Adventures with Mudmen. 3 July

Today we make a trip to visit the Pogla Mudmen.   Their story that we were told (which is probably embellished and not exactly accurate, but here it is anyway)... Paraphrased from our PNG guide, Raymond:   "Some time ago, maybe in the 1920's? the people who are the Mudmen (known as the Kaulga tribe) were defeated in battle by the Kuli tribe.  Many of the Kaulga men were killed.   So, all of the Kaulga tribe fled from their desirable valley lands, and hid in the mountains for about 10 or 15 years."

"Eventually, they got fed up with trying to make a living and grow food in the mountains, and decided to come and reclaim their land in the valley.   They saw the smoke coming out of the valley, and all the pigs and people enjoying their land, and they wanted it back.   They couldn't fight the Kaulga because they didn't have enough warriors (men) left, as so many had been killed in battle.   Somehow, they came up with the idea of to make mud masks for their heads and fashioned long, frightening bamboo "fingers", and to cover their bodies with white clay.   Thirty or forty of them, mostly boys, but including a few men, dressed up.   They wanted to make their enemies believe that they were the spirits of all the warriors killed by the Kuli in the battle from years before.   They came first in the daytime and scared people (both men and women) that were out in the forest hunting, collecting firewood or fetching water.   The Kuli were frightened, and that night, when the went home to their families, they told stories of what had happened, and shared the stories throughout their village.   Everyone was worried.  That night, the Kaulga "attacked".   They had no weapons though.   But the Kali were terrified, and they fled from the village, thinking these were the spirits of the men they attacked.  [Umm, excuse me, but I'm pretty sure this exact storyline has been used on Scooby Doo.]  Anyway, the Kaulga never returned, and the Kuli got their village back."

{include photo of the Mudmen}

I looked up this story on the internet, and found many references to the Asaro Mudmen of Pogla, but did not find the story I just recounted here.

The mudmen perform for us, decked out in their giant helmets of mud, with faces carved into them, and some of them with giant boars' tusked embedded into the mouth areas, their bodies flecked and streaked with white mud, and a few of them with ultra-long scary "fingers" simply made of finger-diameter lengths of bamboo, then sharpened at the ends.   They click their fingers, and come forth in a crouched attitude, walking barefoot, slowly, purposefully, and menacingly towards us.   As wonderful as the performance is (and once again, yes, it's just me and Rachel in the audience), it is the most "touristy" thing we've seen, the most "this-has-nothing-much-to-do-with-our-tradition-and-everything-to-do-with-needing-your-tourist-dollars."   Still, I must admit is was very good theater.  The light is very bright today, and they are performing in the sun, so the photos are very contrasty.   We ask them to pose for some photos in the foliage and the shade nearby, and they kindly oblige.

After the mudmen finish posing, we head off to photograph the local witchdoctor, and an array of other jauntily dressed PNG tribesmen.   I must admit, we did so many different tribes in such quick succession over so many days, that they all run together in sort of a soup in my head!!!   A soup with feathers, bones, leaves, shells, cuscus fur and lots of stuff I'd better not discuss.   At any rate, the witchdoctor is next and a demonstration of the lifestyle of the Melpa people.   First we are taken to a house that has a doorway with no door, only a string slung horizontally over the doorway's lintel, and strung with a number of 5-foot long banana leaves.    A sort of groovy hippie banana leaf door, if you will.  Raymond tells us all about the Melpa customs and traditions.  Mostly, we admire their fancy headdresses, and wonderfully photogenic faces.

{include photo of captive tree kangas}

Next we are taken to some cages with some captive tree kangaroos.   (And later, a sort of grim reminder of what happens to TK's that aren't captive... TK skins hung up for sale.   Yuck.)   But the captive tree kangaroos seem reasonably happy.  There is a single male in a cage by himself, a sort of medium brownish-gray fellow, who looks to be quite healthy.   We are told he is a Mokelep (the species name, in Melpa language).   Jim Thomas later informs us that this is an Ifola Tree Kangaroo.   I take a number of photos of him, but them am a sucker for the cage next door, a mother and baby tree kangaroo, and they are too cute for words!   These are called "Rakep" in the Melpa language; Jim identifies them as Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo.   We are told that originally they had a male and a female adult, but the male escaped, leaving the mama and a joey.    Rachel and I would have stayed here taking photos for several days unless we were pulled away.  We are such predictable suckers when it comes to adorable critters.   Our guide gently steers us away from the tree 'roos, but before we go, we insist that the keepers change out the absolutely filthy water in their cages for clean water.   They tell us several times the black murky water is fine for creatures, but we are determined.   Defeated by the crazy wait meri (white women),  they change the the water.    We keep trying to learn some Pidgin, but we are pretty bad at it, and there's not much use in it as everyone speaks English, and we feel silly saying things like "wantim" (want)  or "likim" (like) because it sounds awfully similar to Tonto-speak.   I like to refer to me and Rachel as "crazy white women" and I ask our PNG guide, "what is the Pidgin word for 'crazy'?"   We are told the word is "long-long".   However, after a time, we come to realize that there really is no Pidgin word for crazy, but there is a word for "high" (as in:  high on marijuana, high on betelnut.)

We learn the following vocabulary words in Pidgin:

Pidgin:  pisin
Long-long:  stoned, drunk
Lik-lik:  little
Kai-kai:   food
Pinis:  finished
Meri:  woman

and, basically, that's it.   We make up endless jokes that involve almost exclusively those 6 words.   We laugh as easily at these jokes as 12-year-old boys.   Actually, 12-year-old boys are probably a lot more sophisticated that we are.  I'm laughing pretty hard right now.... sorry...

OK, back to writing.    After the tree kangaroos (a very tough act to follow) we went to Kaip village where they had a lot of very boring wooden figurines set up to represent various situations both tragic and mundane, within village life.   We are jaded, hardened tourists now, having seen countless PNG tribespeople trouping past in the most magical array of outré costumery.   We are not going to have much interest in some small, muddy, unremarkable carved figures of people and pigs, even one wooden figurine of a woman strung up from a tree, having hung herself over a man who didn't love her.  Ho hum.

We do learn that if a girl does kill herself over unrequited love, her mother  (in traditional times at least) would cut off her own finger and wear it around her neck to remember her lost child, and to show people what happened.   Yep, they don't call it the Land of the Unexpected for nothin'.

Our tour finishes up with a final group of performers who demonstrate the Spirit Dance, which a tribe would do before (a) going to ceremonies  or (b) going to battle.   And possibly (c) going to battle over unexceptional ceremonies.

We pile back into the jeep, and head down the road.   Shortly, we see a group of locals gathered to see some betelnut and a few sweet potatoes.   We stop for a few photos, then off we go, back to Rondon Ridge Lodge.

A quiet dinner, although we are amazed to see that the Lodge now holds 4 of us guests:   2 more lucky souls have arrived from Canada.   We ask them to join us for dinner, and we have a pleasant conversation, before heading off to bed.