Papua New Guinea is sometimes referred to as the Land of the Unexpected and occasionally, The Land of the Untrusted. In my view there’s also good reason to call it The Land of Paradoxes!
The Mini Australian Oxford defines paradox as follows:“seemingly or self-contradictory though often true statement”. In other words… the essence of contradiction.
Well… in this land called Papua New Guinea - there abounds paradoxes. Let me list 10 that I have observed in the few years I have lived, worked and interacted with the locals:
- You can trust a man with your life but not with 50 bucks.
- Lovers will not hold hands in public but good mates do.
- Order and chaos are one and the same.
- A person’s wealth is measured by what they give away rather than what they accumulate.
- There’s no such thing as PMV timetables but as a rule of thumb one does not have to wait longer than a few minutes for a passing bus.
- There’s no such thing as a free gift even though the locals give freely.
- It’s much easier to raise money for the dead than what it is for the living.
- Papua New Guineans will patiently hang around for hours but when it comes to queues they lose all sense of courtesy.
- It’s totally acceptable for a man to have close body contact with a young lass whilst riding on the back of a PMV other times it’s probably best not to have eye contact.
- There is no word for paradox in Tok Pisin!
lol… the above is so tru..
how about
when asked for coins but expect to be given notes.
will say yes to what you ask but have no intention of doing it. Will never say no to yu
Spot on!
Thanks for adding your two to the list of 10.
I bet you we could come up with many many more!!
R
HAHAHA mate, right on the mark there. Especially No.2 . I went to UPNG here in Port Moresby and I’d be holding hands with the highlands brothers and all but when it came to your woman…NOOOO…you cant do that sem pasin yah??!!!
Ahhh the paradoxes, LOL
Hi, there Robert, been reading some of your stuff about PNG, but have not yet come across anything good about PNG? Looks like you are scaring our visitors away. Yeh, well we have a lot of room to complain, complain and complain. I don’t like the system here though, especially when waiting for services, it drives people up the wall. But what can we do, we are changing from kanaka to civilisation and its a long process. I am a proud PNGan.