How SABLs allowed Condoms and Baby Products to Take Over My Land

This is a story of how Condoms and Baby Products took over my land. This is happening here in Papua New Guinea, it may have already happened to you or it could be about to happen to you.

My name is Mary; I come from a matrilineal society so mi *mama graun.  When I was a child, my playground was humongous! The whole forest near our hamlet was mine to trample, sing, gather *kumu, pick fruits and play *hait-hait. The little stream that we bathed in and washed our dishes and clothes fed into a river called ‘Tuu’. There was a huge *pikus tree that grew on the banks of the Tuu, you could swing from a vine high into the air and dive into the Tuu. As long as I was within our customary boundaries and not upsetting the *masalai’s, I could do anything I wanted.

However, that was then, now everything has changed! There is no pikus anymore, actually, come to think of it, there’s hardly even a river.  Now my clan, tribe and *kastom do not set the boundaries to my land, in truth I can’t even say it’s my land because I have no say what happens anymore. I have to pay to use my own land and in effect, I am a slave in my own land.

The Condoms and Baby Products took over so surreptitiously it seems I just blinked and BANG! I was ‘unauthorized’ to enter my land. I have no access to the places where we used to hunt, to fish, to gather kumu and the worst part is that the people that dictate my boundaries don’t live here and most likely will never live here in Papua New Guinea.

It all started with a village magistrate from five villages away, who had been preaching about an easy way to get a haus copra built, a road created and an aid post built. The magistrate had told Cathy, *het meri of my sister clan, that some ‘kongkongs’ would pay K700 000 to set up their oil palm project and with this money Cathy and her clansman could do all the ‘development’ they dreamt of. Cathy could read but there were so many papers to sign and in her excitement, she didn’t read any of the papers before signing them.

Only two weeks after she signed, the big machines, trucks and tractors came to our jungle.

A multinational company has limitless resources and influence to make people in high places move. This Condom and Baby Products Manufacturing Company had very vast influence. All the way from Hong Kong they somehow had heard of our tiny jungle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and decided that they wanted to expand from their usual rubber and latex production into timber and logging. After giving K10 000 as payment they claimed they had rights to our land and they had the papers Cathy had unknowingly signed as proof of this right. According to ‘Condom and Baby Products’ people we were trespassing on what was rightfully their land for the next 100 years!

Cathy’s brothers and sisters were outraged to find that they were confined to a tiny portion of their land. Their best hunting areas and the ‘hap masalai’ were all out of bounds! Even on the river, the only places left for them to bathe were the places normally assigned to the women. Cathy’s clan  gathered at her house to question her and demand that she make the outsiders go away.  If only it was that simple. We were all angered because somehow our whole tribe’s land and not just Cathy’s clan’s land was available for them to use for whatever they were doing!

The next time the *kongkongs came around, we tried to talk to them – that was a bad idea. They couldn’t speak our language let alone *tok pisin and those of our tribesman that could speak English said they sounded like they had eaten some sticky vine by accident and their tongue was stuck to the roof of their mouth. Total communication breakdown! We resorted to gestures but even that was a failure – our spokesman ended up just yelling in frustration, them looking very scared and walking off hastily to their trucks.

That night a huge meeting was called near the biggest clan's men’s meeting house. The men had met earlier on in the afternoon and they decided that this was important enough to call the women to take part in the discussions too. At the end of the meeting it was decided that we all wanted them to build only on Mary’s clan’s land because she had already made an agreement with them and had received and spent K10 000 of the promised K700 000 BUT they should stay off the rest of the tribe’s land and they should leave.

That night I slept fretfully, I didn’t know why I had this sense of doom. The answer came early enough, the next morning before the sun came up I heard someone hissing through the bamboo thatch wall – I was confused for a second then I realized it was Martha, my very good friend from Mary’s village. I opened the door and before I let her in she pulled me out with such force that I would have yelled out if she hadn’t covered my mouth with her hand.

She pulled me towards the bush behind the *haus kuk and just as I was going to fight her I saw beams of light and a group of men walking into the village. The men had guns! I was very scared! I had only seen guns in the Rambo movies, this was my first time to see them in real life. What happened next was surreal. The men who looked like they were our wantoks fired their guns into the air and in *Tok Pisin yelled out that everyone in all the houses must come out. Even babies had to be brought out in the cold morning air! When one man tried to protect his baby by telling the men that his baby had a cold he got a gun butt on his face and told to tell his wife to bring their baby out or he would get shot. It was at that point that I panicked! I got so scared that I just ran away, with Martha at my heels. We stealthily ran deeper into the jungle and although I was scared of masalai’s, I was more scared of the men with their guns - I told myself, you know how to handle masalai’s those men you didn’t!

Martha and I woke up the next morning under a huge *galip nut tree. I don’t remember how we got there, fear and exhaustion must have made us just collapse into a deep sleep as soon as we realized we were safe (either that or we had both fainted).

We eventually gathered enough courage to go back and see what happened to our villages. We made our way through the jungle as quietly as possible. The first village we came across was Cathy’s. There wasn’t much noise although everyone was just sitting in their haus kuks which was abnormal. Martha and I asked one woman why everyone was at their hause kuks. That’s when we learnt that our best hunting and gathering grounds were out of bounds, most of our masalai areas were cleared, some families were even forced to make their new gardens at a masalai area! Anyone saying anything against the kongkongs would be imprisoned or belted up very badly. The final insult was at my village we were all to wash where we normally go toilet on the river. We had been effectively made prisoners on our own land!

The next couple of days we heard more stories of how the men were all asked to line up and were beaten, how some of the more vocal elders were taken to the District Head quarters where they were imprisoned for days without food or water. The women were intimidated whenever they went to the garden.

Gradually 90% of forest around us was cleared and all that was left were the tire tracks on the muddy soil and a sorry looking aid post with no health worker and medical supplies. We never got to see that K700 000 that was supposedly paid into the District Land Administration’s account. The rivers got warmer, some got shallower others became trickles. We had lost more than just some trees, plants and soil, it felt like we had lost a distinguished elder of our tribe. Our spirits were broken, we were without hope for any happiness in the future. No hunting grounds, no gathering grounds and no claim to any land.  The Condom and Baby Products Manufacturing Company had in effect killed us.

Note---All names of characters and places have been changed to protect the individuals involved. The events described have occurred in various parts of Papua New Guinea as a result of the Special Purpose Agricultural and Business Leases together with the Forest Clearance Authorities.

*mama graun = female landowner/caretaker

*Kumu = greens/vegetables

*hait-hait = hide-and-go-seek

*pikus = Banyan tree

*masalai’s = spirit/demons/sacred

*Kongkongs = people of Oriental descent

*kastom = custom

*haus kuk = kitchen that is a separate house of its own

*het meri = female head of clan

*tok pisin = a Creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea

*galip nut = Canarium nut