It has been a crazy week for me. I have had to deal with several different “hevi”s this week. A hevi is generally a conflict between two people. In the US we would tell the person how we felt or just be mad and get over it. Either way we would generally say our peace and get over it.
Here it is a completely different situation. Here good relationships are valued over anything else. “gutpela sindoun”- Good relationships and a general good situation is critical to life in the village.
When these conflicts arise everything else stops and everyone is thrown into a state of worry. Even the people who are not directly involve in the conflict have a sense of anxiety and have a need to get the conflict resolved.
This week someone accused one of our workmen of stealing fuel and giving it to his “wantoks” (his family line). What I was not aware of was that there is jealousy between the two lines. So I went and asked the mechanic if he had seen anything funny going on with the fuel. This was a culturally appropriate thing to do. An intermediary is often used to resolve conflict.
The other thing I didn’t know is that this is not the first time that workmen had been wrongly accused. Me asking the question set in monition a big heavy that traveled through the workmen. I had assured them that the matter had been resolved to my satisfaction and that there was nothing to worry about but this seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Finally, two days later during morning devotions it all came to a head and we spent two hours talking about it (a very PNG way to handle it). When it was all over everyone was happy we all shook hands and went away “wanbel” (in agreement). I learned a great deal of lessons from this incident but perhaps the most important is what conflict resolution looks like in PNG.
The second incident was when a man who lives near here wanted to rent one of our cars and driver to go the airport and get his wife the next day. This was the same day that our Discovery Course started so we just couldn’t do it. Generally, if there isn’t a course on we try and provide this kind of service for the community.
The man was enraged and began to scream and yell. He accused us of never being willing to help him ( even though I carried his wife and mother to the eye clinic in town for free a week before). He then said the land that our water pump was on is his family’s traditional land and that if we wouldn’t help him we had to remove it. The yelling went on for a long time and we just stood and listened.
He left and I talked the situation over with the workmen that were there. One of them is his closest neighbor. He said he would go and talk with him (the intermediary thing again). What I had forgotten is that people who live that close together are almost always related. This could have been a good thing or a bad thing. If the person is not as prominent a member of the family as the one you have a conflict with they can be dismissed off hand.
In this case it worked well for us. About an hour after He left, the workman called me and said he and the disgruntled man were coming up to see me.
When they came we all sat down in our house. The man apologized and explained that he had been under a lot of pressure. We then sat and talked and got to know each other a little more. My brother-in-law (Derrick) who is visiting made them some food (a great PNG thing to do when you are having these kind of makeup sessions).
I believe that God made this happen for a reason. This man has not lived here in a long time and just moved back this year. In the words of one of my PNG friends he is not back in the rhythm of the mountain. This is no new age saying they just meant he has had trouble fitting back into the ebb and flow of day to day life here and he hasn’t had a chance to see how the new staff here at POC does things. So, I think God made this thing happen so that we could meet and he would know that I am a friend.
At the end of the day we might not know why God has done what he has done but we can rest assured that it is for our ultimate good and the good of those who love him.
matt
No comments:
Post a Comment