In the grip of betel mania

A buai saleswoman at work. Photo / Jim Eagles

The day after Pacific Forum leaders announced that member state Fiji faced partial suspension if it did not commit to elections in 2009, Papua New Guinea's daily newspaper The National ran an editorial headed "Banning the nut not wise".

The great buai debate was raging.

Local authorities in Port Moresby banned street side sales of buai [betel nut] as part of its beautification drive which has seen sculptures of soaring metal birds erected and planter boxes put on road routes. The governor had decreed that betel nut shells and red spit on footpaths and walls - the result of chewing the mix of betel nut and lime - were not conducive to attractive streets.

Outside the Crowne Plaza Hotel, police appeared and "moved on" a group of betel nut sellers, hitting the nuts off the tables and berating the sellers.

The issue seemed small, given the country's other problems: 85 per cent of the nation's six million people rely on subsistence living, just half the country is literate and and life expectancy is only 55 years. Aids is rife in a country where talking about sex is taboo and the local papers carry reports of gang rapes, offering women as payment, torture for sorcery and corruption in high offices.

Crime appears linked to consumption of "Highlands Gold" or marijuana, which sells for about 1 kina a joint (73c) and "steam", a homebrew made from sugar cane.

But the nuts are one of the items used to work out movements in the consumer price index. The white in the stars on PNG's flag symbolise the lime powder.

The National newspaper pointed out the futility of banning the age-old tradition - and the dangers of wiping out the sole source of income for many families in a country where only about 20 per cent of people are in formal employment.