Inside the Crocodile

Trish Nicholson

Description

In the wilds of the most diverse nation on earth, while she copes with crocodiles under the blackboard and sorcery in the office, Trish Nicholson survives near-fatal malaria and mollifies irascible politicians and an ever-changing roster of bosses - realities of life for a development worker. With a background in anthropology and a successful management career in Europe, five years on a development project in the remote West Sepik province of Papua New Guinea more than fulfils Trish Nicholson's desire for a challenge. In extreme tropical conditions, with few only sometimes-passable roads, travel is by a balus - an alarmingly tiny plane, landing on airstrips cut with grass knives and squeezed between mountains. Students build their own schools, babies' weights are recorded in rice bags and women walk for days, carrying their produce to market. Physically tested by dense jungle and swaying vine bridges, Trish's patience is stretched by nothing ever being what it seems and with 'yes' usually meaning 'no'. Assignments in isolated outstations provide surreal moments, like the 80-year-old missionary in long friar's robes revealing natty turquoise shorts as he tears away on an ancient motorbike. Adventures on nearby Pacific islands relieve the intensity of life in a close-knit community of nationals and a cosmopolitan mix of expat 'characters'. Local women offer friendship, but their stories are often heart-breaking. More chaos arrives with Frisbee, the dog she inherits when the project manager leaves, along with other project expats. Tensions increase between local factions supporting the project and those who feel threatened by it - and stuck in the middle is Trish. Her emotionally engaging memoir Inside the Crocodile is full of humour, adventure, iron determination and... Frisbee the dog. It is beautifully illustrated with colour photos of Trish's time there.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784626150
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

About the author
Trish Nicholson is a writer and social anthropologist, and a former columnist and feature writer for national media. After an early career in regional government in the UK and Europe, she was for fifteen years a development aid worker in the Asia Pacific, including five years in West Sepik, Papua New Guinea, where she was also Honorary Consul for the British High Commission. For three years she directed the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) operations in the Philippines where she later completed a doctoral degree. Further research, on indigenous tourism initiatives in the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia, was partially funded by a grant from the UK Department for International Development. A shifting lifestyle she survived with a sense of humour. Her other works include books of popular science, travel, management, and writing skills. She lives in New Zealand.
www.trishnicholsonswordsinthetreehouse.com
Inside the Crocodile
The Papua New Guinea Journals
Trish Nicholson
Copyright 2015 Trish Nicholson
Photographs copyright 2015 Trish Nicholson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
9 Priory Business Park
Kibworth Beauchamp
Leicestershire LE8 0RX, UK
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1784626 150
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To Clarkson Dikinsep of Ankem village, whose service to his country was cut tragically short.
And to the many women and men of Papua New Guinea committed to the welfare of their people.
Note:
All the characters you will meet in this narrative are real people and in a few cases, names have been withheld or changed to preserve their privacy. There are others I knew or worked with who are not mentioned here because to include everyone and every event would make it an impossibly long read.

Contents
List of illustrations
Introduction
1: Reptiles, sorcery and a push start
2: Weevils, broken pots and the longlong man
3: Already illegal, working for a non-existent government
4: The perils of Pidgin and the value of coconuts
5: Cacao and a jackfruit the size of several rugby balls
6: Mercenaries, missionaries and misfits
7: We start walking through the bush to Lake Kopiago
8: Still walking ... crossing the Strickland Gorge
9: Wasps, sheer drops, and a pigsty
10: Stumbling through forest in the dark ... and praying
11: Yellow plastic sunglasses, arsgrass and a cocktail
12: Health hazards, and why don t the nuns get pregnant?
13: Yes, Premier, (but over my dead body)
14: Port Moresby and the battle front with bureaucracy in Waigani
15: Uncertainty, confusion and a narrow escape
16: The skin was silky smooth and saffron yellow
17: Stranded with a priest listening to Mozart
18: Panguna - an artificial pond of big snappy carp
19: Bilased mothers, seasickness and smelly feet
20: A counterpart, a prize, and a christening
21: Several Monday mornings each week 146
22: Wuvulu Island, bicycles and coconut crabs
23: The Beast, a fright for Frisbee, and the milk-run to Madang
24: Bring an axe, and the price of a husband
25: Looking back from deep south and high north
26: Comings, goings, wives and chocolate ice-cream
27: Big trucks, big pups and a big missionary
28: Of life, death, and unrequited love
29: Raskols , French clich s and going while staying
30: New Year on Manus Island, and a missed turtle
31: When there might not be a morning
32: A year of trouble and of irrepressible hope
33: Hostages, charges, and an unexpected dance
34: A cause for much celebrating and a little fighting
35: A departure rather than an ending
Epilogue
Glossary of acronyms and Pidgin words and phrases used
External links to maps
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
1. Our route from Oksapmin to Kopiago
Plates
1. Young woman celebrating Province Day
2. Approaching the grass airstrip at Yapsiei
3. Aerial view of Vanimo town scattered over the peninsular
4. Clarkson, Jim s counterpart who replaced him as project co-ordinator
5. Grace models our SDU T-shirt
6. A member of the provincial staff wearing hornbill ( kokomo ) bilas for Province Day
7. Boys playing in the sand on Wuvulu Island
8. Sharing a meal on an outrigger canoe, Lorengau, Manus Island
9. Waiting for a flight at Lumi airstrip
10. Thomas reading his Bible during a rest on the Kopiago trail
11. Wata, the little big man at Kabori base camp
12. Mothers and children gather at Angor School
13. Kunai -grass slopes of the Strickland Valley
14. Yakona Village along the Kopiago trail
15. Mike crossing the vine bridge over the Strickland Gorge
16. Turning the plane around on the short, narrow airstrip at Kabori
17. Frisbee, proud mum
18. Trish relaxing with Jim, his mother, and Frisbee
Introduction
Papua New Guinea is the most diverse nation on earth, rich in resources, natural environment and cultures - 800 indigenous languages have been identified and others may exist, spoken by peoples not yet known - a complexity that has developed over some 60,000 years of human habitation. The country is an enigma that defies consistent description and there are still white patches of unknown on maps and flight charts that not even Google Earth has penetrated. Like the bird of paradise, just when you think you have it fixed in your camera lens, it flits to another branch in the canopy.
While isolated tribes sustain themselves with their taro gardens and jungle hunting grounds, largely disengaged from the rest of the world, their sons and daughters may be young graduates in the cities, using Facebook and Twitter accounts to participate in a global society. Epitomized as the land of the unexpected , most people s idea of Papua New Guinea goes little beyond sensationalised travellers tales of cannibalism. A single book cannot explain this extraordinary and exciting country and this is not an attempt to do so. Inside the Crocodile shares my roller-coaster ride of five years living and working in the remote border province of West Sepik - Sandaun - and travelling to other areas and islands of Papua New Guinea. And it is not only my tale, but that of the Papua New Guineans who became my colleagues and friends. I arrived in Vanimo in 1987, twelve years after independence, to work as a member of the local administration, implementing a development project with World Bank funding.
Of all the countries I might have chosen in which to participate in rural development, this was probably the ultimate test, yet at the time, it seemed the most natural step to take.
I suppose it was inevitable that I would one day work in some far flung corner of the globe. For four generations my forebears had left their roots in the Isle of Man to travel the world. Great-great-grandfather went to Kansas before getting a place in a covered wagon and following the Oregon Trail to San Francisco in the 1800s. His son also went out to Kansas, and was ordained in Topeka. Later generations made extended visits to China, India, Africa and South America. My parents didn t travel, but my handed-down childhood toys included a ball of raw rubber from the Amazon, a single wooden clog from Japan, and a fierce Chinese deity with an arm missing.
While the ancestors had been missionaries, my interests were quite the reverse: I was studying anthropology, I wanted to understand other ways of life and alternative cultures, not convert anyone, but their influence created in me an image of the world as a place to be explored, a curiosity to see what was there, and an attitude that anything was possible.
But interest is not enough. To survive as an alien in unforgiving environments and other cultures one has to be flexible, to accept discomfort and uncertainty. In some cockeyed way, my chaotic childhood in what would nowadays be called a dysfunctional family had prepared me for my future. Constantly moving from one place to another in a state of perpetual insecurity - financial and emotional - working part-time to pay off household debts while still at school, I was an adult before my teens. But those were the days of education grants in the United Kingdom, not just to stay on at school, but to attend university. Inspired by a teacher to aim beyond my reach, I studied for a joint honours course in anthropology and geography at Durham University.
Armed with a master s degree, I began a career in Scottish regional government, starting as a junior administrator where the skills of filing and tea-making were finely honed. Working up to senior positions and broadening out to management, training, and some freelance consultancy, I was seconded for three years to work on an EEC (now the European Union) exchange programme for young workers. In the cracks of all this work, I became a part-time tutor in the Open Business School and wrote a column for a management magazine and articles for the press. It was all very haphazard; none of it had been planned, things just happened and opportunities arose. But by imperceptible steps, I developed a stronger sense of self with the realisation that I could, and should, create the next phase of my story myself.
In a classic example of Sod s Law, the same morning my boss handed me the fax confirming my job in West Se