Lost in Translation - Itambu

This is the second instalment in this segment 'Lost in Translation' i'll explain to you a word you will see a lot if you come to Papua New Guinea, 'Itambu'. All over the place you will see signs which contain the word 'itambu' and from the general sense of the context of the word you can tell 'itambu' is some bad mojo.

'Itambu' in Tok Pidgin is for us the word 'forbidden' in English. In the sign above it translates to, "It is forbidden to stand close to the airplane (balus)" or less formally, "Don't stand next to the the airplane or your arms and head will be chopped off and the little dance you started in front of the rotor blades of this aircraft will look silly in retrospect." Look closely at the picture. He was definitely doing a little jig before the guy was chopped up. Look at his legs...see?

But here's something more interesting. 'Itambu' also means 'in-laws'. So your 'in-laws' are 'forbidden' in Papua New Guinea. I don't think this requires any further explanation. But for a country with such an apt linguistical (if that is a word, if not, tada, I am the inventor) way of avoiding this taboo there seems to be a little bit of revision needed by some people of this very useful word. Here is an article I photographed last year. It's not that uncommon to see articles of this kind in the national newspapers. It's quite disturbing and very sad to read about this abuse, which usually occurs to females but also sometimes young boys. Last night I heard on the radio another accusation of incest in which an uncle (20 or so years) paid his slightly younger niece for relations...AND SHE CONSENTED! It's not a problem unique to this part of the world, but it's definitely one of the problems inflicting this country.