Hands and Feet

The Papua New Guinea Highlands is perhaps one of the last places in the world where tribes still regularly fight. The idea still strikes me as preposterously unreal, but then again I’ve had trouble defining reality for quite some time. Yesterday, in the remote Highlands town of Tari, a ferocious’looking man wearing a large headdress of plastic bubble wrap and a breechcloth of tanket leaves ran up to me with a look of urgency. He was waving a spear and I thought he wanted to kill me.

Instead, he caught me by the arm and gave me the newspaper he held. Yitshak Rabin had been assassinated! he wanted me to know. Somewhere far away from the thick jungles and 14,000 foot Highlands of P.N.G., in a place called Israel, Rabin had been shot dead.

I climb inside the van, stuffing my backpack under one of the front seats. There is only one other woman passenger inside, but for her presence I’m grateful. I can talk easily to the women in P.N.G., my small talk with men often misinterpreted as a come’on. She moves over to let me sit beside her, wiping some sweat from her forehead and extending a tiny black hand to help me get in. She is barely an adult and her meri blouse is pulled down to accommodate a baby at her breast. We smile at each other and she introduces herself as Deomi, because in the Papua New Guinea Highlands everyone is polite. Everyone introduces themselves, calls you “brata” or “sista” unless you’re at war, in which case-as is my understanding now-your hands and feet are chopped off and left on the side of the road.

“And they take the stomachs, too,” Willy has added now, practicing his school’learned English. His voice is loud: he is proud of his English. “They will cut off everything, you know.”

This comment, once translated into Pidgin, sends squeals of laughter throughout the van. I realize I’ve missed something, haven’t been paying attention. They cut off everything. Everything. Oh, yeah.

“You’ve seen this?” I ask, incredulous, tired of the bravado. His ever’growing list of body parts makes me suspicious.

Both Willy and the man beside him nod.

“When did you last see this?”

Willy tells me he sees it often. The latest time was just last week. This war, Willy says, has been going on since the early 1980s. He thinks it was started because a Koogka man killed two of an Opoka man’s pigs and never offered any pay back.

I sit back, anxious for the feeling of motion to begin. Our van finally pulls away to the asphalt road, heading east.

“You will see the battlefield,” Willy says, his voice too loud, even with the engine going. It occurs to me that I’m a novelty now, entertainment for him and the van’s passengers.

“We’re going to pass a battlefield?” I ask.

“Yes, it is by the highway.”

“We’re going to see these people fighting each other?”

“Of course. They make their own guns now.”

Our entire conversation is translated. Someone makes the suggestion that I should crouch down in my seat whenever we approach any of the combatants. A general wave of nodding heads agree: if there is trouble the fighting men could, at the very least, rob me of my backpack if they see that I’m white.

“Crouch down,” I repeat.

“Sindaun,” the man beside Willy says in Pidgin, as if I didn’t understand the English. I’m reminded of the B’rate Westerns I used to watch as a kid. Heading into Injun country. Don’t light no fires.

“If they stop us,” I ask Willy, “will they kill us?” He laughs then translates it into Pidgin for the rest of the passengers in the van to understand. Most everyone laughs.

“They just look for enemies in the car.” He points to Deomi, who is breast’feeding her baby. “Like her. Her wantoks are Koogka.”

“Ah, em i meri. Wait meri,” the man beside Willy says of me.

“He says that you’re a woman, though. A white woman.”

“I know what he said,” I snap.

Our van shudders as it hits higher speeds. The road looks new, the yellow dashes bright. I wonder if the road builders with their asphalt and steam rollers were delayed by skirmishes.

We speed along at 60 m.p.h., the grassy hills of the central Highlands careening past. I am still surprised by the look of the Highlands, by its grassy fields and pine trees, after having trudged through the lowland jungles and swamps for much of my stay in P.N.G. Early explorers were surprised by the Highlands too, having only discovered it in 1932, which helps explain why tribesmen still wear headdresses and fight each other over issues of murdered pigs.

Deomi tells me that she is from Mt. Hagen, where we’re going. She has wantoks-blood relations-in the Koogka tribe. She knows that, if caught by the Opoka, they’d kill both her and her child, but there is only one road to Mt. Hagen and her mother is dying.

Strangely, Deomi doesn’t seem nervous. In Western countries human violence is a reason for fear and outrage, but in P.N.G. it is as common and accepted as natural disaster-is a form of natural disaster, and just as cruel and capricious. Deomi sits patting her baby, silent, perhaps trying to divine the turn of the weather outside.

The little Toyota van rattles at 70 m.p.h. We stream by burnt villages, by groups of men carrying bush knives and axes, dressed only in a breechcloth of red cloth and what’s called “ass grass”-the few thick tanket leaves hanging down their buttocks. This is, Willy explains in his best English, voice raised as always, their “battle dress.”

Willy smiles and points to an empty stretch of yellow grassland: the traditional battleground. He’s excited to show it to me because the fighting is none of his concern. Most of the people in the pmv help point to it. A carload of tour guides save for Deomi and one other man. The eyes of these two, like mine, are fixed on the scene in front of the van.

Because a group of the young men are now standing in the middle of the highway, not moving. I crouch low in my seat. The pmv slows, our momentum fizzling. More men in ass grass materialize from behind a tree and congregate around a telephone pole, bush knives raised. Deomi reaches over me and locks the car door. She shelters her baby’s head with the palm of her hand.

Some of the older combatants have sticks or tusks through their noses. They stand barefoot in battle wear on the newly paved and painted asphalt road, over the yellow lines which tell a driver not to pass.

“Opoka,” Willy says, as if he were a safari guide pointing out a new species of animal. He’s still smiling in excitement. “Do not worry.”

I crouch lower in my seat. Deomi’s baby doesn’t make a sound. Willy applies the brakes in a series of jolts. Our motion is almost gone. The adrenaline rushes into my limbs, washing away the oblivion. It makes all my senses acute, has a strange way of making me conscious of each breath. I forget, for once, my headache. Being sick is trivial. I eye my bush knife, but it has become worthless. It rests in my bag as a useless talisman, a trinket meant only to ward off fear. I’d be a lunatic to use it now against several fully armed men.

Willy rolls down the window. Knowing he possesses at least three lives, he addresses the men in a very loud, pompous voice.

“Yupela stap gut?” he asks, wanting to know how they are.

And how would men be in the middle of a war? They mumble some rough responses. Willy isn’t discouraged. “Mi laik baim wanpela tair,” he says.

Smiles. Happiness from the men. Have I heard Willy right? One young man races off. We watch his form getting smaller as he cuts across the battleground into a clump of bushes. I am still crouched, along with Deomi, in my seat. My heart has a will of its own and is pounding desperately. The men outside are peering in and my title, wait meri-White Woman-is exchanged. Me, I am used to sticking out everywhere, but do they recognize Deomi and her baby as one of the enemy? Apparently they know, can somehow tell either from recognition or the subtle differences in tribal appearance.

The young man returns holding a tire on top of his head. Further to his left, a number of warriors charge an unseen party, engaged in what seems to be the proper business. We all wait. The sound of a gun goes off and a wisp of gray smoke rises above some distant trees. Willy negotiates the price of the tire. Every time a man starts to look into a window of the van, Willy becomes irate and puts the car in first. Forty kina are exchanged and the tire is slipped into the vehicle beside my backpack.

We pull away.

The van shudders again at 60 m.p.h. Some ass’grassed warriors further down charge us as we speed past. One of their bush knives hits our van with a heavy clunk. The people inside cheer at the failed attempt, looking back at the attackers. Willy, I notice, is adjusting his rear view mirror. He shakes his head.

“Close, those men,” he says, smiling and clucking his tongue.

My fellow passengers are mimicking the warrior’s charge with the knife, trying to capture the essence of the attack, to master the movements. It is important they get it right for future retelling, so there is a lot of correction and practice. Deomi, I see, has her head against her baby’s chest and is silent. I peek out the window for signs of hands and feet on the side of the road. Nothing. Only the grassy fields of the Highlands encroaching upon the road, threatening to overtake the new asphalt.

I try to stay calm as the van rattles and drones. As we at last approach Mt. Hagen, I ask Willy why they didn’t pull me or the Koogka people out of the car. Did they recognize their enemy? Of course they saw I was white-and a woman, I growl.