By: Mereno Katie
Hands callused and strong, warmly envelops my own in greeting. Her smile bright and welcoming, overpowers the gloomy aura of the black threadbare widow’s outfit that she dons. Geiwa is from the Naho Rawa LLG of Raicoast District in Madang Province, she is a refugee of sorcery accusation. Her story, unfortunately mirrors the life of many from that area.
‘Ol hausman i suspect olsem man blo me poison man na ol i kam na kilim em,’
she musters in her best pidgin. Her opening sentence completely catches me off guard and with a face of steel, she takes me on a journey deep into the mountains of Madang.
Geiwa once lived a content life with her husband and her nine children, hidden in the cool mountains of Naho Rawa LLG. She lived a satisfactory life enjoying her gardens, tending to her pigs, and concentrating on raising her children.
In 2015, the life Geiwa knew vanished in the slash of a machete. Following the death of a fellow villager, Geiwa’s late husband was suspected of sorcery and brutally hacked to pieces. His body was burnt to ashes by a group of sorcerer hunting men who call themselves ‘Hausman’. She not only lost the love of her life and father of her children that day, but the life that she had built with her husband and children was gone forever. It was all nothing but now only just a memory etched in time. Left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, Geiwa and her nine children fled into the mountains.
She now lives in a refugee settlement, a stone’s throw away from Ramu town in Bilia village. The settlement no bigger than half a soccer pitch, and accommodates around fifty refugee families. With no land to farm on, refugees have been living off food plants gathered from the Ramu Plain. Their staple diet consists purely of cassava and wild ripe ‘yawa’ bananas which are gathered from the Ramu Plain. Fetching water for drinking requires a three hour walk into the mountains, and a three hour walk back.
Three of Geiwa’s children have since married, and she now takes care of the remaining six. With no money or source of income, she cannot afford project fees for her children to attend school.
“Mi bin salim ol pikinini go skul, tasol nogat moni bilong baim projek fi. Planti taim tu ol isave hangere na ai raun, na tisa isave salim ol kam bek ken.”
I am told that there is another big refugee camp located on the foothills of Ramu town. Sakiko Care Centre is a refugee camp which houses more than six thousand sorcery refugees from the Naho Rawa LLG. The camp continues to grow, where more and more survivors continue to seek refuge there.
When asked if the refugees in Bialla had any plans for the future, they gloomily replied that they saw no end in sight for their sad predicament. The community spokesperson of Bilia, Ipson Romboke Daunde expressed how life was difficult for them. With nowhere to go, and no way of earning an income, they are hopeless and constantly living in fear of their enemies.
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