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.

Splintered Feet and Overloaded Bilums - What is the development agenda for rural PNG women and girls?

by GARY JUFFA - (www.pngwoman.com) 

WITH aching back and sweat soaked brow, the Papua New Guinean village woman is a hard worker. Carrying an oppressive weight in her string bags (bilums), laden on her lean back, sometimes a pile on another, not unusually a sleeping infant perched atop, her cracked feet grip the gritty dirt road and doggedly she moves on.

Mawarero Woman, Rai Coast. Picture courtesy of Jeremy and Team at Finisterre Vision. www.pngwoman.com

Her back bent over she trudges over mountains, across flooded streams, treacherous winding mountain tracks, bare footed to and from her home, her garden, to the market to some event, determined and dutifully.

Her duty is to her family, her children, her husband, often times they do not see her plight, she is the unseen force behind their very existence.

In the early morning, as the first birds sing, she is up and about, stoking the fire, preparing breakfast for her children and her husband, gathering her vegetables to sell at the station or district market. Another long and hard day awaits her. She has accepted her lot in life. Her family has readily demanded it. Her society sanctions it.

Sometime ago she has had an opportunity to dream. Perhaps a brief interaction in a church run school, where she learnt basic reading and writing and numbers, remote vestiges of dreams, forgotten, a small bright light that slowly flickers as it dies, snuffed by grim reality and the somber and stifling acceptance of arranged marriages and adulthood. Often she has had to make space for her brother's, school fees being scarce, admonished as it were by her very gender, to the garden and rearing children and her dreams of perhaps being a nurse or teacher, as far away as the flight of a lonely hawk, flying above the dull gray sky on that dreary walk, as she, laden with the burden of existence, life having departed along with her dreams, keeps on keeping on…

A woman carrying her granddaughter in the bilum in Sydney, Australia.
Image: Arosame Wawe‎ / 2017. 

And she is expected to accept, whatever is meted out to her, rarely a word of appreciation, though often brutal reprisal is swift, for delays in tending to some chore or responsibility, whether she had mitigating circumstance, illness, tiredness, or not…. punished for disappointments, unfulfilled expectations and failures beyond her comprehension…her cut lips and battered face, broken limbs, dislodged teeth and blinded eye reminders of the unjust society she exists in…

Hope for a better life for her children are transmitted in her loving hands and the warmth that she miraculously exudes towards them, despite the grim circumstances of her situation, catering to their every whim, their laughter she revels in, their tears she wipes and their pain she tends away.

Many fortunate women take for granted the moments they have to spend time attending to their personal hygiene. Moments spent in front of a mirror, applying scented lotions, carefully arranging their hair and taking a moment to take in their presentation. They wear clean fresh clothes, use modern appliances and engage in some form of meaningful employment.

A girl carrying her Madang style bilum. Image: Monalisa J. Umbu / April, 2017.

The woman in the village is lucky to have a cake of yellow soap. Her employment is constant, sun up to sundown, she has no leave and there is no payment.

40 years after independence, while seemingly this young nation saw hope in the so called democratic freedom granted to it, the Papua New Guinea village woman, still trudges to and from, with her bilums full, her back bent, her hands full, her feet bare, her punishment real and her dreams just that – “dreams”…

Yes, it seems independence has come to our young nation… but that is hardly so for our womenfolk in many parts of Papua New Guinea…

Little children know that special items are kept in their mother's bilum.
In the photograph, the little child was checking for some coins (money) while her mother was watching. Image Credit: Meri Madang / Facebook / 2017.

Bilum-making helps HIV/AIDS victims in Papua New Guinea

WOMEN living with HIV/AIDS in Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea are being helped to make a living through income-generating activities.

The Baptist Union Church of Papua New Guinea has opened its doors to help disadvantaged mothers and those living with HIV/AIDS through bilum-making and other handicraft. 

Women living with HIV/AIDS attended the 9th tri-annual Baptist women’s conference from Sept 23 to 27. They brought tears when they shared their stories of near-death, faith and love during a workshop organised by the Baptist Union HIV/AIDS department.

A 'Sea Wave' pattern bilum made by a woman from Tambul, Western Highlands Province. Image: Elizabeth Bonshek / 2007.

Women were given basic information on the virus, statistics and how to deal with stigma and discrimination. The Baptist Union HIV/AIDS department has two groups that associate with people living with HIV, mainly women. They are the ‘true friends’ and ‘true warriors’.

In these groups, women are taught forgiveness, love, Christ and how to sustain themselves through small businesses like bilum-making. They are engaged as peer educators to conduct awareness in communities outside Mt Hagen.

Mt Hagen handicraft coordinator, Barbara Pagasa, said the idea of the handicraft shop was to help mothers who had family problems and women who were living with HIV/AIDS.

Pagasa said money generated from the bilum sales were kept for the women.

She said they encouraged the women to save for medical, school fees and emergencies.

The five referral clinics in Mt Hagen are the Tininga STI and HIV clinic, Rabiamul STI and HIV clinic, Anglicare voluntary counselling and testing clinic, Susu Mamas Ante-natal Clinic and the Well Women’s clinic.

Most of the peer educators are sex workers themselves who do awareness on STIs, HIV, condom distribution and referrals.

Source: The National, Thursday October 10th, 2013.

A Possum fur bilum from Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Image Credit: Grey Grey Love / March, 2017.

A new design bilum in Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands Province. Image: Bianca Barry / 2017.