STEP Open House

This morning I went to an open house for the STEP course to see what the participants have achieved. The STEP course is for Papua New Guineans, teaching them how to teach literacy and prepare local language materials for their community. Two men from the Sos Kundi language are participating in this course.

At the open house this morning, I saw the books that the language groups had made and I spoke with the participants. There was one book that had animals in it and in the text, each animal made its animal noise, like 'woof' for a dog. The pig's noise was "Mmoo", but when the men said it, it didn't sound like the 'moo' a cow makes, it was more like the grunting sound that pigs make. They even had a sound for the noise that the sun makes! I have never heard the sun make a sound, but I guess in their culture, they believe that the sun says things like animals too.

Here are some of the books the Sos Kundi men made:

I don't understand much Sos Kundi, but the first two words on this page, 'wuna apa' mean 'my father'.

Me talking to a language group about one of their books. (Unfortunately the only photos with me in them were blurry!)

A couple of Papua New Guineans looking at some books.

Don't fall!!

There were several log bridges in the Sos Kundi area. Rather scary to cross!! In the picture below, I am crossing a big log bridge with a hand rail.

Not all log bridges are so nice! There are smaller logs with no hand rails!! One time when crossing one such bridge, I had a long stick to help with balance, however I put too much weight on it and it snapped! Fortunately I did not fall in - I managed to regain my balance and at the same time a strong hand grabbed my arm from behind to steady me. It was a man who had been some distance behind us and I didn't realise that he had caught up with us. This reminded me of God and how he looks after us. We don't always realise He's there, but when we need it, He puts out His hand and rescues/protects us.

The last farewell

About 5 months before we arrived in the Sos Kundi area, two women from Mangijangut village died. They mourn and bury them at the time, but then for the next several months they follow some practices, for example the relatives of the ladies didn't cut their grass, the men didn't cut their beards and the relatives wore black woven bands around their wrists.

The finishing of this mourning period happened when we were in the area. We were staying at Chikinumbu village at the time, so we packed our bags to stay overnight at Mangijangut village. The night before we went there, they had a night of crying, but we missed out on that.

The night we went there, there was some men from another nearby language group who they had hired to sing their songs about how everything came to be.

Here are the men singing the traditional story about how things came to be. They sat up all night doing that. We stayed there till midnight and then went to bed. The super strong, super sweet coffee that we were served at 10pm helped us to last to midnight. There must have been about a 1/4 cup of coffee and a 1/4 cup of sugar per drink!

It was all happening in one house, and in the house, there were grass images of the two women who had died.

Here are the grass images of the two women, plus some other grass. The women are in the centre, you can see one clearly, it is the tallest one with a loop at the top (for the head). The other image is immediately left, but it is hard to see the loop for the head on this angle.

The next day, they burned the grass images and looked to see which direction the smoke went. They believe that indicates something about their cause of death (eg where the person who did sorcery to cause them to die is from). I'm not too clear on that.

Taking the images out to be burned:

The fire:

There are believers and two churches in the area, but traditional practices also still happen. Not everyone is Christian, just like in Australia.

Animals

We saw a lot of animals when we were in the village. Some were living and some were dead when we saw them (for example the snake mentioned here). There were cows, ducks, chickens, pigs and crocodiles that the people were looking after to either eat or sell. There were a few cats and lots of dogs and puppies in the village.

One day we went to the market and we saw some people carrying a baby crocodile, so we had a look at it and had our photos taken with it. They were just carrying it that, they weren't selling it at the market, but sometimes when they are bigger, they sell them, either at the market or to private buyers. They get good money for the skin. In our village, one family had about 13 crocodiles in a pit that they will sell once they are bigger. The bigger the crocodile, the more money they get when they sell it.

Here's me with the baby crocodile:



Close up of the baby crocodile in my arms. See, it's mouth is fastened shut. They took the band off after we held it, and it was snapping quite a bit!

Another day we were sitting under a shelter doing some work, when some people came back from being out in the swamps, and they had with them a large lizard that they had killed and they were proud to show it to us. Here is a picture of me holding the dead lizard:

And the lizard full length:

And now for the dogs. The poor dogs have a hard life out there, but they got a bit of love and affection from me.

Here's me with a puppy:

The two puppies in the picture below are litter-mates, but one was weak and rejected my the mother and wasn't getting fed for a while. Correna took that puppy under her wing and cared for him, giving him food and washing him. We saw a lot of improvement in him and the mother dog accepted him and let him feed. As you can see in the picture, there is a huge size difference between him and his brother. When we left, someone was going to look after him for Correna, but he was still so small, we don't know if he will live to adulthood.

The next picture is of a young dog, maybe a 6 month old. She was about adult size, but still a puppy. I really loved her, she had such spunk and energy. She had already learnt to be cautious of human hands, so it was often hard for me to get near her. I usually gained her confidence by patting the baby puppies first.

When she let me near her, she just wanted to play. Playing involved her mouth and my hand, but she was gentle and never hurt me. Dogs know how to control their jaws well.

Food, food, food!

Wow, so far almost all my blog posts about my Sos Kundi trip have had something to do with food! Well, now I am just going to write one more post about food and be done with it!

As already mentioned, I ate snake and cuscus in the village. Some of the other meats that we had occasionally include: bandicoot, pork, duck, beef and chicken. The people killed a cow and gave us about 2 kilos of the best bit - good lean meat. I also ate cooked sago grubs three times. They were rather juicy, but not something that I would choose to eat!

Here's a few pictures of the food/me eating the food:

Burning the hair off the pig:

Orphaned piglets! Sorry, it's a cruel world.

Close up of sago grub, cooked with sago:

Me eating the sago grub in sago:

Cooking the bandicoot:

Bandicoot on the plate:

Me eating a bandicoot leg:

"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.