My Day in the 3rd Least Livable City in the World

Flying north on my way to visit my Uncle Arnie in Madang, Papua New Guinea, I stopped to change planes in the country’s capital, Port Moresby.  Telling an Aussie you’re going to PNG is like telling an American you’re on your way to Honduras.  And Moresby is the reason why.

The city’s high crime rate has it frequently listed as among the most dangerous cities in the world.  In this year’s rankings by The Economist, Moresby came in as the 3^rd least liveable city in the world, behind Damascus and Dhaka.  I hasten to mention, however, that Baghdad, Kabul, and Monrovia were apparently not included, so Moresby cannot be worse than 6^th.  The Economist did rank both Karachi, Pakistan & Tripoli, Libya as more liveable than Moresby, though, so that did cause me some concern.

The travel doctor I saw in Sydney to get some anti-malarial tablets told me about how a buddy of his had been a resident physician in Moresby in the early '90s.  At least then, the city’s nightclubs were only open in the day, because it wasn’t safe at night.  To create the nightclub experience, they blacked out the windows.  Other Aussies will have other stories – the Aussie media makes Moresby sound like the Seventh Circle of Hell.  Representative examples are here and here.

I would never seek out Moresby or suggest it as a destination.  For starters, PNG doesn’t really have a tourism infrastructure (only 5,000 Americans even came to the country in all of 2013), and if you are coming here, you will want to see the Highlands (that’s the New Guinea you know from National Geographic) or the islands or coastal towns like Madang with beaches -- which are more peaceful, less crowded, and just all-around more pleasant.  But since I had to be in Moresby anyway to get to Madang, and I was faced with a 4-hour layover in a really dismal airport, I hired a driver in advance of my arrival to take me around town.  And I had to pay a not-insubstantial sum for his driving/guiding/bodyguarding (?) services.

I had a few requested destinations.  The first was a store I saw featured in The New York Times called PNG Arts.  It’s basically a large tin roof building that, from the outside, looks like it was a car repair shop that went out of business about 20 years ago (though in fairness, much of Moresby looks like that right now – though that’s changing).  Inside is a collection of tribal art and artifacts that could be a museum exhibition in the West all on its own.  I was expecting high prices – all I knew about PNG’s economy at this point was how much I was paying for my driver/guide/bodyguard.  The pieces, however, were amazingly inexpensive.  I bought a mask for 42 kina – less than $20.  Large pieces could be bought for as little as $100, US.  Getting it shipped back might be an ordeal, but there were bargains to be had.

PNG Arts, Port Moresby.

On the inside.  I purchased one of the masks hanging on the far wall.

My next request was to see the Parliament House.  It’s a really striking building – with the front meant to resemble a village’s “spirit house” (i.e., a sacred temple-like structure in the old days).  The area around the Parliament is not supposed to be the safest part of town, and I noticed that my guide was a pretty fast walker, despite weighing almost twice as much as me.  The Parliament is not usually open, but for some reason, it was when we showed up, even though no one seemed to be there other than the security guards.  We strolled in and had the place to ourselves (well, I couldn’t walk on to the floor of the chamber, but could go right into the Visitor’s Gallery).  Unfortunately, I could not take pictures of the chamber itself, but you can see that here. 

The front of Parliament House.

We drove around town and my driver/guide/bodyguard? showed me the neighborhood where the ex-pats (largely Australian) live behind a lot of high fences and barbed wire.  He said some Papuans live in that neighborhood too, but they were public servants who had made money off of the nation’s recent resource boom and then spent the income on a nice house in Moresby rather than on their constituents.

Speaking of which, there is a lot of construction in Moresby.  The Chinese are here, with the Japanese and Exxon not too far behind, in the race for the country’s recently found oil and mineral wealth.  There is evidence everywhere, including a nice apartment building going up with a sales office’s signs in Chinese.  We came upon one police roadblock in the city and my driver/guide/bodyguard? explained that they were just looking for expired plates, but that the police would target Chinese people.  I gathered that there’s a little bad blood here generated from the popular conception that the Chinese are taking the nation’s wealth.  Combine that with an entrepreneurial police force, and the cycle of bribery continues.

And I’m getting ahead of myself, but while I’m on the topic, far and away the nicest building in Madang is the office of a Chinese nickel concern.  It’s a building that would look completely at home in Chicago (despite being only about 5 or 6 stories tall), but in Madang, I would do a double-take every time I passed by.

Anyway, apart from the ex-pat zone and the downtown, there is a lot of poverty in Moresby.  That said, I never felt unsafe (my tour was from about 12:45 PM to 3:30 PM).  We did pass by one burned-out hulk of a car on the side of the road and it was explained to me that you should never abandon your vehicle on the road, because it will be stripped for parts and set afire.  Good to know.

I left very glad that I had seen Port Moresby.  Since I was there anyway, I think there's nothing more worthwhile than getting out of the airport & seeing how people really live.  And as long as you do your homework and have a trusted local helping you out, I think it's fine.  I will leave the alarmism for the alarmists.