Whirlybirds, Windsocks and Witch-hunts
When Chris Unrau set off with John Bromley and Anton Lutz from Rural Airstrip Agency for a full day of airstrip surveys, he didn’t anticipate being overwhelmed by the beauty and diversity of PNG, or by the tough reality of people living out in the bush, desperately in need of an airstrip and living in fear of the “sanguma”.
Our pilot David stroked his pony-tail beard and talked himself through his pre-takeoff checks. The Bell 407 helicopter we were aboard was whining and whirring, the turbine engine screaming its presence above our heads. Those that know me know I am crazy about just about anything that flies – except helicopters. I’ve only been on one once before, and my recollection was that it was a shaking bucket of rotating bolts, waiting for one to come loose and allow it to plummet to the ground.
I love airplanes – anything with fixed wings actually – for the simple reason that if the engine quits, it doesn’t just fall out of the sky like a brick. Rotorheads tell me that choppers can glide too, but that’s just a concept I’m not willing to test. The machine groaned and shuddered a little as it broke free from the bonds of earth. We were airborne from Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea.
David pointed the helicopter to the Northwest, and we began to make our way towards Enga Province, where our mission of the day was to assess four airstrips and perform surveys on three of them. Weather is always a factor in PNG flying, and today was no exception. We searched for holes, and finally after seeing the lush green landscape emerge from between the puffy clouds, we darted down into the valley.
The Rural Airstrip Agency is an organization that started several years ago with the aim to provide resources to communities to enable them to maintain their airstrips, open new ones, or restore airstrips that have become unusable.
At one time there were as many as about 600 airstrips in PNG; today there are fewer than 300 that are usable.
An airstrip means that instead of walking for days through rugged, dangerous terrain, a community has viable access to teachers and educational supplies, doctors, healthcare workers and medicine, pastors and church resources, food, supplies and more.
The first strip we assessed was Paiela. We made a couple of passes to get a good view, but we could tell without landing that Paiela, despite being usable, would always be considered too short and too flat for many aircraft. This community, by virtue of its location alone, will be difficult if not impossible to serve with today’s modern, larger aircraft.
Our flight continued on to Kenalipa, where we gently set down on a small grassed area. We quickly unloaded our gear and set to work. Kenalipa is a community that knows the value an airstrip would bring, and they are eager to make it happen. Unfortunately, they too are limited by their location and, despite herculean efforts to start the work, may never see a viable airstrip open up. Unfortunately for Kenalipa, a couple of factors also played in – a mountain at the high end, a sharp drop off at the other, and another mountain on the approach/departure path.
Mountains are not good for airplanes, they typically don’t move out of the way and can be quite hard when you hit them.
The approach into Papake was difficult. Clouds were blocking the view, and despite what the on-board GPS was saying, we couldn’t see our destination. Finally, Papake emerged, and as it grew brighter we could see a lot of work had already taken place. People were busy working in different areas, and they waved and cheered as we continued our descent into a clear area. Once again, we unloaded our gear, and I set to work getting the drone in the sky, snapping photos one by one.
The work at Papake was incredible. This village had been working very, very hard. Crews of young boys were swinging bush knives to clear vegetation, making way for us as they marked the centerline and assessed the progress. Others were carrying roots, sticks, and stumps and stacking them to be burned. But the hardest working people on the site were a group of ladies, barefoot, carrying sod chunks to the side and filling in gullies with large lumps of dirt. Two ladies had spades, and would hack chunks of sod the size of a pillow, then others would strain to lift them onto their shoulders and carry them away. The windrow of sod pieces stretched a couple hundred meters long, probably 1.5 meters in height. They had been doing this for a long time. It was an incredible sight.
After gathering data from three airstrips in various stages of construction, I now had my work cut out for me. I would need to get back to my computer to process it all, but really I was trying to process in my own mind what I had just seen and experienced. Surreal is the best word I can find to describe it. As John and Anton and I sat around that evening, we sipped our locally grown PNG coffee and chatted about what these airstrips would mean to these communities.
I could see for myself that there were a lot of people living there, in very primitive societies, in primitive conditions. Some of the men wore only loin cloths. One man had a plastic bag for a hat. Many people had discolored or missing teeth. Few people had any footwear.
Yet at one point, at least one cell phone was pulled out to take video footage of my drone in action! PNG is a country of many contradictions.
As we discussed these contradictions, it became more and more clear to me how much need there is in these communities. There are no doctors, nurses, or teachers at any of them.
At Yalum, the last strip we visited, anyone who wanted any education had to walk nine hours through the bush before reaching a road, where they could then hitch a ride to go further to find a school. People are sick and dying of very treatable conditions. An airstrip connects these communities and allows access to life giving services.
As noble as it sounds, using airplanes to bring doctors, teachers, and nurses to remote communities, there’s something deeper, darker, and even more pressing and urgent driving the need for airstrips in PNG. Sinister beliefs lurk in many communities and result in pain, suffering, and senseless deaths. In the remote border areas between Enga and Hela Provinces, where we were working, communities continue to struggle with beliefs that lead to witch-hunts.
Despite what many westerners might think, witch-hunts were not eradicated in the middle ages. They’re alive and well.
No matter your culture, death is painful and confusing. And when your education, albeit effective for survival with only a loincloth, leads you to blame a person or spirit for every bad thing that happens, it further adds to the confusion. Witch-hunts in PNG are rooted in the need to assign blame or cause for misfortune or untimely death. When an untimely death occurs, be it for natural or accidental reasons, without the knowledge of science, people look for someone to blame to explain the sudden loss. They seek out ‘sanguma’ – sometimes translated as ‘witches’ – often women, whom they can blame for the death.
In the Hewa area where we were working, it is believed that these witch women possess spirits that have emerged to kill the other person. These spirits are invisible and mysterious, however, so how can these ‘witches’ be identified? In the Hewa, it’s believed that a person in their dying moments can reveal who is causing their death, or perhaps an outsider can been brought in as a ‘witch-hunter’ and will ‘correctly’ assign the blame. In any case, once you have been accused as a witch, your days are most likely numbered.
I had heard of these witch killings and accusations, having followed a few stories in the media. But it was really brought home to me with a visual that continues to reside in my memory, showing the gravity of the situation in that remote area. Anton opened his laptop, started up Google Earth, and began to show me locations of killings and accusations in the Hewa. A red person symbolized a witch killing, a yellow person symbolized an accusation.
The map was littered with red and yellow. Lives snuffed out. Individuals and families who dread what is to come.
An airstrip brings health, education, and development to remote communities, but it really brings much more than that. It brings them an opportunity to be released from the bondage of false beliefs such as the need to label your neighbors ‘witches’ and murder them. It brings them people who will help them understand these confusing events and teach them about a God that loves them. And it brings them Jesus, who, they will learn, came to die for them, so that others don’t have to.
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