Voice of Conflict: Elsie Konovai's story from Papua New Guinea

Elsie Konovai remembers happy times before the Konnou Crisis.

She and her high school sweetheart married when she fell pregnant at 17 and ran away to Oria, a remote village of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Autonomous region where her husband’s family lived. A daughter came, and then a son.

“Life with my two kids and my husband then was very enjoyable,” she said. “We did everything together, me and my husband, and I followed him everywhere. We were good and happy."

Then came the fighting between Wisai men and boys from their community against rival Me’ekemui combatants, reviving rivalries from the previous 10-year conflict known internationally as the Bougainville Crisis, but locally simply as ‘The Crisis’. Elsie’s husband joined the Wisai Liberation Movement (WILMO) against her wishes, leaving her home with the young children.

“I felt that if he went to fight, there was a big possibility that he could get killed and I couldn’t imagine my life and that of my two small children without him,” she said.

Her worst fear became reality.

“I felt like there was a big sore in my heart,” she said. “Every time you walk into your house and the room you share, you’re reminded that he’s not around and it’s just you. Your husband gone is like one part of your hand or body being cut off.”

Wracked with grief, she struggled for three years to raise her children alone. Her turning point came in 2011 when women from Oria and the Me’ekemui village of Mogoroi came together to make peace. Tired of the fighting and the senseless loss of lives, they met without the men to hold a traditional reconciliation ceremony.

Elsie joined the women as they stood in a circle and held hands, then recited their names and the names of the men they had lost. They cried and hugged each other, recognizing the pain they shared as widows, mothers, sisters and daughters of slain men.

For Elsie, the ceremony freed her from the grief.

“I learned that just like myself, there were young women from the other villages that also went through what I did,” she said. “That made me realize I needed to let go of my anger and move on.”

 Now married to her new husband Emil, she has two more children and works the family farm with him. They have 150 clone cocoa trees nearing maturation and first harvest, received through the World Bank-funded Productive Partnerships in Agriculture Project (PPAP).

“His job is to prune and put fertilizer around the cocoa trees so insects won’t destroy the leaves,” she explained. “I weed around the trees and generally keep the cocoa garden clean.”

Emil also is an extension officer for the PPAP program, helping to bring the project to their former enemies, the Mogoroi community.

“I always tell Emil that whatever money we save, lets invest that in the kids’ education so when they grow up and have jobs, they will be able to looks after us,” she said. “I don’t want what happened to my first two children’s father to continue to affect them later.”

Once again, Elsie has a family life in Oria.

“This community, we don’t want the conflict to happen again,” she said. “One way that helps us look forward to a better future is through projects like the PPAP, which help us to grow, manage the clone cocoa, and earn an income. A lot of people in the community are getting involved and it helps us keep busy, in a way each family is able to rebuild their lives and the community.”