P.N.G. at Fifty

On 16 September 1975, late in the decolonisation game, Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 moved on from being a United Nations trust territory under Australian governance; whc since 1949. Fifty years of independence are being celebrated. PM James Marape has presided over a flag-raising. I know bog-all about New Guinea, so I was tickled that yesterday Wikipedia devoted the entirety of its Front Page Did you Know? column to things Papua . . .

• ... that different sounds drummed on the garamut can indicate the intended recipient?
• ... that Papua New Guinea, despite having only 11.7 million people, speaks more than 800 languages?
• ... that the Papua New Guinean government almost ran out of foreign exchange reserves during a financial crisis in 1994?
• ... that the cavefish Oxyeleotris caeca is found in surface waters during the wet season?
• ... that changes in land use and forestry turned Papua New Guinea's contribution to climate change from being a net carbon sink to a net emitter?
• ... that communities around the Sirinumu Dam lack reliable access to electricity and drinking water?
• ... that Nancy Sullivan and ten other activists were sued by the Papua New Guinean government as retribution for opposing the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone?
• ... that the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates was intended to stop "yo-yo politics"?
• ... that inland fisheries in Papua New Guinea are used by more than half of people living in the mountainous Highlands Region?
• ... that a bay in Papua New Guinea is Goodenough?

PNG is about the size of California or Turkey but its people speak ~840 (very) different languages [20m YT]. So Tok Pisin is one of the official languages and first language of maybe 10% which makes it, for them, a creole and no longer a pidgin. On a visit in 2012, Charles Windsor used a translator [but not that translator] to introduce himself as namba wan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin.

They eat a lot of taro Colocasia esculenta. But beware, you need to process the raw material properly because the roots are loaded with calcium oxalate. This salt crystalizes out in the plant cells as needle sharp raphides [as R] designed to rip at the oesophagus of herbivores to give them a piss-off-and-eat-something-else message. That's all for domestic consumption. For export, there is Au Co Cu Ni and oil&gas.

Fifty years on, poor old PNG has a terrible record for diversity and inclusion, police corruption, infant mortality, disability rights, misogyny.  We could take a bit more interest and then international pressure might make it better for their dispossessed?