1. The plastic sombrero perched on top of the bottle of Sierra Tequila.
Some friends asked for shoes from Australia, some sweets, but Marj is turning 30 and her only request was a big bottle of tequila to help celebrate. We’re starting the night at her sister-friends’ house in Gerehu, one of the Program’s blacklisted suburbs. Coincidentally, red is also the colour of the tape we had to make our way through to get here for this one exceptional night.
Myself, Heather, and our new sisters are standing around a table covered in food. Meat is frying in the kitchen. Pacific reggae from the speakers on the floor. The tequila is poured out into the little plastic shot glasses. Lemon slices in one hand, salt spilled over the backs of hands. The driver and the armed escort vehicle are waiting downstairs for us, but we’ve been told we can’t leave until the bottle is gone. A poor boyfriend has been ordered to take photos and he obligingly snaps away as we get progressively louder. The best ones he gets are when we’re mid-grimace.
2. The colour of all the clothes I bought at the second-hand shop this weekend.
Second-hand shopping is a serious pastime in POM. The stores are usually run by religious outfits, and if you play your cards right, you can be indulging in retail therapy all weekend – Saturday at the Catholic ones, and Sunday with the Seventh Day Adventists. Clothes are shipped over from Australia by the bale and judging by the quality of the merchandise, they haven’t been picked over by inner-city hipster vultures before they cross the Coral Sea. A friend of mine found a Gucci skirt for K2. Original price tag still on. No joke. She’s dressed in a onesie with a frangipani pattern splashed across her side and thighs. She looks fantastic, even though we are soaked through from the rain. ‘No other Papua New Guinean would wear these kinds of clothes’, she says ‘So of course I get the best ones!’
3. The baseball cap on the man on the road below my compound, terrorising a group of women.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so angry. He is shirtless and screaming. He takes off his hat and throws it on the ground. Then he takes his shoes off and does the same thing. There’s one woman who’s obviously the target. He punches her. She falls onto the ground. She gets up with the help of her friends. Then he throws a rock at her. Misses. Then he grabs a big stick and tries to hit her with it. She pulls it off him. The kids playing with a broken keyboard nearby scatter when he lurches near them. Other men walk past, clasping their hands behind their backs in a very visible sign that they are not about to get involved.
I watch from my balcony. Some events need witnesses. But I eventually go inside because I don’t want to see any more. It’s useless to call the cops. And I don’t think that my security service, the city’s defacto police force, would bother breaking up a fight between people from the settlements. But another feeling stops me from doing anything. A part of my acculturation. It’s none of my business. I am like the men with the clasped hands. Something we were told in our first week here – you have to learn to look at injustice and not try to solve it yourself.
4. The dress on the t-shirt of my friend Vanessa.
We’re at the Monday night Hash. Hash House Harriers is an international social running group for expats. There’s a group in every corner of the earth. Some runners are immediate past members of the Kabul HHH.
Vanessa’s running slightly ahead of me so I look at her back. Her t-shirt is commemorating a recent Hash event, where they all ran through the settlements and suburbs of Port Moresby wearing red dresses and causing one hell of a sensation. It’s just a standard Hash run tonight, in the grasslands past the airport, no ballgowns in sight. Just the sunset and rolling hills.
After months on a treadmill, it feels amazing to be running in real life. I feel like nothing bad could happen. We get so carried away we lose the group. We eventually realise and double back to find them.
The leader looks pissed off. ‘Now I’ve got to do some chastising of you ladies. Never run too far ahead of the pack. You might feel safe, but someone could just drive past in a car and that would be it. So always run in sight of us, or with a guy’.
I hope I look suitably chastised. He has a good point. It’s just difficult to do, when running in the open makes you feel so invincible and free.
5. The dried blood on the walls of the interview room in the police station.
Once I realise what I’m looking at, I snatch my bag up off the floor. The police officer on the other side of the desk has his head down, laboriously completing about ten forms required for a report of stolen property. Behind him, a stream of police, perpetrators and victims flow through the room. They’re waiting around, being led, being collected, having a stickybeak, giving orders, yelling abuse at each other.
I am grateful for my companions, the mum and dad of a friend. The dad is a Manusian man who was a detective in the fraud squad for 16 years from just after Independence. The station’s bossman comes in, shakes his hand and brings him up to date. On his way out, he discretely picks up a coke bottle half-full with red liquid and throws it in the bin. Could be buai spit. Could be more blood, spat out from a broken jaw.
When I go to leave, the police officer gives me my carbon copies of the forms and a bone-crushing handshake, and tells me to call him. I don’t really understand why, whether it’s a police requirement or he’s having a crack. I don’t call.
Papua New Ginnivan 
brilliant ducki!