Cheap Meat by Gewertz Deborah Errington Frederick & Frederick Errington

Author:Gewertz, Deborah, Errington, Frederick & Frederick Errington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2010-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

WORRIED EYES AND SIGHS

To be unable to realize a compromised practice moves many Papua New Guineans from ambivalence to distress: to eat what white people eschew is a problem; to be unable to afford what white people eschew is a bigger problem. This is true for people like Joseph and even more so for those at Ramu Sugar, whose expectations are much higher. What for some are smiles and shrugs, for them become worried eyes and sighs.

We had, as mentioned, already spent considerable time at RSL. A Papua New Guinean agro-industrial sugar complex, RSL was built in the early 1980s as a centerpiece of development in a newly independent nation. It was to be a place of work where Papua New Guinean employees from all over the country would learn the modern technical skills and disciplines necessary to grow, process, and package sugar. It was also to be a place of residence where employees would enjoy with their nuclear families the rewards of their hard-won modernity. With reasonable salaries and with housing and utilities provided, they would lead pleasant, amenity-filled lives—including access to churches, schools, health clinics, and the small commercial center of Gusap. We came to respect, if not to admire, much about RSL. However, the hard times the country was going through were also adversely affecting the company’s fortunes and the lives of most of its Papua New Guinean employees. There was not enough money to enable these employees, even those well-educated ones in top managerial positions (who had passed all exams from standard six through university), to afford much of the promise of a developed life.

On numerous occasions during the course of our RSL research, we had met with one such well-educated manager, Marcus Nembwi (a pseudonym), who worked in RSL’s agricultural division earning approximately K900/fortnight (US$300). (We had an immediate bond because he was a friend of a young Chambri man whose education Deborah had helped finance.) Born in 1965 in the town of Wewak, where his father was the gardener for the Catholic Bishop, he and his family eventually moved back to their home village. There he was educated at schools run by the Assemblies of God mission, where he was taught “honesty, righteousness, living straight, and respecting others as yourself.” Passing all of his exams, he won a place at Karavat National High School, which was located in the “advanced agricultural province” of East New Britain. Thus he became interested in agricultural science and attended the University of Papua New Guinea. He was a good student and won a scholarship in 1984 to study in Japan, but he stayed just six months because he was “only nineteen and put alone into the heart of a big city.” Although he had been confident at home that he could do anything, in Japan he lost his confidence and became homesick. So he returned to Papua New Guinea and finished his tertiary degree at Lae Technical College. After working at various positions (including with a mining company

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