Papua New Guinea Village Living

The next morning, I woke up early and had my filling breakfast.  That day, the plan was to pack an overnight bag and head to one of the villages for a bit of cultural submersion.  Unfortunately, Jared was very under the weather.  He was complaining of intense ear pain, cold chills, headache and generally feeling crappy.  I did my best to load him up with medication that I had, but sometime in the afternoon, we threw in the towel and decided to postpone the village trip until the next day.  The rest of the day, I did research on the next leg of the journey, Indonesia, and checked on Jared every hour or so, making sure he was taking my medications at the correct times, and making sure he was eating a bit of what I brought him from the kitchen.  Even though, I wasn’t much of a tourist that day, being stuck at a nice resort and getting in a lot research was not the worst thing.  I decided that even though Jared was sick, I would still head out the next day, so as not to waste an exciting experience (for which I had already paid).
The next day, Jared perked up a bit, and decided to join me on the village trip.  Our escort, William, picked us up in the early afternoon, and drove along the coast.  We disembarked and met the family we were supposed to have stayed with the night before.  I walked around a bit, and watched the kids playing in the water, until our host came and met us.  I can’t remember his name right now, but he was very nice and he walked us up from the beach for about an hour to his village, Orotoaba.  When there, we met his wife, whose face was covered in traditional tattoos, and children, which had actually been his sibling’s children.  He and his wife were unable to have kids, so his sibling’s wife carried and gave them two children!  What an amazing family!  The kids followed us around, as our host showed us the village.  Jared didn’t feel well again, so he went to lie down, while I walked around a bit more.  I have to say, the village was pretty immaculate.  You might imagine rundown shacks packed together with the jungle growing around them.  But it was much the opposite.  The entire village was perfectly groomed.  The grass was cut close, making me think they must somehow have a lawnmower there, but I was told the grass was actually cut by hand with a machete that looks a lot like a sword, in that it’s thin and comes to a point instead of the larger, more common machete’s tip.  The area was larger than a football field; imagine cutting all that by hand!  All the trees in the village had been either cut back or chopped down, so the common area in the village looked like a park with small trees set up in designs and larger trees only growing up on the outskirts of the village.  It was really quite impressive.

The host showed me the river where they cleaned their clothes, and the area from where they got their fresh water.  The village was set on a plateau edged in on two sides by fjords, so he walked me over to both sides of the plateau to look out onto the fjord and ocean in the distance just as the sun was setting.  It was a beautiful backdrop.  I started getting a bit nervous as the sun went down though, because we had to walk a bit through high grassland, and with my unsure footing, I was worried about walking in the dark (I’m a big of a scaredy-cat).  I was able to use the last few rays of sun to make my way back through the grass to the village, followed all the way by the village children.  When I got back, I relaxed a bit on the patio of the bungalow made from sego palm shoots and interwoven dyed palm leaves.  The homes were actually was quite beautiful and well built. 

 After a bit, the host came and announced dinner.  Dinner was a bit interesting.  Firstly, there was a massive amount, way more than we could eat!  There was also an interesting mix between local fare like veggies cooked in coconut milk and salted cooked taro, and well known “classics”, like ramen.  Haha.  As the sun was going down and there was no electricity, I snuggled into the mosquito net-covered bed with the warm breeze blowing through the large open windows of the bungalow, and went to sleep.
Tnext morning, I woke up at about 4:30am for a jaunt through to the jungle to try to spot the native Bird of Paradise, the national bird of Papua New Guinea, and the only place in the world to see all but two species.  As I quietly tried to get my head together, so as not to wake sick Jared, I stumbled toward the eating bungalow for hot coffee to pry open my eyes.  As I was sipping on the coffee, I noticed the sound of drums in the distance, back toward the ocean where I first disembarked…at 4:30am!!  From an hour’s walk away!  Glad I didn’t stay there!  Anyway, after a few minutes of waking up, I turned around and got a shock!  The host had just stepped into the door frame, smiling.  Now remember the purely terrifying smile natives’ display!  Also, he had very dark bloodspot sclera (the white part of the eye), which I noticed the day before, but of which I thought nothing.  Now, with the pitch black, his smile, eyes, and machete in hand, I was a bit freaked!  Haha.  He must have been equally dazed, because it took him a second to say anything; we were both morning zombies at that point.  After I got all my things together though, the two of us set out to the jungle.  On our way, he grabbed his homemade spear…not kidding, in case we ran into any wild boar.  After about a half hour, the sun slowly started shedding light on the path and surroundings.  The walk was probably a little over an hour, during which we only passed maybe two or three people.  He pointed out a few farming spots, grabbed a handful of betel nuts straight from a tree and started munching on them, and we chatted occasionally along the walk.  Towards the end of our walk, he pointed out the Bird of Paradise call and mentioned they were very timid birds and would fly away if they suspected us.  Has anyone ever been bird watching?  Good Lord, it is not my cup of tea.  We ran back and forth in the jungle for two hours, hearing the birds’ call and making our way as quietly as possible in that direction, waiting around looking up into the trees, only to hear the stupid call again back in the area where we had last been, and briskly, and quietly getting back to that area.  Back and forth, back and forth!  Honestly, I think those birds knew exactly what they were doing, and just teased us the whole time.  After the two hours, the closest thing I got was a glimpse of the tail of one before it flew away.  Grr.  Still it was neat to spent time out in the jungle.  I remember the moment when my host stepped off the actual beaten path, to follow the birds’ call, instead of continuing on the trail, and thinking, “um, are we allowed to do that”?  Haha, silly tourist!  After our time in the jungle, we made our way back to the village, quickly stopping for a few more betel nuts.  When we got back, I was exhausted from the early morning and intense heat, and passed out on the patio of the bungalow, before actually crawling into the bed and napping there.  Only 11am and I was already all tuckered out.  After a few hours, I woke up and had lunch, while chatting with my host about his experience with travelers, his village, his family and some of the traditions in his village.  I think my favorite factoid was regarding the traditional female face tattoos.  He said any girl could get a tattoo if she decided, usually around the age of fifteen.  In more recent years, fewer girls were getting them done though.  Only certain women were allowed to perform tattoos.  In years past, each village had a dedicated woman to perform them, but there were fewer now, and a girl from his village had to travel to a different village to get one.  The design of the tattoo was up to the woman placing it, and took several months, during which time the girl getting it placed stayed in that other village.  I asked about male tattoos, which he kind of laughed at and said, “oh, men don’t get tattoos”!  I thought that was so interesting!  In their culture, it was only acceptable for a female to get a tattoo.  After picking his brain a bit, we decided it was time to make our way to the next village.  He walked us back toward the ocean, where we said our goodbyes, and made our way along the beach to the village of Jebo.  There our next host met us, introduced us to his wife, who also had facial tattoos and his children.  This village seemed much smaller, with only a few houses dotted along the beach. 

Jebo lived much more from the ocean, and they had several outrigger canoes washed up along the water.  I asked if I could try to take one out for a spin, to which he agreed!  Now that I think about it, it’s kind of like loaning a perfect stranger your car.  He helped push us into the water, and as we made our way out into the ocean, I looked back to see the locals all gathering on the coast to watch the whiteys try to handle the canoe.  It was very precarious!  In order to sit, you basically had to stack your legs, because it was so narrow.  Your “seat” was really just placing each “cheek” on a side of the canoe. 

I have no idea how people managed these things before the stabilizing bar, because the ocean was doing its best to throw us over.  Also, and I know this just sounds like I was bad at it (which I wasn’t!), but I swear paddling is backwards in these things.  Each time I paddled on the right side of the canoe, the canoe turned right, and vice versa.  In an attempt to go straight out, I basically just made one big, unintended circle, before just succumbing to the ocean and letting it drag us back to shore.  The locals were all big smiles, but at least I didn’t tip!   After a bit of lounging on the beach, our host called us to the bungalow patio for dinner, which, yes, was lobster that he just happened to pick up off the beach a bit earlier with local vegetables cooked in coconut milk.  Yum!  We chatted with him over dinner, when he told us that he learned all of English from hosting!  His father had originally hosted, and introduced him to other cultures when he was a young boy, and when he grew up, he built his own guesthouse and now hosts people himself!  What a great tradition to pass down.  After the sun set, we all headed to bed.The next morning, we woke up early for breakfast, and packed up to head back to Tufi.  The boat came early to pick us up, and after our goodbyes, we drove back to the resort where we met the divers again.  We had another breakfast with everyone and shared stories.  That day was the Tufi Cultural Experience, so we all made our way back down to the docks, got in the boat, and drove over to a new fjord.  While waiting there, a series of outriggers pulled up, being paddled by locals in traditional attire, including leaf and flower covering and large intricate beaded tops for the women, with local flowers decorating their hair. 
 
We all piled onto the platforms built over the outriggers, and they paddled us up a stream to their village, dubbed McLaren Harbour.  Once there, we all piled out and were greeted by the locals with an intense assault where they came sprinting, wielding spears, and yelling at us in their language.  Finally our local guide, translated their yelling to “are you a friend?  If not, we will eat you.”  The answer was obvious…eat him, not me!  After we passed the “friend or foe” test, we were escorted through to the village to more locals dressed in traditional clothing made from the land.  We stepped through their entry gate, made of flowers, and the children threw flower peddles on us. 

 They told us stories about their heritage, and showed us how they used their most valued natural resource, the sego palm.  The same sego palm, that all the villages use to make their homes, were abundant to their village.  They even used the shredded interior of the tree to make a pseudo-flour, which they used for baking, called sego loaf. 





They would shave out the inside of the palm and soak and kneed the shavings in water, strain it, hand-scoop out the thick creamy paste coming out, form it into a loaf wrapped in banana leaves, and dry it out over a fire.  When it was done, the soggy drippy paste from before has become a hard, dough-like substance that could be sliced off, ground up, and used like flour.  I thought it was fascinating to see how they had learned to use every bit of their most abundant resource to sustain their way of life.

The demonstration ended with a traditional song and dance, performed by all men except for one little old lady with the biggest smile.  They were all decorated with brightly colored leaves and flowers and crowns of bird feathers, playing drums and singing rhythmically as they danced around one another. 
As we walked out, more locals gathered to sell some of their crafts, including my favorite: a miniature outrigger with a sail made of paper-thin, bark.  It was such a perfect replica, but looked so fragile I knew it would disintegrate into mulch when I tried to travel with it.  We thanked everyone for their hospitality, waved our goodbyes and hopped back into the outriggers to be paddle downriver to our boat.  The lot of us piled into one speedboat and headed to our lunch destination, Komoa beach, for a BBQ of fish, meats and vegetables.  We spent the rest of the afternoon digesting, relaxing in the sun and snorkeling around the beach.  As the sun made its way toward the horizon, we made our way back to the Tufi Dive Resort for packing and one last dinner with the whole group.

The next morning, everyone had their bags packed, enjoyed and early breakfast, and either walked or were shuttled the quarter of a mile to the airport.  We all stood around chatting, exchanging details, and waiting for the plane.  When the plane landed, we say the new travelers disembark and be greeted by Wayne and Debbie.  As we made our way toward the plane, Wayne and Debbie drove past and we all gave enthusiastic waves and yelled our thank you's, and I recalled my first impression when I arrived in Tufi; that they must have really gotten on with those few people leaving.  Turned out, we were all those people too!  It was such a wonderful stay, and everyone was so hospitable.  No one might have ever heard of Tufi or the Tufi Dive Resort, but it’s a gem of a secret!