"Red buai"

In PNG some people chew betelnut with 'daka' (a mustard/pepper) and lime and it gives them a bit of a high and a red mouth. If they just chew the nut by itself, it doesn't have the drug effect or give them a red mouth.

Here's a picture of a young person from my village living at Bunabun who has just eaten some betelnut.

When we did our shopping for the village, we saw some dried mango that we thought would be good to have and put on our muesli. I really don't know what we were thinking when we picked up the packet. I guess we didn't really look at it properly…

Does the colour of the mango in the packet above look like normal dried mango to you? I don't think so!

We discovered that this mango had this reddish-orange strange coating on it and when you eat it, it makes your mouth go red, just like when people chew betelnut!

We thought this was quite funny and Correna played a trick on the people by eating one of these mangoes to give her a red mouth and she was laughing lots too, so they thought she was high on 'red buai' (buai = betelnut in Tok Pisin).

We showed them the packet of mangoes that we had and we gave everyone a piece. They just thought it was so cool, and after that we frequently had people coming and asking us for some of our 'red buai'. It was heaps of fun, and they liked it too because their church denomination forbids people from chewing buai, so this was an acceptable pretend buai!

Here's a picture of me with my red mouth from the mango, looking as though my mouth is red from buai:

And one of the people attending the writer's workshop, sitting there doing some work, holding his 'red buai':

"So glad to see you bathing!" (Bathing story 1)

Our bathing spot at Mangijangut village, was right on the 'canoe highway'. Yes that's right, we bathed on a log at the side of the river where everyone coming and going from the village would pass us in their canoes. So obviously we didn't strip down and wash, we bathed with clothes on!

Sitting on the log and getting wet:

So on the only day that we brought the camera with us to take bathing photos, a man comes back from being out somewhere and he sees us and says, "I'm so glad to see you there!" We thought, 'Okay…why is he so glad to see us bathing?'

It was totally innocent though, he had speared a snake in the swamp and was glad that we were there so that he could show us!

The snake:

Proud hunter:

The numbering of the photos on the camera shows that this happened in the midst of our bathing…the photo of me bathing above is number 340, the two snake photos above are 344 and 346, and this photo below of me about to get dressed is 347. So photos of the man and the snake are surrounded by photos of us bathing!

That night, two pieces of snake were given to the family we were staying with, but they were afraid to eat it and Correna and Elvira didn't want to eat it. I was the only one who was game to try. I didn't even have any psychological issues to overcome to eat it.

Here it is on the plate:

Me eating it:

So, what did it taste like? It tasted like…chicken!! It really did! It tasted like the meat on chicken drumsticks.

Cuscus for dinner

Our first meal of fresh meat when we were in the village was of cuscus. The Sos Kundi people are hunter-gatherers primarily, so they occasionally eat meat from an animal that they have speared.

One day some people came to our door and showed us the cuscus that they had killed, and her baby which was still alive.

Dead mother cuscus:

Baby cuscus:

Later on that night, we had cuscus for dinner. Before they cook the meat (of most animals) they remove the hair from the skin by burning it off over the fire. The burnt hair taste is very evident when you eat the meat. It is quite a strong, strange taste that is rather unpleasant at first, but it is something that I think could be an acquired taste and rather enjoyable once you get used to it.

A few days later, they still had the baby cuscus and we had a bit of play with it as you can see in these pictures. It is such a cute animal, even as adults they are cute.

Fishing

Elvira and I had the opportunity to go out with the people sometimes and observe some of their regular activities and then as part of our work, we would record someone telling us about that activity in their own language.

One of the things we did early in our trip was to go out fishing with the ladies one afternoon. They put out these nets, set them up, and then check them the next day for fish. The fish swim into them and get stuck in the holes as you can see in this picture:

Here is Rebecca with some of the fish that got caught in the net:

We went out in traditional dugout canoes and at first I was worried with every little wobble that we were going to capsize (especially after having that incident at Easter!), but of course we didn't! Here's my pose for the photo on this fishing trip:

I'm back!

I arrived back in Ukarumpa on Wednesday and have been quite busy getting settled back in and catching up with everything. We had a good 7 weeks in the village, but it's also good to be back now with modern comforts too.

I have so many stories to tell, so I'm planning on putting up new blog posts every couple of days so that you can catch up with it all before my next adventure (details of that to come).

We stayed in two villages during our time in the Sos Kundi area: 'Mangijangut' for two weeks, and 'Chikinumbu' for the rest of the time. We had some interesting bathing experiences, we actually had four different ways of bathing. So stay tuned to hear about them!

Also we had quite a variety of different meats that we ate occasionally. When we stayed in Mangijangut village we didn't carry our food with us, so we were eating local food every day there. The regular everyday food that we ate there was pumpkin, sago and fish. I'll tell you more about the different foods that we had in some later blog posts.

Here are some photos of how we started our journey…

Nice view on the way:

This is us coming in to land. It is flat, flat country where we were - no mountains to look up at.

See you in 7 weeks

Well, tomorrow morning I'll be up at the crack of dawn to get my flight to the Sepik. The language group is called Sos Kundi. I've got my small backpack and two small cardboard boxes packed with all the possessions I need for 7 weeks.

It's going to be really hot and humid where we're going, so that will be interesting. I will probably get a heat rash, so I'm taking talc to help prevent it, and cream to stop the itching.

We've heard that they are building a new toilet for us. That was very exciting news! It will be nice and clean and not smelly for the first week.

I think I will be able to recharge my camera batteries with a solar panel set up that we are bringing with us, so I won't have to worry about conserving the batteries, which is great.

There won't be any new blog posts for the 7 weeks and you'll get used to not checking it for a while, so write a reminder on your calendar/diary to start checking my blog again after 23rd June. I will have lots of stories to share when I get back and will be updating frequently.

Off to the village soon

On Wednesday I'll be leaving to go to the village with my housemate Elvira and another single lady, Correna. We're going to a village in an area called the Sepik Plains. We won't be right on the Sepik river, but there'll be other rivers in the area. The airport we will be flying to is called Tinboli, and that comes up on Google searches. We will be living in a village not far from Tinboli, about a 40 minute walk away.

Today I have been doing a few things to get ready for going. Firstly, I had a little panic in the shower when I thought about my Thermarest (sleeping mat). I had the terrible thought that I'd left it at Madang when I went there at Easter as I hadn't noticed it the other day when I was getting something out of the bag where I store it and I couldn't remember attaching it to my backpack when we left Madang. Fortunately when I looked for it in the bag, there it was - I was so happy!! Actually I only just realised a minute ago that I didn't even take it to Madang, that's why I couldn't remember taking it home! I must be going crazy!!

This morning I went to Correna's house to soak my mosquito net in permethrin to make the mozzies stay away from my net. Then in the afternoon I went to a nice lady's house and she sewed up and made a travel pillow for me. So I'm beginning to get my things together and organised for leaving on Wednesday.