Butibam is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

on the outskirts of

Lae Lae () is the capital of Morobe Province and is the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea. It is located near the delta of the Markham River and at the start of the Highlands Highway, which is the main land transport corridor between the Highl ...

Morobe Province Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands P ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

Location

Butibam lies to the east of the Bumbu River and north of Busu Road. The Butibam market and primary school lies to the south of Busu Road. The Buku (Sepik) settlement lies to the south of the primary school and covers up to the

Huon Gulf Huon Gulf is a large gulf in eastern Papua New Guinea. It is bordered by Huon Peninsula in the north. Both are named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Huon Gulf is a part of the Solomon Sea. Its northern boundary is marked by ...

beach.

Churches

Following a dispute with the

German New Guinea Company The German New Guinea Company (german: Deutsche Neuguinea-Kompagnie) was a German Chartered Company which exploited insular territory in and near present Papua New Guinea. History In the 1870s and 1880s German commercial firms began to site tr ...

, Pastor Gottfried Schmutterer from the

Neuendettelsau Mission Society Neuendettelsau is a local authority in Middle Franconia, Germany. Neuendettelsau is situated 20 miles southwest of Nuremberg and 12 miles east of Ansbach. Since 1947 it has a Lutheran seminary ( ''Augustana Hochschule''). Diakonie Neuendettelsau ...

was forced to relocate his original mission camp in July 1912 and was offered a location on the banks of the

Bumbu Bumbu is a municipality (''Communes of Kinshasa, commune'') in the Funa (district), Funa district of Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The town is in the hilled southern portion of Kinshasa and settlement there ...

known as Ampo. The Ampo Lutheran Church was built in 1937 and later used as a WW2 field hospital and remains the oldest building in Lae. Several Lutheran churches, schools and headquarter buildings now occupy the surrounds. In the 1920s, the Lutheran Church had a significant impact on the Butibum and Malahang communities and garnered a great deal of loyalty to the faith. By way of example, in 1971, the Roman Catholic mission decided to erect a church in the Bumbu settlement to serve the

Sepik The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Sepi ...

community there. The Butibum people generally regarded this move as sacrilege because they believed their lands, on which the new church stands, are hallowed by the Lutheran faith.

WW2

Under Japanese occupation many Butibam villages resisted the occupation. A villager called ''Kamakang'' received beatings from Japanese soldiers for aiding the allied coastwatchers. When Lae fell to the Allies, the Japanese had two possible routes by which to reach Madang, their base on the north coast. One was to go through the

Markham Valley The Markham Valley is a geographical area in Papua New Guinea. The name "Markham" commemorates Sir Clements Markham, Secretary of the British Royal Geographical Society - Captain John Moresby of the Royal Navy named the Markham River after Sir Cl ...

, where it would have been easy for the Allies to attack them from the air. This meant the Japanese had to take to the interior, through the rugged Saruwaged and Finisterre Ranges, to reach Madang. The Japanese left Butibum and followed the Busu River over the Saruwaged, to eventually reach Kiari in Sio on the north coast.

Gravel supplies

In December 2012, landowners from the six clans of Butibam village signed an agreement to work together with their company, Butibum Progress Ltd, in a multi-million kina contract to supply gravel to the Lae Port Tidal Basin Project.MALUM NAL

accessed 29 January 2014

Notable people

* Pobuc Jonathan * Major Bill Mollard – worked in Lae in the pre-war years with

Vacuum Oil Company Vacuum Oil Company was an American oil company known for its ''Gargoyle'' 600-W steam cylinder motor oil. After being taken over by the original Standard Oil Company and then becoming independent again, in 1931 Vacuum Oil merged with the Standar ...

(Mobil), he was known to the local Butibum villagers as ‘masta Benzine. Major Bill Mollard’s 2/32nd Battalion occupied Pabu Hill, named after his good and faithful Butibum friend, on November 20, 1943. *

Loujaya Kouza Loujaya Kouza (born 20 July 1966) is a Papua New Guinean politician, poet and singer. She was known under her married name of Loujaya Toni when elected, but reverted to her maiden name in 2013 after divorcing her husband.Suburbs of Lae