The next day we hopped aboard banana boats for the 3 hour upriver journey to Pema, the site of the school we would be donating to and helping build. The speed of the boats and the cool river water combined to make the temperature agreeable for most of the ride, despite the blazing sun.
The banana boats require fuel to get up and down the river, and fuel is expensive. That, and the fact that the infrequently seen banana boats were carrying foreigners, piqued interest along the river bank. Any time we would see people fishing, bathing, or what-have-you along the river, they would drop everything to wave vigorously as we passed:
The Zia themselves (and, I assume, many Papua New Guineans) made use of ingenious outrigger canoes to get up and down the river. The narrow body of the canoe offers practically no resistance to current of the water, allowing 1 person to paddle up and downstream on a very fast, deep river.
We finally arrived at the school at Pema- just downriver from the village proper. This is looking uphill at the school, coming from the river. I don't know who's head is sticking up in the bottom of the picture, but it was no end of amusing for my elementary kids when I did a slide show about PNG for them (I hadn't noticed it before).
The heat is always on in PNG, especially farther inland where the stabilizing influence of the ocean isn't so strong. I was about ready to pass out by the time I'd made the short walk from the river to this bower, where there were chairs and opened coconuts waiting for us:
After the welcome assembly at the school, we got back on the boat under a threatening sky, and moved upstream towards Pema and the guesthouse. The rain and mist cast an interesting effect on the jungle, but more or less stayed in the mountains, leaving us alone.
When we got to guesthouse, there was another traditional welcome set up for us. This one was just the traditional Zia welcome song and dance, minus spears and black-painted warriors.
This man was the leader of Pema village, as far as I could tell. The head-dress and paint is mostly for ceremonial occasions, anymore the Zia fashion trends are weighted towards t-shirts and shorts.
Several of the village children came up to check out the curious newcomers. They were very shy initially...
...but seemed to get over it pretty quickly:
This boy was very friendly, and a lot of fun to play games with later on. He also evoked one of the more amusing reactions from my elementary students when I showed this image- suuugoi!! Afro hair!! (sugoi means amazing or awesome):
After our initial welcome at the guest house, we were taken across the river to Pema village itself. We mostly just looked around, and played a lot with the kids. Here are some pictures to give a general feeling of what Pema looks like:
After seeing the village, we were taken back to the guesthouse for a delicious dinner, and a slow evening of talk and card games.
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The next day, we went to start "help build" the school. I use the quotation marks because, while we provided the funds and the school supplies, the tropical heat was overwhelming. The native villagers were not only accustomed to the climate, but also many times stronger than us.
First, however, we needed to be made into members of the Zia tribe. I'm not sure what all the reasons for this are, but it has been standard practice to make every NICO group into members of the Zia tribe- each of us being divided into one of four clans:
Wapo: Responsible for farms and gardens.
Bego: Responsible for raising domestic pigs and hunting wild ones.
Sakia: Responsible for event organization, dance, and medicine.
Yewah: Responsible for fishing.
The clan's specialty doesn't necessarily designate their vocation- all the clans do all of the above, but each clan has "special knowledge" of each of those activities. I couldn't quite puzzle what that meant out, but I think that in addition to have above average expertise, there might be some beliefs of magic involved there. For example, if your taro plants are all suffering, you may have pissed off a Wapo, and may need to make restitution of some sort.
In any event, I was placed (more or less at random, I later learned), in the Wapo clan, which seemed just fine to me. We were taken to the clan lodge and given more necklaces and coconuts to drink. Here we also found out that one of the clan veterans from a previous trip would be responsible for us (whatever that meant) and that technically members of other clans couldn't talk to women in ours without asking our permission first. Yowza.
After becoming Zia, the first thing we did upon reaching the school was travel up a hot, dusty hill where pineapples grew wild amongst the brush, to the other side of a ridge near the village. Here, a nifty portable lumber mill had been set up. All the timber for the construction of the school came from the felling of just two massive trees- the saw can travel up and down the trunk, and then the blade rotates 90 degrees to plane off the board that it just demarcated. The advantages of this were many: no hauling pre-cut timber up the river in motorboats, much more cost-effective, and it didn't necessitate the cutting down of numerous trees to get to the useful ones, as is the case in traditional timber cutting in PNG.
Here are some children sitting on the log of one of the trees being used for timber. I thought it was interesting that there were no growth rings- because of the constant warmth and moisture, tropical trees grow continuously, creating a strong, ringless hardwood.
Bugs were a big part of the whole PNG experience. When they weren't drinking our blood, however, they were actually pretty interesting. This was a large beetle that one of our guides captured while the lumber mill was running:
After watching the mill operate a while, we were given our first taste of actual labor- carrying boards back down Pineapple Hill to the construction site of the new classroom. The boards were just 2X4s, which were a little heavier than usual because of the still-wet hardwood, but manageable. However, the heat and humidity were such that even sitting in the shade was a sort of trial, let alone carrying anything. Still, we carried the boards all the way back down to the village, dripping sweat profusely. I tried to pick up a shovel and help with the foundation-laying afterwords, but the heat completely defeated me. You can imagine my relief, then, when I saw:
I was as excited as anyone at the prospect of trying orange watermelon, but the flavor proved to be a bit of a let-down. Imagine a watermelon slice where the whole thing tastes like that border region between the sweet, pulpy seed tissue and the rind, and you'll have an idea of orange watermelon. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as tasty as the less chromatically interesting red watermelon right next to it.
Even after eating the watermelon, I still felt absurdly hot. Whether I was just unused to the weather, or maybe my German phenotypical body was hard-wired to not like heat, I'm not sure. All I know is that in spite of drinking like a fish, I was feeling overheated and dizzy. I mentioned I was going down to the river to swim, and one of the school teachers recommended I head to the waterfall behind the village instead. In my near-heatstroke stupor, I asked skeptically how long it would take to get there. "Just over that hill," they said. "It's not far." This was exactly the answer I was afraid of, and was about to head for the river when an affable teacher's husband volunteered to show me the way to the waterfall. Having no choice I followed them back over what did prove to be a fairly short trail (by local standards, anyhow), and tried not to express exasperation when they would stop abruptly to talk at length about something in the environs. When we finally made it to the waterfall, I immediately dunked my head underneath, and it was glorious. Here's the trail that led there:
I've never been more refreshed by anything, ever. Here's the rest of the group cooling off:
Here's Christian again- the one person who decided it would be a good idea to climb the waterfall a bit.
Refreshed by the waterfall, and having long-since abandoned any pretense of getting any work done (none of our constitutions would hold up), we went down onto the school's sports field (pictured) and played some games with the kids. I opted for volleyball, while others played soccer. Jungle living had made the village children impressively stronger than their same-age equivalents in more industrialized countries- one of the sixth graders I played with probably could have served a volleyball through a brick wall (although he probably couldn't have hit a target painted on that same wall). I was impressed, anyhow.
Speaking of strength, the ability to climb coconut palms with relative ease still boggles me. After a good game of volleyball, we were all thirsty, so some of the teachers told one of the children to go get us some coconuts, the way a parent in America might ask their kids to take out the trash. the freaky thing was, it didn't look much harder for this guy than taking out the trash was for me...
While I was taking a break and drinking my coconut, some of the other children showed me something that was surprisingly cool: seed guns powered by air compression. A plunger is inserted into a bamboo tube, and a fruity seed is put in the other end. The fleshy fruit squishes around the seed, creating an air-tight seal, and then the plunger is depressed, using pneumatic force to blast the seed an impressive distance.
After a full day of sitting in the sun and playing with the children, we wearily returned to the guesthouse for another delicious meal, and to share the company of numerous Huntsman spiders, mostly in the latrine. This fellow, however, was hunting in our sleeping room.
While the venom of the huntsman doesn't do much harm to humans, seeing it move, suddenly, very rapidly, with all its hairy legs that could stretch across a halved volleyball moving in concert, was a very disconcerting experience. I went and tucked in my mosquito netting after snapping the shot above.
Below, Colleen is modeling with delicious Wopa, a brand of plain wheat crackers available at a PNG food store near you. In addition to the fun name and illustration, they were very satisfying in a straight-up carbs kind of way, and I snacked on them extensively.
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Sunday came around, and we were offered the chance to go to church, should we so choose. Papua New Guineans are largely Lutheran, due to the very successful efforts of German missionaries, who were also largely the first outsiders to make contact with this side of New Guinea in the 1700s. Pema was already a well-established village by the time the missionaries came around, and was for who knows how long before that. I find it a little wild that this community lacking structures made of anything more permanent than rotting wood (from the humidity) has been doing just fine for longer than my country has existed.
Ancientness aside, the villagers took to the new religion enthusiastically, and the modern Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea seems to be well-connected to the international evangelical movement as a whole. Worship tended towards Bible readings interspersed with praise songs accompanied by guitars. The melodies and themes followed familiar themes, even if many of them were in the Zia's tribal language, or in occasionally in Tok Pisin.
We were ushered into the house being used as a worship space (they don't have a church building yet, yet another project the village is working on), and were given a special "guest of honor" seat up front. Then we sat and listened for a while, contributed to the offering, and shook hands with most of the congregation, who thanked us for visiting their village and their church. It was, as far as ecumenical experiences go, a pretty good one.
Below is pictured a page from the Tok Pisin Bible that I managed to get a glimpse at before we left. I requested that the owner open it to Matthew 5 for the benefit of all you Menno readers who might want to read familiar material in Tok Pisin. (click photo to enlarge)
Just for fun, here's a photo of a friendly praying mantis we found after church. Not too exotic perhaps, but always cool.
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Later (I don't know if it was just after church, or the next day, or what), we were given a choice: We could either spend the afternoon at the school construction site, or playing in a jungle waterfall that was a short hike up from the river. The decision was almost unanimously, and sheepishly, to go play.
We came to the waterfall after hiking a zig-zag trail up the stream for about a mile. the waterfall was really a series of cascades, each of which ended in a deep and gratifyingly cool pool, good for swimming and relaxing. This waterfall also had a sweet feature- you could sneak around behind the falling water into a tiny, air-filled chamber, before ejecting yourself into the current. Braver souls than I also slid down the falls like a waterslide, and jumping into the pools was a popular activity. The whole afternoon was deliciously refreshing and a lot of fun. Pics:
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It's hard to give a good representation, in terms of time, of what all went on at Pema, since I'm mostly using photos. I could type up my journal entries as well, if I wanted to go into business as a writer, and you all wanted to spend the next several nights and weekends pouring over notes on my trip. As it is, after about a week, and after all the things listed above happened, we reached our last day in Pema. In the humid, gray morning, we were greeted by a man and his pet tree kangaroo. I've nothing more to add about tree kangaroos here, but more pictures of fun forest friends are always good:
After getting over the novelty of the tree kangaroo (or rather, once his owner left- we never really got over it it), we all went downriver to the school. The idea was that we would teach lessons in English and math on the last day (most of us were JETs after all), and then there would be a SingSing, or a regional party, to see us off.
As it happened, however, someone had the good idea that the children should teach us instead. They pulled down an ample supply of palm leaves, and taught us how to make any number of things by braiding them. I learned how to make an arm-band from a spirited girl of about 12 named Tildabed. She was very quick about lacing the fibers together, and when my first bracelet ended prematurely because the fibers weren't quite the right length (partly her mistake and partly my bad weaving), she took it and destroyed it, putting me to work on another one. No shoddy work here. Some of the older children/young adults were pretty impressive in their weaving abilities- this boy of about 18 put together a backpack in about the same time I made a bracelet:
Here is one of our number decked out in woven things made by the schoolchildren:
After we had been weaving palm fibers for a while, an announcement went out that other members of the tribe were arriving from the village, and we should head down to the riverbank to meet them. Down at the river bank, the welcome drums and dance were going in full swing:
The boats also brought future dinner with them:
More drums a' drummin':
It has become traditional for the local village to make the group leader of the NICO charity group an honorary chief for the day of the sing-sing. I like to think that in this photo he's saying "well, then cut the baby in half and each mother can have half."
Along with chiefly power and gear come chiefly responsibilities- killing the pig with the blunt side of an axe, the traditional way. Properly done, it is as sane a method of execution as can be asked for. Nonetheless, it made a number of people in our group (especially the vegetarians) squirm.
After killing the pig came the lengthy process of butchering it:
Some of the cultural differences manifested themselves in the reactions of different people. We foreigners were all a little squeamish about the slaughter of the pig, where the Zia were standing chatting and joking, much as one might waiting for a potluck to be set up. Such is the effect, I suppose, of a whole culture never having read Charlotte's Web. This little girl was watching the butchering with purely technical interest, and turned around and flashed me a beautiful smile when I leveled my camera at her:
One likable thing about the Zia children was their willingness to be photographed. They weren't self-conscious about it at all, and would just stand and give big natural smiles whenever you had a camera pointed at them (it was understood that you would show them the picture afterwords).
Once the pig had been properly butchered, we were invited forward to carry back pieces to our respective clans so that they could each prepare the meat in their own fashion. I agreed when one member of our group noted- "you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound" with the Zia PNG experience. Carrying still-warm pieces of bloody, hairy pork over and piling them up was...an experience that doesn't have any corollary in my personal history.
After the warm pig distribution came lots and lots of dancing. This dance was performed by men, wearing these excellent hats that had apparently been imported fairly recently, style-wise (a good loooong time ago):
This next dance was performed by the single women/girls of the village, and was what could only be described as "zesty." At several points they cupped their breasts and made provocative poses. I was later told that what they were singing translated to "hold on there little girl, you're still to young to get married!"
People were chewing copious quantities of Betelnut for the duration of the SingSing. Mind, they were generally chewing a lot anyway, but it wasn't until the SingSing that I finally tried some. Betelnut is a mild stimulant and milder intoxicant, chewed much the way tobacco is in some parts of the word. It's distinctive characteristic is to react with the lime, mustard root, and saliva with which it is chewed to turn the spit of the chewer blood-red. The flavor is bitter and unpleasant- having a stringent quality not unlike sucking on a mouthful of black tea leaves, but gives a refreshing boost rather like a cup of coffee. It was interesting to try, but, like chewing tobacco can lead to mouth cancer, so let the chewer beware. Elsewhere in the world it's a little harder to come by, and chewed sparingly on special occasions. In PNG, it's everywhere, and everyone chews it all the time. Here's a picture of a betelnut: the pithy looking bit in the middle is the actual active nut, surrounded by a tough woody husk:
Here's another dance, seen from a distance this time:
The SingSing with foreigners was a big enough occasion to bust out the pricey gas and generators, and play some electric music for us. It was great.
This guy did a satirical dance, something to do with the police. I'm sure I missed all the subtleties, but it was funny as it was.
After the SingSing wound down, we went back to the guesthouse to sleep for the last time in Pema. While certain things about PNG were difficult (mostly the climate, actually, that and the mosquitoes), I was sad to leave. Here's a parting shot of the view from the guesthouse railing- the Waria river keeps going inland, and into another tribe's land shortly outside of the range of this photograph.
This is what a papaya tree looks like. I didn't know where else to stick this photo, but I thought the habit of the tree was interesting enough to warrant posting:
The last picture I took in Pema, on the way to the boats- a spider mimicking a butterfly for whatever evolutionary advantage. Very cool. (clicking to enlarge is advisable)
Thanks for hanging in there, those of you who made it this far! I hope it was interesting. The next few posts will be much shorter (for my sake as much as anyone's), and will catalog the many interesting things that transpired on the return journey.
