In some ways, Port Moresby is a lot like Canberra. There are lots of roundabouts. All the government buildings are crammed together. It’s small – everyone seems to knows each other and what everyone’s doing. And it’s flat, figuratively speaking – you see the people you read about in the newspaper in the street, and rub shoulders with the rich and powerful in the supermarket.
I have already literally rubbed shoulders with PNG’s Prime Minister at Trukai Fun Run, when I was dragged through the crowd at the finish line to emerge right at his side. Making the most of my opportunity to converse with the country’s leader, I gasped ‘Hi, Mr O’Neill!’ to which he smiled benevolently and posed for the cameras, before he was whisked away into his shiny black four wheel drive.
Last weekend, I once again got to bathe in the glow of fame – I had the pleasure and privilege of being a VIP groupie with PNG’s number one pop band at the premiere concert of their national tour.
(I’m not going to mention them by name – internet penetration in PNG is only at 2% but it’s growing, and when people eventually use the internet to find out about their favourite bands, it would be upsetting if this blog is the first hit that comes up).
Despite my adolescent hopes for my adult self, my life in Australia has been depressingly celebrity-free. The best I can do is that my ex-housemate’s crazy boss had Gotye sleeping on her couch for a few weeks between albums. I’m not a natural groupie, but I’ll try anything once.
We’d been looking forward to it all week. We gained VIP status through Heather’s partner, who went to uni with the singer and some of the band, and was the head of security for the night. You know you’ve made the big time when you have military men as your bouncers.
On Saturday afternoon, hopped up on Goroka plunger coffee, I was arranging my outfit for the night ahead. A plasticky fluorescent pink top with a cut-out back, bought that morning with clubbing in mind and the hope that any spilled drinks would just slide off. My black chinos. My peep-toe flats I’d soaked all day in Domestos to kill the greenish mould that has engulfed every leather shoe I have.
And my new glasses, the ones that sit perfectly on the bridge of my nose, no glasses strap necessary. Since my first pair of round-rimmed, vine-wreathed, purple and green glasses which stalked my teenagerhood, I’ve never felt good wearing glasses. But my new pair, purchased after email consultation with the family fashion squad, look set to break the curse.
We head down to Illusion Nightclub early to watch the soundcheck. The band circle through their songs. It’s a big lineup: two backup singers, some rappers, percussion, drums, everything you could want, really. They’ve just dropped a new album and the lead singles are playing every time you turn on a radio. I don’t know much about music genres, but if I were to take a stab, I’d say it’s Pacific pop, strong reggae overtones, with production sounding like it’s straight out of the early 2000’s. Awesome, right?
Then it’s time for the pre-party. We head up to the singer’s condo in a massive round building perched right on top of the hill. There’s lots of food, and a pool table, and two middle-aged Australian men totally engrossed in the Cats v Hawks game. We sit on the balcony and get talking to a backup singer, who’s nervous, but awesome, and tells us her incredible life story – how she came to singing after her father died when she was young; about her beautiful daughter, actually the biological daughter of her sister; the haters who are stalking her on Facebook; how she’s going to school us on the dance floor. We drink. We wait.
Then the singer stalks into the condo an hour late, and thirty minutes after the band was meant to be onstage. He’s wearing upsized silver sneakers, brown skinny denim, and custom-made Adidas hoodie with eye-popping tribal prints (one of only five in the world, apparently). Who knows where he’s been? It doesn’t matter now – he’s got the band’s matching caps and t-shirts, and in two minutes the convoy of sedans carrying the band has crawled down the hill to the nightclub.
The cars all pull up and everyone gets out, and we’re standing around in a giant circle under the fluorescent lights, getting ready to make our entrance. The sounds of a very drunk and impatient audience echo out of the door to the nightclub. Then suddenly the singer realises that he’s left the set list back in the condo. Frantic calls, but no-one back there is picking up. And so he gets back in his car and drives back to collect it. It’s a tense ten minutes as the band waits for him to return (he later tells us that he doesn’t really follow the set list, anyway – he just cues the band however he wants).
Then we get inside and are ushered to the ‘VIP area’, which turns out to be some bench couches separated from the crowd by a glass fence and several burly men, with some fancy lights in the wall. The drinks are on the band’s rider, so of course it’s spirits, bottles of Jim Beam bought wholesale on the tab and slopped indiscriminately into glasses of coke and ice. Everyone’s smoking, and it’s so thick that it hurts our eyes and stains our hair so badly it takes three washes to get out. It feels, strangely enough, just like a provincial French discothèque.
Then the band walks onstage and starts playing. We push our way to the front. It’s like the Beatles have come to POM. Young women are screaming, shoving past security, reaching their hands out. Beside me, a middle-aged woman dressed in all in black is standing very still, tears running down her cheeks. I hold her hand and ask her if she’s OK – yu orait mama? She tells me that she’s the sister of the singer’s mother, who recently passed away. She’s still in mourning, that’s why she’s dressed that way. She wanted to come to see how proud the singer would have made her sister. When he waves at her, mid song, she clasps her hands together and bawls.
We head off to the ladies. There are only three cubicles for the entire club, and one’s not working. There are fifteen sweaty women queuing up and everyone’s talking at once. It’s going to take ages. It’s the perfect place to take my Tok Pisin for a spin. I yell out how happy I am to be exactly where I am, mi laikim stap lo hia, and a lady with tattoos across her forehead yells back that she’s happy that we’re there, amongst Papua New Guineans, not living above them, like other people do.
But right at that moment, a staff member with a monogrammed shirt grabs us, drags us out of the toilets, and pushes us through a hidden door in a secret wall to the staff toilets. Two empty, quiet cubicles, for our uninterrupted use.
A couple of lessons learned from that experience. Full bladder trumps sentiment. And while you can try to forget the skin you’re in, others won’t.
Then the singer has had enough. It’s around 4am. He’s almost the first person to leave. He signs the last cheques, shakes the last hands, and then a group of us head back to his place for a post-party, via a drag race through the empty streets which we lose because we were following the road rules.
The next day. I am lying very, very still on my bed, while the children down on Ela Beach scream and play and the breeze blows through my bedroom like any other Sunday. Suffering another rebuke from my body that I’m no longer the happy-go-lucky 20-year-old I once was, who could bounce out of bed to be a functional human being the morning after a big night. At some stage in the afternoon, I make it downstairs and put on their CD, and I feel a little bit better.
Papua New Ginnivan 