Among other things, it was a GodsMustBeCrazy kind of place, almost hallucinogenic in some ways, driven over the edge by colonial introjection; you found yourself doing double-takes a lot. It was a place filled with colorful characters and doings, which could be summed up by a blurb for a book of short stories, Port Moresby Mixed Doubles by Michael Challenger: "The local inhabitants are often relegated to roles as domestic servants, subordinates at work, or as partners in brief sexual flings. Among the expatriates themselves, relations are complicated by boredom, jealousy and self-importance." So true.
In keeping with our current theme, out of all the colorful characters I came across there nobody brought out the crazy melange of Das Kapital, prehistoric literality, missionary pilgrims-progressivism, and the kind of good old ingenuity that kept the chains moving on the evolutionary track than Abba Bina, aka Mr. Sh*t. I remember him fondly for his proud moral motto: "Chicken sh*t, horse sh*t, cow sh*t, but no bullsh*t." He ran for office with that slogan, and lost, because, as we all know, at the end of the day, once the charm of such populism wears off, we all want the bullshit back, the loamy loam of idealistic illusion. Anyway, Mr. Sh*t knew how to make a buck and would have perfectly understood Titus' toilet humor about money.
Mr. Sh*t, in turn, had me thinking about another character from PNG I reviewed a book about awhile back: Behrouz Boochani. He's an Iranian Kurd who was chased out of Tehran, the religious regime there wanting to bust his balls (literally) for his dreaming of a future Kurdistan. Some "friend" sent him in the direction of Australia in search of expressive freedom, apparently as some kind of practical joke, as Oz, for all its virtues, has no real protections for journalists, and struggles, occasionally, to justify its lack of. Boochani managed to find a way to smuggle not one but three mobile phones into the Manus Island prison, which, because I'm twisted, made me think of the scene in Pulp Fiction when young Butch is delivered a family heirloom.
Anyway, Boochani's book, No Friend But the Mountains, which some ex-guards have called sh*t, features several episodes when the pump didn't work and nobody knew if it was because vandals took the handles or hwat. Detainees had to slosh and smell through ankle-deep turds in "cremation" hot heat that Boochani rightly described as torture. Well, Boochani would never be able to get into Australia after that sh*t reportage, even if they had found him to be a valid "refugee." (When he arrived by boat, such a determination became moot.) And there, on Manus Island, he languished for a few years.
However, it wasn't all bad news for our Behrouz. He wrote his book with WhatsApp and won Australian lefty literary prizes for his criticism of righty Australian policy, and he still writes for the Guardian and gets absentee lecturer money from a university and shekels up with each new interview, recently signed a movie deal, and is now, when all the chips are counted, the richest homeless guy in the world, with, by my estimate, as much as $500,000 to his account. If he hadn't escaped Manus, then he might have started a cargo cult ( ten hut) there, where Margaret Mead got her early start in cultural anthropology, and drew her conclusions about Americans.
That's a lot to take in right there, but it goes on and on, like bowel symphonies sometimes do. In the course of research, I wondered about the local scene, how Australia had contracted with PNG to set up the detention and later "residential" facilities for the asylum-seekers. Apparently, the asylum-seekers had plenty of sympathy from the locals when they first arrived in 2013 (I've seen happy-faced testaments) and the good missionary work of a charitable heart seemed on full display. But then I discovered ka-ching was a factor and that other kinds of missionary work was going on, probably at reasonable rates for the refugees, but at great cost to the local colonized community: Brothels to service the asylum-seekers.
Well, the argument for brothels was not so much a matter of providing comfort to the stateless prisoners, but rather seemed, if I read right, to be along the lines of providing a good wage for the island girls and, apparently, wives. But the idea was rejected because, being a community that has absorbed the invader ethos, locals can't open up a shop referred to as a "brothel", but instead provide the same services in facilities called "massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub parlors, and studios or by some other description". Wham. And then it comes at you, the colonial corruption at work and play, Big Mammon� "� spreading its seed. You can see it in the way they dress, the crossover, and it reminds you of "horrors" you've seen elsewhere.
And the sh*t keeps coming, overflowing really, like Boochani's depicted toilet room, and you find yourself looking among the turds for a grand eye-opening epoophany, or some sage conclusion drawn on the wall, but it never arrives. Australia has spent more than $10 billion on the "offshore processing" of asylum-seekers, according to a Unicef report, from 2013-2017.
After the detention center closed and detainees were moved into other encampments on the island, Australia hired, without a bid, a shady mercenary company called Paladin who were handed $423 million dollars to service the asylum-seekers, but accountant giant KPMG, in a report through the Australian Financial Review, can't seem to figure out what the company is actually paid for: "One issue is the sheer amount of money being spent - $1600 a day for each refugee, not including food or medical care, when comparable mining camps in PNG provide far more services for around $100 a day." Where does this money go? Many refugees have since been relocated to Port Moresby.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
