PNG students studying in China showcase bilum as the country's national identity and cultural icon in Zhejiang Province, China

by PETER S. KINJAP

PAPUA New Guinea students studying in Zhejiang Province, Xiasha District of China at the Zhejiang Gongshang University will do a showcase of PNG Bilums with other cultural displays from various cultural origins of PNG. The event will take place on the May 4th at the University's International Cultural Day celebrations.
        More than 20 PNG students will be participating in this international cultural event with many other students from various countries throughout the world with their cultures and traditions.

PNG students representative Shyriell Wembri said this event is an important cultural event for PNG students to display the richness in cultural variety from their home country PNG. One of the main PNG cultural icons to be showcased is the popular tourist-loved PNG souvenir, the bilum. 
                  With its aesthetic value and uniqueness the bilum has already attracted residents in the Zhejiang Province. “It’s gonna be our cultural day so most bilums will be displayed with few of us wearing the bilum wear in PNG colours,” Wembri said.

She said PNG students will participate in traditional attires and dance the Tolai Dance, a display of PNG bilums (bilum bags, bilum wears and bilum hats) and other cultural items to the world so that they can see and know that there is a small island country called Papua New Guinea with its beautiful traditions and customs to feast their eyes.

A photo gallery on PNG bilum products being displayed and showcased at this event in China will be uploaded on this PNG Bilum blog. This blog is a volunteer initiative to promote PNG bilums for tourist attraction and stir literature on PNG bilums. Stay tune.

PNG student leader at Zhejiang Gongshang University Shyriell Wembri in her PNG flag colour bilum outfit with a bilum bag and a bilum hat in China. Image Courtesy of Shyriell Wembri / 2017.

A popular bilum pattern from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Image: Bianca Barry / 2017.

A Kundu design bilum from Papua New Guinea, originated from the highlands. Image: BL Burgin Willie / 2017. 

A collection of PNG bilum variety from the highlands. Image: Samson Sala / 2017.

This is a bilum collection owned by Tasha, a young girl from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Image: Tasha K Pep / 2017.

  

A collection of Wasara Bilums from East Sepik Province. Image: Jen Jen‎ on PNG Kona Market (Facebook Page), 2017. 

Young girls in traditional attire and with Sepik style bilums. Image: Nicole Morgan / 2017.

Spotted in this photograph is the Irish sensational singer and artist Ronan Keating's girlfriend Storm Uechtritz with her Sepik Bilum from Papua New Guinea. Image: www.dailymail.co.uk 

Each bilum tells a story, recalls a personal tie and is the visualization of the psyche.

by PETER S. KINJAP

IN PNG traditional society bilums were cultural expressions from each cultural village, made and used for specific purposes and occasions. Today bilums are common in many regions of the country and abroad.

Maureen Anne Mackenzie on her paper "Androgynous Objects: String Bags and Gender in Central New Guinea (1991)" related that bilums were made mostly by non-Austronesian speakers, that is, mostly the Highlands and Momase regions which today popular bilum designs and patterns emerge from Mendi, Mt. Hagen, Goroka, Madang and Wasara (Sepik).

The Austronesian language speaking people from Southern and New Guinea Island regions then made and used baskets and clay pot that serves the same purposes as the bilums.

With the influence of western ideas and promotions of their concepts, changes have scattered and displaced many traditional skills and knowledges. For PNG women, it did not altered their bilum making skills and knowledge but instead the changes affected the use and perception of bilums. The creation of transportation systems, communications and business inventions have inspired the women to curve those perceptions of changes through the twisting of ropes.

From commercial point of view, bilum offered an opportunity for cash generations. The emergence of large scale transforms bilum production leads to the adaption of modernization of the country. New forms of bilums with new different styles and patterns have appeared and have become successful in urban areas. To meet the new expectations and demand, bilum weavers have chosen new materials and modified techniques in the fabrication of bilum bags.

The choice of new materials could be attributed to scarcity and unavailability of the traditional bush materials. The process of making a bilum requires time and patience, and those mothers who intend to make few bucks invest to buy "wool" (arcylic) or Nylon in order to get income more quickly. Importantly, bilum weavers buy imported ropes maybe because of the prestige associated with imported goods. 

Many bilum users carry bilums made of wool or Nylon consider that these modern materials are suitable to a modern environment. The use of imported materials allows women a level of complexity in pattern configuration which cannot be reached with fibres dyed naturally or with artificial colours. 

Modern materials offer a larger possibilities for bilum in trade and commercial than traditional. But the taste of modern material did not destroy the traditional bush materials as many bilums are still in natural fibre and they attract the same authenticity. 

Bilums are a permanent actualization of a moment of early childhood, an artefact in which we were swung as babies; the most lasting symbol of the affection and care of our mothers. Bilums secure and protect the most personal items and, at the same time, display the emotional relationships of of artefact holder with the person who made it. 

This psychological dimensions of bilums is one of the most salient aspects of the use of bilums. These bilums are kind of bridge between themselves and those they loved. For those who are living in the urban areas, bilums represent as well as affectionate link between holders and those they like, in particular if these last live far away. In a way, bilums restore a tie with their place of birth or place of origin, a part of their family and their culture, as with traditional adornments such as headdresses, gras shirts, bracelets or necklaces which they wear for special events. 

Unlike traditional adornments which are worn once in awhile, bilums can be worn constantly. Many adults, boys and girls or men and women can possess several bilums, some even collect them and display them on the walls of their house or rooms at the school or home.

Some of them, which are specially prized either because of their aesthetic or because of the person who made it, are worn only on special occasions such as family gatherings or religious events. In other words each bilum, modern or traditional, tells a different story, recalls personal ties and is a visualization of the psyche. 

 

Baby in the bilum being swung by her sister in Sydney, Australia.
Image: Arosame Wawe / 2017. 

Sepik girls dressed up in traditional attire with Wasara Bilas bilum.
Image: Doreen Dii Doenz / 2016.

Kimberly with a 'bu' soft drink and her bilum walking. Image: Wandařïï Kimberly / 2017.

Soniya with her PNG flag bilum. This is one of the many bilums she has in her possession. Image: Shonnyah Snider / 2017.

PNG's Deputy Opposition Leader Hon. Sam Basil in Upper Watut in his district on October 9 to deliver an ambulance was presented with a gift of bilum amongst others.
 Image: PANGU Party / 2017.

One of the many bilums Bianca from Tambul, Western Highlands Province has in her possession. Image: Bianca Barry / 2017.

Diana with two of the bilums she has made to sell them at the Goroka Bilum market.
 Image: Jmaio Diana / 2017.

My Bilum

by IPHIGENIA SOABA
(A poem about bilum)  

I love my bilum

Because it was given to me by my big sister 

And I love my big sister too.

My bilum is purple 

My favourite colour

I carry my bilum everywhere 

To school

To church or just to spin around

To show the beautiful colours it has.

My friends admire my bilum

And so do I.

I love my bilum.

A grandmother with her bilum carrying her grandchild. Image: Arosame Wawe‎ / 2017.

A girl with her bilum. Image: Aderf McFadden Wurr / April, 2017.

Two girls with their bilums for a selfie. Image: Anzzgillah Kewa / March, 2017.

A girl with her bilum. Image: Hela Wandarii Tunzup Nong / March, 2017.

A girl with her bilum. Image: Ray Ray Relvee / March, 2017.

A girl with her bilum. Image: Marielisha Ilai / 2017.

A boy with his bilum. Image: Dan Wairin / 2017. 

• Poem extracted from the book "Twisting Knowledge and Emotions: Modern Bilums of Papua New Guinea" edited by Nicolas Garnier. The University of Papua New Guinea, 2009.

Bilum

by STEVEN EDMUND WINDUO
(A poem about bilum in Tok Pisin - one of the PNG's national language widely spoken)  

Mak blong Madang em wanpla

Mak blong Sepik em natapla

Na ol Goroka tu igat mak

Na blo Hagen em no wankain

Olsem blo ol Mendi.

Yu laik save yu yet baim na karim

Yu laik filim yu ken karim wanpla

Em no hevi olsem saksak long karim

Em no hevi olsem taro long karim

Em no hevi olsem kaukau long karim

Em no hevi olsem stone long karim

Yu traim bai olgeta stail bai pinis

Kainkain kala na mak i pinis long skin

Ol han i wokim em i gat bikpla nem

Na save blo ol i winim olgeta

Na mekim kamap bilum

Madang designed bilums owned by a woman from Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands Province. Image: Elizabeth Bonshek / 2007. 

Highway bilum made and owned by a woman from Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands Province. Image: Elizabeth Bonshek / 2007. 

Pawa Post bilum made by a woman from Goroka and owned by a woman from Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands Province. Image: Carolyn M Doa / 2017. 

A girl proudly with her Madang style bilum. Image: Kay Chee / 2017.

Wasara Sepik bilums on sale in Port Moresby.
Image: Jen Jen‎ on PNG Kona Market / 2017. 

A bilum from Lake Kopiago, Southern Highlands Province. Image: Felix Talira / 2017.

• Poem extracted from the book "Twisting Knowledge and Emotions: Modern Bilums of Papua New Guinea" edited by Nicolas Garnier. The University of Papua New Guinea, 2009.  

PNG bilum travels over time and space: As a cultural material from Goroka to a modern fashionable item in New York.

by MONICA ORBE - www.pri.org (edited)

ON a sun-drenched day, you often spot women sitting under a tree for shade or perched against a grass hut, twisting plant fibers into yarn, weaving the yarn into a textile and making a carrying bag called a bilum.

A PNG girl wearing a bilum dress. Image: Mono Meri Enga / 2017. 

From the time that a young Papua New Guinean girl is old enough to remember, bilum bags are part of her life. She grows up seeing her foremothers weave them, wear them with a strap across their foreheads and even be married off with them. Traditionally made of plant fibers and other natural materials, such as feathers and fur, bilum bags show a girl’s social standing, where she came from and her marital state.

Bilum as a bride price

When marriages are arranged in Papua New Guinea, the husband and his family send a bilum bag as part of the “bride price.” After the exchange is made and the marriage is finalized, the girl slings the strap of the bag across her forehead and uses the bag to carry things, like food, on her back. The bilum notifies everyone that she is married.

Isolated Goroka has recently felt the impact of westernization. In the last five to 10 years, the Internet, cell phones and television have slowly changed the culture. Jaukae and other women say men are now more likely to abandon their wives and children for a modern life, often with a younger woman.

Two PNG girls in bilum dress. Image: Lovelyn Howard / 2017.

After this happened to Jaukae, she felt lost trying to support her five children. She found comfort in going back to tradition and weaving bilum cloth. But instead of making it into a bag, with all its marriage symbolism, she sewed it into a dress and wore it in town.

The 30-year-old single mother remembers the shocked reaction. “Everybody would say ‘Look at that! Is she all right? A bilum is something we carry our food in. Who is she to wear that?’” she says. “So I was really breaking through customary beliefs.”

Bilum becomes a business

News travels fast in small towns like Goroka. As people spread word of Jaukae's dress and other bilum creations, she became known as bilum meri, the bilum woman. Soon, she started to receive orders.

By showing the women of Goroka that bilum need not be limited by the confines of marriage, she unintentionally taught them that they need not be either.

A Papua New Guinean girl wears a wool bilum bag over her shoulder.

A girl in her bilum dress outfit. Image: Mono Meri Enga / 2017. 

Now, more and more women are starting to wear bilum bags, but over their shoulders, challenging the symbolism of bilum as a marriage bond.

In the past, “bilum” almost exclusively referred to the bag worn on a woman’s head. Largely due to Jaukae's unwitting act of rebellion, bilum has now come to mean the cloth used to make the bags.

Jaukae sells bilum dresses, hats and scarves in a variety of colors, patterns and materials, depending on the tastes and finances of the buyer. Many single women are customers, and some clients are abroad. How she got to this point explains that day in New York at a fashion show in 2014 when her cloth made it down the runway.

At first, she says, “it was really hard work trying to break down people to understand that bilum can be something different.” She needed a loan to build her business and to bring in other women to help her weave. “So I invited Pacific Islands Trade and Investment [a government business development agency] and said, ‘Come along. I am hosting a bilum festival.’”

She planned her festival just before a popular market event called the Goroka Show, so tourists would be in town with time on their hands. Jaukae saw it as an opportunity for single mothers, like herself, to sell their work.

PNG girls with their different bilums. Image: Lizzy Rylez Kela / 2017. 

The Bilum Festival was such a success with tourists and locals that it is now celebrated annually, she says. “When the tourists and guests come into Goroka town for the show, at least they come to my festival and then they buy bilums from my mothers [the weavers].” 

Competitors expand the market

While Jaukae focuses on a growing foreign clientele, other weavers have focused on modernizing bilum making for the local market. Dorothy Ketau heard Jaukae speak at a women’s empowerment event and, as a mother without a partner, wanted more control over her life, too.

A 'big shot' bilum design. Image: Bianca Barry / 2017.

To create a lower-priced bilum to sell locally, Ketau decided to use a machine, instead of her hands, to twist the yarn. That cut spinning time in half. She also works with less expensive, synthetically dyed wool — a material Jaukae wouldn’t dare use.

Ketau now also has a group of single mothers working for her. Each weaver can churn out a bilum bag in a week or so. Ketau sells a no-frills version of the traditional one used for bride price at just 100 Kina. One Kina in Papua New Guinea buys a pineapple at the market or a round trip bus ride into town. It's about $37.

Ketau spends about 10 Kina on supplies per item. “So if [the clients] are paying me 100 Kina for a bilum, I pay [the weavers] 40 kina,” explains the new business woman. She says she earns more than 500 Kina a month.

She is finding life as a single mother easier than ever before. “When I was working, I was still weaving, too,” she says, “but the type of money I make right now is far better than ... being employed.”

A PNG girl in a bilum dress with Simbu Provincial flag colours.
 Image: Image: Emily Andrias Aisa / 2017.

Ketau says she sees an uptick in sales prior to the wedding season. “When it comes to an occasion of bride price,” she says, “we make a lot of money. It is really valued in our society, in our community especially. Any bride price that is done can’t go without bilums.”

Ketau is making a living off a traditional way of life that has eluded her. Like Juakae, Ketau has seen an impact on the lives of the women who work tirelessly to make mass-produced bilums for her.

“I would like to take it to the next level where I can come back to help the weavers, ‘cause I have seen how they have struggled, too. All of the weavers tend to be ... single mothers, defectors [divorced women,] separated, all this. I think I can use this bilum to bring some help back to these mothers.”

Recently, Ketau was asked to make 5000 bilums to be given as gifts at the South Pacific Games (Papua New Guinea’s local version of the Olympics.) She has also been chosen to showcase her bilums at next year’s Bilum Festival and has registered as a bilum maker with the National Cultural Commission in its effort to preserve the culture and art of bilum making.

The future of bilum

Jaukae, though, has grander ambitions for bilum. She wants to bring it, and her business, to the world.

A girl in traditional attire with bilum products of bra and hand-band.
 Image: Ałphã Quĕĕñ Hålē / 2017. 

In September, 2014, she participated in the LDNY (London-New York) Festival. Held at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York, the festival featured a fashion show and luncheon, aimed at empowering and inspiring up and coming female designers.

The experience opened her eyes to how far she had come, and how much further she still had to go. “Everybody knew where they were going and who were the buyers there,” she recalls. “There were women with money. They had factories and they had places where women work.”

“Everybody was talking about their products ... at least they were given times to talk about their products. And I was lost, I didn’t know what to say.”

Fashion students from Parson’s School of Design and the London College of Fashion were charged with selecting one of the international designers and creating an item of clothing from the designer’s material for the fashion show.

Once again, Florence found herself in the position of having to justify bilum as something more than a quaint tradition. Students would come up to her perplexed by the new fabric, inquisitively stammering, “How am I going to…?” She would then explain how it could be used in designs and they would politely retort, “Oh ... okay,” and move on to the next designer.

A PNG girl eating corn and her bilum. Image: Wandařïï Kimberly / 2017. 

She feared that “nobody would want to work with bilum, because everybody was confused.” But one lone student from the London College of Fashion came up to her and said she would like to make a hoodie of bilum.

“When my bilum came down [the runway,] I was like ‘That’s my bilum.’ I was completely lost. I just sat there and tears were coming down.”

It was the culmination of one dream and the start of a new one. “I want a huge market. I want to export more, like home wear [casual wear] fashion. Fashion from the ethnic side,” she says.

A member of Parliament Hon Sam Basil with a bilum dress on campaign rally.
 Image: PANGU Party / 2017.

From single mother — and now grandmother — trying to make money for her kids through a traditional craft, Jaukae now sells her custom work to clientele in Australia and is getting comfortable with the label of international designer.

“[Bilum] has changed my life greatly.”

PNG colour bilum. Image: Jmaio Diana / 2017.

Each bilum bag from PNG is a woman's story and the designs are a visual language

by CLARE PRESS - www.smh.com.au

"Why does anyone buy a beautiful bilum bag?" says Caroline Sherman. "It's not just to put your wallet and keys in, is it?" True, that. The allure of the covetable fashion accessory is all tied up with status and desire. I've "invested in" bilum bags because they were good quality, or irresistibly pretty, but also because magazines assured me this was the latest "it-bag". I once bought a ridiculously expensive clutch because it matched my new shoes.

If Sherman has her way, there will be a lot more Australian women buying the bilum bags from her Among Equals label. Perhaps they will do so for the reasons above but there is a better one, she says: "These bilum bags can change the lives of the PNG women who make them. What put it in perspective for me was when I found out that one of the weavers we work with was able to buy walls for her house with the payments she received. She literally had no walls. It's quite common to have no electricity and no running water in the areas we're working in."

Possum fur bilum made by a woman from Tambul, Western Highlands Province.
Image: Elizabeth Bonshek / 2007.

Among Equals is a collection of Bilum - hand-woven Papua New Guinean bags "of deep cultural significance" made the traditional way by women in the mountainous region around Goroka. Back in Sydney the bags are embellished, or as Sherman describes it, "given a contemporary twist", with tassels and painted wooden beads. She does this bit herself. "I spend a lot of time on the floor making pompoms."

A textiles designer by trade, Sherman was wandering around a government trade fair in 2014 when she "saw this flash of amazing colour and pattern bilums from PNG". It was a group of indigenous women from PNG demonstrating traditional weaving techniques. "I sat with them for hours, I was so excited by their craft. I'd never heard of a Bilum."

"PNG is our closest neighbour," she says. You can fly there in an hour from Cairns. "But like most Australians, I'd never been. All I knew was the war stuff, the Kokoda trail stories. In terms of design it was unchartered territory for me."

A "big-shot" bilum design made by a woman from Tambul, Western Highlands Province. The big-shot is one of the latest patterns or designs in the year 2016 and 2017.
Image: Bianca Barry / 2017.

Making several trips to educate herself and meet weavers, what Sherman discovered was that while PNG is resources rich, it's reliant on foreign investment and jobs for locals are scarce. It's common for women to be the main breadwinners.

In remote areas weaving and selling bilum bags is one of the only ways to make a buck, but without a sustainable market, sales often depend on the whim of tourists – and there are precious few of those in places like Goroka. In the patrilinial societies which abound here "they don't allow divorce and there are serious and endemic problems with domestic violence," says Sherman. "Rape is frighteningly common. Their worlds are complex and often violent and insecure." She figured a sustainable income could only help, and finding an Australian market, based on repeat business, was something she could contribute.

Sherman's initial idea was to commission her own designs, "but the bilum bags lost something that way. I realized is each bilum bag is a woman's story and the designs are a visual language."

A grandmother from PNG living in Sydney, Australia is making a bilum. Her design and patterns is a language of love to her grandchildren who would be using this bilum. Image: Arosame Wawe / 2017.

A year on, she sells them online and through small exhibitions – there's one in Sydney at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Paddington (art world philanthropist Gene Sherman is Caroline's mother-in- law). What the brand does is present these bilum bags to an international audience as artisanal luxury items, allowing Sherman to pay the weavers a premium. 

She runs Among Equals as a social enterprise, ploughing her profits back into weaving communities, which she works with through the government organisation like Pacific Island Trade and Invest (PTI). Her dream is to partner with a charity to build a workshop similar, in ethos if not perhaps in scope, to the one New York-based luxury brand Maiyet and not-for- profit outfit Nest has planned to improve working conditions for the silk weavers of Varanasi, India.

It's not about scale, she explains, but providing a safe, clean, well-equipped place that the weavers can call their own. "Among Equals can never be a production line. It takes the ladies weeks to make the bilum bags. It's a really grass roots process, it's slow, and that's why it's lovely."

PNG girls and women love their bilum bags. This photograph is a collection of bilums owned by a young girl displayed in her room wall. Image: Dante Bii / 2017. 

Not everyone in PNG is agrees. As the modern world encroaches on places like Goroka, slow can read as old-fashioned, and the younger generation tends to be less keen on learning traditional skills. Others feel protective over their craft and its heritage. But weavers like Florence Jaukae, who calls herself a Bilum fibre artist, are fearlessly reinventing the medium. The first time she sewed her Billum cloth into a dress, her peers thought she was at best off her rocker, at worst being unforgivably subversive. "Everybody would say 'Look at that! Is she all right?'" she said last year. 

"'A Bilum is something we carry our food in. Who is she to wear that?' So I was really breaking through customary beliefs.'" It worked.

Jaukae's designs have taken her as far as New York, where as part of an International Trade Commission program she worked with the students from Parsons and the London College of Fashion. On September 1-2, 12 local designers will have the chance to court global fashion when PNG holds a catwalk event called Runway in Port Moresby.

"We used to say 'global' in the fashion industry to mean London, Paris, New York, but that's an outdated view," says the event's official photographer Sandhya Dusk Devi Nand, a Sydney-based Fijian former model and TV presenter, who is a passionate advocate for ethical fashion.

Tourists with bilums in Goroka, Bird of Paradise Hotel. Image: Peter Kinjap / 2008.

"Our own region has so much to offer in terms of creativity and inspiration, there's a lot to get excited about here. Who is to say the next big fashion name won't come out of PNG? But also fashion can work as a form of feminism in the Pacific," she says.

"It can be a tool for expanding horizons, taking something that comes naturally to females - dressing up - plus creative skills they already have - sewing or weaving or printing fabric - to establish independence and sustainable business."

• Clare Press is a slow fashionista, and the author of Wardrobe Crisis, How We Went From Sunday Best to Fast Fashion.

PNG School girls in traditional attire and with their bilums. Every girl in contemporary PNG society loves a bilum bag. Image: Diikenz Dii Dykes / April,  2017.

Bilum has helped women in Mt. Hagen to have hope in their life

by CATHERINE WILSON

(THE JAKARTA POST - extracted from Keith Jackson's PNG Attitude blog) 

IN Mt. Hagen, a city high up in the valleys of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a group of local women, many of whom are HIV positive, have begun a self-help initiative to achieve dignity and a better standard of living.

Many live in informal settlements on the city’s periphery and confront daily struggles with poverty, drugs, family violence and inter-clan conflict.

A bilum made by a woman from Western Highlands Province.
 Image: Elizabeth Bonshek / 2007.

Established in 2007, the Mt Hagen Handicraft Group consists of 50 women, of whom 25 have AIDS, all facing social and economic hardship within the community. Handicraft coordinator Barbara Pagasa spoke evocatively of the women’s lives.

“Life is a dream of hope and many think and wish if only an angel from above could rescue them from this life of struggle that is hidden deep inside their hearts,” she said.

“A fear of hunger, sickness and death awaits and creeps quietly into their minds, thinking if I don’t wake up as early as 5am during the first breaking of the day, looking for twigs, empty cartons to cook breakfast, God knows what.

“If I don’t do it, then who else is going to do it?” she asked. “This has been their day to day struggle to meet their basic needs and to have a decent plate of food on the table each day.”

In a nation where women are significantly underrepresented in decision-making roles and suffer from a high maternal mortality rate, AIDS is another cruel burden. According to the United Nations Development Program, “gender-based violence affecting women and girls has reached unprecedented levels making them vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS.”

A Southern Highlands Provincial Flag bilum design made by a mother from Western Highlands Province. Image: Meri Hagen / 2017.

In 2009, the National Aids Council of Papua New Guinea reported that 34,100 people were living with the disease, approximately 0.9% of the population, with 60% of reported cases located in the highlands. Women comprise 56% of known cases.

The group’s aim is to empower women through self-generated incomes and a physically and psychologically supportive environment and, thus, to “make a difference to women by improving their ways of living and ability to escape the traps of these crises.”

The first aim is achieved by developing the skills of women in sewing and the designing and making of bilums, versatile and unique string bags that have become cultural icons of PNG. 

Every week Julie makes her way to the handicraft group’s offices situated behind a busy bakery in the centre of Mt Hagen. In this sanctuary, away from the grinding noise of trucks on the main road and endless hustle of roadside market stalls, she finds peace in the women’s quiet industry and gentle friendship. 

Ten-needle bilum pattern from Western Highlands Province.
Image: Sodua Jexu Sparks / March, 2017.

Julie has been living with HIV for nine years, ever since she contracted the virus from her husband who had had multiple sexual partners. “My husband died nine years ago and I have two children I am responsible for,” she said.

In addition to the economic challenges of being a single parent, Julie has been ostracized by her family because of her HIV status.

“When my husband died, my family did not want to go near me or drink from the same cups or eat from the same plates,” she recounted. “Even now, when I visit my relatives, they make sure the utensils I use are kept separate from the others.”

“With the bilums I make and sell, and with the money I get, I buy school fees and food and medication,” she continued.

Bilum sales on display in Mt. Hagen. Image: Meri Hagen / 2017.

But the support and friendship of the women in the group is priceless.

“Now that I have joined the group, I have lots of friends and I’m very happy,” Julie said. Within the handicraft group, she is also a member of True Friends, a core group of HIV positive women who focus on counseling and companionship.

Seated on the floor, another handicraft group member, Akumele, was looping a beautiful bilum featuring a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors interwoven with green threads. “These are our colors,” she declared. “We are a mixed people, and then the green is our environment.”

Bilums are made by a method of string looping or crocheting, which produces a bag which is both strong and elastic. 

“Traditionally, all mothers make bilums with the bush material fibers and use them for going to the gardens and carrying their crops, garden foods, back to the house, and there is another one for carrying babies,” the handicraft group’s executive, Wendy Puma, explained.

“There is also a bilum for when young girls want to go and get married. They have a special traditional bilum that they have to carry to the groom’s house.” Bilums are also used at funerals, feasts and cultural shows.

Bilum sales at the Kagamuga International Airport. Image: Meri Hagen / 2017.

Today women have innovated, readily adopting ideas from contemporary fashion and using colored wool-based yarns to create new bilum designs.

According to Akumele, it can take one week to make a small bilum and up to one month to complete a large one, which might sell for approximately K30-50. Each bilum made by the group has a special “label”, three colored strings attached which symbolise “make-crisis-history”.

Eighty percent of the revenue from bilum sales is given directly to the women makers. The group also manages a savings program for members, so the women are able to conserve a percentage of their income for the future.

The Mt Hagen Handicraft Group is also looking to the future and planning to expand the scope of their project. Recently the organization has reached out to sex workers in the Mt Hagen area, inviting them to join, train in bilum-making and try an alternative source of income. 

By the end of 2012, the group hopes to have a total of 80 members by attracting vulnerable and HIV positive women from village communities in more remote areas of the Western Highlands.

A tourist and a local mother with bilums. Image: Google.