Robert@PNG

Meet Simon.

Simon hails in from : Tari - a town in the Southern Highlands (Last Papua). Simon has lived on the Unitech campus for the past 23 years or so, doing gardening and helping out with various odds job around the place (eg: washing cars etc…).

Simon comes over to my house one day a week (Tuesdays) and helps out with the gardening. He recently planted 57 pineapples in my yard !! There are now well over 60 of them !! I am told that in about 9 months time we should start to see some of these juicy critters take shape !! I love PNG pineapple - the best I have eaten anywhere.

Simon is a very interesting character and does well considering his circumstances. His going rate for a days work is K10 ($4.50). With the 2 or 3 days of work he gets a week he struggles to make ends meet more often than not. Simon also happens to be a master of giaman (bullshit) and has conned me out of a buck here and there on many occasions. I suppose that at the end of the day is just trying to survive and after 23 years of living close to white man he has learnt some pretty savy tricks at getting a quid out of someone.

I know he bullshits me from time to time. Simon knows that I know that he bullshits me. And I know that Simon knows that I know that he bullshits me. Simon is just Simon.

Simon also happens to have a wooden leg - which makes him all the more the character. Occasionally the rubber at the end of his peg leg wears out (or so he tells people) and this is one of the giaman (bullshit) tricks that he plays on people to score a few Kena. No one knows how he lost his leg but rumour has it that he was shot by the police back on xmas day 1962. I have asked him a number of times about his leg but he just shuns me off. I’ll just keep asking !! And what he ends up telling me will not necesarily be true anyway!

I have a good rapport with Simon and always make him a cup of coffee (with condesnsed milk) when I get home from work on a Tuesday. He is also one of my Tok Pisin teachers and we always converse in this language. Despite all of his giaman I do trust him in a funny sort of way.

Since I got back from Oz in January I have been helping Simon to save. This is not working out very well. The idea I come up with when I got back from my xmas break was to pay him a total of K15 for a days work. With Simon getting K10 on the day and the remaining K5 would go in a jar for saving. So far there have been a number of “emergencies” (more giaman) that have required him to dip into the “jar”. I don’t know if Simon will ever learn how to save but it doesn’t stop me from trying to help him anyway. At least he is getting more than a lousy K10 per day.

On the subject of pay…. one of the things in PNG that is terribly wrong is how nationals get payed much less than their ex-pat counterparts. For example : I have seen the pay scales here at Unitech and an ex-pat gets paid over twice the salary than a national gets paid - for doing the same job !! This is one thing in PNG that definitely needs to change : Equal pay for Nationals!!

Back to Simon…

It is raining today and I know that Simon will have a lazy day. When I get home this afternoon he will tell me all the things he has done (giaman). It doesn’t matter much : I know, Simon knows that I know, etc….

Onya Simon !!!