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Janice Lamattina
Sepik River Region
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Janice Lamattina
Sepik River Scene
How to explain the mystery that is the Sepik River region of PNG?
An area accessible only by boat (usually dugout canoes), where communication is still by drumbeat with signals unique to each village. A world in there is still an intricate hierarchy of tribes, villages, clans and families, where an affront or error in judgment requires—at best—compensation (actual money....or perhaps two sugar packets) or—at worst—retribution (that word again) from the spirits. A place where women are regarded both as powerful for their ability to bring forth life but also threatening for their ability to steal a man’s power when they’re menstruating. A place where headhunters honored their victim by naming a child after them. A society whose tribal carvings of spirit masks and other cultural items are much sought after artifacts that are displayed in every important museum around the world.
As I’ve learned with other PNG provinces, the culture of the Sepik is unique and varies enormously from tribe to tribe, village to village.
The Sepik and its tributaries twist and turn, cutting through muddy banks of water hyacinth, occasionally as wide as a mile but typically the width of the Altamaha. It runs 700 miles, but across only 200 miles of land. During this, the dry season, a day’s itinerary is determined each morning based on water levels. (It is also dependent on whether there has been a death in a village or, perhaps, a “conflict” with another tribe.)
The hot air hangs moist and heavy as our flat bottom boat churns up the Sepik. The only motor ANYWHERE, villagers hear us approaching and come running to the riverbank. Children, naked, race into the river to catch the boat’s wake. Families wave excitedly as we pass. Any boat, especially one with a motor is a rare event! Canoes huddle the embankments with women fishing, occasionally with fires in the canoe to smoke fish wrapped in palm leaves as they go.
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woman fishing
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Kids and Women Fishing
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Kids Fishing
It is hard to describe such a vast expanse of water and land without roads, electricity, stores, or modern communication, and yet, somehow, with a culture and lifestyle with its rhythms and daily routine.
Sago (yes, the palm) is the main diet staple and eaten at every meal. A laborious process of shredding the peeled trunk and running water through it to extract a sediment (I am grossly oversimplifying!) results in a flour. This is turned into sago pancakes (tastes like bland chewy nothing) or sago pudding (mixed with water and boiled until the texture of thick caramel syrup, but tasting equally bland). One 50 foot sago produces enough to last one family a month or two. The Sepik people trade their sago for pottery or shells from other tribes in neighboring provinces. And yes, villagers are having to go further and further in search of the palms.
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Sago processing
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Sago pancakes
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Sago pancake
The river people supplement the sago with smoked fish, mostly piranha, caught in nets. I never saw line fishing in the Sepik. Our 65 year old guide remembers the river filled with swordfish, catfish, and prawns. We pulled up on the mudflats near his village where women were trapping small shrimp in baskets made of sago and sugar cane fiber. Some were cooked for dinner on our boat that night: tender and very sweet! As the Sepik began to clog with water hyacinth, the Europeans brought in tilapia to clear it out. Then piranha, added in the 70s, ate virtually all the native fish.
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Women Fishing
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Smoking fish
Sepik river homes are built up about 8 feet to keep rodents out and as a precaution for flooding. Cooking is done on the ground under the house, which is also where the pigs live. The black “tar” from the smoke and cooking somehow coats the wood and helps prevent termites! Sago thatched roofs cover 2-3 rooms. Cane fibers are used in lieu of nails. Occasionally there is a large pot for collecting rainwater. Otherwise, river water is either boiled or allowed to rest while the sediment settles to the bottom, at which point the top “clear” water can be drunk.
Janice Lamattina
Water Collection
You also see small, exceedingly neat, gardens of sweet potatoes, corn, tapioca, bananas, beans (plus tobacco). All the gardening, fishing, and sago making is done with the most rudimentary hand tools. Even hunting of cassowary birds is still done by spear.
Education seems haphazard. One school had four boys in grade six the day we were there, although the teacher claimed 12 third graders and 12 sixth graders. Every village had lots of school-aged children milling around. One explanation given is the government is not enforcing a commitment to education. The teacher alluded to not being paid. Seems they had been being paid fortnightly, but given travel times in PNG, paychecks were delayed by weeks. Supposedly the government then began direct deposit. That does no good for a teacher who is 2 days travel by canoe from any ATM.
People 45 and older speak English easily and well. Village children seem to have low comprehension and can’t get much past “hi” and “what’s your name.” Apparently, when the Australians ran the schools through the mid-90s, English was the language taught. Since then, it has been pidgin, which is not helpful for getting jobs or advanced education.
The Sepik river tribes are known for their spirit houses, many of which were destroyed by missionaries (and termites!). They are, essentially, repositories for the history, tradition and legends that make this culture so unique. Forbidden to women (except white women) and children, it is in these buildings where men gather, make decisions about village issues, store cherished and sacred village objects and hold the ceremonies for initiation into manhood.
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Sepik Spirt House 01
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Sepik Spirt House 02
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Sepik Spirt House 03
An important traditional activity of the spirit house (or, also, the men’s house) is resolving disputes. In the center of the first floor is an old large wooden chair known as the orator’s chair, typically carved with spirit representations (crocodile, pigs, bird of paradise, ancestors). This is the most sacred item within the spirit houses, so taking pictures of it is forbidden. Two parties alternate approaching the chair and presenting their “case” to the men gathered in the spirit house who will ultimately decide on the issue. One recent example relayed to us was a disagreement over which clan controlled a fishing site.
Other items inside these two-story, long, buildings include platforms on which the men sit, organized by clan, bamboo flutes, decoratively carved old drums called Garamut (some a couple hundred years old) made from hollowed-out trees, woven or painted spirit masks and decorative and symbolic carvings of spirits. At one time, heads taken in battle were placed under the support posts of the spirit house. Given the age of some of the houses, it is fair to assume the skulls remain, hidden. It is said that the knots in a rope seen hanging from the ceiling in today’s spirit houses represent the number of skulls they once had.
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Inside Spirit House
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Inside Spirit House - woven boar
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Inside Spirit House - orators chairs
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Inside Spirit House - gables mask
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Inside Spirit House - carving
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Inside Spirit House - ladder to upper floor
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Inside Spirit House - interior carvings
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Men dancing in Spirit House
But the spirit house’s most sacred purpose is the initiation of boys into manhood, or the “scarification.” When boys reach the age of approximately 13, a group of them are brought into the spirit house. They enter through a door above which is a carving of a woman, legs spread as if in childbirth. This signifies the mother’s womb they have symbolically been in as a child. Over the next several weeks or months (six months to a year in distant times), they are instructed in everything about the history and traditions, stories of spirits and sacred knowledge of the tribe/village, the rules for manhood, how to behave. The boys remain secluded in the spirit house the entire time. Simultaneously, the mothers may paint their faces with clay and go into mourning for the child who is gone and will never return.
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Carving of woman giving birth - both sides
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Carving of woman in child birth in spirit house
Finally, the boys’ shoulders, backs, and buttocks are cut (spilling and removing the mother’s blood on the spirit house floor) with small marks to resemble crocodile skin, a powerful symbol in the Sepik and from whence the Iatmul tribe believes they descended. Traditionally, the cutting was done with bamboo slivers; today it is a razor. During the cutting, men play the sacred bamboo flutes to calm the boys with the sound of the spirits (and also to drown out their cries from villagers). After the cutting, in the middle of the night while the village sleeps, the boys are taken to the river where their cuts are scrubbed clean. Then a tree oil/clay combination is rubbed into the cuts. Repeated over several nights, the cuts take on a raised pattern. Finally, when the cuts have healed, the boys who are now accepted as men emerge from a second doorway, also with a woman with legs spread open overhead. This time the sculpture signifies emerging from the womb they have been in for the past months. A big celebration ensues.
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Scarification 01
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Scarification 02
A surprise re-routing one day due to water levels, took us through a small cut off the Sepik into the Black Water Lake area. But no water, no lake. Only small channels just deep enough to accommodate our flat bottom boat. However the birdlife was amazing as they fished the grassy flats and the scenery spectacular in a stark way. Far from sago trees, everyone was out fishing.
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Black Water Lake 01
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Black Water Lake 02
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Black Water Lake 03
In one village, we had the rare opportunity to visit a “family” house, sort of the women’s version of a men’s house. They meet here to discuss village problems, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence, and plan “marketing” where a few women discuss what to barter with neighboring villages or plan the long journey to a town to purchase items like soap. While seldom discussed and not celebrated, women too have their traditional dances and rituals. And, if a parent chooses, there is also a smaller version of the boys’ initiation ceremony which includes sharing of traditions, seclusion and, on occasion, scarring. The woman who spoke to us had chosen to do it “to share her brother’s pain.”
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Womens House 01
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Womens House 02
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Womens House scarification
The photo below captures much about the Sepik river spirit houses. In the foreground, are blood stones where a victim’s head was placed after a battle. This was done as an honor to the spirits who gave the tribe the power and strength for their victory. Sort of like a sacrifice. In the middle ground is an open area, forbidden to women. In fact, village women were gathered along the sides with their artifacts displayed on sago mats for sale. In the back is the spirit house, showing a main door and the woman above.
Janice Lamattina
Spirit House with sacred area women cannot go - Bloodstone in foreground
It is important to understand, and locals stress the point, that some tribes (the Yoakim of the Karawari) practiced cannibalism. The Iatmul of the Sepik did not; they were headhunters. Cannibalism is unhesitantly discussed among local guides. They describe the practice as ceremonial and ritualistic as opposed to being strictly for food. The actual process apparently varies, like everything else, from region to region. In the Karawari area, it was done during the mortuary proceedings, with special body parts imparting special powers. For many years, a tribe of women were dying from a mysterious “laughing” disease that was eventually found to be caused by handling and consuming human brains.
Cannibalism was officially banned in the late 30s. But there are known lapses continuing into the 60s. One local guide, who would have been a young child at that time, seemed to speak knowledgeably (who knows whether by experience or storytelling) about it. But he was quick to say that now the practice is not done because they have learned we are all one people under God. As I watched a man in his 70s from a tribe that practiced cannibalism perform a victory dance with other men, I couldn’t help but wonder.
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Man from tribe who once practiced cannibalism
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Close-up of man from tribe who once practiced cannibalism
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Dancing man from tribe who once practiced cannibalism
After a late night crocodile hunting expedition,
Janice the croc hunter
and an early morning refueling stop (hand pumped!!!!) we head back to the Highlands, the land of the warrior tribe: the Huli Wigmen
The landing strip where, only four days ago, we had scrambled 15 feet down a muddy embankment to our boat now looked totally different. The current was running fast and rains in the mountains had raised the water level 12-15 feet. And the rainy season has not begun.
Janice Lamattina
Fuel being hand-pumped into plane
Next time: some observations on this country today, some favorite faces of PNG ....and then on to Toraja, Sulawesi.
