6 November 2023 -
I boarded a flight with a foreign friend I've just physically met, on an airline I've not really heard before, to spend a month in a developing country known for poverty, tribal violence and disasters. I didn't tell them at the time, but when I said goodbye to my fiancé and family at the departure gate, I legitimately felt like there may be a chance I would not see them again.
I was going to Papua New Guinea (PNG)– No, unlike what many people have asked me, it's not in Africa– a country in Oceania to do a non-profit film about the tribal issues there. In the queue just before we boarded the plane, the friend I was travelling with casually remarked, "By the way, you know when we get there the water we drink is rainwater right."
Um, WHAT? Out of everything I packed, water clarifying tabs were not one of them. "Why did you just tell me this now!" was my incredulous reply. But I steeled myself, of course, there was no way to back out now. I guess had to be prepared to face whatever may come... or not. After all, 'expect the unexpected' was advice many who have been to PNG have given me.
My first time flying Air Niugini –never heard of this airline prior to 2023!
But, how did I even get here?
We'd have to fast forward to months prior, when I spent 3 months in Norway (read about it here) and heard of the work YWAM Aalesund was doing with YWAM Medical ships: A non-profit christian organisation that specialises in bringing ships with medical aid capabilities to hard-to-reach places of need. I was not involved at that time with YWAM medical ships- but was helping with a video that involved my base leader who was working with them. That is how I met Maarten, the foreign friend I was travelling with this time. A dutch by citizenship, but a digital globetrotter as far as he's concerned, Maarten had been working with YWAM Medical ships and travelling to Papua New Guinea for some time. After working with him online for that particular video, he shared that he was planning to do a documentary there and was looking for some more video-equipped people to join.
After a call or two of him sharing about the project, I met the other teammate, Camy, online to learn more. She had been a dentist for the past 5 years in one of the highland provinces in PNG, Enga, where it was known to be one of the most dangerous/violent in the country. And the stories that Camy shared were heart-wrenching. She told of the many problems plaguing society there, stemming from human sin and leading to tribal wars, lives lost, broken systems which in turn led to lack of healthcare, education and crumbling infrastructure preventing progress for the nation as a whole.
I felt called by her stories shared and believed in what they were trying to do with a documentary to change things. Not that there weren't already some really good documentaries out there- ABC had some possibly award-winning coverage of the tribal wars in PNG. But while those documentaries did a lot to talk about the issues, what they lacked was presence of a good solution. What comes after awareness? Whose awareness? Certainly not the couch-sitting, documentary critics or audiences un-impacted by the problems on the ground. If we were to make a documentary, ours was to be a film not for film festivals or fancy channels, but for the people there. A tool for sharing wisdom where education is hard to come by.
So, I said yes to the project.
One of the many calls we had spanning 3 different countries and timezones~
Months of preparation
We were as slim a team as it gets: 3 people from vastly different cultures and backgrounds (Dutch, Indian, Singaporean) but united to do this project. Camy took on the role of story and field producer, Maarten as director, videographer and editor, myself as exec producer, scriptwriter and videographer. But all these roles are just names- we were basically the core team to handle everything to just make sure the film of our imaginations came to fruition. After months of discussions, raising funds (you can still contribute to our GoFundMe here), we bought our equipment, packed our bags, and headed to the beautiful land of Papua New Guinea.
The amazing view from the plane before touching down in Port Moresby (POM)
The land of the unexpected
From the plane, PNG looked like Eden- paradise, untouched. I've not seen this much nature at this altitude, so low to touching down. As far as my eyes could see out of the Air Niuguini plane, greenery and winding rivers spanned into the horizon. Nearing the airport, some houses I saw were scattered around... a stark difference to metropolitan Singapore where every inch of our land is developed.
Just some quick context, PNG is huge. It is the world's third largest island country, spanning 462,840 square kilometres and home to more than 600 tribes with an estimate of 850 unique languages. There are largely untouched tribes in the bush that had never seen ice (yes, frozen water) in their lives and yet also a big modern city, Port Moresby (POM), with highways and smartphones. Wow. PNG is so culturally diverse and unique, and the land itself is resource-rich, blessed with good soil, natural oil and even diamonds.
But for all that the lush land is blessed with, most of the population lives in poverty, lacking access to food, sanitised water and education. Also the infrastructure is really broken and (likely because) corruption runs rampant. Things may or may not work here, and we experienced that the moment we touched down to POM. We were headed to Enga and needed a connecting flight from the airport in POM to the main city area of Enga, known as Mt. Hagen. As expected, our flight was delayed. We entered a hall to wait where we heard people have been waiting, some for days, to catch their late flight. Welcome to the land of the unexpected! Thankfully for us, our flight was only delayed a total of 5 hours and we made it on to our little propeller plane to Mt Hagen.
Touch down at Mount Hagen! At a super small and quaint little airport surrounded by mountains
The start of an adventure
Up till this point, PNG looked pretty civilised- there were lights, roads and internet connection. But once we got to Mt Hagen, we were to make a 4-hr drive to the highlands of Enga to a small town called Kompiam. We got on a small van and did a supplies run at a big grocery store in Mt Hagen, changing cash, purchasing a sim card, buying food and other supplies we would need. That would be the last we saw of such a store. After loading up the van, we would proceed on the worst drive of my life. We were seated at the back of the van, holding together our food and items and from being thrown about from the bumpy ride. "Bumpy" feels like an understatement here- I've been on what some people call off-roading, riding through nature on mud paths with a big four-wheel drive. This was that, just way worse, as it was pitch black outside, we were seated sideways, and holding up stashes of luggage, boxes and bags for dear life. I was not usually motion-sick, but the fact that I didn't puke this time was well and truly a miracle from God.
Finally made it to Camy's! She warmed us up from our bumpy ride with some hot milk tea~
A lay of the land
For the next few days, we would be at Kompiam, a small district where the only true area of civiliasation was the Kompiam District Hospital. Set up years ago by a Christian doctor and the baptist church, the hospital was a whole gated compound where the doctors, nurses and staff lived. It had a small international school attached and was the only place, as far as I know, with running water and electricity (they had their own generators). That said, the lights cut off at 9pm and the water was from rainwater collected in big tanks on the compound. Within the hospital the vibes were calm and safe- the staff stayed near the hospital building itself, and while extremely basic, I could see how much this place was a haven for the locals who would have no healthcare available otherwise. I heard of tribes who would walk for days just to get to this hospital. In a way, the hospital was at the center of Kompiam district.
The first few days in Kompiam were spent going through paperwork, shot-lists, the script, and trying to explain to the locals what we where trying to do. We met with our main profile, Saki (more on him later), to brief him on what we were trying to do. Besides the language barrier, interestingly there were concepts of thinking between us that differed drastically that made communication a little harder. For example, when thinking or recounting the past- it seems like the local Engans do not see things linearly like us, instead they thought of things as a whole, and constantly related things and experiences to their present selves. It was interesting to understand how different our perspectives on reality can be, and also how similar it could be.
Our first meeting with our main profile, Saki Tanim.
Filming begins
As mentioned above and as we realized early on even in pre-production the challenges of communication and cultural differences were our main obstacle in production. Camy spoke Tok Pisin- a kind of english pidgin that has amalgamated into its own language (very much like Singlish, but more officially recognised), yet most Engans, especially uneducated ones did not speak Tok Pisin. Instead they spoke Engan, the primary language that we were planning for our film to be in. After the film was supposed to be for them. Thankfully we had an educated English-Engan translator, James, with us most of the time (another problem was he was also education officer of the town and was a very busy man).
Also, because of the cultural differences and the fact that none of these people were really familiar with video production, interviews were a mix of us asking questions in english, translated or clarified in Tok Pisin and then spoken to the interviewee in Engan, and vice versa. It was a long and painstaking process, but thank God that we could labour on. Over the course of 2 weeks, we managed to record about 9-10 interviews like this.
Village Life in PNG
Undoubtedly the physically hardest part of filming though, were not the interviews but actually going up the mountain where the tribes lived to capture b-roll and sequences. We planned to go up for 2 weekends, 2-3 days at a time to live with the villagers and capture shots and re-enactments for the documentary. Besides the arduous (at least for us non-locals) more than 2-hour trek up the mountain with our supplies of food, heavy filming equipment and luggages, the other challenges were that there was no easy access to water, which villagers had to collect from a river below the mountain, and zero electricity. We had to bring a lot of batteries, and use solar-powered chargers to run our production. That said, what an experience it was.
The 2.5 hr or so trek up the mountain was beautiful but tiring~ Thankful for our little helpers wh helped us with some bags!
On the sunny top of Mount Yokris where Saki's tribe, the Mayaks and Kirapenns lived, the air was crisp and cool. Cows and goats wandered around, and the pigs, though usually tethered, grazed on the leafy hills. Cosy thatched huts made of wood and dried grass/plants scattered around the top of the mountain in close huddles, with the occasional rise of wafting smoke being the only indication from a distance that there were people living there. The view reminded me that, besides all its humanly troubles, PNG was really paradise for miles that the eye could see. After much panting from exhaustion, we finally got to the hut we were to stay in. Made completely out of organic materials, it was a small 'living area' and 3 'rooms' attached, each the size of roughly a handicapped toilet cubicle, with curtains for doors. We were to sleep in our sleeping bags on the woven floor in the living area. A single solar-powered light hung from the ceiling which had no on/off switch.
One of the nights spent wrangling footage in the hut - you can see the rooms made out of the woven walls!
A few metres away from the sleeping hut was a 'house-cook', a smaller thatched hut used as a smoky kitchen where the ladies of the family would cook over wood and charcoal. Nearby, a restroom which was basically a small mound with a hole dug into the soil for doing your big/small 'business' covered by woven blinds. Let's just say I was happier to do my 'business' in the bush than in that fly-infested corner :-D On one occasion I asked Saki, "Why do you guys want to live on this mountain?". I mean, it was an inconvenient 2-hr plus trek up and down everyday for the kids to go to school or for those who needed to head to the main 'town' area. "This is our ancestral land," he simply replied. He later told me that tribes liked to live on the top of mountains so they could see any enemy coming from miles away. The concept of animosity and warring tribes have been set in place since ancestral times and I saw it in their daily life- children carrying small machetes, men taking pride in carrying guns, etc. It was a stark contrast to the nature and beauty otherwise all around.
When we got to the hut that we were going to stay at- first photo with the villagers!
Filming woes and Miscommunications
Throughout the next 2 days and even the following weekend, besides the practical challenges of needing to solar charge all our batteries, and having to sleep with the sound of rats and insects around us, the main obstacles– as it turns out is similar everywhere– were the challenges with the people. While not hostile per se, there was an air of wariness from the locals as to what we were there for and what was in it for them. Understandably, they would be wary of foreigners coming to their village, brandishing strange equipment (cameras, drone) and asking for their cooperation with our filming needs. Most didn't even understand the concept of a documentary, much less the intricacies of doing re-enactments etc.
While we did already plan to pay tokens of appreciations to those who aided in our production process, it was not easy to communicate clearly and ensure they understood we were not doing a commercial film production but a non-profit one for the benefit of their community and Enga at large. The key profiles in our documentary understood our cause and supported it by agreeing to be featured and giving us access, but we needed the buy-in from the whole tribe. Hence, we had to hold various group discussions with tribe leaders and tribe as a whole to explain on multiple occasions throughout the filming- made harder by the language barrier.
"Tok Save" is Tok Pisin for 'explanation' or as directly translated, 'Talk-understand".
The culture of 'Benefit'
The key underlying issue was the locals having a wrong impression that there was money to be made in this project– when they asked how it would 'benefit' them, they meant monetarily. Surely, we would pay them as much as we could afford for their time and effort, but we had to assuage their fear that we were just here to make a story of them for profit, then up and leave. Probably based on experience, what other secular foreigners would have done. We had to make sure they understood our cause and as our discussions progressed throughout the production process, there were times things got tense- in part due to miscommunication or different expectations from different groups in the tribe.
But I realised, sharing the message of why we came here was a 100% as important as making the film itself- having the villagers of Saki's tribe understand their story that we were here to cover, and giving them a sense of ownership to the project would be the first step in transforming their perspectives on tribal fights and violence in their culture. Even the process of talking about the topic and re-enacting the scenes relating to the incidents in the story could be cathartic and point of reflection for the people who lived in this reality daily. In a way, getting them to be a part of the filming process allowed them to see the issues in their community from our eyes.
An interview with of one of our main profiles, Pastor Ki.
Trial by fire
The hardest scene we had to film of all the days on the mountain was also possibly the hardest scene I had to film ever. It was one where we had to re-enact the burning of a house– one they built specifically for us for this purpose. It was a key scene in the story, and we only had one chance to get it right. I mean we couldn't possibly un-burn the house right? In the story, this event happened at night, but for filming purposes, we could not film when it was pitch-black; we still needed some daylight to capture shots before the fire was lit.
So it was a situation where we needed the right amount of light to film and still make it look like night, without the lighting equipment luxuries a big film set would usually give. Because of this, we decided on filming at a sliver of time just before dusk, after the sun set. And we would have to do a one-take wonder for an action scene with multiple angles, 3 cameras running, a drone flying, and multiple characters doing everything in the right blocking. All with just a 2-man video team and a handful of helpful locals.
The afternoon just before the scene was to take place, rain started falling and posed a new problem: Would the wet wood of the hut ignite? By the time it was close to shooting time, the rain had simmered down to a drizzle. We decided to just proceed and trust the locals when they said it would ignite despite the hut being soaked through. When the time fianlly came for the hut to be set on fire, I was filming on the roving camera, and we all waited to see what would happen. Very slowly, the second time the man who was to light the fire put his torch to the edge of the roof, the first few sparks caught. And quickly, the wood of the hut, although wet, went up in flames and started devouring he house.
All that's left of the burnt hut was glowing embers crackling in the wind.
At that moment, all the villagers who were looking on around us quickly backed away from the sudden powerful heat (although we were already at a safe distance). It became the hottest thing I ever experienced. Even though I was probably more than 8m away from the flames, the metal of the camera body felt hot and I felt like my camera lens was going to melt from just facing the fire. I had the sudden thought that this was what it would have felt like to watch the presence of God appear with Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnance, as in the Bible. Simply impossible, and with a sense of awe and fear looking into the roaring fire. That evening, in front of the hot embers glowing with what was left of the hut, we gathered with the villagers and said a sombre prayer, understanding the weight of the scene we filmed and one of thanksgiving. With all the various risks involved it really was a miracle everything proceeded without any major problems. Often, Camy, Maarten and I look back on that day with just incredulousness at how everything could work out.
A confirmation
To say the filming did not take a heavy mental and physical toll on all of us would not be truthful. At each step of the way I hardly felt that we were prepared enough to handle the technical, societal and spiritual aspects of the project. But at 2 key moments where I was exceptionally anxious about what we were filming, I believe God gave a sign. On two separate occasions, after we finished filming the respective scenes, there appeared a beautiful double rainbow on the hills. Twice! What were the odds of that? To my interpretation at least, that was a sign of promise that we were on the right path with our capturing and telling of the story. To me, God was saying "As promised, don't you worry about it a project that belongs to me. It is going well."
"I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth"
– Genesis 9:13
The continuing work
I could continue to give many other anecdotes about the amazing things we experienced along the way: the mini earthquake in the middle of one night, stories from the local ladies who have lost family and children to the violence, how we organised a "mu mu", or barbecue feast and saw two clans that were previously enemies sit down to eat together. But I would not be able to do justice to how awakening the whole experience was to me. The last days in Kompiam before we headed out to Mt Hagen for some rest, we packed up our equipment and luggages, and left with our weeks' worth of footage backed up into 3 separate drives.
I said goodbye to the people I've met with a sort bittersweet heavy heart. That's because I knew that while this documentary's story was mostly captured, the story in reality was not a linear one. When the credits roll, on what may be seen to be a happy ending, the story of the lives of these profiles go on– and they're the ones who will have to make the choices along the way that will impact their own, real ending. And I pray that this film (after we finally finish post-production!!) would help them make those choices.
Before the mu mu commenced - where we provided lamb chops and drinks for everyone in the village.
The last group picture taken with the whole village on a Sunday, after church service.
If you've come to the end of this long journal post, thanks for sticking around~! We have taken the time in 2024 so far to work on transcribing and translating of the multiple interviews we have done in Tok Pisin and Engan to both English and Tok Pisin. This has taken more time than we expected, but we are slowly and surely getting through all the interviews along with the help of our translators. As of November 2024, Maarten and Camy are back in PNG for the project to film more required footage and work on the assembly cut and film collaterals.
If you would like to follow along for more updates, you can join our Telegram channel here:
To continue supporting our project, you can donate to our GoFundMe here.
Thank you & may God bless and keep you.
– Matilda
Comments