Robert@PNG

And how I ended up with the “shits”…

I have been crook the past week. Diarrhoea (spelling?) and strong pains in the gut. It all started when I “pigged” out on some Marata last week, Wednesday to be precise. An ex patient called “Atawai” dropped some at work for me to take home.

Atawai when I met him in Goroka Hospital March last year…

What is Marata? (I hear you ask)… as yet I have not found the english word for this very unusual vegetable. The other night I did a bit of a google and never found any reference to Marata. The closest I came to finding anything close was a reference to a person with the surname Marata that wrote about vegetables.

Marata is a very unusual looking fruit - I will now try and describe it the best I can: it’s dark red in color, it’s shaped a bit like a cucumber but with one small end and the other end thicker (sort of tapers out if you like), they can grow to 0.7m and they have a skin similar to a Jack Fruit.

The culprit…

In the PNG Highland’s, Marata is highly prized in social exchanges and compensation payouts, probably 2nd to pigs in status. The locals love the sauce that is arduously prepared from it’s flesh - one could even go so far as to say that the local go crazy over it! Perhaps similar to “westies” (westerners) going crazy over food item’s such as prawns or crab, caviar, roasted pig, maccas, ice cream, haggas, etc… depending on what part of the world one is from.

And Eli told me to only have a little !

I’m not going to go into how Marata is prepared and cooked but basically you end up with a thick tomato sauce type paste, very dark red and extremely greasy, with a taste that is nothing like Heinz or Rosella - in fact not one bit like it!

So here we are at the dinner table last Wednesday… vegetables (plenty of them) such as “kaukau” and banana, carrots, cabbage and beans etc… The idea is to dunk the vegies into the Marata, which sits in the middle, and down the hatch!

The final product! This batch has some bananas mixed in!

I remember thinking at the time… next time I see my mate Atawai, I want to be able to look him square in the eyes and tell him that his Marata was absolutely delicious, in fact he told me that when he was
preparing the sauce he put in extra garlic for me. And Eli kept on telling me: “Em inap Rob!” (That’s enough Rob). But stubborn Rob, just kept on dunking those kau-kau’s and banana’s into the pot of red thick paste saying: “em i orait” (she’ll be sweet).

Well… she was sweet all right. Sweet as shit! Which was red for a couple of days by the way!! I almost died of fright the next morning when I stared down (the you know what) and I saw something very unnatural, mr whippy like!

I remember the first time, we were wandering down a track in the village, and there it was - laying in the middle of the road: a dirty, big red shaped turd! And definitely from a human source! (By the way, I can now tell the difference between: human, pig and dog turds - the dog turd is an easy one but to differentiate between human and pig waste can be a bit tricky. I have now mastered that art.

(The hide some people have to shit right in the middle of a track! The locals seem to have developed a skill to anticipate the location of public toilets in the bush).

So there you go folks…

The good news: it’s Wednesday 6:30pm and the gut seems to have settled down. Back to normal? No chance!


Disclaimer: if you have taken offence to any of the “poo” talk in this
post, I would like to suggest that you maybe go find another blog to
read. (Still amazes me how folks out there find time to read other
peoples blogs!).

NB: Hopefully now… Google will show a hit when doing a search on
“Marata” or “Marata” and “PNG” or even “Marata” and “red” and “poo”!

That’s all for now folks…

Except… and before I forget! Gelo has given birth!! Yes - we are now grandparents!!! (Sorry, nogat cigars to hand out)