By DANIEL KUMBON - The National WeekenderIT IS very easy to forget and gradually lose some of PNG’s authentic traditional practices if people did not practice them.
I discovered this important fact at the recent 25th Enga Cultural Show silver jubilee celebrations.
I was intrigued to see this lady covered from head to foot in white clay sitting with four others in a booth at the far south-eastern end of the showground.
She was wearing lots of equally white necklaces made with ripe seeds or Job’s tears harvested from a plant called waku that grows wild in old abandoned gardens.
This was how women used to express deep sorrow when they lost a loved one.
I realised how ignorant I have been not to notice the danger it posed for this important aspect of Enga’s cultural heritage to gradually disappear without a trace.
I am not sure if I would write this piece if this woman had not decided to participate at the show.
She brought back vivid memories of my own mother dressed exactly like her when my own baby brother, late Nuamb died nearly 60 years ago.
I remember many people coming to my house and crying so mournfully. They sat around the stiff body which appeared to me to be sleeping peacefully in a partially opened bilum lying on the ground.
I was worried they might poke his eyes or wake him up when they kept touching my late brother’s face, arms and legs as they wailed at the top of their voices.
This all looked funny to see grown men and women cry easily like children.
Nobody was beating them so why were they crying?
I guess like all children, I did not understand or knew anything about death at that early age of my growth.
A couple of days later, I realised my mother was not breast feeding or holding my baby brother anymore.
I felt happy about it when I was told my brother Nuamb would never come home.
I would now have my mother all to myself, I thought for he had been given all the attention.
White ghost
But lo and behold my mother had turned into a white ghost.
I hadn’t noticed the body of my brother taken away and buried on the edge of our garden with the mighty Lai River flowing nearby slowly making its way to the coast.
That evening, I screamed in terror and fled when I saw a ghostly figure covered from head to foot in white clay sitting there in the semi-darkness in the mid-section of our house.
‘Don’t be afraid of me my son, it is only I your mum,’ my mother said to me in a husky voice which sounded almost like a whisper. She had lost her voice after all the crying and wailing for the loss of her son.
Friends and relatives began bringing firewood, food items and ready-made Job’s tear necklaces for my mother to wear.
As the days went by, my mother kept applying mud on her body and continued to wear the ugly necklaces which made hideous sounds when when she moved.
At times my mother picked me up in her arms, held me tight and quietly sobbed in my ears. I screamed and kicked like a small piglet to escape but her grip on me was firm and overpowering.
I discovered this important fact at the recent 25th Enga Cultural Show silver jubilee celebrations.
I was intrigued to see this lady covered from head to foot in white clay sitting with four others in a booth at the far south-eastern end of the showground.
She was wearing lots of equally white necklaces made with ripe seeds or Job’s tears harvested from a plant called waku that grows wild in old abandoned gardens.
This was how women used to express deep sorrow when they lost a loved one.
I realised how ignorant I have been not to notice the danger it posed for this important aspect of Enga’s cultural heritage to gradually disappear without a trace.
I am not sure if I would write this piece if this woman had not decided to participate at the show.
She brought back vivid memories of my own mother dressed exactly like her when my own baby brother, late Nuamb died nearly 60 years ago.I remember many people coming to my house and crying so mournfully. They sat around the stiff body which appeared to me to be sleeping peacefully in a partially opened bilum lying on the ground.
I was worried they might poke his eyes or wake him up when they kept touching my late brother’s face, arms and legs as they wailed at the top of their voices.
This all looked funny to see grown men and women cry easily like children.
Nobody was beating them so why were they crying?
I guess like all children, I did not understand or knew anything about death at that early age of my growth.
A couple of days later, I realised my mother was not breast feeding or holding my baby brother anymore.
I felt happy about it when I was told my brother Nuamb would never come home.
I would now have my mother all to myself, I thought for he had been given all the attention.
White ghost
But lo and behold my mother had turned into a white ghost.
I hadn’t noticed the body of my brother taken away and buried on the edge of our garden with the mighty Lai River flowing nearby slowly making its way to the coast.
That evening, I screamed in terror and fled when I saw a ghostly figure covered from head to foot in white clay sitting there in the semi-darkness in the mid-section of our house.
‘Don’t be afraid of me my son, it is only I your mum,’ my mother said to me in a husky voice which sounded almost like a whisper. She had lost her voice after all the crying and wailing for the loss of her son.
Friends and relatives began bringing firewood, food items and ready-made Job’s tear necklaces for my mother to wear.
As the days went by, my mother kept applying mud on her body and continued to wear the ugly necklaces which made hideous sounds when when she moved.
At times my mother picked me up in her arms, held me tight and quietly sobbed in my ears. I screamed and kicked like a small piglet to escape but her grip on me was firm and overpowering.
And so was her love for me.
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 to support each other to defend clan territory in times of attack from enemy tribes.
I was able to recall all this because of this lady who had come to the show to demonstrate how it was done.
Mourning weeks on end
No wonder I was surprised to see her because it was such a long time ago that I had seen my own mother dressed exactly like her.
Nowadays, it was common to see a mourning woman dressed only in a black blouse and a matching skirt. It seemed women today did not like to spend long periods of time in the funeral home or haus krai either.
In the olden times, women mourned for weeks on end. They continued to rub white clay on their bodies until the funeral feast was concluded. Only then were they free to resumed normal life.
The lady in mourning at the show sat with four other women. All of them were elaborately dressed in authentic everyday attire as women were expected to wear.
At their feet were three pairs of newly made Job’s tears necklaces, two gourds filled to the brim with fresh drinking water, cooked sweet potatoes, wooden digging sticks and other memorabilia from the past
Today people still helped contribute something at a haus krai but lots of cash and cartons upon cartons of Coke was involved.
Even so it was still encouraging to see people still embraced and kept alive some aspects of traditional culture as was evident here at the show. One woman was making a traditional umbrella using young leaves harvested from the pandanus nut tree. Another was making grass skirts while the fourth was making strings from bush vines to make a bilum or string bag.
At another part of the showground, two men were chopping a log using stone axes demonstrating how effective it was in olden times. A video recording of this event has gone viral on the internet.
Other men were building model homes, made fences, stone axes and human hair wigs etc as children ran around free and naked as was common in the village.
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 to support each other to defend clan territory in times of attack from enemy tribes.
I was able to recall all this because of this lady who had come to the show to demonstrate how it was done.
Mourning weeks on end
No wonder I was surprised to see her because it was such a long time ago that I had seen my own mother dressed exactly like her.
Nowadays, it was common to see a mourning woman dressed only in a black blouse and a matching skirt. It seemed women today did not like to spend long periods of time in the funeral home or haus krai either.
In the olden times, women mourned for weeks on end. They continued to rub white clay on their bodies until the funeral feast was concluded. Only then were they free to resumed normal life.
The lady in mourning at the show sat with four other women. All of them were elaborately dressed in authentic everyday attire as women were expected to wear.
At their feet were three pairs of newly made Job’s tears necklaces, two gourds filled to the brim with fresh drinking water, cooked sweet potatoes, wooden digging sticks and other memorabilia from the past
Today people still helped contribute something at a haus krai but lots of cash and cartons upon cartons of Coke was involved.
Even so it was still encouraging to see people still embraced and kept alive some aspects of traditional culture as was evident here at the show. One woman was making a traditional umbrella using young leaves harvested from the pandanus nut tree. Another was making grass skirts while the fourth was making strings from bush vines to make a bilum or string bag.
At another part of the showground, two men were chopping a log using stone axes demonstrating how effective it was in olden times. A video recording of this event has gone viral on the internet.
Other men were building model homes, made fences, stone axes and human hair wigs etc as children ran around free and naked as was common in the village.
Fertility ritual
An activity that attracted a lot more attention was the re-enactment of a fertility ritual called the Mara Karenge’ which involved the slaughter of a pig on a raised platform.
The pig was ritually led to its slaughter by several men. It was lifted up to a man who was already standing on the platform.
Then the nemogol or ritual leader climbed onto the platform and slaughtered the poor animal with one blow as the other man propped it up for him. The two men then threw the carcass to the ground and jumped down after it to cook it in a mumu to offer it to the spirits.
Another attraction already gaining popularity is the Yokonda Ancestral Salt Ponds near Sirunki situated at 2,000 meters above sea level.
Visitors have gone there by the busloads to see the ingenuity of traditional salt extraction methods. They tasted the rare favorable salt as they sprinkled it on food offered to them which was cooked in an earthen oven or mumu using hot stones.
When I was a child, I saw my father travelled twice to Yokonda all the way from Kandep on bush tracks and brought back a couple of round parcels of salt wrapped with pandanus nut leaves.
He went with other men from my tribe taking with them trade items like kina shells and tree oil from the Foi people of Lake Kutubu in Southern Highlands.
The oil gourds usually changed hands until they finally reached not only my people but others too in Kandep.
Some kept the oil for their own use or took it up to Yokonda to barter for the precious salt.
To reestablish this ancient trade link, a cultural group from Enga went to Lake Kutubu in 2018 to take part in the Kundu and Digaso Festival. A group from Kutubu was anticipated to attend this year’s show in Wabag but did not come.
The Enga Show Society did not rest to establish more cultural links, even overseas.
An activity that attracted a lot more attention was the re-enactment of a fertility ritual called the Mara Karenge’ which involved the slaughter of a pig on a raised platform.
The pig was ritually led to its slaughter by several men. It was lifted up to a man who was already standing on the platform.
Then the nemogol or ritual leader climbed onto the platform and slaughtered the poor animal with one blow as the other man propped it up for him. The two men then threw the carcass to the ground and jumped down after it to cook it in a mumu to offer it to the spirits.
Another attraction already gaining popularity is the Yokonda Ancestral Salt Ponds near Sirunki situated at 2,000 meters above sea level.
Visitors have gone there by the busloads to see the ingenuity of traditional salt extraction methods. They tasted the rare favorable salt as they sprinkled it on food offered to them which was cooked in an earthen oven or mumu using hot stones.
When I was a child, I saw my father travelled twice to Yokonda all the way from Kandep on bush tracks and brought back a couple of round parcels of salt wrapped with pandanus nut leaves.
He went with other men from my tribe taking with them trade items like kina shells and tree oil from the Foi people of Lake Kutubu in Southern Highlands.
The oil gourds usually changed hands until they finally reached not only my people but others too in Kandep.
Some kept the oil for their own use or took it up to Yokonda to barter for the precious salt.
To reestablish this ancient trade link, a cultural group from Enga went to Lake Kutubu in 2018 to take part in the Kundu and Digaso Festival. A group from Kutubu was anticipated to attend this year’s show in Wabag but did not come.
The Enga Show Society did not rest to establish more cultural links, even overseas.
Australians to the show
For the first time, an Australian indigenous cultural dance troupe from the Torres Strait Islands on an exchange programme attended the Enga Cultural Show silver jubilee celebrations.
This was made possible by the High Commissioner to PNG Bruce Davis.
For the first time, an Australian indigenous cultural dance troupe from the Torres Strait Islands on an exchange programme attended the Enga Cultural Show silver jubilee celebrations.
This was made possible by the High Commissioner to PNG Bruce Davis.
The people stood motionless as he officially opened the show and when a member of the dance troupe picked up the microphone to introduce her group to the Enga public.
They then performed some elaborate dances to the amazement of everybody who was able to crane their necks to get a glimpse of them.
Even people dressed in traditional attire abandoned their own performances and stood around to watch the Torres Strait Islanders strut their stuff. It was a sight to behold.
They then performed some elaborate dances to the amazement of everybody who was able to crane their necks to get a glimpse of them.
Even people dressed in traditional attire abandoned their own performances and stood around to watch the Torres Strait Islanders strut their stuff. It was a sight to behold.
Enga cuisine and fashion
Two other new cultural activities that were included in the jubilee celebrations was the introduction of Enga Fashion Week and a Tasting Enga banquet featuring local dishes.
Both these events proved to be big hits on the first try.
The Fashion Week was staged on Friday Night at the Enga Take Anda where raw talent was show cased as they modelled unique textile designs created by Stanley Peasero of Sirunki.
The organisers were satisfied, they had found what they were looking for.
They invited at least one model and Stanley Peasero himself were selected to go to Port Moresby to take part in the prestigious PNG Fashion Week festivities scheduled for Oct 7 to 12.
‘That is a big plus for Enga in our first attempt at such an event,” said an excited Stanley Peasero from Wabag.
The other major blockbuster event was creating local dishes involving top chief, Julz Henao who declared there was enough rich organic food in Enga province that could be used to create many local dishes of international renown.
The Yaskom Hotel at Sirunki was parked to capacity on the night of Aug 10 with patrons who ampled an inclusive three-course meal to showcase the exquisite produce and flavours of Enga.
The local dishes were created by Henao who is said to have cooked for world leaders during the 2018 Apec meeting in Port Moresby.
Believe it or not kaukau or sweet potatoe leaves were part of the ingredients for one of the local dishes.
Two other new cultural activities that were included in the jubilee celebrations was the introduction of Enga Fashion Week and a Tasting Enga banquet featuring local dishes.
Both these events proved to be big hits on the first try.
The Fashion Week was staged on Friday Night at the Enga Take Anda where raw talent was show cased as they modelled unique textile designs created by Stanley Peasero of Sirunki.
The organisers were satisfied, they had found what they were looking for.
They invited at least one model and Stanley Peasero himself were selected to go to Port Moresby to take part in the prestigious PNG Fashion Week festivities scheduled for Oct 7 to 12.
‘That is a big plus for Enga in our first attempt at such an event,” said an excited Stanley Peasero from Wabag.
The other major blockbuster event was creating local dishes involving top chief, Julz Henao who declared there was enough rich organic food in Enga province that could be used to create many local dishes of international renown.
The Yaskom Hotel at Sirunki was parked to capacity on the night of Aug 10 with patrons who ampled an inclusive three-course meal to showcase the exquisite produce and flavours of Enga.
The local dishes were created by Henao who is said to have cooked for world leaders during the 2018 Apec meeting in Port Moresby.
Believe it or not kaukau or sweet potatoe leaves were part of the ingredients for one of the local dishes.
Many years ago, we ate not only the tubers but the sweet potato leaves as well when we students were introduced to it by American teachers at St Paul’s Lutheran High School.
International tourists look for something that is different or something unique to a particular locality in any part of the world.
Enga has everything the world might want – authentic cultural practises, exquisite local dishes, unique sand paintings, unique textile designs and much more.
Tickets for the show were sold on-line for the first time this year resulting in nearly 200 tourists from many parts of the world attending.
Enga must brace itself to receive more visitors from now on.
Proper hotel facilities must be provided and grade 10, 11 and 12 school leavers must be trained now to cook food that is palatable for visitors.
In 2018 over 95,000 visitors arrived in PNG which represented a 9.5 per cent increase from 2017.
They collectively spent K700 million in the country according to an article by Lisa Smyth published in Paradise, Air Niugini’s in-flight magazine.
Enga must urgently prepare itself to tap into the lucrative tourism industry.
International tourists look for something that is different or something unique to a particular locality in any part of the world.
Enga has everything the world might want – authentic cultural practises, exquisite local dishes, unique sand paintings, unique textile designs and much more.
Tickets for the show were sold on-line for the first time this year resulting in nearly 200 tourists from many parts of the world attending.
Enga must brace itself to receive more visitors from now on.
Proper hotel facilities must be provided and grade 10, 11 and 12 school leavers must be trained now to cook food that is palatable for visitors.
In 2018 over 95,000 visitors arrived in PNG which represented a 9.5 per cent increase from 2017.
They collectively spent K700 million in the country according to an article by Lisa Smyth published in Paradise, Air Niugini’s in-flight magazine.
Enga must urgently prepare itself to tap into the lucrative tourism industry.
- Daniel Kumbon is a freelance writer.
