by Tim Flannery
The Miyanmin are, by their own reckoning, the ‘last people’. That is, they were virtually the last people in Papua New Guinea to live a lifestyle largely unaffected by the European influence. The Miyanmin count this as a misfortune, and are acutely aware that almost everyone else is better off than they are. They bemoan the fact, for instance, that they still do not possess a village council, but instead must make do with a luluai (village head-man) and tultul (assistant), both of whom are given a badge denoting their rank. In reality, the Miyanmin are not governed so differently from many other remote villages in this regard. In many villages the duties of two men, called the ‘council’ and the ‘committee’, conform precisely to those carried out by luluai and tultul. Despite this, it matters to the Miyanmin that the Government has apparently forgotten to grant them this supposedly more advanced form of administration. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that, owing to their remoteness, the Miyanmin are truly disadvantaged by their minimal health care, educational opportunities and lack of access to western goods.
In pre-contact times, the Miyanmin had one of the most unusual lifestyles in New Guinea. Linguistically and culturally, they show many affinities with the Mountain Ok peoples of central New Guinea, yet they inhabit the lowlands and foothills. It seems likely that their ancestors had migrated from the mountains to the lowlands generations earlier. The impoverished resource base available to them at low elevations, as well as their susceptibility to diseases—especially childhood ones—seem to have forced them into their highly unusual ecological niche.
The Miyanmin used to call themselves the ‘road highway men’, in reference to their habit of rising before dawn every morning to check the muddy paths leading to their village for the footprints of intruders. If any were found, the village was put on an immediate war alert.
The need for such vigilance stemmed from the reprisals which the Miyanmin invited, for they themselves were among the most avid raiders in New Guinea. Even during the early 1980s they would refer to the neighbouring Atbalmin people as bokis es bilong mipela (literally, our refrigerator). While there is a myth among westerners that most New Guineans were cannibals, cannibalism as it was manifested among the Miyanmin is an extremely rare thing among New Guinea cultures.
Before 1973 the West Miyanmin would divide the year into two seasons—the drier time was the pig-hunting season, when they would descend to the floodplain to hunt pigs and other game. The wettest part of the year, when the lowlands were flooded, was the man-hunting season. Then the Miyanmin would travel upwards to the highland valleys, which are densely populated by Telefol, Atbalmin and other peoples. The raids they would stage there had often been years in the planning.
My constant companions at Betavip were Kegesep, a turnim tok (translator) who spoke good Pidgin and so could translate from Miyanmin into Pidgin for me, and Anaru, the luluai of Betavip village. It was through these people that I learned in a very intimate way about how the Miyanmin once lived, and how their past continues to affect them.
Kegesep was a slight, nervous person, who dressed in dirty shorts and a shirt. He was worried endlessly about sanguma (sorcery). Don Gardner told me a story about him which revealed much about how Kegesep saw the world. Don and he had been travelling far up the Skgonga River during an influenza epidemic. It was, perhaps, one of the first such epidemics to hit the area. Their travel was made perilous by the taut social situation resulting from the wildfire-like spread of the disease and its many fatalities. Everyone blamed the epidemic on sorcery by their neighbours, and reprisal raids were expected at any moment.
One morning Don entered Kegesep's hut to find him grey and stricken. It slowly emerged that the previous night Kegesep had gone to the edge of the camp to piss. There he had felt something brush against his leg. It was a snake, he said, which was attempting to climb his leg and enter his anus. Kegesep knew that the snake had been sent by enemies to weaken him. He explained that as a youth he had seen many such snakes taken from the intestines of the victims of his father's raiding parties. Kegesep knew that those snakes had been sent in advance, using witchcraft, in order to weaken their victims.
The ‘snakes’ Kegesep saw in the bodies of the slain were doubtless the impressive Ascaris roundworms which are ubiquitous in human populations in remote areas of Melanesia. These large, active intestinal parasites do indeed superficially resemble white snakes.
Don understood the seriousness of Kegesep's situation, but was at a loss as to how to help. Finally he gave Kegesep two aspirin, explaining that they were medicine to kill any snakes which may have entered him.
Kegesep made a speedy recovery. I have often been amazed at the beneficial effect simple remedies such as aspirin or vitamin pills have on people such as the Miyanmin. For those with serious vitamin deficiencies there is, perhaps, an almost immediate improvement in general well-being after swallowing a vitamin pill. Likewise, for someone who has never experienced an analgesic, the relief that even a simple aspirin brings can seem tremendous.
I liked Kegesep very much. He was always laughing or smiling, and invariably took the trouble to correct my stumbling Pidgin. It was saddening to think of the numerous fears and obstacles which beset him in his everyday life. I gave him my shirt when I left Yapsiei in 1984. Kegesep died soon after my last visit to Yapsiei in 1986.
Anaru was a powerful man with greying hair, probably in his late forties. He was by far the most healthy man in his generation at Betavip, showing no sign of illness at all except for the usual grile. He wore nothing but a short penis gourd, allowing his fine physique to be shown at its best.
I got to know Anaru well when, after spending only a few days at Betavip, I decided to climb Mt Boobiari, the 1,200-metre-high limestone peak which rose abruptly a short distance from the village. The mountain was reputed to be home to one of New Guinea's rarest and most spectacular mammals, Goodfellow's Tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus good-fellowi), which the Miyanmin know as Timboyok. This beautiful, chestnut-coloured kangaroo has a long tail mottled with gold, two golden stripes running down its back, and striking blue eyes. It is at home in the tree-tops of New Guinea's oak forests. But almost nothing was then known of it in the wild.
My companions on the trip were Anaru, Deyfu and Imefoop. Anaru and Deyfu were superb hunters. Imefoop, on the other hand, was frail and sickly. His body had been devastated by tuberculosis since childhood, leaving him with little strength. Imefoop had been enlisted as one of our carriers at Yapsiei Station. Don, who knew him quite well, was happy for him to carry our kettle, for which he was paid four kina per day (about six Australian dollars), the same wage as our other carriers. Even with this light burden, Imefoop was often left gasping by the time we called smoko.
Imefoop was extremely pleased to carry for us from Yapsiei to Betavip. The matter was not solely one of money for him. In truth, Imefoop had almost no standing in the community. He was the butt of endless jokes and taunts by the village children, and was largely ignored by the adults. Now he was being paid equal wages to work alongside more able-bodied Miyanmin. For once he was being taken seriously.
By 1986, just two years after we climbed Boobiari, tuberculosis had all but destroyed Imefoop's frame. Fluid accumulated in his abdomen, then flooded into his penis and scrotum, causing immense pain and disfigurement. One day, when the end was near, he approached Don and opened the blanket he had wrapped himself in.
‘Look what has happened to me,’ he said, in a voice filled with anguish and shame.
In death Imefoop gained a touch of the dignity and influence which had so sadly eluded him in life. As he lay in his hut dying, he shouted out that he was going to punish those little boys who had taunted him for so long. When he died, he said, his spirit would fly to the headwaters of the Skgonga River. There it would cause a landslide which would muddy the water, making it impossible for the children to dive for a quartz stone, their favourite pastime.
Soon, his relatives and friends crowded around him. Each asked for some favour or o
ther which he could bestow on them when he reached the spirit world. Imefoop was at last being treated as a man of consequence.
EIGHT
Boobiari
The climb up Mt Boobiari was short but steep. Mercifully, most of it was through tall primary forest, which got cooler and firmer under foot as we ascended the slope. At about 800 metres elevation we emerged unexpectedly onto a tiny ridge covered in kunai (grassland). There, a patch of tall cane grass grew in a small hollow. It was the kind of cane from which arrows are made. Deyfu bent down and gently plucked a few stalks. When I asked him what he was doing, he said quietly, ’Papa bilong mi i stap’ (My father is here). It was a moment before I understood that the cane had been planted atop his father's grave. Suddenly, the symbolism of his gesture overwhelmed me.
The little clearing marked the site of a village which had been abandoned perhaps twenty years earlier. It was a splendid location as far as defence was concerned, for the entire upper reaches of the Usake River could be seen from here. Any enemies would be sighted long before they came near. Despite its defensive advantages, one could not help thinking of the poor women. Every day for countless centuries they had trekked down the mountain to work in their gardens. Each evening they had carried food, bamboo canes full of water, and babies back up the 800-metre ascent.
Another few hundred metres up the mountain we reached a small hut. It was just a roof supported on four sticks a metre or two above the ground. Here, we rested and boiled tea. Deyfu fashioned his canes into arrows, clamping them between his teeth to straighten them.
We were to spend a week at this place.
A few hours later we continued our walk to the summit, which we reached by following a rocky path a kilometre or so on from the hut. As we neared the peak, the vegetation became stunted and wisps of mist lay between the trees. A few more steps and we were at the summit itself, the path ending abruptly at a precipice.
There we had a surprise. A large eagle-like bird was perched in the leafless branches of a stunted tree which overhung the cliff. Although it goes by the ungracious name of the Long-tailed Buzzard (Henicopernis longicauda), this is an impressive animal. New Guinea's second-largest forest-dwelling bird of prey, its feathers are shades of soft brown, and it has a long, barred tail. It is rarely seen at close range—this was my only view of it at the distance of just a few metres in all my years in New Guinea.
It glided out over the valley.
Below, through the swirling mist, there were glimpses of the Usake River and the cluster of huts which make up Betavip. I suddenly felt what it meant to be the only European to have scaled Mt Boobiari. I felt a very long way from anywhere.
On the lonely nights we spent together on the mountain, Anaru told me of raids he had taken part in as a young man. The first step towards making a successful raid, he said, was for a big man to ‘make ropes’. By this he meant that a warrior who wished to stage a successful raid must create a network of social obligations among the scattered Miyanmin communities, so that enough adult males could be gathered together to undertake a successful raid. ‘Ropes’ were made by marrying off daughters, distributing piglets and meat, and cementing ties through other gifts. Once the strategic alliances had been forged, the work of planning the raid could begin.
If the raid was directed towards the Atbalmin, then a cane suspension bridge had to be constructed over the Sepik River, which separates the lands of these two people. This might take several weeks. Then, an appropriate village must be located and scouted. It should be a little isolated, containing perhaps forty or fifty people. It was of crucial importance that every one of the inhabitants be killed or captured in the raid, as one escapee could alarm neighbouring villages, who would then descend upon the Miyanmin before they made good their escape.
Anaru described how the village would be surrounded at night. The attack often took place near dawn, when the huts were rushed. The killing had to be quick and total. The men and older women were usually dispatched by being grabbed from behind, and a sharpened cassowary leg bone thrust violently downwards into the gap between collar bone and shoulder blade, so as to pierce the lungs.
Anaru mimed a demonstration using an old blood-stained dagger, with me as a mock victim. The feeling of his sinewy arms around my neck pinning my body to his, and the point of bone biting into my skin, sent a shiver down my spine. It was all done so expertly.
The bodies had then to be butchered, again quickly and efficiently. The head, arms and legs were detached from the torso using bamboo knives. Then the torso would be gutted, and tied, much like a backpack, to the back of the man who was to carry it. The head was carefully wrapped in a package of palm leaves and carried slung from a looped cane handle. A leg and an arm would be thrown over each shoulder, to be grasped in pairs by the wrist and ankle. The bearer would then begin the long trek back to his village. The community would eat well in the next few days. If he was exceptionally lucky, he might also carry away a child strung in a bilum (string bag) over his shoulders, or herd a terrified young girl before him.
These raids were vital to the Miyanmin, in both social and physical terms. They gave meaning to the lives of men, who sometimes schemed for years to carry off a successful raid. If they could succeed just once, their names would ring down through the generations. The raids also brought a cornucopia of protein to a malnourished people. Yet even this was not their most important product, for (what mattered most to the Miyanmin) they brought children.
Even in the days before their move to Yapsiei, infant mortality was dreadfully high among the Miyanmin. Once a child had survived its first few years of life, its chances of making it through to adulthood were much improved. Such older children were valued, so that even children adopted after raids were cherished and brought up in loving families.
The full significance of this came to me in 1986, when I visited Yominbip, perhaps the most remote Miyanmin settlement of all. There I met a close family which had been forged in just this way. But that story must wait its turn.
I confess to having spent a few uneasy nights in the shelter on Mt Boobiari after Anaru told me of his earlier life. He clearly loved the ‘good old days’ and told his story with great relish.
Our days of hunting on Mt Boobiari were a strange mixture of intense pleasure and almost insufferable discomfort. The shelter was so small that it was impossible to stay dry under it during the daily downpour. At night, too, various parts of our anatomy would be exposed to the persistent rain, either by poking out from under the hut, or because of its many holes. Worse, it was so low that I could not stand up in it, and often could not shelter fully from the sun. Despite its disadvantages, there really was no alternative. The ridge it sat on was so narrow that there was literally nowhere else to go.
The worst annoyance on the mountain were the sweat bees. They discovered us very early on. Sweat bees are minute, sting-less bees which can swarm by the thousand from dawn until dusk. As their name suggests, they drink sweat. The vast clouds which swarmed about the shelter on Mt Boobiari set up a high-pitched hum which did not cease while there was daylight. They are incredibly tenacious creatures, and will not move from your skin until they are squashed. They climb into your ears, eyes, mouth and nose, under your shirt, pants, socks and hair, by the thousand. The feeling of ten thousand tiny tongues lapping simultaneously at my skin was a torture which soon drove me to distraction.
To make matters worse, one bee in a thousand is in fact another species. This one stings with the ferocity of a high-voltage electric shock. Rest your hand against a tree or pole of the hut, and it strikes. Go to pick up a tool, or brush against the shelter's roof, and it strikes again. Brush bees from your face or arm, and the electrode explodes into action yet again. To sit for a minute in such a cloud of insects is bad enough. Every second is counted. But to spend days on end, with no possible relief, is an absolute nightmare. I even looked forward to the mosquitoes of the dusk, despite the risk of malaria they carried.
For so
me inexplicable reason, my animal traps caught absolutely nothing the whole time we were camped on Boobiari. The hunters did better, and it was the wondrous beasts located by Anaru and Deyfu that held me there. On our first day Deyfu returned to camp with the body of a large rat in his hand. It was the size of a small cat, and had whiskers which extended more than fifteen centimetres on either side of its face. Its fur was a rich brown above and white below. Remarkably, its balls were larger than those of any of us humans.
At first I could not identify this strange creature. Was it a White-tailed Rat (Uromys caudimaculatus, a species common in Australia) with elephantiasis? No, the tail scales were too large. Then I remembered a description I had read some years before of New Guinea's very rarest large rodent. Named Xenuromys barbatus, which means ‘strange mouse with a beard’, it was reported to resemble superficially the common White-tailed Rat. I trembled with the thought that I might be holding one of only five Xenuromys ever seen by a European. If so, I would have the privilege to be the first ever to know the weight of this beast, to know where it was sheltering when found, to look into its stomach and learn of its diet, and even to speculate on its need for such titanic genitals. Indeed, I was probably the first European to discover that it was so well endowed.
These thoughts quickly translated into a frenzy of measuring, sampling, preserving—and finally cooking! We were all hungry for meat after a diet of rice and tinned fish, so we stewed the skinned body with forest greens. It was a terrible job preventing Anaru and the others from crunching up the bones as they habitually did with such food. Each time the sound of splintering bone cracked around the darkened campfire I had to seek out the culprit and request the mouthful they were enjoying so much. I felt guilty at depriving them of such evident enjoyment. Still, after it was over, I carefully packed away the bones, and proudly pondered the fact that this would be the first skeleton of a Xenuromys ever to grace a museum collection.