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Embarrasing Cultural Differences

In my memoir Big Road (at page 105) I tell a story about Chips Rafferty, Australian movie actor. In 1954 I’d spent the day driving him and his producer around the Goroka valley in PNG. They were looking for locations for their proposed movie Walk into Paradise. I’d shown them a very picturesque village and they’d fallen in love with it. After a look around …

We … squatted down for a rest and a smoke. In typical Australian bushman style, Rafferty squatted down and sat on one heel, his other leg stretched out. We rolled our own cigarettes then Rafferty pulled a lighter out from his pocket and we all lit up. By this time, a grey old villager had emerged from a nearby house and joined us. He took a smok (smoke), bush tobacco rolled in newspaper, from behind his ear and signed to Rafferty for a light. Rafferty leant across and lit it for him. By way of a thankyou and as a sign of what a good bloke he thought Chips was, the old man stretched out and gently cupped Chips’ genital area in his hand.

Chips was not to know, but he was receiving the customary man to man greeting common amongst men of the Asaro valley. … With a yell of protest, Rafferty’s full two metres unwound upwards; kept going another metre or so, and descended ready to fight. I managed to get in front of him to restrain him while I spoke rapidly to convince him that scrotum-cradling was a local custom and a sign of huge respect. Fortunately, he calmed down and we enjoyed our smoking session more than ever. Rafferty’s eyes sparkled with amusement but held a glint of wariness about the old man until he was safely squashed back into the Land Rover.

Chips was not the first or the last to be startled by this local custom. Anyone who’s lived in another society can relate incidences of the practises (or language) of one culture reacting embarrasingly (or worse) against another. Like removing shoes before entering a mosque. Like calling someone a bastard in America but son-of-a-bitch is okay. Need I go on?

In PNG there were, and probably still are, many traps similar to the one Chips fell into.

Commonly, a man, knowing another is of higher standing, will greet his senior by hugging his thigh. If the status difference is great, the hugger will cradle the scrotum as well. In those early days in the Highlands, a senior government anthropologist was part of a VIP vbisiting group. Female, uncommonly she was wearing slacks. She, with the others, got the thigh hug from a village leader who was confused. To him she looked like a woman but was wearing men’s clothing. So he slid his hand up to check. He got his answer as she jumped back with a squeel.

The Pidgin lingua franca has traps. Newcomers quickly learn that many Pidgin verbs use the English word with ‘-im’ attached as in lukim (look-im), karim (carry-im), pulim (pull-im). But if you get bogged on the road and you want some onlookers to give you a push, you don’t say pusim. That means ‘have intercourse with’. Debogging is safer with subim (shove-im).

I could go on for pages, but blog posts are best kept short I’m told. Probably more will come from readers Comments. I hope so.

Another Royal Occasion

In my book Big Road (Red Hill Publishing) I talk about a visit to a mountain village north-west of Goroka in PNG. The villagers spoke only their own language so everything I said in pidgin had to be interpreted to them. I had with me one of the government-employed interpreters from the District Office. His name was Bepi and he’d recently been part of a PNG delegation to visit Cairns to meet Queen Elizabeth on her 1954 tour of Australia. I asked him to describe his trip directly to the villagers. I knew his story which went something like this:-

‘I was chosen to represent the Eastern Highlands District on a trip to meet Misis Kwin (The Queen) and her husband Prince Philip when they visited Cairns in Australia on 12 March 1954. I flew in a big four-engined plane. We flew over water and the water stretched as far as I could see. I saw many many houses in Cairns and the people were altogether too many to count. They were all white like these two kiaps. My heart pounded and my belly fired up when I and others from PNG were introduced to Misis Kwin.

‘She is very young but no matter – she is truly the Number One of all of us, of all of Australia, and of all of England where she comes from. She asked me where I came from and I knew enough English to answer directly “I come from Goroka in the Highlands of New Guinea.” Then she shook hands with me.’ Bepi dramatically held his right hand high. ‘This hand has shaken hands with the queen. Luluai, come and shake hands with my hand that has shaken hands with Misis Kwin.’ As the two shook hands, the almost mesmerised audience burst into wild applause. Bepi acknowledged that with a huge smile and waved his Royal hand.

Everyone in the village wanted to shake the ‘royal hand’ and when we walked to the next village the following day, we found that word of Bepi’s fame had preceded us. As we walked into the village, everyone crowded around wanting to shake his hand. Bepi was probably one of the very few royalist papua new guineans in 1954. If he was still with us today I’d bet he would be watching the wedding tonight of one of Missus Kwin’s grandsons.

[My book can be purchased through the link on the right hand side at the top of this blog.]

Fuzzy Wuzzi Angels

This Anzac Day, as always, all over Australia there will be ceremonies big and small remembering the Gallipoli campaign of WW I. More and more, speakers at these ceremonies are linking-in the Kokoda campaign of WW II as a significant battle which adds to the Anzac legend. Some of these will pay tribute to the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels and the compassionate way they helped evacuate on stretchers the wounded Australians from the front line back to the Casualty Clearing Stations.

The name ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel’ became the popular name among the troops for good reason. ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy’ refers to the large afro-style, tightly-kinked hairdo of the Papuan villagers along the south coast of their island country and to the troops, they were Angels. Today, the descendants of the ‘Angels’ aren’t too keen on that bestowed name. Condescending perhaps, but given with good and grateful intention.

It’s not as if these villagers just happened to be there and became compassionate stretcher-bearers. They were there because they were recruited by army personnel to carry supplies in to the fighting troops. Everything the troops consumed – ammunition, weapons, food, clothing and other supply essentials - was carried in along the Kokoda Track. There was no other way. This is the reason they were there and I believe their return journey carrying wounded Australians should not be mentioned without talking about their essential forward journey.

Without these re-supply carriers, the Kokoda campaign would have been a totally different story which hardly bears thinking about.

They were recruited and organised by army officers and NCOs serving in the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU). The most complete story of ANGAU, including details of the organisation and work of the carriers is recorded in Alan Powell’s book The Third Force – ANGAU’s New Guinea War published in 2003 by Oxford University Press in ‘The Australian Army History Series.’ It’s well worth a read.

Addendum:    I’m just back from marching (wearing my father’s medals) and attending the Anzac service at Kenmore, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Among the many laying official wreaths at the memorial was Col Richardson who I know through Rotary. A young Lieutenant Colin Richardson was severely wounded during the Kokoda campaign and temporarily patched up by a front line doctor who expected him to die.  Over two days Col was carried back to better medical services by a team of the fuzzy wuzzy angels, miraculously still alive.  He ended up in a Sydney hospital, was properly repaired (minus one lung) and has led a useful and successful life. And there he was today, ninety years old laying a wreath in memory of his beloved angels.

Fifteen years ago Col gave official recognition to those who saved his life when a bronze plaque was unveiled on Anzac Day 1996.

If you want to see the whole incredible story of Col’s injuries, rescue and recovery, click here . No wonder he feels strongly about the Angels.

A Big Pig Kill

‘A big pig kill,’ aka ‘A Big Ceremonial Singsing where many Pigs are Killed’.

One day in 1954 when living at the 2500 metre high Daulo Road Camp west of Goroka in PNG, I heard of a big singsing about to happen with many villages attending. I asked if I could attend with the people from nearby Koreipa village. I was welcomed.

 I took my camera, a neat little German Diax with an excellent Schneider lens, but I had only black-and-white film. My Kodachrome order from Madang hadn’t arrived.

 

 

First there’s the business of getting dressed in Singsing Best. No mirrors here, so everyone in a family dresses and paints each other. Fathers are especially proud of their sons and equip them with the best feathers, plumes, cane belts, fine woven armbands, possum skins and shells they can afford. Mothers too. For them it’s important that the right tribal symbols are painted on their faces.

‘All ready?’

The tribal symbols are painted on pounded bark fabric stretched across a tall frame supported on the shoulders. The  man appointed to wear the display controls it  with two handles at the bottom of the frame at his arm’s length. To identify a clan in this way is similar to European Medieval knights with heraldic signs on their shields.

 ‘OK. Let’s go!’

 

  This group leaves the village to sing their way as they walk to the host village – about an hour away. The two women wearing (non-traditional) white blouses probably have some primary education and want to distinguish themselves from their sisters.

Along the way groups from other villages merge onto the track.

 They display different tribal symbols.  

 

 

There’s a lot of waiting around while each group, one at a time, dances it’s way into the central arena of the host village.

Most dancers keep dancing to keep the adrenalin level high so they can impress their hosts with their skills. The dancing is much the same between groups: what makes the difference is their dress finery and the composition of the songs they sing.

 When everybody’s arrived, attention shifts to the display of pigs killed for the occasion. At this singsing there were at least 200 pigs. The hosts had lined them up in two columns, each about 50 metres long. This is one of the lines. A most impressive display of the wealth of the hosts.

Each pig is killed, gutted, opened out flat, seared over a large fire to keep the juices in and tied to a frame for display.

By this time, shadows were lengthening and I was out of film so I left for the two hour walk back to my camp. But the festivities continued. The leaders of each village group would speak with skilled and ringing oratory, praising the virtues and generosity of the host. After the flattery, the pig carcases were presented to the visitors. The number of carcases presented would depend on a carefully remembered record of previous favours, obligations and debts between the groups. Some would straggle home, others not and, maybe the next day, cook the meat for the whole village to gorge on for several days.

Note: Night temperatures in this part of the Highlands were quite cool and humidity was low so meat spoilage was minimal. Even so, several illnesses would result, mainly due to incomplete cooking of the pig meat.

More Road Building

Earlier this month, I enjoyed reading another story about road construction in the Highlands. This one took place fifteen years after the construction over Daulo Pass on the Highlands Highway which I describe in my memoir Big Road (Red Hill Publishing). This one was the road from Tabibuga Patrol Post in the Jimi River valley to connect with the roads in the Waghi valley in the Western Highlands. You might think after fifteen years there might have been some machinery and other modern aids to construction. But no!

The article appeared in the March 2011 issue of Una Voce, the journal of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia. The author and the man who accomplished the feat was a junior kiap, as I was – Jim Moore. He suffered the same shortage of funds, had the same tools available – axes, spades, shovels, crowbars and used the same techniques to cut the road through heavy forest, around and over steep high  mountains and over numerous creeks. And he had about the same number (thousands) of enthusiastic village people who did the work.

Actually, Jim had it a bit harder than I did. He had to find and mark out a route which took ‘a couple of months’. All I had to do was more or less follow a walking track used since the 1930s. I’ve not seen the Jimi area but the terrain sounds like a lot steeper and tougher than that over Daulo Pass. I had a good number of village people living within two hour’s walk from the road. Jim describes how many of the Jimi villagers walked up to two days to get to the road.  Yeah, sounds like a tougher job. Thanks Jim.

It’s a seldom-told story really of how the extensive road network throughout the Highlands was built, mostly under the supervision of kiaps. My story and Jim’s and others, told and untold, are tributes to everyone involved.

 

Salt Making in the Highlands

In pre-contact times in many areas of PNG there was a traditional trade in locally produced salt. In the Highlands, villagers’  vegetable-based diets were deficient in salt.  Protein intake was limited to an occasional glut of pig meat during and after ceremonial occasions. In some areas, salt was extracted from mineral springs, in others derived from specific plants.

On my first patrol, south of Chuave, I saw one method of making billets of solid ‘salt’. I put that in quotes because the result of their process was very likely high in potassium salts and other substances and relatively low in sodium chloride which is what we call salt.

First they gathered a reed-like plant growing in swamps near their village. After drying it in the sun for several days, they burnt the leaves and stalks in a compact fire. The ash was carefully collected into a banana leaf supported on a simple  frame in a sloping position. Water was dribbled onto the ash which infused through it dissolving the soluble parts of the ash.        >>>

 As the solution came through, it trickled down the spine of the banana leaf and dripped into a nother banana leaf bent into a cup shaped vessel. <<<

 The vessel was carefully tied to a stick which was then suspended over a slow fire to evaporate the water. Because the heat of the fire was carefully kept low, the liquor only got warm and the banana leaf retained its strength.

<<<

 

After some hours, the liquor solidified into a greyish mass which was further dried out in the sun for a few more days. In this form, the lump could be stored or traded to neighboring villages. In use, to add flavour to boiled vegetables, a piece was broken off the lump and added to the cooking pot.

The Holey Shilling

I wonder how many holey shillings are still around in PNG today. I suppose some come to light every now and then. They were issued in the 1920s by the Australian Government for circulation in the Territory of New Guinea. During the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s they were quite common and were legal tender circulating together with the Australian shilling.

 On one side (is that ‘heads’?)  is the crown and crossed sceptres symbolising the monarch and parliament (I think!). Looped through the sceptres is what looks like a pig tusk necklace. Around the periphery is lettering similar to the Australian coins of the day. ‘GEORGIUS VI. D.G. REX ET IND. IMP’. If my memory from primary school serves me, a translation would be ‘George VI Defender of the Faith, King and Emperor of India’.

The other side is ‘TERRITORY OF NEW GUINEA  ONE SHILLING  1938′. But what are the symbols surrounding the hole? More than likely New Guinea artifacts. The smaller ones like a tear drop could be lime spatulas but I don’t recognise the other column-like items. Can anyone help me here?

And the hole? That enabled the coins to be strung on string and they were often seen worn as a necklace.

In 1975 at the time of independance a new currency was introduced based on the Kina and Toea  and the TNG and Australian coinage was progressively withdrawn.