PAPUA
It has been many years since I wanted to visit Papua New Guinea, to experience the authenticity of its culture and the unchanged way of life of its residents. Τhis was not, however, a journey that one can easily decide upon. The information available on the country is minimal, the tourism infrastructure almost non-existent, whilst it is plagued by malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. Moreover, tribal clashes are not rare; these are small-scale but particularly violent, conflicts usually involving a local character that can keep the visitor trapped in a dangerous region for many days. It is not a coincidence that the country has only 40,000 foreign visitors each year. Yet, all this is only one side of the coin; on the other is the discovery of a country that has been left untouched by the passage of time, covering in just a few decades the dizzying distance from the Neolithic period to the modern world, the singular feeling of encountering a society that stubbornly insists on sticking to its primeval traditions. So, in August 2009 –the best month to visit the country in order to experience the wonderful Mt Hagen Sing-Sing, the country’s largest festival – I was there. It is truly very difficult for me to describe the surprise I felt when i found myself, for the first time, in the sanctum of an aboriginal village and an ancient civilisation, unchanged for millennia. You have the feeling of having just travelled in time: from the high-tech era of globalisation and communications, to the age of tools, hunting and magic, at the dawn of human life. However much one might try, it is impossible to “fit” such a distinctive country into economic figures, political practices and demographic equations. Tradition surfaces everywhere and composes a perfectly harmonised universe of primitive farming, ancient customs and an economic outlook that is foreign to us and limited to necessities. Even the meaning of democracy, a “The world only exits when it is shared” Tasos Livaditis, Greek poet foundation stone of modern states based on the rule of law, can be understood only with difficulty by the different tribes of the hinterland, which have been based for centuries now on the power of the tribal shaman and the counsel of the elders who, in a land where few reach an old age, are clearly considered holders of invaluable experience and wisdom. Until 1930, the hinterland had not been explored at all; the Europeans considered these wild and mountainous regions as inhospitable for living in. Only in the mid-20th century did a couple of Australian gold diggers, who were searching for gold deposits at higher altitudes, discovered, amazed, that around a million people lived in these wild areas, isolated from the fertile mountain valleys and preserving a civilisation almost unchanged since Neolithic times. This was an astonishing discovery for the Western world as at that time everyone believed that the planet had been fully explored and mapped in detail: given the sight of such a primitive society, scientists – botanists, anthropologists and archaeologists – politicians and journalists, proved unable to rise to the occasion and, without prior research, debate and reflection, suddenly invaded this foreign world, bearing the miracles of technology and their Western culture to people completely unprepared for such a change. Thankfully, however, even in our days, the exceptional difficulty in accessing their hinterland and the refusal of the inhabitants to lose their cultural identity has meant that European influence has been relatively limited. Today the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, as it is officially known, is a state that is working hard to modernise and to battle diseases, illiteracy and barbaric customs wherever they still exist. It is transitioning from a barter economy to a money economy, and hopes in the future to see its great natural and mineral wealth being put to use. It is not easy however to subdue a people that has learnt to live free, organised in small independent social groupings comprised of a few villages; a people that has learnt to apply a system of justice devised not by legislators but by centuries and myths. It is thus difficult to uproot the practice of centuries, of superstitions and selfgoverned and autonomous local societies from the life of the Papua overnight. My journey to New Guinea gave me unique experiences but above all it gave me the gift of a colourful society that is very old and that follows the thread of its own distinctive history. And yet I found myself unprepared – truth be told, no one can prepare themselves for what they will see in front of them – within these colours, dances, isolated tribes, strange languages; I felt a foreigner – burdened with the baggage of a completely different culture – and the great need to find an object that was mine, something familiar and loved to have as my ally. So I kept my camera; an achievement of digital technology a worthy representative of my familiar world, searching with its lens to find not only what separates us from these people but also what unites us. No matter how many journeys one might take, whichever part of the planet they may find themselves, every time they will see the cheeky smile of a child, the impetuous gaze of the adults and the stoic, welcome expression of the elders demonstrating that, under the successive layers of culture, we all have the same face, the same voice, the same body. After many days in this strange and wonderful land I considered that I had by now formed a fairly complete picture of it: I’d explored the Highlands, their wonderful mountains and local tribes, I’d seen their greatest festival, the unique Mount Hagen Sing-sing, I’d toured the banks of the Sepik, the largest river, had faced the ocean at Madang beach and had visited some of the islands. After all this wandering I once more felt my values being shaken. No one doubts that it is imperative that steps are taken – and immediately – for modernisation and to fight the spread of diseases, illiteracy and the often barbaric customs and inhumane rituals. What, however, is the correct way to make such a violent intervention into the history of a place more moderate, to smooth its transition to a new reality? Do others, in this case us, the developed nations; decide on the fate of people unable to respond in the face of the cultural steamroller of technology? Are we to take the risk that, along with all that is wrong in these primitive societies, their valuable individuality will also be lost, their completely idiosyncratic view of life, the hundreds of languages, their unique art? How can we be sure that the society of the Papua will adjust smoothly to a world that, to its eyes, seems to be coming from the far future? Yes, I was certainly delighted with the wonderful journey that was coming to a close, for having had the good fortune to touch for myself something so primitive and authentic. Even so, I could not avoid a feeling of imperceptible sorrow, a nostalgia for something that will be lost: a mud village, a beseeching popular belief, a unique language; a pure piece of human history, true and undefended. THE INHABITANTS AND THEIR DAILY LIVES Whichever part of the country I went to I encountered people who were calm and true; people who moved about with humility and an inherent dignity that was in complete harmony with their natural environment and who were reconciled to the innate difficulties it entailed. You believe that in their every movement, in their colorful costumes and the strange steps of their dances, you are witnessing an unending attempt to appease the bad spirits, the wrath of nature and their vengeful gods (despite the establishment of Christianity, the primeval beliefs still maintain a prominent position in religious life). A main feature, however, of their social and cultural life is the globally unique heterogeneity of the population. The indigenous population is divided into thousands of different communities, most of which only number a few hundred members. With their own customs and their own languages and traditions, many of these groups have been in conflict with their neighboring tribes for millennia. In some cases, because of the mountainous landscape and the isolation it imposes, many were completely unaware of neighboring tribes who lived only a few kilometers away. This heterogeneity, the differences in the bosom of one people, which can perhaps best be summed up in one of the 8 9
island’s folk sayings according to which “for each village, a different culture”, is apparent in the number of languages and local dialects, of which there are over 800. Of these, less than half are related to each other whilst the others appear to be completely independent, unrelated to any of the island’s other languages or any larger language groups. The inhabitants have more in common in terms of their diet, as amongst the main foods we always find starchy vegetables, bananas, mangoes, coconuts and other fruits. Their meat supply comes mainly through rearing pigs and poultry as well as hunting, whilst in the coastal areas fish and seafood are a main element of the local diet. Prior to the coming of the Europeans, there were no towns anywhere in the country. During the colonial period the scattered settlements were merged into larger villages for the first time, making them easier to govern and provide education and health services. The first towns grew around the administrative centers and the missionaries and at first housed only men, who worked mainly in construction. These towns gradually grew into the country’s urban, political, administrative and commercial centers. As regards social stratification, there are no castes and social classes only developed recently: in general, one could say that the society is divided into the “upper class” and the “simple citizens”. The first group includes the educated, high-income town dwellers (the “coffee millionaires,” in the local lingo), and the second group includes the inhabitants of the countryside and the low-income town dwellers. In the past few years a middle class has begun to emerge. Even so, the villagers are not poor, or at least not in the sense that we mean poor. You would be hard pushed to find in the microeconomic activities of the tribes any kind of accumulation of goods and wealth, and consumption as a way of life is completely incomprehensible. The annual income per capita of these people may not be more than a few dollars but in a barter economy such as there still is to a great extent, no one lacks essential goods. Whatever money is available is invested in the development of social and political relations within the tribe or village, through which the members of each local society maintain their position in the tribal hierarchy. Labor within the village is divided less on the basis of position and more on the basis of gender; the men build the houses and the dams, they hunt, they fish and they cultivate the banana, coffee and cocoa. The women grow all the other vegetables, rear the poultry and pigs, weave baskets and clothes and raise the children. Any income from the sale of coffee and cocoa is taken by the men, who are socially stigmatized in both the villages and the towns, if they commit the “crime” of performing work that is traditionally attributed to women. Things have changed somewhat today and a hard-working woman is given her due respect - she may even leave her husband for someone else without suffering any social stigma if her husband is deemed not to have cared for her as he should have. Marriage takes place as an agreement between two families and very rarely as the personal choice of the couple. A girl’s parents will hope to marry her to a wealthy man, whilst what is sought for in a woman, is first that she is willing to work and secondly her external appearance. Polygamy is generally accepted for men as traditionally a well-built man always enjoyed a greater share of the women. There is an unheard of tolerance in the rearing of children throughout almost the whole island, at least for the first five or six years of their lives. This is due to the common conviction that the spirit of a small child may abandon its body if it is hit or frightened. The selfishness, cruelty or malevolence of some children are ascribed to bad spirits and not to the child themselves or their bad upbringing. In these cases the parents often invite a priest-magician to expel the evil and restore calm to their home. As they grow towards adulthood children are taught by following the examples of adults, participating in various, often inhuman, initiation rituals. All this preparation is considered essential in order for the young adult to be able to respond fully to their social and marital responsibilities. Almost patriarchal societies keep women at a distance and in clearly distinct roles. As described above, the process of separating small boys from their mothers begins at an early age: they start to sleep far from women, in the houses of men, whilst in many tribes there are initiation rituals into the world of men, so as to remove all traces of female influence and achieve full catharsis of the pollution from the “hot” discharges of the female body. As for religion, approximately 96% of the population is Christian. Of course, as often happens in many cases where Christianity coexists alongside preceding religions, what eventually arises is a completely new fusion, with Christian practices being combined with primeval beliefs – prayers to Christ in order to expel the subterranean spirits, monsters and the invisible creatures of the forest. The traditional religions are often animistic and include elements of ancient worship. A prevailing belief amongst the traditional tribes is that of the masalai, the bad spirits who have the power to provoke death and destruction. Another common conviction is the parallel existence of the physical and metaphysical world; in order for the living to prosper, the interaction between the two worlds necessitates the observation of customs and the preservation of social ties, such as satisfying the spirits of the dead ancestors, who continue to observe, beyond the bounds of death, the activities of the tribe. Very few accidents, illnesses or deaths are attributed to chances or natural causes. Almost every fatal event is attributed to curses, angry water or forest spirits or simply to the vengeance of the insulted ghost of an ancestor. Great store is put upon the use of a magical substance known as “mana”, and a large number of natives have knowledge of magic. Much has been said about the cannibalism of the Papua; it has even been claimed that the first Australian explorers who got as far as the isolated regions of the hinterland in around 1930, provided a most nutritious meal for their hosts. Nonetheless, the truth is that cannibalism had a prominent place in the cult practice and burial customs of many of the island’s tribes, who believed that by eating the dead they would acquire their positive characteristics, gaining strength and bravery. Women often ate a part of their dead husband so as to absorb something of his masculinity into their female nature. The kuru disease (or “laughing sickness”, as the symptoms include pathological outbursts of laughter) has been demonstrated to result from the ritual practice of cannibalism, in particular of the Fore tribe in the Eastern Highlands. This is an incurable and fatal neurological disorder, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that appeared for the first time in the mid-20th century and spread progressively in the form of an epidemic to the neighbouring regions. It primarily affects women and children, due to deposits of the protein particle prion in the human brain, which showed a preference for the “weaker” members of the tribe: during Fore burial customs those present had to honour the dead by eating them. Men chose first which pieces they would eat and the rest of the body went to the women and the children, including the infected brain. The kuru disease was studied by the American physicians Daniel Carleton Gajdusek and Baruch S. Blumberg, who proved the infectious nature of this type of encephalopathy for the first time, for which they won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1976. The disease gradually disappeared when cannibalism was abolished through the implementation of Australian colonial laws and the efforts of the local missionaries. The majority of the inhabitants, approximately 84%, belong to groups of the Papua tribe. The oldest is the Negrito tribe (Pygmies), whilst amongst the autonomous Papua tribes are, the Orokolo, known also as the “People of the Sea”, the Daudai, the Goigala and others. Also of great interest are the huge demographic diversity and the over 820 languages spoken on the island, comprising one-fifth of the world’s total languages. The official language is English, which is used in education and by the authorities, whilst the main languages of daily speech are the Creole Tok Pisin and, in the south, Hiri Motu. Tok Pisin (Tok = talk, Pisin = pidgin) developed as a necessary means of communication between the Melanesian colonists who worked on the plantations of Queensland in northwest Australia. These workers, who spoke countless different languages, gradually started to develop a language structure, drawing the vocabulary 10 11
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island’s folk sayings according to which “for each village, a<br />
different culture”, is apparent in the number of languages and<br />
local dialects, of which there are over 800. Of these, less than<br />
half are related to each other whilst the others appear to be<br />
completely independent, unrelated to any of the island’s other<br />
languages or any larger language groups.<br />
The inhabitants have more in common in terms of their diet,<br />
as amongst the main foods we always find starchy vegetables,<br />
bananas, mangoes, coconuts and other fruits. Their meat supply<br />
comes mainly through rearing pigs and poultry as well as<br />
hunting, whilst in the coastal areas fish and seafood are a main<br />
element of the local diet.<br />
Prior to the coming of the Europeans, there were no<br />
towns anywhere in the country. During the colonial period<br />
the scattered settlements were merged into larger villages<br />
for the first time, making them easier to govern and provide<br />
education and health services. The first towns grew around the<br />
administrative centers and the missionaries and at first housed<br />
only men, who worked mainly in construction. These towns<br />
gradually grew into the country’s urban, political, administrative<br />
and commercial centers.<br />
As regards social stratification, there are no castes and social<br />
classes only developed recently: in general, one could say that<br />
the society is divided into the “upper class” and the “simple<br />
citizens”. The first group includes the educated, high-income<br />
town dwellers (the “coffee millionaires,” in the local lingo), and<br />
the second group includes the inhabitants of the countryside<br />
and the low-income town dwellers. In the past few years a<br />
middle class has begun to emerge. Even so, the villagers are<br />
not poor, or at least not in the sense that we mean poor. You<br />
would be hard pushed to find in the microeconomic activities<br />
of the tribes any kind of accumulation of goods and wealth, and<br />
consumption as a way of life is completely incomprehensible.<br />
The annual income per capita of these people may not be more<br />
than a few dollars but in a barter economy such as there still<br />
is to a great extent, no one lacks essential goods. Whatever<br />
money is available is invested in the development of social and<br />
political relations within the tribe or village, through which the<br />
members of each local society maintain their position in the<br />
tribal hierarchy.<br />
Labor within the village is divided less on the basis of position<br />
and more on the basis of gender; the men build the houses and<br />
the dams, they hunt, they fish and they cultivate the banana,<br />
coffee and cocoa. The women grow all the other vegetables, rear<br />
the poultry and pigs, weave baskets and clothes and raise the<br />
children. Any income from the sale of coffee and cocoa is taken<br />
by the men, who are socially stigmatized in both the villages<br />
and the towns, if they commit the “crime” of performing work<br />
that is traditionally attributed to women. Things have changed<br />
somewhat today and a hard-working woman is given her due<br />
respect - she may even leave her husband for someone else<br />
without suffering any social stigma if her husband is deemed<br />
not to have cared for her as he should have.<br />
Marriage takes place as an agreement between two families<br />
and very rarely as the personal choice of the couple. A girl’s<br />
parents will hope to marry her to a wealthy man, whilst what<br />
is sought for in a woman, is first that she is willing to work<br />
and secondly her external appearance. Polygamy is generally<br />
accepted for men as traditionally a well-built man always<br />
enjoyed a greater share of the women.<br />
There is an unheard of tolerance in the rearing of children<br />
throughout almost the whole island, at least for the first five or<br />
six years of their lives. This is due to the common conviction<br />
that the spirit of a small child may abandon its body if it is<br />
hit or frightened. The selfishness, cruelty or malevolence of<br />
some children are ascribed to bad spirits and not to the child<br />
themselves or their bad upbringing. In these cases the parents<br />
often invite a priest-magician to expel the evil and restore calm<br />
to their home. As they grow towards adulthood children are<br />
taught by following the examples of adults, participating in<br />
various, often inhuman, initiation rituals. All this preparation is<br />
considered essential in order for the young adult to be able to<br />
respond fully to their social and marital responsibilities.<br />
Almost patriarchal societies keep women at a distance and<br />
in clearly distinct roles. As described above, the process of<br />
separating small boys from their mothers begins at an early age:<br />
they start to sleep far from women, in the houses of men, whilst<br />
in many tribes there are initiation rituals into the world of<br />
men, so as to remove all traces of female influence and achieve<br />
full catharsis of the pollution from the “hot” discharges of the<br />
female body.<br />
As for religion, approximately 96% of the population is<br />
Christian. Of course, as often happens in many cases where<br />
Christianity coexists alongside preceding religions, what<br />
eventually arises is a completely new fusion, with Christian<br />
practices being combined with primeval beliefs – prayers to<br />
Christ in order to expel the subterranean spirits, monsters and<br />
the invisible creatures of the forest. The traditional religions<br />
are often animistic and include elements of ancient worship.<br />
A prevailing belief amongst the traditional tribes is that of the<br />
masalai, the bad spirits who have the power to provoke death<br />
and destruction. Another common conviction is the parallel<br />
existence of the physical and metaphysical world; in order for<br />
the living to prosper, the interaction between the two worlds<br />
necessitates the observation of customs and the preservation of<br />
social ties, such as satisfying the spirits of the dead ancestors,<br />
who continue to observe, beyond the bounds of death, the<br />
activities of the tribe. Very few accidents, illnesses or deaths are<br />
attributed to chances or natural causes. Almost every fatal event<br />
is attributed to curses, angry water or forest spirits or simply to<br />
the vengeance of the insulted ghost of an ancestor. Great store is<br />
put upon the use of a magical substance known as “mana”, and a<br />
large number of natives have knowledge of magic.<br />
Much has been said about the cannibalism of the Papua; it<br />
has even been claimed that the first Australian explorers who got<br />
as far as the isolated regions of the hinterland in around 1930,<br />
provided a most nutritious meal for their hosts. Nonetheless,<br />
the truth is that cannibalism had a prominent place in the<br />
cult practice and burial customs of many of the island’s tribes,<br />
who believed that by eating the dead they would acquire their<br />
positive characteristics, gaining strength and bravery. Women<br />
often ate a part of their dead husband so as to absorb something<br />
of his masculinity into their female nature.<br />
The kuru disease (or “laughing sickness”, as the symptoms<br />
include pathological outbursts of laughter) has been<br />
demonstrated to result from the ritual practice of cannibalism,<br />
in particular of the Fore tribe in the Eastern Highlands. This<br />
is an incurable and fatal neurological disorder, a transmissible<br />
spongiform encephalopathy that appeared for the first time in<br />
the mid-20th century and spread progressively in the form of<br />
an epidemic to the neighbouring regions. It primarily affects<br />
women and children, due to deposits of the protein particle<br />
prion in the human brain, which showed a preference for the<br />
“weaker” members of the tribe: during Fore burial customs<br />
those present had to honour the dead by eating them. Men<br />
chose first which pieces they would eat and the rest of the body<br />
went to the women and the children, including the infected<br />
brain. The kuru disease was studied by the American physicians<br />
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek and Baruch S. Blumberg, who proved<br />
the infectious nature of this type of encephalopathy for the<br />
first time, for which they won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in<br />
1976. The disease gradually disappeared when cannibalism was<br />
abolished through the implementation of Australian colonial<br />
laws and the efforts of the local missionaries.<br />
The majority of the inhabitants, approximately 84%, belong<br />
to groups of the Papua tribe. The oldest is the Negrito tribe<br />
(Pygmies), whilst amongst the autonomous Papua tribes are,<br />
the Orokolo, known also as the “People of the Sea”, the Daudai,<br />
the Goigala and others. Also of great interest are the huge<br />
demographic diversity and the over 820 languages spoken on<br />
the island, comprising one-fifth of the world’s total languages.<br />
The official language is English, which is used in education and<br />
by the authorities, whilst the main languages of daily speech<br />
are the Creole Tok Pisin and, in the south, Hiri Motu. Tok Pisin<br />
(Tok = talk, Pisin = pidgin) developed as a necessary means of<br />
communication between the Melanesian colonists who worked<br />
on the plantations of Queensland in northwest Australia. These<br />
workers, who spoke countless different languages, gradually<br />
started to develop a language structure, drawing the vocabulary<br />
10 11