My PNG

A ‘real’ slice of PNG at the Enga Show

When I was at the Enga Cultural Show in Wabag recently, I was intrigued by a woman covered from head to foot in white clay (pictured). She was also wearing many white necklaces made with ripe seeds – what we call ‘Job’s Tears’ – harvested from a plant called

waku that grows wild.

In our culture, this is how women have traditionally expressed deep sorrow when they have lost a loved one.

The mourning woman brought back vivid memories of my own mother daubed in white clay when my baby brother, Nuamb, died nearly 60 years ago.

My mother had turned into what I thought was a white ghost. “Don’t be afraid, my son, it is only me, your mum,” she told me reassuringly.

Friends and relatives brought firewood, food and Job’s Tears for my mother to wear. As the days of mourning went by, my mother kept applying mud on her body and continued to wear the necklaces.

She must have wept for me because I was too young to understand that I had lost a brother with whom I could have formed a pair in adult life. Two close men to support each other and to defend clan territory.

I recalled all this as I watched the woman at the show.

Nowadays, it is more common to see mourning women dressed in a black blouse and matching skirt.

Four women with the woman in mourning had just completed some Job’s Tears necklaces, and they had two gourds filled with fresh drinking water, cooked sweet potatoes, wooden digging sticks and other reminders of the past.

These days, people still contribute something traditional at a hauskrai (place of mourning) but lots of cash and cartons of Coke are also involved.

Even so, it was encouraging to see people at the show still embracing and keeping alive aspects of traditional culture.

I also saw a woman at the show making a traditional umbrella using young leaves harvested from a pandanus nut tree, another assembling grass skirts, while a third was making string from bush vines to make a bilum.

At another part of the showgrounds, two men chopped a log using stone axes, demonstrating the effectiveness of the stone. Other men built model homes, erected fences and made stone axes and human hair wigs.

A popular attraction in this area is the Yokonda ancestral salt ponds near Sirunki, 2000 metres above sea level.

Visitors go there by the busload to see the ingenious traditional salt extraction methods and to sprinkle the rare salt on food cooked for them in a mumu.

When I was a child, my father twice travelled along bush tracks all the way from Kandep to Yokonda to bring back a couple of round parcels of salt wrapped in pandanus leaves.

He went with other men from my tribe, taking with them trade items like pigs, kina shells and tree oil.

To re-establish this ancient trade link, a cultural group from Enga went to Lake Kutubu in 2018 to take part in the Kutubu Kundu and Digaso Festival.

The Enga Show reminded me that authentic cultural practices are still alive, but we must be careful that they are not forgotten.

The mourning woman brought back vivid memories of my own mother daubed in white clay.