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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
According to the most recent data, the incidence of confirmed cases of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea has dramatically increased. Nearly two percent of Papua New Guineans are now living with HIV/AIDS (The National 2005b), it rates as the primary cause of death at Port Moresby General Hospital Medical Ward (The National 2005a), and, as stated by the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on HIV/AIDS, between 120 to 150 new cases are diagnosed daily (The National 2005c; cf. Cullen 2006). A significant feature of the situation is that a high proportion of young people aged 14 to 24 are affected by HIV/AIDS, of which young women and teenage girls constitute a particularly high-risk group (Chen 2001:166). (1) In addition, there is the risk associated with unprotected sex among teenagers (Caldwell 2000:14).
The large majority of Papua New Guineans live in rural areas, some of them in remote regions with non-existent, collapsed, ill-equipped or small health centres or aid posts (Duke 1999) where there is little or no testing for HIV; HIV/AIDS-awareness campaigns with programs designed especially for rural lifestyles hardly ever reach the population in these regions (Post Courier 2005). That is why little is known about levels of knowledge of the rural population with regard to HIV/AIDS or the realities of the many people infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS; in addition, there has been only limited anthropological research into the impact of HIV/AIDS in remote rural areas (see for eg. Eves 2003; Haley 2005; McPherson 2005). In view of these facts, the figures collected in urban hospitals like Port Moresby, Lae, Mount Hagen, for example--which are often based on projections and estimates and thus to be interpreted with caution--paint an even more dramatic picture of the epidemic that requires urgent, culturally sensitive and locally adjusted strategies for HIV/AIDS prevention as well as for the care of afflicted relatives and wantoks.
In 2004, when I returned to the Yupno in the village of Gua, it was the seventh visit since the beginning of my fieldwork in 1986, twenty years before. Needless to say, I had developed and maintained close relations with some of the people in Gua and that made fieldwork considerably easier. My first research topic among the Yupno had focussed on their traditional worldview, concept of person, and theories about and measures against illness. Basic questions included what was regarded as being ill, and what does being healthy mean, what do they think about the etiology of an illness and how do they accept biomedical medicine, represented in the form of a small health centre in Teptep. Starting with the results of this earlier research, I began my research on young Yupno's knowledge about and their dealings with HIV/AIDS or sikAIDS as it is called in Tok Pisin (tp). Most Yupno use the term sikAIDS; sometimes it is referred to as sit tevan in the Yupno language, 'serious illness' whereby s[begin strikethrough]i[end strikethrough]t is the generic noun for illness and tevan means strong. This term is also used for all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases, including gonorrhea (Keck 2005:159, 166). In order to develop better and culturally adjusted prevention of sikAIDS for the Yupno as well as people in the many other rural regions in Papua New Guinea, more anthropological research is needed that focuses on how biomedical information about HIV/AIDS is perceived and adopted into local contexts. My aim was to provide useful information for teenagers and younger Yupno who--and this applies more frequently to female Yupno--frequently have limited education and little or no information on HIV/AIDS.
THE YUPNO SETTING
The Yupno people live in a steep mountain region in the eastern Finisterre Range of Papua New Guinea, an area that is difficult to reach, right at the border of the Madang and Morobe provinces, which runs through the middle of the upper Yupno region. The dispute about the border lasted many years, until the governments of Madang and Morobe demonstrated their presence with offices and representatives in Teptep in 2000. All that remains today of this double track are two health stations; the Teptep Health Centre (THC) run by Madang and the recently erected Kangulut Health Centre (KHC), which is financed by Morobe. The Upper Yupno live in 14 villages at a height between 1600 and 2200 m, and they form the largest part of the population, approximately 6,000 people according to the census in 2000. They live in a subsistence economy, cultivating sweet potatoes (to a lesser extent also taro), bananas, sugar cane and various local and European vegetables (cabbage, onions, beans, tomatoes, leafy vegetables). Coffee and tobacco are also grown as cash crops. In the 1980s, the Lutheran Church initiated an agricultural development project designed to both provide an income and minimize migration into towns. As a result, Yupno began planting European vegetables and fruits including broccoli, cauliflower, spring onions, silver beet, capsicum, asparagus and strawberries which were then flown to supermarkets and hotels in Madang. Compared with other groups in PNG, few ideas and goods of the western world reached their remote and inaccessible region until late in the 1970s (Keck 1993b, 2005). With the construction of a government station, a school, a small hospital and an airstrip the world of the Yupno has been enlarged and their social space broadened as well: an increasing number of Yupno, mainly younger men, went into town (Lae or Madang) in search of further school education, looking for work and for an income-generating and 'modern' urban lifestyle. Some stayed on but many came back and followed a pattern of 'circular mobility' (Chapman and Prothero 1985:4) so typical of the rural exodus and the migration into the towns all over Papua New Guinea: one lives in town for some time, then again in the village, then back in town. This form of migration is today increasingly becoming more permanent (Connell 1990:2), and larger groups of Yupno are now living in Madang, Lae and Nadzap.
The Lutheran Mission of Neuendettelsau began missionizing the Yupno in the 1930s (Wassmann 1992), intensified efforts then followed in the 1950s and particularly in the 1990s, and today the church has an important position among the Yupno. Since almost all the government institutions with their staff as they existed in Teptep 20 years ago, such as a kiap office with a kiap, a post office, a policeman, a small jail and others, no longer exist, their tasks have partly been taken over by the church, whether in education (the tokples schools) or transport: only MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship) airplanes fly regularly into Teptep. To date, the Lutheran Church has succeeded in maintaining its Christian monopoly among the Yupno; its sphere of influence includes a series of jobs and positions in the village that have to be supported and partially financed by villagers, from pastors, tokples skul teachers, church leaders as well as youth group leaders, and circuit president (seket presiden). For some years now, over the Christmas and New Year period, a mission team of 'reborn Lutherans' from the Western Highlands visit for two to three weeks; in 2004 it consisted of ten younger men who indoctrinated the Yupno during hours of nightly church services with sermons and songs and whose explanatory models, including that for HIV/AIDS, are clearly marked by fundamentalism. An 18-year-old man from Gua, who is in grade 5 at Teptep school, made the point that the young men from the mission team all say, 'this sickness here comes from God, it does not come from anywhere else. We, the local, people from here, we do not get this sickness. It comes into [our country] from Israel. (2)
In numerous conversations with younger Yupno, the isolation of the Yupno region and the lack of opportunities to earn money are listed as today's pressing and interlinked problems. The remoteness of their region and, compared with other parts of the country, late development and change underlie feelings of inferiority and shame vis-a-vis other, 'more developed' groups. As one young man put it, 'we are bus kanaka tru', meaning 'really backwoods men'. The Yupno share this notion with the Rai Coast villagers east of the Finisterre, for whom their place is the 'last place' (Englund and Leach 2000:230), and with many other people in very remote areas of Papua New Guinea, such as the Duna at Lake Kopiago (Haley 2005). Information from outside filters slowly into the area, as there is no television, very few radios, and hardly any newspapers. For about 15 years--an issue revived during each election campaign--there has been discussion about building a road from Saidor via Teptep to Wantoat and the possible positive and negative effects of such a development; however, the project has never grown beyond planning phases and political rhetoric. Today many Yupno would welcome such a connection to the coast and the towns of Madang and Lae to market their vegetables. Airfares to Lae and Madang are very expensive, due to increased flight costs, for passengers as well as for cargo; in addition, flights from Teptep, the subdistrict headquarters, to Lae and Madang are much less frequent and reliable today than they were 20 years ago, and as a consequence the possibility of making money from the...
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