Paranoia, paranoia

I was hungover on the plane to Alotau, queasily slumping forward on my knees in that unique fatigue that belongs to late nights and early flights and many other gay delights. Not the best of entrances to a new home and a new life, but Port Moresby is a town that demands an exit with fanfare, and after a week of intense supervision and heavily managed contact with the outside world, we were determined to firebomb our Friday night.

We did alright. We made it to La Mana, a notorious nightclub open to the sky, where white skin seemed to be enough to vouchsafe our entry to the Members Only balcony which loftily overlooks the pulsing, primitive dancefloor. We danced. And later, our supervision loosened by beers and borrowed cigarettes, we managed to reprise the grand tradition of the kebab run, Mosbi-style: a three am expedition to a kai bar – think twenty ways with a deep fryer, customers weary or drunk or belligerent, yet instantly willing to close ranks around our endangered species of clueless Australian when a fight broke out between the tables. We came back sticky with triumph, clutching parcels of bright orange fried chicken and soggy chips purchased through a grille, to find Lisa – full of UN wine – fast asleep on Dave’s shoulder.

It’s a strange life lived under security, even more so when your world contracts so rapidly from the freedom of hometown streets. Your index of adventure changes somehow – so much so that there were almost days of conversation and complacent reflection to be had from that time that Tom, Garry and I walked three blocks from our guesthouse to buy beer and snacks. (Seriously, guys: it was Awesome.) So my memories of Port Moresby are snapshots, frames, edged by windows. Palm tree. Rubbish fire. Mountain. Wire fence. Cloud. The dogs all looked hungry, and everywhere the spack-spacks of betelnut edged the rough kerbs like bright gobs of expectorated flesh. People were kind.

There’s a lot that can be said, has been said, will be said, about crime and violence in this country – but Alotau, I was told, would be different. In our (many) security briefings, the trainers laughed aloud. Lucky. Beautiful. Safest place in the country. You’ll have a wonderful time. On my first afternoon, curled in mould-mottled wicker armchairs, my new housemate (another Lisa) tells me – quietly, methodically, in her uptilting pretty Brisbane voice – what happened to that group of volunteers on a road outside Madang. She has arranged for us to have a shortwave radio in the house, after a couple of worrying incidents involving herself and the other Aussie volunteer in town.

God help me, I felt caged – in those security briefings, even on this peaceful balcony with calm, compassionate Lisa. I wrote about this same frustration years ago, in Cape Town – then, as now, I was infuriated by the failure to distinguish crimes against the person (as opposed to crimes against the handbag) in the maelstrom of certain doom that awaited a hapless whitey stepping out the front door.

Things change. Maybe it is the proximity of that horror – clinically referenced by the program as The Madang Incident – maybe a new place and a new way of speaking, thinking. Maybe it is just that odd and ill-applied word: maturity. This time, I have the decency to feel (just a little) ashamed of my outrage, when I am faced with the lived suffering of victims of random crime. So I will use my radio, lock the doors – and read statistics, and talk to people. And get back to you in a little while.