Songs of the Baka and Other Discoveries

by Dennis James

  In the early nineteenth century, the arrival of foreign sailors promoted the development and use of a pidgin form of English called Tok Pisin, also simply referred to as Pidgin, which ultimately spread to the interior. Although English is now the official language of the government, Tok Pisin remains the language of the people, who continue to use their own tribal tongues as well. Although Tok Pisin is clearly derived from English, we were unable to understand a word.

  People of Papuan and Melanesian ancestry have occupied the Highlands for thirty thousand years. They entered New Guinea from Indonesia and Southeast Asia during the last great Ice Age, at which time there was a land bridge linking Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. By 10,000 BC, the seas had risen, isolating New Guinea from Indonesia and Asia.

  The Highlanders found that between the altitudes of four to nine thousand feet, they could grow almost anything on the lava-infused soil. And there was plenty of fresh water. Above nine thousand feet, it was too cold for crops and below four thousand, it was too wet and infested with malarial swamps. What developed were self-contained, self-sustaining islands of humanity with no particular interest in any contact with their neighbors, except for the occasional raiding party seeking wives or avenging some trespass or injury perpetrated by the other.

  As for modern transportation in the Highland interior, there are probably more miles of aircraft landing strips than miles of roads. There are 562 airstrip locations indicated on the International Travel Map alone and just a few sad ribbons of highway, mostly along the coast. There are no railroads. Flying over the interior, we realize that the main reason for this disparity is geography. One-third of New Guinea consists of steep mountain ranges covered with rain forest. From the air, it looks like a rumpled green blanket with lighter green patches of crops and kunai grass. Building roads in this terrain, even when technically possible, is prohibitively expensive. To get from anywhere in the interior to any place else in PNG you fly, walk, or float. Most Highlanders have limited options. Even if there is a nearby airstrip, flying is costly, and not everyone can afford it. If they are not on a navigable stretch of one of New Guinea’s great river systems, they cannot paddle. And, given the topography, even the fittest can’t walk very far. So they remain out of contact, subsisting, but not flourishing—essentially living as their ancestors had.

  For those who can afford it, a few small airlines, some run by missionaries, provide internal transport. These planes function like the local buses in New York City, sometimes landing and taking off three or four times during a two-hundred-mile trip. The planes are frequently taken out of service for repair. Spare parts are available only in a few larger city airports. Most airstrips have no terminal, control tower, runway lights, or repair facilities. With luck, there is a small metal-roofed shack or cement block structure to shelter waiting passengers.

  The roads that do exist are compromised by monstrous potholes. This is true on the highway as well as in the center of the larger towns like Port Moresby, Mount Hagen, and Wewak.

  Simbai and Waim

  In the early morning, we check out of the hotel in Mount Hagen to get to the airstrip at six a.m. for our flight to Simbai, a typically small, isolated village on the slope of the Bismarck Range. One of its elders, Dickson Kangi, maintains a group of guesthouses.

  The gate to our airline, Mission Air, is closed and locked. No one is around. We dump our backpacks on the ground by the cyclone fence, sit, and wait. A kindly security guard opens the gate for us so we can get to a bench with a shed roof over it for shade. A few other passengers show up and stand around; most are men in work clothes being flown to a job someplace. We, a curiosity to the locals, introduce ourselves, and everyone is very friendly. Nothing happens until eight a.m., when the pilot and ticket-taker arrive. Checking everyone through and weighing everything, including the passengers, takes an excruciating hour. After we pile into a twenty-seat, single-engine plane, we fly below the peaks, witnessing a wide-angle view of an intensely verdant, roadless landscape, dotted with villages and squared-off gardens on the slopes.

  We land near a village and take off again ten minutes later. More mountain greenery scrolls by our window, and then the plane banks for a landing on a single runway airstrip in a high valley. It rolls to a turnaround, taxis to a parking zone, and shuts down. There is no tower, no terminal. About one hundred people are standing or sitting on an embankment overlooking the runway. Dickson and his assistant, Ronald, walk up to greet us, then the crowd follows as we are led up a broad, winding path leading to the village. Many come up to shake our hands and introduce themselves, smiling and laughing. The men and boys wear well-used western-style shorts and shirts, as do the women, although some wear skirts. Most speak English to us and Tok Pisin to each other, but soon we hear chanting in an entirely different language.

  Sunrise, Waim Village

  As we turn a bend in the pathway, ten men and a little boy in full tribal regalia approach. They wear only leafy loincloths. Their faces and bodies are painted in stripes and dots of bright yellow, red, white, and black. They have rattles on their ankles and multiple strands of cowrie shells around their necks. Tall crowns that look like the shakos of the Coldstream Guards, made of the black feathers of birds of paradise, adorn their heads. Their noses’ septums are pierced with boars’ tusks or abalone shells. Four men keep time for the intricate shuffling, hip-twitching dance and the repeated chanted verses of the song with hour-glass shaped, yard-long kundu drums. Others carry traditional weapons, slender seven-foot-long spears and axes, bows, and arrows. These are strapping fellows, tall and muscled, with heavy scarification on their backs and chests and complex tattoos on their faces.

  One of the dancers chooses the song, leads off, and the rest join in. The little boy, wearing a similar outfit, mimics the movements of his elders in the middle of the formation. This dance and song is one of welcome, incorporating us into the village as honorary elders. We are grateful and impressed that we have witnessed an ancient ritual.

  Dancing and chanting, the group leads us to the village square, where they finish their sing-sing and store their headdresses and traditional artifacts in a hut. They allow us to look in the doorway. In the dim light of the windowless hut, we see masks, icons, headdresses, and weapons hung on the walls, like the wardrobe of a tropical Valhalla.

  All of the men of the village have holes in their septum. It is a traditional rite of passage to adulthood, Dickson explains. The holes remain unadorned unless the men participate in a dance or another special occasion.

  Dickson shows us his guesthouse compound, which is thoughtfully laid out with four small cabins in a row facing a central grassy square and a large cabin at a right angle to the others. On the other side of the square is a tall, round meetinghouse where meals are fixed and served and where there is a warming room with a fireplace. A thatched hut serves as a latrine and another as a bathhouse with sun-heated water. Our cabin is of ample size with two platforms for beds and sleeping pads, and a front porch equipped with chairs and a stool.

  The grounds are like a botanical garden, with variegated flowers, ferns, and plants. The grass is cut, and stones line the borders of the flower gardens and the paths. Neatly cut drainage ditches keep the area reasonably dry during the rainy season. All structures are on three- to four-foot-high stilts that accommodate heavy ground runoff. There is not a speck of litter on the grounds. During a short tour of the village, I note that the same orderliness and harmony with the surrounding natural beauty characterizes all of the homes, gardens, and pathways in Simbai. A bearded old man in a loin cloth, well past his days of heavy lifting, tends the village’s orchid garden. Is this public beautification unique to Simbai, a lucky village with an airstrip and a trekker’s jumping-off point?

  As we tour the grounds, we encounter an elderly expatriate, J. M., who has heard that two tourists from the States are visiting. He invites himself to dinner with us at Dickson’s and strolls off. Dickson is not pleased.

  Dinner is
a spread of taro root, sweet potato, white potato, greens, fried bananas, and papaya (called paw-paw). It is a typical Highland dinner, and everything comes fresh from Dickson’s family’s garden. The only add-ons are two cans of tuna, obtained, no doubt, with some difficulty.

  We soon learn why Dickson is irritated by J. M.’s intrusion: J. M. monopolizes the conversation for hours, talking mostly about himself. He talks about his position as an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Divine Word University and about the time he was in the PNG government as First Secretary to the Prime Minister and, later, the Minister of Public Works. After J. M. leaves, Dickson expresses his disappointment at not being able to spend the dinner talking with us. Apparently, J. M. had married a local woman who had died three years ago. “J. M. can’t get over it,” he explains. “He is very lonely.” We look up Divine Word University after we return home and find that it does, in fact, exist. It is a Catholic university that receives government support, and J. M. is listed as faculty.

  According to Dickson, it is rare for anyone in the village to go hungry. If a person is injured or a family is unable to grow or tend their garden, the whole village sees to it that they are fed. The gardens are very productive and there is always enough for all. However, the villagers have no source of income with which to buy medicine, clothes, tools, generators, or trips to the cities by plane. Some time ago, when the world market for vanilla surged, the government urged everyone to grow vanilla. So, the New Guineans did, as did many others around the world, causing the market to collapse. Dickson’s hope is that the government will help develop tourism. I tell him, “If people in Europe and the States learn about the beauty and hospitality of your country, they will come—particularly the younger people.”

  He replies, “And adventuresome, older people as well.”

  The next day, we are to trek to Waim, about five hours away, stay a day and two nights, then trek back to Simbai. There is no airstrip in Waim. How will it compare to Simbai?

  The trail to Waim is up and down steep slopes with loose rocks, a baked coagulate of rotted plants and red clay the viscosity of heavy grease. It is hot and wet. Every step is a potential sliding fall into the muck. Dickson says the guidebook rates the trail as “moderate,” though he has told them it should be “difficult.” I agree.

  When we finally arrive at Waim, an all-female sing-sing group in traditional dress greets us. They do not wear the feathered crowns worn by the men but have orchids in their hair, a symbol, we are told, of happiness. The village green is on a broad, flat ledge of several acres perched above a deep valley formed by the intersection of two mountain ranges. A soccer field is laid out, and a primary school is located in one corner of the green. Flowers are everywhere, in ordered composition in the village gardens and in chaotic profusion on the jungle trails.

  Our guesthouse is similar to the one in Simbai. We dump our overnight packs and wander the village, introducing ourselves. Everyone takes our hand and smiles, their red lips evincing the prevalence of betel nut consumption, particularly among the elderly. This ubiquitous chewing habit, with its mild narcotic effect, eventually destroys the gums and teeth. The betel nut is chewed with a lime concoction that generates a bright-red coloring of saliva, gums, tongue, lips, and teeth, leading to friendly, scarlet, single-toothed smiles. The New Guineans call it PNG lipstick, their national drug, a social concoction similar to Western wine. Parents even introduce it to their children.

  The night is surprisingly chilly, bringing on a polyrhythmic insect and bird chorus of symphonic proportions.

  In the morning, the sun ignites the surrounding mountain tops, and a sea of fog fills the valley below. We decide to visit the school, which is a two-room affair with rough benches for the students. The teacher accepts our gift of two dozen ballpoint pens and a world map. Later, he takes the children out for assembly on the field, where forty or so youngsters line up in rows, singing the national anthem and a song welcoming us. Some adults who are studying English at the school are also in line. The teacher tells the assembly about our little gifts, and there is a burst of applause. He asks me to make a few comments, and I tell them how welcome we feel and how beautiful their village and country are. Then the teacher asks everyone in the assembly to shake our hands and introduce themselves by name in English, which they happily proceed to do, in orderly lines. We are moved by the genuine pleasure they express.

  As the fog burns off, Ronald takes us on a tour of the village, pointing out new and old structures and thriving crops: potatoes, cabbage, taro root, greens, pumpkin. He invites us to observe an extended family prepare a cooking pit feast in honor of a family event. The women construct a woodpile filled with large rocks. A man crouching on the ground spins a pointed stick against a piece of dry bark until the bark begins to smoke. He blows on the smoking bark until it glows, ignites a handful of fine thatch, and carries the burning thatch to the woodpile to start the fire, taking all of five minutes. I can hardly believe it. The Highlanders have no matches, and they start fires the same way they have for untold centuries.

  The women dig shallow pits and, when the stones are hot, fill the pits with alternating layers of hot stones, banana leaves, slow cooking vegetables, more stones, more banana leaves, and faster-cooking vegetables until the pit is full. They cover the pit with banana leaves, socialize for an hour, remove the cover, and eat their way down to the bottom of the pit. I sample the greens. They are pungent and hot, like mustard greens.

  As in Simbai, the locals practice the same attention to orderliness and appreciation of the natural beauty around them—decorative stones and flower gardens lining the village paths, even the one to the latrine; a mini-hut with a thatched roof; crab grass on the green cut short.

  The trek back to Simbai seems more difficult. We fall occasionally and are covered with mud by the time we reach Simbai. Fortunately, we hike the distance in two hours less than we did going the other way. Over our objections, Dickson enlists some women in the village to wash out our hiking clothes.

  Over a lovely dinner around a fire, Ronald describes the quandary facing young people in the Highlands. They remain where they are, in a subsistence economy, with little chance of getting the education needed to obtain employment elsewhere, other than temporary, menial labor jobs for low wages. Remaining in their villages in the Highlands assures them of a physical, psychological, and spiritual support system within their clan’s traditions that is lifelong and steadfast. And the only way to successfully break out of this subsistence society and join the consumer economy of the cities of the world is to leave the village for education or training in the cities, where they are alone, bereft of family and clan support, and subject to the temptations of gang life. Many have succumbed to these urban pressures. What is needed, Ronald says, is some income flow to the Highlands that doesn’t require the exile of its youth.

  Silent, we watch the fire in the darkening room.

  We think about several possible approaches: develop tourism or even means of transportation to bring the tribes’ abundant goods and resources to market. But weak infrastructure and government neglect make these solutions unlikely.

  Ronald has raised a dilemma we have confronted on several trips: the conflict between development and preservation of a unique indigenous culture. Development can come in many forms, some more harmful than others. Our worry is that development and preservation cannot coexist and that development always wins.

  We have also seen on our travels villages populated only by older people and cities filled with the young whose dreams have not materialized.

  To us, these indigenous cultures are complex, with beautiful music and art and people who cooperate rather than compete with one another. We think they should be preserved. However, we worry that even relatively benign intrusions such as ecotourism, which would provide jobs and other services, would also degrade these ways of life. So how can we, creatures of the West, say that others should not be able to try to secure the comforts and advances
we take for granted?

  We tell Ronald that we will encourage our friends to visit the Highlands, but the truth is that we have no adequate response for him. Only smoldering embers remain in the sand pit. Ronald stands and offers to escort us to our cabin.

  The next trek is from Simbai to Kundum Hostel. It is a good trail, six hours of up and down but decent footing. There is long sun exposure and we take all precautions—lots of water, frequent stops, sun block, electrolytes, and, occasionally, an umbrella. Ronald has brought along his wife, an excellent cook with a lovely smile, and his young daughter, who is eager to practice her English with us.

  Ronald and family

  Kundum Hostel is described as a birder’s delight. Unfortunately, the birds are nowhere to be seen. But the setting is beautiful, and we are warmly greeted by the elders with their toothless red smiles and fresh, tasty food. We fall asleep to the raucous cries of the unseen birds, a lullaby compared to the sirens, car horns, and loud music we hear at night back home in Brooklyn.

  In the morning, we retrace our steps on the sizzling path to Simbai for five and a half hours. As we approach Simbai, we pass the home of the head of the American Southern Baptist Missionary Project. It is a large modern dwelling that would not be out of place in the wealthy suburbs of any American metropolis. It is surrounded by an off-putting high cyclone fence. Dickson says the clerical occupant is there only a few months a year.