Port Moresby

The capital of Papua New Guinea, and the city whose reputation the video exists to test. Harry spends a day here on foot, on a local bus and in a bar in Four Mile, having been told before leaving home about cannibals and robbery.

Obs: much of the day’s conversation is in Tok Pisin and English at once and the subtitles are heavily garbled. Every figure on this page carries the unverified marker for that reason.

The reputation, and Harry’s theory

He states it explicitly partway through the day and then goes to test it: the violence here is tribal, aimed at other tribes, and a foreigner is not the target.

• Over 700 tribes, each with its own language, customs and grievances, all present in one city — his explanation for why the capital carries the reputation it does.
• Told back to him by a passenger on the bus: rival tribes seeing each other in the street doesn’t start anything on its own. It takes a grievance — theft, an insult, something done to you.
• What the day produced: no incident, constant unprompted friendliness, and repeated insistence from strangers that they are friends rather than enemies.
• The counterweight he doesn’t drop. People also tell him first-hand about stabbings and robbery, and the man who tells him Four Mile is fine to visit declines to guarantee his safety in it.

The one warning he repeats rather than argues with: he states on camera that 50% of women in Papua New Guinea have been raped and that 65% of men have admitted to gang rape (from video – unverified — no source is given in the video), and says that women should not come. It is the only point in the day where his answer to how dangerous is it really is that it is exactly as dangerous as you heard.

Safety on the ground

• City wardens are everywhere, and they are his practical answer to the question in the title. Community police, approved and funded under the governor’s initiative, visible on every street he walks.
• The warden team leader in Boroko runs 30 of them. His stated aim is clean streets, so women can work without fear and investors will come; his account is that five years ago the area was dangerous and now it isn’t.
• Payday is the risk marker. Harry arrives on one, and what he is told is that everyone drinks.
• Knives are restricted in some places, because of what they get used for.
• Why foreigners feel unsafe, according to a local: outsiders keep their distance and hire security. Be open with people, and you don’t need it.

The bus to Four Mile

The best of the day, and the reason to take it rather than a taxi.

• Buses don’t leave until they’re full, and then keep taking people anyway — new seats materialise out of nothing.
• A fellow passenger narrates the route out of the window, unasked, like a tour guide.
• Everybody talks to him at once. Four conversations in parallel, an invitation to a coastal village from a man he’d met twenty minutes earlier, and an offer of a woman’s sister as a wife — settled at two necklaces in place of a pig, followed by a quiet word to be careful.
• Homemade beer, brewed with a pipe and steam and mixed with whatever is around. He’s told 20–30% (from video – unverified), and that a bad batch can do real damage.

Daily life

• Betel nut is the constant. The full ritual: the nut, then lime, then a mustard stick dipped in the lime, chewed together, 1 kina. It stimulates you, in the local description — energy, and talking. The pavements and bins are red with it, and Harry is told that banning it would cause riots because it is a way of life rather than a habit.
• Barefoot is normal. He notices how many people have no shoes at all, and how hard their feet must be.
• Kinship as address: a stranger of your mother’s age is mother, of your father’s father, and everyone else brother or sister, known to you or not.
• Five to seven languages each is unremarkable, and the reason given is marrying into different villages.
• Ground food over processed food — bananas, coconut, sweet potato. What he’s told is that rice and noodles leave people unsatisfied and irritable.
• Rugby is the national obsession, including against Australia, and the group he asks are matter-of-fact that fights at games happen and that people have been killed over one.
• Wages, as given to him and mutually contradictory: 350 kina a month, foreign employers paying 2.50 an hour, sometimes 50 toea (from video – unverified).
• On the government: education and daytime security have improved; at night, people say, there is nothing.

Harry’s tips

• Carry cigarettes or betel nut. His stated rule for the country: if someone does something for you or takes you somewhere, giving nothing back is rude. See bring gifts for hosts.
• Buy the thing rather than hand over the money. He offers to buy a man shoes, finds nothing usable in the shop, gives him 100 kina instead, and says on camera immediately afterwards that it will go on betel nut and beer and that it was his own mistake. See buy the thing, don’t give the cash.
• Take the bus, not the taxi. Everything worth filming that day happened on it.
• Be open rather than escorted. The advice comes from locals, twice, and matches what actually happened to him.

Source

• How Dangerous is Papua New Guinea Really? 🇵🇬 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ragi6vg7LWw