We are rolling along the eastern coast of Bougainville, almost ready to say good bye to PNG and return into Solomon waters. The waves are steep and the wind is fair, which has us bouncing and running downwind with some pace. The full moon brightening the sky brings comfort to those scared-of-the-dark feelings and the silvery waves spread silvery caps along the water's surface. We are feeling reasonably cheery, ready to knuckle down on watch and dive into a book over the night. Nearby the mountainous outcrops of the mineral rich soil of Bougainville hover close by, producing many a reef which we have to attentively navigate around under the bright night sky.

That was early in the night and then..

The wind is howling a little more, the waves are furiously steepening - it takes a little time to remember that we do float, the moon has disappeared and the black darkness rules - and as Eric is putting in the second reef for the mainsail so we are only sailing with a small sliver of sail, a wave attacks our self steering and the whole top part is stolen from us. How dreadful the notion is to us of hand steering the rest of the way, only made worse by furious rain that leaves me freezing and shivering in my New Zealand winter coat and with all the washboards closed up to keep the cabin from getting soaked as well, I sort of feel banished to the cockpit, shut out of the boat. Already our sleeping routines are screwed up from the first night of the passage with me suffering from a migraine. Now we may have to shorten our shifts to counteract the energy of hand steering and struggle with the sleep consequences. The nearby Bougainville coast in the darkness seems suddenly more frightening as I shudder and recall stories of yachts harassed and chased just sailing past - just the name puts fear in our loved ones hearts. But we can rely at least on the weather to protect us - it's too rough for banana boats. During our turns on watch we both concentrate hard on the compass, keeping well clear of the land and the shallower water so that at last we make it through the night with nothing else going wrong.

..OK, we're getting slightly distracted by our sailing conditions - this post, our departure from PNG, is meant to be about reflecting on our impressions of Papua New Guinea. A summing up, so to speak, of some of the things that seem to be happening in this evolving country. Things we may have missed when blogging about the day to day events. So, forget our passage-making hardships, we're coping fine.. back to the issue at hand:

The first thing to say is that the people were amazingly friendly and far form the rascals that we had feared. Contrasting the general 'common knowledge' perspective extensively. It seemed very much that these people would have to be living in hugely poor and awful conditions to turn into rascals. Perhaps these are the conditions of the slums in the large cities, rampant unemployment, poverty and desparation. We did not meet anyone from these areas, Port Morsby, Lae, Wewak that could turn these prejudices around. The common words from areas in the islands we visited were "It is dangerous and corrupt there - but nice people here". With Solidaire, for better or worse, our visit was limited to the coast and safe waters. Certainly we feel we have had some small things taken (where does all our cutlery keep going??) but it's far from the terrifying pirate hangouts we fear from stories - for example just recently a shipping company has bought a warship to protect its shipping line off the coast of Africa. Now we have warships providing security for commercial boats - perhaps a tad excessive but does that not mean excessive danger? Certainly they think it's worth the cost, and they're insured!

One of the most interesting points that makes PNG stand out is its excess of languages. Everyone we met spoke at least 3 languages; their own language for their village or area, pidgin, and English. It made it very hard to learn words from peoples language, when we wanted to be polite and greet people in their language - but it felt like every village we went to had a different was of saying good night, good evening, and good morning. Marroom, verah, arua, were a few of them we learnt but it was impossible to keep up. However in a country where 13% of the worlds languages exist, with over 800 distinct and different languages it seems one of the biggest barriers is communication and fragmentation throughout the country. On top of language there are also accents or versions of Pidgin- which apparently makes the communication hard between the two geopolitical areas, the islands and the mainland and highlands. Specifically the islands feel marginalised as the minority group because they are not understood by mainlanders. The ramification of so many distinct languages is increased tribal and village loyalty and leaves a fragmented county. For example the parliament sports almost exclusively independent MPs not very associated with a political party, loyal only to themselves and their electorates, which creates a situation ripe for corruption. It's a very complicated issue that faces PNG people. It's impossible to imagine what this part of the world would be like if it hadn't been for colonialism and the common language it has brought.

Furthermore the aspirations of young people we spoke to were interesting. What they wanted to be after school for men was generally limited to saying they wanted vocational training to be a mechanic or a carpenter. A few boys also said they wanted to be teachers as well. Perhaps a high status job within their village with usefulness applying there skills, but definitely not that ambitious feeling from a New Zealand perspective. The ambition of a generation is a strong tell tale of the future of the county, or are their dreams more sensible, our youth deluded by Hollywood? One women said she was inspired to be a public servant in New Zealand, we have blogged about her previously, but very few women responded, generally paid work is left for men and the occasional unmarried teacher. Cities are different, but it's much harder for us to have conversations with school age (anywhere from 5 to 25) people.

Another item to discuss is our experience with PNG traditional custom, its fair to say that it has been much more untouched and unaffected by western influence in some ways, or in some areas, than a lot of the rest of Melanesia (with the exception of the strong presence of Christianity). Our funniest story regarding custom was anchoring beside a beach which was taboo for women to be on. Perplexed by this arrangement on how to land - but generally practical the villagers very much wanted to show us their village and so we "disobeyed" their custom with their approval and landed with me walking on the beach quickly up to the forest. To be completely honest I was not too worried to disobey restricted female activity. Many portions of the beaches or secluded nooks and crannies in traditional villages have been reserved for men and are taboo to others (women and children). Which just sort of pulls in your gut to disobey.

Talking about gender relations further, at the same village no less, when we arrived we asked a man if there was a river nearby that we could do washing and perhaps even top up our water tanks. He said "You should have come earlier because we could have got the women to carry the water for you". It seemed a slightly excessive offer to us, 20 liter water containers from a river half an hour walk away! But anyway the most plain and obvious observation in gender relations is the amount of gender segregation in public that exists, you never see men and women together, boys and men of all ages hang out only in their crowds, and women and girls conversely. There are no couples apparent and intergender friendships is probably unheard of. Even sitting on different sides of the room at all times and greeting us separately is normal here, with the slight exception of really small children under the age of 10, you sometimes see them with their brothers and sisters. This level of segregation is quite bewildering to me. Already we're breaking their system by hanging out with each other and I feel sometimes sightly odd that I am talking to Eric, or sitting next to him where only men are - the women sitting together some distance away.

To conclude then, Papua New Guinea is a pacific nation just like home and certain aspects did remind us of how close and connected we may be. Kai bars are where you can get a quick snacks to eat, fish and chips are popular and in the global economy New Zealand cheese and milk still dominate this far from home. A fact that generates much excitement and anticipation of our cheese eating days. One of the best moments after months of no cheese was eating the delicious alluring substance sometime close to Christmas, thanks Mainland!