Joann and one of her mothers
The one and only doorway to a village hut
Michael pointing to the pik-pik grass from which the walls of a hut are woven
A view of a Melpa village in the Waghi valley
Michael and Joyce in front of one of his village's huts
A roadside second-hand clothing market
Michael and some of his cousins in his village
More children in Michael's village
This tyke is obviously well fed, but shoes are definitely not common
This little girl has surprisingly blonde hair
I couldn't resist taking this photo!Papua New Guinea, Part 3
The children of New Guinea, at least the ones we met and observed, were well nourished and with few exceptions seemed playful and happy to meet us. (I left out photos of well-developed young men, since this is a family blog and I know that there are young women viewing it.) Shoes are not commonly worn in the villages - - probably too expensive, and the clothing is second-hand, mostly imported from Australia and sold at local markets. Men and women sleep in separate huts, which have woven grass (pik-pik) walls and thatched roofs. There is a sleeping platform on one side of the hut, a fire pit in the center, and space for one or more of the family pigs on the other side of the hut. On our last day, Joann, one of the Rondon Ridge employees, took us to her village where we met one of her mothers (Joann's father had several wives) holding a grandchild.
Our principal guide, Michael Wandau, introduced us to some of the children of his village, with whom he obviously shares a strong physical resemblance. Michael is 21, and has two years of formal schooling, which he is extraordinarily eager to continue. Unfortunately for him, school is not free in PNG (nor is medical care), and his job as a guide for Trans Nuiguini Tours is seasonal, which means that he is unemployed for about six months of each year and therefore finds it very difficult to accumulate the funds for more education. He is an avid reader, and his English is excellent. As a result, he is quite knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects, and it came as a surprise to learn about his limited formal education. (He was delighted when I referred to him as an autodidact, a new word for him.) He would love to come to America to study, and if anyone knows about an exchange program for which he would be eligible, please let me know. Of course, Michael could not pay for his transportation to or from the U.S., so any exchange program would necessarily require a subsidy for his round-trip transportation. I realize that it would be an unusual American student that would want to spend a year in PNG but I have to believe that there are Margaret Mead-type students sufficiently adventurous to want to live in a PNG village and absorb the culture.
2 comments:
This nakedness thing is interesting isn't it? Apparently having children see sexually mature adults naked, or near naked, is fine in their culture, but would lead to moral decline if it happened here. Even seeing a womans breasts when she has a baby is too much for a westerner.
The kids look lovely, and the village well kept. It is amazing how general this idea is that we keep our immediate surroundings neat and tidy. I would love to have seen that guys garden.
hre the nakedness thing: apparently the "missionaries" have really "persuaded" the villagers to wear clothes, especially the women. We did not see little girls without clothes as we drove around PNG. We did see mothers breastfeeding along the roadside but all had tee shirts which they get second-hand mostly from Australia. Saw even some NY Yankee tee shirts and hats! There are lots of "churches" in PNG and IMO they are trying to move the nationals (as the PNG folks want to be called) away from animism to christianity by making christianity quite mystical to them. For instance, putting crosses on graves so that the "spirit" can leave the grave up through the cross and come back to the person/family whenever the dead person is called. So the cross becomes the vehicle for the spirit to leave the grave! My take was that they go to their respective churches on Sunday b/c they love being together - a community thing but the other six days were back to the cultural way of dealing with problems - murder, clan revenge, etc.
Joycee
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