A PNG village (Part #1)…

Well it finally happened !!  This weekend I had an opportunity to visit my 1st PNG village. An extraodinary experience. The photos from my weekend away can be viewed in the following photo album  Wagang visit 5/8/05 + 6/8/05

I came to PNG with the hope of experiencing at some stage life in a village. This weekend I immersed myself in the village life of Wagang. A small village of around 300 people about 2.5 hours drive north of Lae.

The departure from UNITECH did not go without any hiccups. The bus that I booked to take us to Wagang did a no show (was I pissed off) and as arranged, Nelson turned up at my office at 3pm friday. We had a quick discussion and made a decision to get to Wagang by the PMV bus system. So after one bus ride and one truck ride we arrived in Nelson's village just on dark.

Note that Nelson is from the East Sepik region of PNG and his wife Mukta a local from Wagang. So after arriving I walked around and met many of Mukta's family and clan. Wagang village is made up of 4 clans and each clan has designated land within the tribal area. So, after various formalities and greetings we sat down to the evening meal which was made up of rice, yams, tapiok and fresh prawns. No meat did I hear ?  Of course there was meat. Was there meat !! One bandicoot and one lizard !! BBQ cooked !! The kitchen area is basically an indoor open fire. I did try some of the lizard but I drew the line at bandicoot. The lizard meet was tough and bony and was actually caught by one of the local dogs.

After a few dinner smokes and some buai a few of us headed towards the center of the village (about 15mins walk away) as there was supposed to be a “Sing sing” happening. As it turned out there was just a practice run for the next days festivities. When we rocked up to the village about 20 of the locals came up and shook my hand and greeted me with a “Goodnight”. Goodnight in english is basically a farewell greeting but in Tok Pisin it is the standard greeting for when you meet up with someone any time after dark. As is customary, the only chair for miles was offered to me, which I declined. Something about the white man being offered a white chair that I do not particularly like. So we stood and watched the local sing sing ”team” go through the dance and singing motions in prep for Saturday's celebrations. Apparently, once a month a group of catholics come up from Lae for the day to exchange gifts, food and other grocery type items. Note that the village of Wagang has mainly a Lutheran congregation. It seems that my visit to Wagang was well timed !!

I must admit to dreading the sleeping arrangements. The concept of a pillow and matress is a foreign thing to the PNG village person. A place in the Boy/Man Haus was allocated to me and Nelson was kind enough to offer the matress normally used by their sone Henri Norm. Just before turning for the night one of locals came up to me and offered me a pillow !!  In PNG bedrooms are all open plan and people generally sleep on a mat on the floor and many people end up sleeping in the one area. Now for single man that considers his space precious, I was not looking forward to what I thought would certainly be a sleepless night. My sleeping position was in between Nelson and his brother in law Jethro. Do PNG village people snore ???  I would not know. After popping in my heavy duty ear plugs (I brought 80 pairs with me to PNG), I had one of the best sleeps ever !!!

I woke up just before dawn to the sounds of women preparing breakfast. Decided that it was too early to get up so I went back to sleep. When I did get up Nelson took me down to the local stream for a wash. Upstream of course !!  I mentioned in my blog post the other day that in the PNG village the men wash upstream and women downstream. I could not get over this arrangement and “upstream” and “downstream” became a bit of a joke between me and Nelson over the weekend.

To be continued….