Brian and his teammates arrived in Nemnem, a village found in the Bosmun language area, ready to work. The community leaders were already present and a large group of men were buzzing about excitedly in the haus boi, a structure that in many areas of PNG is built to house single men. In this area the haus boi serves a higher function as the “men’s house” where major community and religious events occur with men only. Women are punished severely for entering these types of structures. The first thing the team did in Nemnem was sit down with the leaders to figure out a good time to come together for the presentation on PBT’s new translation project their community was being invited to join. This discussion was interrupted when someone yelled from the bush and all the men ran off intent on a fight. Brian and his teammates were left alone with one community leader who quietly stated it would be safer for them to find another village to sleep in that night.
Animosity has existed
between two Bosmun villages, Nemnem and Dongan, for a very long time. On this
particular day an incident occurred at the primary school in Dongan where
several children were hurt by an out of control young man from Dongan. Just two
days before the two communities had come together and found peace about this
individual. Dongan promised Nemnem they would control this boy and that no more
violent episodes would occur. Nemnem promised to wait for Dongan to deal with the issue without getting involved themselves. When Nemnem was told about the beatings at the
school, they felt Dongan had betrayed their promises to take care of the
problem and chose to respond in the only way they knew how; by sending a
raiding party to Dongan to destroy the property of this boy’s father. It was
now Dongan’s turn to feel betrayed after the peace talks and to respond in
kind. Apparently they chose to do so right when Brian’s team arrived. The team
quickly left the area and spent the night with a family PBT knows well in a
neighboring language area.
This seems like a
dramatic event to us coming from cultures where retaliation and revenge are not
so violently enacted by whole communities. For the people of Nemnem and Dongan this incident was one
of many and perfectly normal. Everything was progressing by the book. The next morning a community leader from Dongan
called Brian and asked the team to come back to the area. Both Nemnem and Dongan
had agreed to call off the fight until after the team completed their work in both
villages. So in one day they presented in both villages, spent the night in Dongan, and
left the area the following morning where presumably hostilities resumed.
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| Some of the Nemnem men after the presentation. |
In order to be part of
this new translation project, the Lower Ramu Project, each language group invited
is required to create a board of leaders that includes representatives from
each village, dialect, church, and school. Though PBT is involved in the
training side of this project, the weight of responsibility is on each language
group to organize and direct the project. The Bosmun people are desperate to
have God’s word in their language, and despite being encouraged by their willingness
to step away from their anger for one day in order to hear how they might get
God’s word in their language, it is just one day and one small fight. It will
take the work of the Holy Spirit to truly bring them into the cooperative
relationship required for this project.
Please be praying with
us for our branch as they seek to reach four language communities in a new way
with various complications within each group (not all quite as severe as tribal
war). Pray specifically for these two Bosmun communities, that they would find
love and peace where there is now anger and hurt. Pray that God would open
their hearts to His ways of peacemaking through the practice of translating portions of
Mark into their language.
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