An experience from my trip in PNG last year:
So I'm standing in line for the ATM outside my bank. Across the street, men in torn shorts sit in the drying mud and weave enormous grass baskets. Women lean on the walls and fences, weaving bilums, the traditional bags of New Guinea. They mix polyester yarn with thread woven from tree-bark fiber, and decorate with feathers and bits of fur. Babies, firewood and produce wander by in bilums, little old men try to sell spiked clubs and rattan coasters to every living being. A guy with a boar tusk necklace and extensive tattoos wanders by, singing into his cell phone. Two conservatively dressed Australian women with blue and purple hair and nose rings are in front of me in line, and there is this arrow skidding along the ground near their feet. What is an arrow doing bouncing across the road?
People start running, most either towards or away from the Provincial Administration Building across the street. Stone throwers in the street and bow wielding guards in the government yard exchange projectiles over the heads of the bilum sellers and basket weavers. The merchants have the sense to grab their goods and get out. This reminds me that I too should have sense, and I head for the front door of the bank just before they lock down. I, the two Australians and several other people are crammed in the airlock between the front door and the security gate. Like being in a fishbowl in the middle of a riot. Meanwhile a few hundred people have gathered outside the gate of the administration building, which the police have managed to wrestle closed. A shower of stones and garbage passes over the fence, and the occasional arrow lobbed high at no one in particular comes back. A larger crowd gathers, mostly just gawking and spitting bright red betel nut remains all over the places. Police cars start rolling in, but the officers just sit and wait. An arrow hits the security glass over my head. It cracks but does not shatter. Another police truck pulls up and suddenly the melee ceases. Inspector Andrew, the Special Task Force Commander (and the most feared policeman in the province) passes through the crowd. His boney head swivels from side to side, searching for a guilty party. Everyone seem inexplicably interested in their fingernails or the clouds. The bank guard opens their front door long enough to let us in. Inspector Andrew pulls into the Administration building parking lot and the gate is relocked. He disappears into the building and the stone throwing and shouting recommence. A few people try to climb the fence, but reconsider when machetes are waved in their faces. I ask one of the bank guards what the crowd is so angry about. The Provincial Administrator is corrupt and he doesn't fix the roads or fund the hospitals. He is in today and they came to complain but his guards won't let them see him. The bow welding guards are the PA's relatives, who he brought to work because he knew there was going to be a protest today. I translate this story for the two Australians, who I learn have recently arrived to work with Save the Children to encourage sex workers to use condoms and have regular HIV tests. We chat about pitohuis and the crime rate in Goroka. Every few minutes more Police, Highway Patrol, and private security guards arrive; the crowd thins. I use the bank's phone to call WCS and ask them to send a truck to pick me up. A couple of police rehang the sign with the Administrator's name which the crowd had ripped down and trampled upon. I get one of the tellers to cash a check for me. The two ladies are planning on walking to the Raunraun Theater (with all their cash and groceries) and I presumptuously offer them a ride in WCS's truck, which is going past there anyway. They accept. As the fence is gradually reclaimed by bilums we are whisked away.