Despite having never visited this island before, we’re greeted with calls of ‘hello Hans!’ by the first canoe….weird. We find out that this is the brother of Joel, one of the trade-store owners from Bwagoia who Hans knows well - Bernard's left town to live the simpler village life and married a girl from the island. However, it turns out there’s more to life in the village than Bernard bargained for - fishing, working in the garden, climbing coconut trees etc - and we later find out he’s living back in town. Bernard and his wife Mary come out to the boat with a big basket of fresh vegetables, including a big bag of bush limes - vital for rum and coke at sunset - and invite us into their village

Village life in PNG is incredibly confusing to me, everyone always seems to be related to each other. Villages often turn out to be populated entirely by one massive extended family and trying to untangle the relationships between people sometimes requires a degree in anthropology, especially since the terms ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’ are virtually interchangeable.

While Hans spends the afternoon with Bernard dicussing 'guy stuff', I spend some time with Mary and her friends (sisters? aunties??). They all speak very good english and happily sit and talk with me - nearly everyone in New Guinea is delighted to sit under a tree on the beach and story with dim-dims, although you often find people answer 'yes' to just about any question you ask them, whether they understand you or not. I guess living so close to Bwagoia these women have more education than other islands and there are other advantages: they are able to sell produce in Bwagoia – dried fish, vegetables from their gardens, pigs – for kina, the PNG currency, which they use to buy flour, rice, sugar, tea etc.

The next day we go to the island soccer and netball tournament, a 30 minute walk down the beach in the stifling heat with barely a breeze, I have no idea how anyone has the energy to run around for 40 minutes but it’s good to watch from the cool of a shady tree. Most players have a strip of some sort, though not everyone has boots, not that this is a problem to a nation of people with feet like leather.

Click BACK to return to main page.