acclimate to this part of the colonial life style, she was sure of that. Thank goodness she was only in PNG for a few weeks.

She needed to think about how to respond to Charlie. She knew he would land on his feet, but Microsoft? Somehow she couldn’t quite picture him fitting in with all of those yuppies. Still, they probably weren’t all like that and at least he was back in his home country. After all, who was she to look down her nose? Here she was swimming laps in the Sheraton swimming pool while her pregnant housekeeper feared for her life. Some things one just had to accept.

Refreshed from her swim, she returned to her cold beer intending to drink and bake for the rest of the afternoon. Instead there was an instant message from Andrew at the University consortium. Oh well, she thought, might as well get on with it.

Bettina and Andrew bumped along the mountain road in Andrew’s jeep. The jeep looked like it had seen better days. The windows did not roll, which was not a big problem in PNG, but right now the smoke from the burning fields was irritating Bettina’s eyes and she wasn’t sure but that she might trade the suffocating heat for a few minutes of breathable air.

“Is there always this much smoke?”

“It’s the season. We have to prepare the fields. These people all grow taro. The nitrogen is good for the soil.”

“Hm. Does your family still farm?”

“No, not much. My mother has a small garden in Moresby, but since we moved into the city, we don’t do much of that. You’ll see lots of gardening up in the village though.”

Bettina sat back and decided to enjoy the ride. The sun was a large orange ball filtering through the haze of the burning. As they rose up out of the hills around Port Moresby she was struck by how similar some of the landscape was to home. It was funny that she was visiting the northern counterpart to her own island of Tasmania, and although the land itself was in some ways similar, it was in every other respect like a different planet. You had to wonder what Tasmania would be like today if the colonists had not arrived. Would the native Tasmanians be living like these people? Would they look like them? Genetically, at least, they were close relatives, as the Tasmanians had navigated through the Pacific just as many of the ancient people has first arrived in Papua New Guinea. And now, here she was, thousands of years later, probing that blood to see what mysteries it held.

“Andrew, what do you think about the project?”

Andrew said nothing for a long time. Was he watching the road, or deciding how safe she was to talk to? So far it seemed to her that most people in PNG were very careful about what they said to foreigners. Finally, he answered.

“I think it is fine. Some of these people are frightened, of course, but they are really just ignorant. What harm is there, really, in recording their blood?”

“True. No harm, but what about the ownership issue? Whose blood is it, after all?”

“Yes, but that’s different. That is about compensation. And this is something we here know plenty about.”

He gave her a big smile and she knew that this was as far as she should go with this conversation. As they rounded a particularly steep curve Bettina yelled “Stop, Andrew, wait..Did you see that? Back up”. He pulled over. Bettina jumped out and ran to a man who was lying at the base of a large rock. A small line of blood was seeping out the side of his head. He seemed to be conscious, but he was staring blankly ahead and did not seem to notice Bettina’s presence. She leaned down and looked directly into his face.

“Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

The man’s eyes refused to focus, but he did begin to mumble something. It seemed to be an even refrain that he was repeating over and over. Bettina reached out and touched his shoulder, hoping the touch would break the trance. Gradually the chant began to be more clear, until Bettina recognized it. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, surely goodness and mercy…” Bettina turned to Andrew who had joined them.

“This man is in shock. I don’t think the wound is too serious, but we should get him to hospital. How far is Lowak village?”

“Not far now, maybe twenty minutes.”

Between the two of them they managed to lift the man into the jeep. He continued his chant the entire time, his body producing locomotion out of instinct rather than volition. They place him in the back and Bettina placed some clothing under his head to keep it elevated. The bleeding did not seem to be too bad. Still, he clearly seemed to be concussed.

They entered the village which was made up of a group of particle board and woven grass buildings with corrugated tin roofs. A small group of women weaving string bags was sitting in front of what appeared to be the only store in town. They eyed Bettina and Andrew as they propelled their wounded stranger into a building with a cross hanging over the door, which Bettina assumed was the local church. The women did not seem surprised, or even particularly interested.

Andrew led them to a small room where they lay the man on a bed made from particle board lain over concrete blocks. Andrew immediately disappeared and Bettina found she was alone with a strange bleeding man who did not seem to know where he was, or how he got there. His repetition of the 23rd Psalm was slowing, and was now interspersed with other phrases she could not quite make out. After a few minutes he seemed to become aware of where he was. He looked into Bettina’s eyes and she could see that he was definitely coming out of his trance. It was just then that she really started to take him in. From the accent she assumed he was an American and looked to be in his late thirties. He had a broad friendly face, sandy bleached out hair that was now matted with blood, and skin that was definitely not intended for the tropics. He also smelled like he had not bathed in weeks.

Andrew returned with two elderly women. One had a piece of fabric with a bright flowered print wrapped around her, and she was saying something in the local language to the other woman who was much younger and only partially clothed. The younger woman differed to the older who moved with authority, like an experienced nursing sister. Her face was angular, with deep brown eyes set in a finely wrinkled face. Bettina thought to herself that it was a face she would not want to cross. She reminded Bettina of a picture of the Big Bad Wolf from the Little Red Riding Hood book she read to Jessica sometimes. Bettina managed to work out by listening closely that the older woman was named Diana, and the younger was something that sounded like Yeti, but, that probably wasn’t quite right.

Diana grabbed the man’s face and began moving his head back and forwards. Her speech to Yeti was interrupted by laughter. She seemed to find the idea of a delirious bleeding American man quite amusing. She wrapped the man’s head with some leaves and seemed to be giving Andrew some instructions in what Bettina could now recognize as Tok Pisin. She then turned to Bettina

“Em no good. Em got wia loose.”

Bettina turned to Andrew.

“What’s she saying?”

“She says he’s crazy.”

“What happened to him?”

“Probably fell off the rocks. Or jumped. She says he thinks he can fly.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“It’s not a nice story. He came here as a missionary with his wife and baby. The baby died from malaria, and his wife ran off with one of the boys from the village. They’re living in Moresby now. He refuses to leave. The people in the village take care of him. He lives in a sort of permanent fog.”

The man turned out to be Bill Wilson, and he was an American. Bettina felt uncomfortable about not taking him to a doctor, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. His bleeding was not that serious, and the local women had improvised some bandages out of fabric and leaves. Andrew assured her that he would be fine, and to forget the incident. They had more serious problems to deal with. The elders of the community had decided that the research could not continue. Andrew had managed to arrange for a meeting that night with the local “big man” to discuss the situation, but he was not optimistic. It was possible that it could be solved with money, but there was no guarantee. Sometimes in PNG, he said, the obvious solution from the Western viewpoint was the last thing you wanted to pursue. “Who knows”, he had said “maybe he just wants us to say ‘Please’ “. The meeting was at the big man’s house in the evening which meant they would need to spend at least one night in the village. Bettina didn’t really mind, but she was a bit nervous about the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Oh well, at least she could say she had spent a night in a real New Guinea village.

The sickly sweet smell of Bill’s blood mingled with the rotted leaves and overall odor of unwashed bodies was beginning to make Bettina feel a bit nauseous and claustrophobic in the tiny hut, so she decided to go out to have a bit of a sticky beak around. Exiting into the mid-afternoon daylight she had to squint at first. As her eyesight adjusted she began to properly see the village properly for the first time.

What struck her immediately was how neat and clean everything was. Despite the fact that the buildings were made from bush materials and cast-away odds and ends which must have been carted for miles from Port Moresby, the village had a quaint orderliness about it. Unlike Moresby, with its garbage lined streets, and sidewalks covered with blood red beetle-nut juice, she could tell that the people of Lowak were clearly proud of their home. There were even coconut shell flower pots lining many windows. Behind each house was a meticulously tended garden with banana trees, and a variety of other fruits, and the front walkways were swept clean of the palm fronds and leaves that littered the surrounding area.

Several women were sitting on the ground in front of one house. Two of them were weaving the string bags that were ubiquitous in New Guinea. They all eyed her as she approached, although one gave her a cautious smile. Down the street a group of children, playing with a hoop and stick, stopped and stared at her. One girl in the crowd looked to be close to Jessica’s age. She wasn’t wearing anything on her top, and she had a loose set of woven leaves hung around her waist. She seemed to be watching Bettina as she made her way into the area enclosed by the houses. Bettina smiled and said “Happynoon” one of the few tok pidgin expressions she knew. The girl smiled back, but then turned to her mates and said something Bettina could not make out. They all laughed and ran down the street wheeling the hoop expertly like a bike wheel.

Although the heat was oppressive, she did not feel like returning to the stuffy little hut to listen to what she was now coming to believe was the ravings of a madman whose delirium had progressed from Bible verses to Bob Dylan lyrics. He seemed to know most of Bob’s anthology, which was a bit scary in itself. As she had left the hut he was doing “When I Paint My Masterpiece”.

She reached the edge of the village and could see the road heading off up the mountainside. It disappeared behind the wall made by the deep stand of trees less than one hundred meters from the last hut at the village edge. She wondered how long these people had been living here isolated behind that wall. They were less than one hundred kilometers from Moresby, and yet until fifty years ago they had lived in complete isolation. That wall had protected them quite effectively until now. She thought about her own island, the southern equivalent, and wondered why it had been so easy for the West to penetrate there. The Tasmanian natives were long gone, except for people like Darren who were walking around with traces of their blood running through their veins.

And now here she was, part of the extended invading force, the next wave perhaps, ready to examine these holdouts, take their blood, bring them into the 21 Century. And give them what in exchange? A few dollars? A new school? A scholarship to University? What did people coming from the stone age really want from the modern world? Well, she thought, at least it should prove to be an interesting evening.

Please log in or sign up to review this excerpt.