Randoms II

I was riding into Kundiawa with my friend John this past Friday. John is a retired systems planner from London who is moonlighting as a volunteer teacher at Rosary. Great guy. As we made our way though the busy streets, John exchanged one of those abrupt, shouting hellos (by far my favorite kind of exchange) that occur when one party is in a moving vehicle and the other is on foot. The two men waved happily at each other. I asked John who that was and he cheerfully responded 'oh, that was the man that organized the burglary of my house'. Good times.

I was scheduled to meet a new volunteer this week in town at the bus exchange. He gave me a time when he expected to be in and asked how he would recognize me. I said 'um… well, I'll be the white guy.'

There is what I like to call a 'PNG Group Laugh'. At first I thought it was unique to Rosary but apparently it is used by high school students around Simbu. If a group of three or more kids find something collectively amusing, they will all share an obligatory 2-second chuckle followed by a resounding 'WHOOO!' The timing is impeccable. And whether you have 3 or 50 teenagers engaged in a funny, the 'WHOO' begins and ends at the precise moment. It's quite remarkable. How they all come to a split-second decision that a particular moment is worthy of team laugh and unified 'WHOO', I will never know. All throughout the day and night, I hear the sounds of the PNG group laugh, springing from the different classrooms and dormitories. I am sure that this practice reveals some underlying truths about their culture but I don't want to think too hard about it.

The following is stolen directly from Lonely Planet, but it was so funny that I had to share it: When the first elections for the House of Assembly were held in PNG in the 1960s, the town of Lavongai took to the spirit of Democracy with gusto and decided they would vote for American president Lydon Baines Johnson.

Lavongai went 'All the way with LBJ' but when the American president didn't show up, the islanders decided they needed to take more direct action. They refused to pay their taxes and instead put their money in a fund to buy Lyndon Johnson. They raised a lot of money, but they never did manage to entice the American president to come and represent the people of Lavongai.