Category Archives: Pacific

It’s Sunday and Friday nite I was expecting to get into town (or leave for town, which means getting in Saturday morning). A bunch of people from the Kui, Siboma and Paiawa church circuit [or parish?] have to go build a house for a big church meeting in September of the Lae or Morobe Parish [or circuit?] so they will use the [M.V.] Sago to carry all and drop them on the way to town, do their business (and me do mine) and pick them up on the way back. So I’m writing letters like mad to mail when I get into town.

The church service reminded me to write something about the music. All songs are in Yabêm and the words are in a hymnal without the notes, only marks indicating repetition [where to repeat]. Some of the songs are translations from German standards and are immediately recognizable from their steady beat, be it fast or slow (usually quite plodding), as it proceeds, Westernly from bar to bar. The others are local compositions with the author’s name and place at the bottom and these are recognizable by a rhythm that goes from crescendo to crescendo. They usually build up slowly on the men’s voices which carry the low tones [pitch] and gradually pick up the women who usually trail a bit behind the men and carry the crescendo to its peak in high tones [pitch] and at a much greater amplitude since all voices are contributing. The men then beat the women to the beginning of the next cycle, the song often carried by just one person at first then by more and more till the next crescendo peak. So one is a bar and staff rhythm, the other a crescendo to crescendo rhythm. Thus endeth my first attempt at ethnomusicology.

UPDATE: Recommended reading for specialists: Mission and Music: Jabêm Traditional Music and the Development of Lutheran Hymnody, by Heinrich Zahn [1880-1944]. Translated by Philip W. Holzknecht. Edited by Don Niles. Boroko: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, 1996.

“This entire work is a fitting tribute to one of the little-recognized–but hardly “unsung”–heroes in the development of Jabêm music and literature.” –Oceanic Linguistics 36 (December 1996) (Read full review)

“[Zahn’s] feeling for context almost makes him a contemporary of the sociologically oriented ethnomusicologists of today such as for example Thomas Turino.” –Oceania Newsletter 21 (September 1998) (Read full review)

The other day some women came back from their garden with a [c. 3-year-old] kid who had sliced off the top joint of his ring finger. It took some discussion before they asked me for medicine and bandage. I had only some of those sterile gauze pads and bandaids along with disinfectants but nothing to stop the bleeding and felt pretty useless but it turned out they decided to put kambang, the [slaked] lime chewed with betel nut, on as a disinfectant and I have an ample supply of that. I measured some out on my knife blade and put it on the cotton and one guy tied up the bandage. When they took the original bandage off blood shot out of the finger. They said later that the kambang would act as a poultice and when it went to work that nite the kid would not feel in the best of spirits. A doctor came or they took the kid to the doctor in the next village and he gave a penicillin shot and rebandaged the wound and yesterday the guy who did most of the original doctoring came to get my disinfectant powder and some bandaids so the wound seems to be healing all right. Since then I have been of slitely more use in dispensing aspirins, one cold tablet, and bandaids. Next time in town I plan to get more aspirins and some stomach marasin for me. My host’s wife gets migraines.

The meeting started out mostly in Tok Pisin and was conducted in parliamentary procedure of a most genuine and impressive kind. No holds barred discussions took place, which the two secretaries (called cuscus after a local animal [phalanger, opossum]) duly recorded in Tok Pisin. But as the meeting wore on, Yabem became more prominent perhaps because the older people are more comfortable in it and they did most of the talking. My presence did not seem to hinder the discussions in the least. Younger men would listen to Yabem and reply in Tok Pisin. The Sunday service was conducted similarly: Hymns & prayers in Yabem were followed by a sermon and scripture reading from the Nupela Testamen. There followed an ordination ceremony in Yabem. Ceremony tends to be Yabem because a prayer book or whatever it’s called has been translated into Yabem. Still, Tok Pisin seems to be slowly taking over from Yabem.

An Australian Lutheran missionary came on the afternoon of the Saturday meeting and I got to see the small singsing cooked up for him. The ship was met at the dock and after unloading the passengers headed off for the meeting ground. They were soon accosted by a guy with a padded out stomach and a construction helmet who looked as severe as possible and asked where they thot they were going. They gave some reply and he turned to the coconut frond fence they had erected for the occasion and called out his troops: about half a dozen men and an equal number of women adorned variously with grass skirts, body paint (ochre legs, black & white-face) and some towels the women carried as they danced. The men blew conch shells and beat a drum while they chanted and made threatening motions–one with a tomahawk–and threw coconut frond ribs at the visitors & crowd.

I tagged along with the spectators, who explained to me the setup beforehand and told of cases where some kids had been scared by the display into crying. They, however, were well aware it was all by way of giaman (roughly ‘deception’) and were as touristy as I was about it all.

The dancers were singing a Siboma singsing which the Sibomas asserted they had done rather poorly. People are familiar with singsings from a variety of places and like the local string band numbers as well as Western music and singsing music. Unlike Micronesia, which seems to lean toward Western stuff as far as I can tell. Well, maybe Yap just didn’t have a lot of intermediary music olsem stringband stuff here.

The boat carrying the missionary and 2 dozen others came into the dock head on and nearly knocked down the newly repaired thing altogether. It is an old leaky boat unlike the sound, sturdy little [M.V.] Sago which the Sibomas commissioned and had built recently.

It wasn’t till after the service Sunday that I talked with the missionary tho I saw him off and on from a distance. In Micronesia whites living in the village tend to be mistaken for Piskor; here they are taken to be SIL Bible translators. Both perform a similar function in fostering democratization and racial equality. [Several people mentioned that the missionaries, unlike the Australian administrators, would eat from the same food.] Melanesians are rather capitalist & democratic but racial equality needs considerable more work.

The ‘informant’ situation couldn’t be better. The kaunsil puts me to work. People never leave me alone when I’m working; they all come around eager to help and I’ve so far spent too much time getting & putting on paper & not enough assimilating and organizing. I’ve really got to work out a felicitous medium ground arrangement without alienating people. For only a week & a day here I feel like I’ve made phenomenal progress. The trip to Kui allowed me to stop assimilating onto paper and start communicating in it more.

Today I did my big book of seashells, with interesting results. Dictionary work is more fun than grammatical when your informants are not top grade. Together they make a good combination. And being put to work rounds things out nicely. Being able to relax by myself is all I need more of. And I think I’m slowly working that out.

The kaunsil & family are really top grade teachers (he was a schoolteacher for a while–a long while–and has ‘bossed’ (taken care of, taken responsibility for) a number of whites). [His lead dog was raised by whites and knew how to sekan (‘shake hands’)–and to eat ship biscuits.]

The [M.V.] Sago pulled 4 canoes to Kui, 2-1/2 coves away toward Lae just inland from Lasanga Island. The ride took about an hour and cost the kaunsil, his wife & canoe & me 70 toea [100 toea = 1 kina]. The occasion was a meeting of the Malalo Paris of the Lutheran church here.

The first time I saw Kui was in the middle of the nite and I could only see a few houses, a broken down wharf and a lamp or two. This time it looked quite splendid indeed. It stretches along a cove twice as wide as Siboma’s and deep-watery and waitsan-dy [Tok Pisin waitsan ‘sand’] with a large school ground in the middle. There are really three subvillages: the main one Kela who came to Kui to go to church from Buso. Apparently Siboma had the only church but it was a bit of a long way so they split the difference and started a settlement and later a school at Kui. The school is Standard 1-6 and serves Paiawa, Siboma & Buso and of course Kui. The kaunsil has 2 sons and 2 daughters there.

The trip back was exactly what I hoped for and dreaded. We paddled, the kaunsil, his wife & me. When we set out at 8:00 (so the school kids could help us pull the canoe down to the water) I envisioned an all day affair with possibly a siesta midway and a hot sun (aye, that it was). And I only had my lotion, not my sunscreen. But my hat protected my face, a towel covered my knees and my feet were in the canoe so only my arms got really cooked. Oh, it felt good tho to paddle like a machine. I conked out when I got back but am none the worse for wear and am on my way toward getting some useful callouses on my hands. They had to force me to rest sometimes but we did the trip in 2 hours with two rest periods when I wasn’t pulling so my arms are cooked but not blistered.

The water was clear down deep and the coral formations beat the Honolulu Glass Bottom Boat ride. Very small bright blue fish abound here, lots of others come and go. We wrestled with a [large] clam a bit on the way but let it go. The kaunsil had his shotgun ready but the birds seemed to be on to him, so no bird meat.

The boat ride to Siboma [in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea] took 10 hours [from Lae]. Darkness came about Salamaua. Shortly after leaving we could see Lasanga Island that lies off Siboma a ways. There was a half moon and all nite the coast was visible. During the day villages were marked by smoke, at nite by lites. The lite of a single lamp can be seen a long way off. And on the boat you could barely hear the person next to you for the sound of the [Yanmar two-cylinder diesel] engine. When the engine stopped everything sounded a bit faraway well into the next morning.

We got in in the middle of the nite and not a lite was shining. I left most of my stuff aboard and went straight off to the kaunsil’s house to sleep. He has a couple of rooms facing the sea. He took off to go hunting for pig soon after we got in so I stayed around the next day so I would be here when he got back.

About the time I got up the boat was leaving for the fishing grounds pulling about a dozen outrigger canoes all lined up behind. It puttputted out and got back about dark pulling the canoes back in. Mostly women and children were left behind along with some old men who kindly taught me stuff.

Siboma lies in a cove with mountains surrounding it. There is a narrow stretch of sand with about 3 dozen houses strung out along [it]. The timber company that bought their timber cleared land for a new village on the other side of the cove but only one incomplete house is there now.

There is a pleasant little stream, nice and chilly, to wash in a little ways out of the village. The women’s W.C. stands near my end of the village and the men’s all the way (100 yds?) at the other end.

Plenty of dogs and chickens abound but no cats and, strangest of all, no pigs. The past kaunsil said to get rid of the ones in the village for sanitary reasons. Though they may keep some down the coast a bit they mostly have to get them in town or hunt for wailpik like the kaunsil does with his shotgun the size of Dan’l Boone’s long rifle.

There really are no mosquitoes, it’s amazing; and the compensating sandflies don’t bother me as much as they seemed to bother [the fieldworker who arranged my stay].

Yesterday, my second full day in the village I had a mild case of diarrhea that affected my appetite and worried my hosts a bit. But this morning I made up for it some by polishing off a whole fish and a huge plate of rice.

There is one crazy (‘longlong’) man here who wanders around covered by a blanket and one mute I share a room with. Neither does anything all day but each is apparently provided for. Some of the women are from other places but they have learned [the village language].

Today the kaunsil called everyone together and apportioned the work: who’s to fish, who’s to cut sago, who’s to split it, who’s to wash it, etc. The sun has withered many of the gardens so people are turning to sago, which is hard work, for their starch. It’s good I came equipped with 25 kilos of rice. There are no gardens near the village [not entirely true, as I later found], only some stands of sago and coconut. The women all have to take outriggers to work in their gardens [on the hillsides above the cove].

None of the smaller outriggers are equipped with sails but they are a joy to paddle. There are about three big canoes with masts and a couple more in the making. [In July, I counted 28 canoes in Siboma’s cove.]

Pacific Islands Monthly has named Australian PM John Howard its Pacific Man of the Year for 2003. Why? Primarily for taking the lead in trying to solve the crisis in the Solomon Islands.

In the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand are entrenched in the region by a dint of history, geography, trade and considerations of political and military strategies, capped by full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum of independent states. Save for the last, all those factors apply to Australia’s relationship with Asia. Whereas Asia could dispense with Australia, how many of the Pacific Islands Forum member states, although they do not like such dependence, could enjoy the reasonable degree of sovereignty they have without Australian and New Zealand support?

Australia, to our minds, is part of the South Pacific (except perhaps the bits fronting the Indian Ocean) and that is why Howard is presented appropriately as the Pacific’s Man of the Year.

There will be some who will be taken aback and irritated by this year’s nomination. Even Howard may be taken aback.

Some Pacific Islands leaders view Australia’s dominant role in the region with suspicion and resentment, just as in other regions the United States presence is so viewed.

Whatever the motives, who can seriously rebut the notion that Australia’s intervention in the Solomon Islands in July, requested by that sad but now happily reviving country, was a pivotal event in the region’s history? We hope that it is not an event that will ever need to be replicated in any Forum country, but that possibility cannot be ruled out.

In Honiara [the capital on Guadalcanal], Howard was received with relief by people on the streets as a liberator from the shameful misrule of their own leaders and their hooligan accomplices. That, tellingly, is food for thought for critics of Australia’s policy. The Bali bombing in which so many Australians died would have partly motivated the capture of Howard’s attention by the Solomon Islands failure. Of course, Australia has its own national interests to pursue in the region, not all of them benevolent, but now having captured Howard’s attention, the islands would be foolish to let it slip. They have too much to lose.

On the eve of the intervention, The Rt. Rev’d Terry Brown, Bishop of Malaita, Church of Melanesia (Anglican) outlined ten ways that Australia and New Zealand could help rebuild shattered institutions in the troubled Solomon Islands. The BBC has more on Australia’s “new taste for intervention.” The intervention “coalition of the willing” (which also includes Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Fiji) has already begun talking about scaling back its military force. The Sydney Morning Herald covered the initial launch of Operation Helpem Fren and the first disarmament efforts.