the Mount Hagen festival

At all of the villages we visited we were made very welcome, many villagers coming out in their ceremonial costumes, others enjoying watching the proceedings.  Yes, I assume the dressing up was part of the ‘deal’ agreed in advance with the village chief – but the reaction of the villagers to our visits was clearly genuinely positive.   As indeed was the case all over the country.  So few foreigners visit PNG that it is an exciting event for them to see us – whether in the remote villages or in the towns.  & I love the fact that this makes it so easy to give pleasure, whether just by acknowledging the attention from adults with a simple nod or smile, or by waving at the children.

It's one of the aspects of this country that shows how remote it is from the rest of the world.  Another is the language situation, with the 820-odd different languages spoken in this nation of 11 million people representing one-quarter of the world’s languages.  Thankfully the language of education is English, so it is usually possible to find someone you can communicate with.  The official language is Pidgin (Tok Pisin), which is semi-comprehensible to an English-speaker and often quite amusing.  Some examples I picked up during my trip:

    Yu orait? – How are you?

    Nem bilong mi em Louise – My name is Louise

    Nambawan sosis bilong yumi – Our number one sausage

A sadder aspect to the remoteness is the persistence of some practices we would not find acceptable in the ‘modern’ world.  Killing a male member of another family is seen as an acceptable means of justice for certain wrongs, and fighting between neighbouring clans – to the death – as a means of resolving conflict persists in many parts of the country as there is no effective police force.  Thankfully we didn’t see any evidence of this, although I did hear that three people were shot dead in an argument between different clans whilst people were supposed to be enjoying an evening out following the main day of the Mount Hagen festival.  & a couple of hundred people died last week, I read, in inter-tribal violence in one of the areas we visited.

The festival was spectacular.  It showcased a great number of different traditional tribal ceremonies as well as a few more modern ones, and so was such a great opportunity to see all of the costumes … but all taking place in a fenced field surrounded by modern buildings, and with a lot of other tourists present.  Indeed I bumped into two people I know there!

I’m very glad I went to the festival, and would recommend it to others, but it was a universe away from the more personal experiences I’d had in the small villages.

Thankfully my group also made a trip to a ‘pre-festival’ show about an hour away from Mount Hagen, which took place the day before – in a beautiful countryside setting and with only a small number of tourists present.  Around nine or ten groups performed there for us.  It was yet another day on this tour when we foreigners just walked around all day saying "Wow!" over and over again.  Even now I cannot find words to describe what I saw or to articulate how I felt, so here's a couple more photos.