Kol in Papua New Guinea

Introduction / History

New Britain, the largest island in PNG's Bismarck Archipelago, rises steeply from the sea into dense rainforest and deeply cut river gorges. On the southern side of the island, within the remote Pomio District of East New Britain Province, the Kol people make their home — inhabiting the territory stretching from the highland interior around Open Bay down to the Waterfall Bay coast. The district is accessible only by boat, and the rugged terrain of forested ridges and high-volume rivers has long kept the Kol people separated from the broader currents of PNG's national life.

The Kol were originally nomadic subsistence gardeners who ranged across this forested interior. It was an Australian colonial official who, pushing overland across New Britain, first encountered the Kol and consolidated them into a fixed village settlement — a pattern repeated across PNG as colonial administrators sought to tax, count, and recruit labor from otherwise dispersed communities. The village of Tuke became the center of Kol communal life as a result of this contact, and its tin-roofed church stands as one of the most visible markers of how much the community has changed since those early encounters.

What sets the Kol apart linguistically is remarkable: their language appears to be an isolate — meaning it is not demonstrably related to any other known language family. In a country already famous for linguistic diversity, the Kol tongue stands alone. It remains actively spoken as a first language throughout the community and is taught in some local schools, though Tok Pisin serves as the broader language of communication, commerce, and inter-village contact.

What Are Their Lives Like?

The forest and the garden form the twin pillars of Kol subsistence. Taro, sweet potato, bananas, and sago are staple foods, cultivated through the slash-and-burn methods common across New Britain's interior communities. Men clear the land, and families work their garden plots through the growing season. Pigs remain a central element of social life — exchanged at marriages, feasts, and ceremonial occasions — and hunting supplements the diet alongside fish taken from the rivers and coastal waters. The dramatic river system that cuts through Kol territory, including the Pandi River that emerges dramatically from limestone caves, has long defined the rhythms of daily travel and subsistence.

Life in Tuke and the surrounding settlements is organized around extended family networks and clan obligations. The extended family is the primary unit of production, protection, and social identity. Elders command respect and serve as custodians of customary knowledge. Since Pomio is reachable only by boat, the community has remained relatively isolated from urban markets and services. Some families participate in the broader New Britain cash economy through cocoa or copra production, crops that also drive the provincial economy more widely. Music, dance, and storytelling remain vital expressions of communal identity, marking the cycles of life and the rhythms of the season.

What Are Their Beliefs?

The Kol community is largely Christian in name. The great majority identify with Christianity, and the presence of a church in Tuke is a visible sign of the faith's reach into this remote corner of New Britain. A meaningful evangelical presence has taken hold as well — a genuine, if modest, community of believers who hold to personal faith in Jesus Christ. This is an encouraging development in an area long characterized by the spiritual challenges common to remote PNG communities.

Yet Christianity among the Kol, as across much of Papua New Guinea, coexists with older spiritual frameworks rather than fully displacing them. A significant minority practice ethnic traditional religion, and for many nominal Christians, beliefs about ancestral spirits, spiritual forces in the natural world, and the power of the unseen realm continue to shape how illness, misfortune, and daily life are understood. The broader Pomio region has also been shaped by the Pomio Kivung movement — a syncretic millenarian cargo cult that blends Christian language with traditional Papuan ancestor veneration. This movement, which holds that deceased ancestors will return to deliver material prosperity to the faithful, has influenced spiritual thinking across the district, including among communities like the Kol. Even for those who do not formally belong to the movement, its underlying assumptions about the spirit world, the power of ancestors, and the expectation of material salvation can color how the gospel is heard and received.

The single greatest gap in Christian resources for the Kol is the absence of written Scripture. Bible translation has been started, but the work is incomplete, meaning that the Kol church currently depends on audio gospel materials — recordings provided by Global Recordings Network — as its primary access to God's Word in their language. This is a meaningful starting point, but a spoken word alone cannot fully equip a church for teaching, memorization, discipleship, and theological formation across generations.

What Are Their Needs?

The isolation of the Pomio District shapes nearly every practical need the Kol face. Medical care is difficult to reach; the combination of rainforest terrain and boat-only access means that serious illness can go untreated for days. Basic healthcare infrastructure — clinics, trained workers, reliable supplies — remains sparse. Clean water and sanitation facilities are inadequate in many remote settlements. Educational access beyond the primary level requires leaving the community entirely, a barrier that limits the horizon of young Kol men and women. Economic development is constrained by the same geographic isolation that defines the community's world, though cocoa and copra offer some connection to broader markets.

Spiritually, the unfinished Bible translation is the most urgent need. The Kol church is growing, but it is growing without the full counsel of Scripture in the mother tongue — the language in which theology is felt most deeply, remembered most readily, and passed most naturally to the next generation. Audio recordings are a gift, but a completed written Bible would open the door to literacy-based discipleship, lay leader training, and a church whose foundations run deeper than oral tradition alone.

Prayer Points

Thank God for the believing community among the Kol and ask him to deepen its roots — drawing nominal Christians into genuine, personal faith in Christ alone.
Pray urgently for the completion of Bible translation in the Kol language, asking God to provide the translators, financial support, and community partnerships needed to bring this work to completion.
Ask the Lord to raise up Kol pastors and teachers who are grounded in Scripture and equipped to distinguish the gospel from cultural and spiritual distortions.
Pray for healthcare workers, educators, and development workers willing to serve in this remote and isolated community, meeting pressing physical needs as an expression of the love of Jesus.

Text Source:   Joshua Project