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Monday, 13 August 2007

Journey to the highlands...

DAY 2 - 4: Raskols

With nothing heard we started to worry about the future of the project. Had something happened? Had Tom abandoned the project? We were reassured that no project funds were missing. In fact, Tom had not requested the transfer of funds for some time. Just what was the matter? Finding out was one of the reasons I was in PNG.

AusAID, the project's donor, was expecting a monitoring report. I had explained our communication problem to them and, fortunately, they were easy-going about it. Less reassuring were people I knew in Sydney, people with experience of aid work in PNG. "Development is impossible in PNG", one woman told me, the sentiment being based on her own experience and reiterated by others.

Now, in Lae, I discovered what has befallen Tom, why he had been silent for months. And it was not nice.

Tom had run afoul of the violent and usually-armed gangs of thugs known as 'raskols'. It happened as Tom was driving through the suburbs of Lae, along a road near the city tip where houses are few. The raskols stopped him hauled him from the car, beat him with bottles and stole the car with its cargo of waste metal. The car was later found, burned. The reason we had been unable to contact Tom was because he was in hospital.

The term 'raskol' is really too mild and does not do their violence justice. Raskols are a plague, Tom and others said, who make life risky for both locals and visitors and who do so much to hold back the development of the country.

He had talked his way out of an earlier encounter with raskols. Then, he was driving a load of waste metal back to the depot and had given a lift to an older woman. When the raskols stopped the car he asked them if they really would hurt the woman... she could just as well be their mother, he said. Maybe he touched a soft spot in their hearts... they told Tom to get going.

Many of the raskols are rural youth who drift into the cities but cannot find work. There, they make their own work of the illegal kind. A problem particularly in Port Moresby, Lae and along the Hilans Hiway to Mt Hagen, raskols are the reasons why offices in Lae are guarded by men carrying long sticks and why restaurants employ guards. They are a menace on the streets and the reason why later, in Port Moresby, we walked in a group when we went the short distance to a restaurant.

Press exaggeration or reality?

Someone once complained to me that the PNG press, and sometimes the Australian press, exaggerate stories about raskols. He said that the reporting was a bit over the top and that the reports merely sensationalised violence.

It was with difficulty that I tried to reconcile this with Tom's experiences.