PETER KRANZ
IT was due to an unfortunate misunderstanding over Papua New Guinea’s traffic regulations that I came to spend an afternoon in the police cells of the Port Moresby suburb of Hohola.
Apparently 'driving over a roundabout' is not to be taken literally.
Anyway there I was, behind bars, with five fellow evildoers just itching to get their hands on a stupid waitman.
The biggest, nastiest, most fearsome brute shirtfronted me.
"Yu waitman no bikpela nau! Yu krai olsem meri! Wa wa wa wa!"
You’re not important now, white man. You'll cry like a woman. Wa wa wa wa!
I took the comment as an opportunity.
If you're going to be beaten to a pulp you may at least get in a few jokes first. So I took my chance.
"Yu bikpela man, maski yu got liklik dik."
You’re a big man but it doesn’t matter that you’ve got a small dick.
I heard laughter from the other ne’er-do-wells. I was in like Flynn.
"Yu laik harim sitori?"
And so I started telling stories in a mixture of broken Tok Pisin and English. I shamelessly recycled old fairytales, threw in a few blue jokes and witnessed the assembly coming around to my side.
"You hear the one about the pukpuk and the pik?"
"Tellim tru!"
They were a captive audience. They were a happy audience. They started cheering.
Eventually I began to run out of material so decided, as it was December, we should sing Christmas carols.
After the third raucous rendition of 'Silent Night' the police released me. Maybe they were sick of the cacophony.
I suggest if you want to sharpen your stand-up comedy skills, try doing a gig in a PNG kalabus.
In my case no harm was done, and later the bikpela became a good friend.