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'Small Steps Along the Way' by Paul Oates

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'Small Steps Along the Way' by Paul Oates All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author. The official languages of Papua New Guinea are Tok Pisin, English, Hiri Motu, and Papua New Guinean Sign Language. Tok Pisin is a largely English-based creole and is the most widely spoken and serves as the country's lingua franca. Papua New Guinean Sign Language became the fourth official language in 2015, and is used by the deaf population throughout the country. Tok Pisin is used extensively in the following account. As a written language it is spelt phonetically. Cover photograph: the author crossing a small suspension bridge in the Yalumet area of the Kabwum Sub-district of the then Morobe District, Territory of Papua New Guinea, 1971. Copyright © 2019 Paul Oates All rights reserved. ISBN: 9781707077939 DEDICATION To all those who went before me and with me. CONTENTS 1 Murder most foul Page 1 2 Another world, a different era Page 5 3 Becoming a Patrol Officer Page 11 4 My first patrol Page 28 5 Pindiu Page 43 6 Parades and station Management Page 53 7 Mindik Base Camp Page 58 8 The annual Village census patrol Page 72 9 Bulum Valley villages - Ogeranang & Selimbeng Page 78 10 Communications Page 85 11 The 1970 Lae Show & kaikai Page 94 12 Longlongs, cargo cults & missions Page 103 13 Kabwum Page 111 14 Medical Matters, adultery & passing wind Page 129 15 Aseki Page 141 16 Tok Pisin Page 153 17 Wau Page 160 18 Sialum Page 181 19 Rough landings, fishing and the importance of directions Page 204 20 Finschhafen Page 212 Epilogue Page 227 Acknowledgements Page 234 About the author Page 235 Chapter 1 Murder, most foul Most people would remember the first time they saw a dead body. I had a number of reasons to remember mine. One of those reasons was because it was a murdered, new born baby or an infanticide. The worst kind of dead bodies were those that had to be exhumed for investigation. Air crash victims were almost as bad however, especially when the plane had burnt on impact. The village of Morago was roughly about 5 hours walk away to the North East from Pindiu Patrol Post. Acting on information, the Officer in Charge (OIC) sent a policeman to the village to investigate a rumoured murder. The Constable returned in a couple of days with the village ‘komiti’ (local level government committee man), and an extended family group carrying a suitcase containing the body of a dead child. In most of Papua New Guinea’s Huon Peninsula, the Lutheran Mission had a powerful presence as it had been well established since German colonial times. Missionaries came in all shades however but the insistence on monogamous marriages and the western style kind of relationships was very big. Enormous shame and humiliation applied to anything resembling a return to traditional culture. This attitude clashed directly with the situation where a large number of single women lived in the villages and most young men went to the towns to try and earn some money. Many husbands were away from the village and their wives for years at a time. Temptation was always close at hand, especially with the high 1 Small Steps Along the Way degree of communal living. Nevertheless, it was a big shame when an illegitimate child was born in the village although many were. It was a far greater shame however when the mother was married to someone in the village but who had not been home for many years. Little by little, the story came out that the girl had claimed she had a bad case of wind and had taken a long time to get rid of it. The village ‘komiti’ was however a very diligent man and he searched and searched to find the baby. He finally found the body, two weeks after the birth and in a rubbish tip where the mother had buried it. This was a tropical rubbish tip so the body had started to significantly decay. Not good! It started to rain heavily as the OIC sent me, a policeman and the villagers up the road to the Mission run hospital at Wagazaring. It took us over two hours to walk up the ‘kiap’ road to the hospital in the now torrential rain. Our group included the mother and extended family plus the suitcase containing the body, the village ‘komiti’, Const. 1/c Temba and myself. All of us arrived at the hospital like drowned rats. There was a young doctor relieving there at the time and I explained to him that we needed a qualified medical examination of the body to determine, if possible, what was the cause of death. The doctor put on rubber gloves and we repaired to an examination room and opened the suitcase. Someone had sprinkled talcum powder over the body to help cover the smell however this had failed miserably. I asked if I could smoke and having been told I could, tried to perfume the air with ‘Blend 11’ tobacco from my pipe. The child was perfectly formed and had a clearly evident bruise around his neck. It was obvious that it had been strangled. It was possible that its neck was also broken as the head flopped around on top of the body. I tried to concentrate on writing up what I saw and what the doctor was saying. The smell just got worse and worse in spite of the copious blue smokescreen I was emitting. After completing my notes, the body was placed back in the suitcase and I thanked the doctor for his help. It was still raining ‘cats and dogs’ as we started back down the hill to the patrol post. The rain was so thick that we could hardly hear ourselves talk as we walked along the road. This was a kiap 2 Small Steps Along the Way road, cut into the side of the mountain and formed out of red laterite clay. The traditional kiap road was 3.6 metres wide and was supposed to consist of a minimum 2.4 metre of cut and 1.2 metres of fill. It should also be slightly cambered into the mountainside to give drainage. These roads wound around the ridges and valleys, usually set at a reasonable incline to permit vehicular traffic. The villagers moved out in front of Corporal Temba and myself and disappeared around the bend where the road continued around a ridge. I turned to Temba and started to make a point about the investigation. Suddenly there was a crack like a rifle going off and a loud BOOM and the mountainside crashed down at our feet and right where we would have been if I hadn’t stopped to chat. Tons of trees, rocks and clay had become waterlogged and couldn’t maintain their grip on the hillside. When I got back to the station, the OIC said I looked a bit green. I told him what had happened and he said I needed a drink. He poured me four fingers of Buka Meri (Rhum Negrita), that good old rum of yesteryear. “Get that into you,” he said. Looking at my notepad later, as I was typing my report up, I found my writing in the pad had started off neatly enough but had visibly deteriorated as I got to the more odiferous parts. Some weeks later, I was required to go to the Sub-district HQ at Finschhafen to testify at the District Court run by the Assistant District Commissioner. Murders could not be heard by the Local Court in Pindiu and this case needed the resident Police Officer at Finschhafen to conduct the prosecution. The outcome was that the mother was convicted and given two years gaol, due to the extenuating circumstances. I noticed that there were lots of mosquitoes at Finschhafen but didn’t think too much of it. My initial supply of anti-malarial (Nivaquine) had given out some time earlier and the local Aid Post Orderly had given me some Camoquine instead. What I didn’t know is that he had only given me infant strength Camoquine, not adult strength. Now we had been briefed at ASOPA about taking anti-malarials. The briefing went like this: If you take your malarial depressants, you won’t get malaria however if you do get malaria, take two 3 Small Steps Along the Way tablets after each episode. I didn’t spot what was patently wrong with that advice until later. Not long after I returned to Pindiu from Finschhafen, I felt as if I was coming down with a bad case of the flu. The usual aches and pains started however it then began to feel like there was sandpaper between all my joints. It became painful to move and if I looked up, I just about passed out with a headache. Still none the wiser, (remember we couldn’t get malaria if we took our pills), I retired that night to my SOQ (Single Officers Quarters) to wake up about 10 o’clock feeling distinctly unwell. Suddenly I felt cold and my whole body went into an uncontrollable spasm of quivering. I couldn’t stop shaking and had no control over my body. This went on for hours until sometime in the early morning when I found I could relax. I also found my bed was sopping with sweat.
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