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...Mission Station, now the property and concern of the Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea (ECPNG) and populated primarily by teachers, nurses and other health officials of the District, they saw young woman quietly leaving by one of the gates. She was carrying a small plastic bag in her hand. The group of women, assuming that the girl's bag was filled with rice, tea and sugar from the trade-store, immediately called out to her, demanding that she explain her presence at Buila Station at this time in the morning. The young woman, grasping her plastic bag, ran off in the direction of Balimo village. The group of women, many of whom were much older, took off after her, yelling for her to stop. The girl kept running and was soon out of sight. The group of women, out of breath, responded to the call of one of the most senior women, who told them to leave the girl alone. With much shaking of the head and grumbling, the women regrouped and resumed their march down the main street of Balimo, raising their voices in unison in a Christian hymn of praise.
Although this incident was described to me with much laughter by one of the women present at it, in explanation for noise I heard early one morning whilst staying in a house at Buila in late 2004, its message was serious. The woman, a prominent, educated and much respected member of the Church and the Balimo Health Centre, explained that the women, referred to in English as 'Warrior women', were part of a 'Prayer Warrior Group'. Prayer Warrior Groups have become fairly common among Gogodala communities since the 1980s. They consist of fellowships of women who, touched by the power of the Holy Spirit, are able to 'see' more clearly than those who have not been so touched. In particular, these women have the capacity to identify those who contravene the tenets of the Holy Spirit and a Christian ela gi or 'lifestyle'. Prayer Warrior Groups are pan-denominational, and each local Church may have women touched by the Holy Spirit. These groups act in concert to locate persons and forces within the community who pose some kind of threat to the health and well-being of others. They also participate in healing, using prayer and 'laying on hands' during illness or birthing, and have become a common sight in the labour ward of Balimo Health Centre (BHC). As has been noted throughout PNG, divination, healing and the laying on of hands are common activities of those touched by the Holy Spirit (see for example Fergie 1977; Jojoga 1977; Ryan 1969; Robbins 1998, 2004).
Until recently, these women focused largely on the threat of iwai dala--men versed in the use and powers of magic and sorcery. Thus they would systematically identify iwai dala in the village, naming men as prominent as the Deacon or Pastor of the village Church. More recently, however, with an increasing societal awareness of the spread of HIV and AIDS into the area, Warrior women have began to target those who are seen to bring harm to the community through their sexual behaviour and/or HIV status. AIDS is referred to in Gogodala as melesene bininapa gite tila gi or literally, 'the sickness that has no medicine' or, simply, as AIDS in English. There is no distinction drawn between HIV and AIDS in local understandings of this sickness. As Eves (2003:253) argues for the Lelet of New Ireland, Gogodala conceive of HIV and AIDS as one entity. At this stage, despite some, albeit limited, awareness campaigns and work by staff at the Balimo Health Centre and the Department of Health, knowledge about either HIV or AIDS is largely speculative and experiential. Much communal speculation focuses on both the hidden nature of HIV/AIDS, at least until advanced stages of the condition, and the absence of an effective medicine or cure for it. The term used in Gogodala for sickness, gite tila gi, focuses on the moment that ill health becomes apparent to others: people gauge the health of a person by their appearance and actions. HIV then, presents a conundrum, as those infected do not necessarily act or appear transformed in ways characteristic of other sicknesses. In their experience, it is only during the latter stages that AIDS becomes visible, when patients lose weight, become listless and their skin becomes dry and loose.
The very nature of AIDS or melesene bibinapa gite tila gi, then, is its ability to deceive: for it is secretive, operating outside the bounds of the visible. If HIV/AIDS is understood this way, so too, increasingly, are those infected with HIV: for they are seen to act outside the moral domain--they generate and spread sickness through illicit sexual behaviour often conducted in a secretive fashion. Thus, like practitioners of iwai or magic, and other powerful and shadowy creatures referred to as ila dala or 'fire-bottom men', those with HIV are believed to move around at night away from the eyes and ears of the community, or whilst away in other parts of the country while engaged in paid employment. It is not necessarily surprising, then, that Warrior women have come increasingly to patrol the areas of Balimo town and village perceived to be the grounds of those engaging in illicit sexual relationships. Women, in particular, have been targeted as their movements during the night or in the early hours of the morning are, by their very nature, suspicious.
Thus, the young woman sneaking out of Buila Station in the early hours of the morning became an immediate figure of suspicion for the Warrior women patrolling the streets of Balimo. This fellowship group immediately assumed that she was engaging in some kind of surreptitious sexual adventure, that perhaps she was even pamuku meri--a sex worker or woman who exchanges sexual services for goods or tradestore foods. That she carried a plastic bag, which these older women assumed to hold rice, tinned fish and maybe tea and sugar, only seemed to confirm her guilt. Thus they sought not only to shame this young woman, and possibly her partner, but also, more importantly, bring such sexual liaisons into the public gaze--and thus make them socially accountable. Warrior women, then, seek to reclaim the night, and its illicit and invisible sexual possibilities from those who by their behaviour are seen to place the rest of the community in danger of contracting HIV/AIDS.
WARRIOR WOMEN
Prayer Warrior Groups have existed in the Gogodala area since the late 1970s and early 1980s, during which time Gogodala men and women began to experience 'revivals' in village Churches (see also Jebens 2005; Robbins 1998, 2004; Tuzin 1997). For the Gogodala, the notion of revival derives from the Biblical section of the Pentecost, which involved the descent of the Holy Spirit, referred to in Gogodala as Kamalite Alaete or Awana Limo, to earth and the transfer of it into human bodies, which resulted in practices like 'speaking in tongues'. This process is referred to in Gogodala as awana limote paeyana gi--literally, the 'coming of the Holy Spirit'. Initially, any man or woman in the Church could be entered by the Holy Spirit during these revivals. In many of these cases, the Holy Spirit descended with some violence, resulting in wild dance-like movements, the afflicted thrashing around until they fell down unconscious. For most, this was the point at which the Holy Spirit then left the person's body, having expunged the 'sins' of the recipient.
In one such documented case in 1982 at Wasua station on the Fly River, during a Pastor's convention, the Pastors were called to attend nearby Tete village to help those experiencing a revival. Pat Christon, an APCM missionary wrote:
The clanging of the morning prayer bell woke us before daybreak. Soon a low hum spread through the village. It was the Christians praying in unison as is often their custom. Since the revival started at Easter this has become part of life at Wasua and in those villages where new life has come. The day begins and ends with God ... Some people had experienced physical coldness in their feet and spreading up their body till they shivered from head to foot. This was accompanied by an overwhelming conviction of sin. When this was confessed their body returned to normal temperature and joy came with the consciousness of sins forgiven (Christon,...
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