Robert@PNG

There was a time and it wasn’t that long ago when I felt drawn to the romance of tribal warfare. It might have been the fighting thing or perhaps how the free expression of anger towards an enemy is condoned in Highland’s culture. I’m really not sure why it is that I felt that way. Let me tell you though… my attitude towards tribal warfare has definitely changed. It’s certainly no longer the chivalrous pass-time that I once thought it was.

Towards the later part of 2006 after my neighbour, colleague and mate Anthony was ripped of to the tune of around K8000 by a local, I will never forget the adrenalin rush I felt after organising a posse to go searching for the prick late one evening. As we were driving around those back streets of Lae with a car full of angry, revenge hungry and testosterone charged lads, I felt powerful, I felt strong and I felt man!!

All of the story book stuff is fine but what about the effect and impact of it all?

What about the collection of limbless folks hopping around town just barely able to make ends meet not to mention the loved ones and kids left behind?

Tribal warfare costs!

Just take a look at this character, hospitalised after being speared in the old noggin as a result of inter/intra clan/tribal conflict…

(He survived by the way!)

As an outsider married to a lady that maintains a strong and close connection with her clan back in the village, I continue to have opportunities to interact and participate in village and tribal life. We head out to Waraguma for a weekend visit at least once a month and during our stays we find ourselves participating in all intra and inter clan affiairs.

It’s not all fun and games!

Although there has never been any personal threat during of our many visits - it continues to baffle me no end how the locals seem to be preoccupied with one compensation case after another. Most are quite harmless and just involve a token “sori” after some form of minor altercation. But occasionally something a little more serious crops up and the court cases are slightly more tense with compensation amounts running into the thousands of kina in addition to the mandatory pigs.

At the moment there’s two situations in the village which are causing the locals some angst. The first one is election related and compensation is yet to be settled whilst the 2nd incident involved one of clan lads attacking a community leader (from another tribe) whilst down in Lae on a drunken spree. Both situations (in my opinion) totally unnecessary and end up costing the community untold grief, a bucket of cash and not to mention the fear of payback experienced by all.

If we add up the financial cost to the villagers, from both of these incidents, it is quite disconcerting. By the time both cases are settled it would have cost the clan the equivalent of the education fees for around 200 primary school kids. One of the things that I find annoying is how everyone seems to find it easy to come up with the bucks to chip in for these compensation claims but when it comes to coughing up a few lousy kinas to pay for their kids school fees - well… different story!

Take note… although I have been known to chip in for the odd clan responsibility (eg: death, marriage, etc…) - I utterly refuse to give away one cent from my hard earned cash to pay for any compensation as a result of some trouble started by bullshit reasons.

I have heard said that there are three reasons why Highlanders fight: 1) Women, 2) Pigs and 3) Land!! This list probably needs to be adjusted to include: 4) Elections and 5) Alcohol!!