By Charles Bennett

Our base here in Bougainville is in Arawa, a town with a brief but amazing history. Arawa was built in the 1960s by Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, to house workers from the nearby Panguna Copper Mine. Panguna was once the world’s largest open-cast mine and employed over 10,000 people.

Arawa was built to very high standards with schools, a library, department stores, leisure facilities for the mine workers and one of the largest and best equipped hospitals in the South Pacific. The mine was highly profitable and contributed around 40 percent of the GDP for the whole of Papua New Guinea.

I won’t try to summarise the recent history of Bougainville, but from 1987 a civil war (known as the Bougainville Crisis) was fought in Bougainville between the Bougainville Resistance Army (BRA) and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF). The Panguna Mine was one of the triggers behind the conflict. Many Bougainvilleans were angry that the mine was causing enormous environmental damage and that the economic benefits from the mine were not reaching local people.

As a result of the conflict the mine closed in 1989 and Arawa was abandoned. Almost all public buildings in Arawa were destroyed – the hospital, banks, government offices, the library, department stores, as well as many houses. In the highly fertile tropical climate, large sections of the town were reclaimed by the jungle and are now completely overgrown.

The former hospital lies ruined, burnt down and overgrown by jungle.

After years of highly destructive fighting, a cease-fire was signed in Burnham, Canterbury. Since the ceasefire, the peace has held and people in Bougainville have begun to rebuild their lives. What remains is a very bizarre town with wide streets and cul-de-sacs of Australian designed duplexes in various states of disrepair.

People from the local villages have moved into the houses, patching up damage caused during the crisis. The hospital has reopened in a much reduced capacity, in buildings which once housed a nurses training college. Small shops have opened on the ground floor of the old banks, travel agents and department stores. The shops sell tinned food, soap and second-hand clothes. Satellites once used for communications are now used for hanging clothes out to dry.

The old commercial centre of Arawa, now mostly derelict and abandoned. There is no power in the electricity lines.

In spite of all this hardship, Arawa is once again growing and moving forward. A large, open market has successfully launched and is full almost everyday with people buying and selling fish, seafood, fruit and vegetables. There are plans for a library with strong New Zealand connections and the High School is expanding with new classrooms under construction.

Coconuts for sale at the market in Arawa.

Oxfam’s work supplying clean water to villages around the town is partly needed as a result of the crisis. Many village water systems were destroyed during the conflict and many people have been living with limited access to clean water because of the crisis. By working to restore a clean water supply in these communities, we are helping people put Bougainville’s troubles behind them and to rebuild their lives.