Papua New Guinea Blog 7: Kolopom School

Jane Fajans is a professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. She was invited to join the James Cameron expedition during their time in Papua New Guinea and share her insights into the culture of the Baining people. Jane conducted fieldwork with the Baining on the island of Papua New Guinea, near the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific.

On Monday I decided to visit Kolopom Primary School. Martin offered to accompany me since I had never been to this school before. Kolopom is the biggest school in the coastal Baining region and is growing. Until recently it only went up to 6th grade. To continue their education, students used to have to graduate with good grades from 6th grade, and then go on to boarding school elsewhere. Only a few families among the Baining could afford to send their children to boarding school in the past.

Tony Paska, headmaster of Kolopom School, Coastal Baining District, Papua New Guinea. Photo by Jane Fajans.

Nowadays, the schools are being extended to include all grades up to 10. Kolopom is now offering grades 3-7, and next year will add grade 8; they will add a new grade every year until the school can accommodate up to to grade 10. For the first two grades, children go to elementary schools in their own communities. Then, they move to the more centralized primary schools, which host children coming from 4-5 local elementary schools. After grade 10, some students go on to high school, and some go to vocational school to learn special skills to help them acquire jobs.

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Papua New Guinea Blog 6: Lassul Bay

The day after the fire dance people got off to a relatively slow start. Around 10 a.m., I had an interview with James Cameron about the fire dance and Baining life, in general. We sat outside and the film crew filmed the interview. I found Jim an excellent interviewer, and the whole event felt more comfortable than I had imagined.

After the interview I set off for the North Baining. I had only five days left before my departure, so I chose the village that was easiest to get to. The journey turned out not to be as easy as I expected, in either direction. The driver, James, took me to a place where the coastal Baining and other residents navigate across the big bay, called Atiliklikun Bay, in big speedboats, called ‘banana boats’ because of their shapes. I thought I would be able to find a boat to take me across the bay. It was midday when we arrived, but the people on the beach said that none of the boats would be leaving until 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening.

Being reluctant to just sit on the beach and wait, we called the district administrator for the coastal Baining–who had said on Thursday that he would be at this beach around noon–only to find that he was still in Kokopo. After several conversations, he persuaded us to drive back to Kokopo to meet him (an hour’s drive). When we did find him, he said he wasn’t ready to go, and found me another ride instead. That ride was also not ready to go, but I got into the car anyway. We proceeded to drive around Kokopo from store to store, while the various passengers bought supplies and talked with friends. Most of the passengers in this car were teachers from one of the local Baining schools; they were in town because they had been paid on the preceding Thursday and were now spending their earnings. They were not Baining themselves, but represented a spread of people from across Papua New Guinea.

Finally, around 4:30, we left Kokopo, but to my surprise we didn’t go straight to the beach where the boat was docked. Instead, we went to the home of the school inspector. He insisted on feeding us with rice, noodles, and chicken pieces, and some greens in a coconut sauce to put over the rice. This meal is fairly typical of what a teacher or other salaried person might eat regularly.

Just as it was getting dark we loaded into the truck again, this time along with the school inspector, who actually owned the truck, and headed for the beach. The school inspector then drove the truck home, and we got into the speedboat to head to Lassul Bay. Lassul Bay is the government headquarters for the Coastal Baining. There is a brand new health center there (to be opened with great fanfare at the end of March), a police station, the district administrator’s office, and the local government council offices.

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Papua New Guinea Blog 8

Jane Fajans is a professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. She
was invited to join the James Cameron expedition during their time in
Papua New Guinea and share her insights into the culture of the Baining
people. Jane conducted fieldwork with the Baining on the island of Papua
New Guinea, near the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2012, Martin and his mother, Tangbinan, sent messages out to various hamlets in the region to invite everyone to a farewell dinner on Wednesday. All day I was told who would be coming. As plans got finalized, I learned that each guest was going to bring food, and that several men and boys were also going to arrange a dance performance of a part of the dance called amambua.

I had seen amambua performed several times when I lived with the Baining in the seventies, but had been told when I visited in 1991 that they no longer performed it. I was pleased to hear that they were performing it again. This particular performance was being readied for the opening of the new health center. The performance for my going away party was thus sort of a dress rehearsal for the event a week or two later.

With invitations out and preparations on the way, Awat, Aidah, and I set off to wash clothes. We headed for a spring and water hole about 20 minutes away. We had to walk about twice as far, however, because we first had to buy washing soap at the trade store along the coast. While at the store, we also bought some rice and tinned fish to serve as my contribution to the going away party.

The water hole is called ‘wata kalop’ in pidgin, which means jumping water. The water comes out of a crevice in the rock and falls to the pool below. Those who use the spring have created a small channel made of a split bamboo to create a kind of waterfall that works as a shower.

Women washing clothes at the ‘wata kalop’. Photo by Jane Fajans.

After we washed our clothes, we spread them out on the grass and bushes to dry. Then we sat in the cacao grove alongside the water and cooked some plantains and waited for our clothes to dry.

Waiting for our clothes to dry, cooking bananas, and chewing betel nut. The fire is almost extinguished here. Photo by Jane Fajans.

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Papua New Guinea Blog 5: Fire Dance

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Jane Fajans is a professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. She
was invited to join the James Cameron expedition during their time in
Papua New Guinea and share her insights into the culture of the Baining
people. Jane conducted fieldwork with the Baining on the island of Papua
New Guinea, near the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific.

On Tuesday, March 6, we drove up to Gaulim to make arrangements for the Baining Fire Dance. This is a traditional dance that is performed at night. The dancers wear big masks and dance around a big fire. From time to time one of the dancers will run into the fire and start kicking logs and embers and sending sparks flying across the area. The dancers are accompanied by a male chorus. The members of this chorus sing in a rapid staccato style and pound a piece of bamboo tubing on top of a large piece of wood. The music is very energetic and the dancers also move energetically–and sometimes frantically–around the dance ground. The shadows of the mask, the sparks of the fire, and the pounding music make this a very dramatic performance.

The village is about an hour from Kokopo, the capital of East New Britain. The road to the village goes up into the mountains and then about halfway down the backside of one mountain. The road is good until about 6 km (3.7 miles) before the village, and then turns into a very rutted track. On Tuesday, the road was dry so we could bump along it up to the edge of the village, but on Friday, when we went back for the actual dance, the road was all mud due to a recent rain.

Because we had called ahead and said we were coming, there were a number of people (men, women, and children) waiting for us in the village. Normally, everyone would be out in the gardens at this time of day. Having cell phones and cell phone coverage is a recent, and very welcome, change in this region. As I found out later, coverage is not available in other parts of the Baining territory.

On the way up to the village, we stopped at a small roadside stand to buy betel nut, the fruit of the areca palm that is widely chewed in Papua New Guinea (and elsewhere in the Pacific and Southeast Asia), and often combined with the fruit of a pepper plant and powdered lime. When mixed together, these three components turn bright red in the mouth and give a slight burst of energy, or buzz. Betel nut is used as a form of greeting among the Baining. Instead of a handshake, people exchange betel nut with one another, and if they have time, chew it together. People say that conversation goes better with betel nut (called “buai” in tok pisin, the local lingua franca). You should not swallow the betel nut, so people spit the red juice that collects in their mouths out on the ground. In many places in town there are signs forbidding the spitting of betel nut, but in the rural areas where the ground is dirt or grass, people just spit wherever they want. When you see people with very red mouths like bright lipstick, it is because of the betel nut.

We came up to the village and James and I (James was our driver) exchanged betel nut with the people in the picture below. The Australians with us did not understand this custom until they saw us do it. When I chewed betel nut with the residents of Gaulim, everyone laughed and the children ran around telling others. It is not common for non-Papua New Guineans to chew it.

Gaulim
villagers outside one house. Photo by
Jane Fajans.

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Papua New Guinea Post 3: Touring Caves and Volcanoes

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Yesterday I went on a tour of East New Britain area, or that
part which is readily accessible and thus included in such a tour. Parts like
the Baining Mountains are generally not considered in this category because
they are too hard to get to. We started out from Kokopo, which is now the
Provincial Capital of East New Britain. It is about thirty kilometers from the
old Capital of Rabaul. Along the road towards Rabaul, we stopped at several
caves. These caves are dug into the pumice cliffs along the steep escarpment
which forms the ancient caldera of the volcano, which formed Rabaul
Harbor.

Rabaul Harbor was a very important naval base and armed
forces headquarters for the Japanese Army during World War II. There are still
many remnants of their occupation all around the region.

The cliffs below were dug into the hillside by the Japanese
armed forces during World War II. They dug these tunnels in order to pull some
of their naval ships out of the harbor when Allied planes were sighted. The
ships, mostly barges and tenders, were lifted out of the water by cranes and
loaded onto railway track that led into the cave. The barges were thus dragged
into the tunnels to avoid being seen and bombed. The biggest remaining tunnel,
cutting deep into the mountain, can hold seven barges.

Photo by
Jane Fajans.

We also drove by a small volcano called Vulcan, which locals
watched emerge from the bay in 1937. Back then, as the Tavurvur volcano erupted,
a cone of earth and magma began rising from the water, forming Vulcan. The two
volcanoes remained active; they erupted again in 1994. Tavurvur also erupted in
2006.

Vulcan Volcano seen from Kokopo Road. Photo by Jane Fajans.

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