Picture Post: The Sing-Sing

Steph got the car today so we could go out and see some of the actual sing-sing.  We packed up, loaded up the Tracker with Steph and Jonathan, Matt and Miriam and I, and set out down the road toward the river to see the goings-on.  It was much busier today than it had been on Wednesday; truckloads of people being toted up and down a one-lane partially-gravelled road that apparently used to be the Highlands Highway.  It was quite an adventure in itself, rocking precariously on the side of the road as another vehicle scraped by literally inches away sometimes, but one we weathered well.  And the views were incredible.

At the place where we'd seen the dance rehearsal before, there were only a few scattered vendors and some folks sitting around, but two women were dressed except for their paint.  They had beautiful headdresses, shell necklaces, and tree-kangaroo pelts on their chests.  Jonathan had been given the charge of our printed out sing sing rehearsal pictures, and he distributed them to people so they could take them home.  Then we rattled on down the road - and down and down and down. 

Jonathan proved to be an excellent tour guide, directing us to the sights that were worth seeing - a structure built of bamboo and vegetables (which the locals were happy to pose on) that I suspect was for the actual exchange of cows later on, but nobody seemed quite clear on why they'd built the thing.  I do know that it was something else to see a man in ceremonial garb and a flower-encrusted hat posing with fruit in classical style. 
There were a number of beautiful floral decorations tied to the trees around this spot; the natural loveliness of the land is something its inhabitants know how to take advantage of.  Decorating with fresh flowers takes on a whole new meaning.  

Everywhere we got out of the Tracker people crowded around.  We spent the first five minutes at any location shaking hands and exchanging greetings, letting women pinch Miriam's cheeks and rub her legs (someone always picked her up, and bless her adventurous spirit she was willing to be carried by total strangers), introducing ourselves and nodding that yes, we were going to take some pictures.  I've been hugged and squeezed and shown around by more women whose names I don't even know today than, I think, ever before.  It's a very friendly culture - and the fact that we came and wanted to know what was going on was a source of some evident pride.  We stayed at a few little stops, enjoying the scenery.

Eventually, when one lane was more like three-quarters of a lane, we came to a field where the cows were grazing, just next to the primary school and basketball court (there's one in every village, I think).  There was a stream where some of the folks were bathing (no pictures), and a swarm of pikinini who brought us a cassowary-feather hat to try on and posed for pictures.  They seemed very interested in everything we were doing, and wanted to show off the cows.  Miriam wasn't so certain about the cows, but she did get on fairly well with the children. 

We turned around, then, and headed back up toward the general area where the sing-sing participants were gathering.  Along the way, we encountered a lotu just getting out, so we climbed down a steep incline toward the river and watched the baptism.  The pastor was very glad to have our attendance, even if Miriam did steal a tomato from the garden, and told us to come by later after the women had finished parceling out the meal, so we could have some of it.  We thanked him graciously and continued on.
According to Jonathan, most of the Christians don't take part in the dressing up and dancing for a sing-sing.  He doesn't find there's any biblical prohibition regarding it - they just don't.  And in this little village it was fairly tranquil, with women preparing food and no bird-of-paradise feathers to be found.

We came back up to the little village where we'd watched the painting on Wednesday and encountered the girls from up the road, now with face paint - and several other folks all garbed up - and then we hiked a few hundred yards up the road to where all the shouting was taking place.  There was a big circle of dancers all shaking their as-gras (I don't make these words up) and shouting something which Jonathan told us meant "We're going to get the cows" in tok ples.  Their dance was something like a big group shuffle with plenty of hip shaking, which does exciting things to the as-gras, which is a giant tuft of leaves strapped on behind.  It's a chaos of color and sound.  Very exciting.

One man asked us to e-mail him a picture of himself - he was a student - so I got some good poses from him with his axe.  Once upon a time, the axes were stone, but the waitskins came and brought steel with them, and now the axes are bought at stores.  His headdress is an excellent example of decorating with pigeon breasts and bird-of-paradise feathers; there's a kina shell at his neck, and you can see pig's tusks on his necklace. 
The loincloth in front also has meaning: each region has a different kind of coloring.  We saw some women in long white fringey ones, as well as the Western Highlands black and white stripes.  The Hagen folks had a different look as well.

We drove up to Jonathan's house, then, and stopped along the way at the village - the pastor had our food in plastic bags and wrapped in banana leaves to keep it warm - to pick up lunch.  There was chicken and pork, cooking bananas (which are fairly bland and not at all sweet), and plenty of kaokao, all still warm from the stone-and-earthen ovens.  Each of the four of us had our own individual plastic grocery bag of food, all jumbled together, and they provided four cans of soda as well.  We ate with our fingers, out of the plastic bags, and were glad for the wet-wipes to clean up with first.  Miriam mostly ate chicken and the cooking bananas, while the rest of us enjoyed our kaokao and meat.  The leftovers went to Jonathan to save.  He also had a tree-kangaroo in a cage, and got it out for us to see after we ate. 

Refreshed, we headed to one of the meeting-up places.  An old man greeted us, stalking up and down the pathway and yelling something I couldn't quite make out.  There was a group of women in everyday clothing with as-gras and face paint and decorated headdresses dancing and chanting, and when one of them noticed my camera there was a flurry of lining up and turning.  The dance got more interesting as everyone tried to make sure that my camera could see them.   They stayed mostly in a circle.  And then, beyond them, there was a group of men.  When I got over there they were mostly just standing around, but the camera does seem to bring out the best in people, so everyone wanted to make sure they were seen in the picture.

And then someone broke out the Coke.  There's something about watching a bunch of half-naked men in traditional garb and feather headdresses all swigging Coca-Cola that gave us the giggles.  I can't blame them for wanting a drink - today was hot, bright and sunny without a drop of rain or hint of clouds; a lot of people were carrying umbrellas to protect against the tropical sunshine and I got a little dizzy from the heat and the dehydration once or twice myself.  So we watched them drink their Coke, and then someone in one row started shaking his hips so the shells clattered together, and someone else stamped his feet, and the next thing we knew they were dancing and chanting once again, following a corkscrew pattern through the crowds (when a bunch of men come stomping at you, you move) like so many well-armed honeybees.

They danced, and the women danced, and there was a lot of singing and shouting that, after a while, starts to reach down into some primal place inside and make you want to dance and chant too, but we were heading back to the Tracker, since Miriam was getting pretty tired by this point - and then along the way we came across the adorable little guy on the right.  He can't be more than two or three at the most, but he was holding on to a broad-leafed plant as if he owned the place, all dressed up in traditional garb, with his little pot belly hanging over his loincloth and paint and all.  The man watching over him and the kids who were with him were just thrilled that we wanted to take his picture, but from his expression I'm not certain he liked the idea much.  He stood for us anyway, though.

We were about to leave again and had actually gotten back to the Tracker, when there was a great deal of shouting coming from down the road, so we stopped and waited - and a whole group of folks from earlier came charging up the road, dancing and shouting, followed by the marching men with whistles who'd been putting on paint on Wednesday.  There was nothing for it but to sit back and watch the scenery, since they were turning into the little clearing where we'd parked.  Steph moved the Tracker out of their dance floor, and two groups of dancing men circulated for a while - long enough for the men and women we'd just seen to come down and join them in one big dancing, shouting, singing, noisy sequence.  There was as-gras waving and feet stamping and feathers bobbing, and the crowds were shouting along.  According to Jonathan, it was more of the same: "We're going to get the cows."

At one point, I found myself directly in the line of march, as the groups formed up and moved out back to the main road, so I scrambled up a little hillock with some sure-footed children and watched the excitement pass by with one eye glued to my camera.  Everyone was very intent on their dancing and shouting - and there's something quite intimidating about a line of dancers with spears and axes coming straight at you.  I wasn't quite sure if they'd move if I didn't, so I got out of the way.

We'd gotten the Tracker a hundred feet down the road, in the wake of the crowd following the dancers, when there was more shouting and singing, so we pulled over and I climbed out with my camera.  An old man met me at the back door, and shook my hand, and asked if I was going to take pictures.  I'm glad for my rudimentary tok pisin because it lets me understand old men - and so I told him that yes, I was going to take pictures, and he told me there was a line of dancers coming.  I noticed.  And when I got around to the front, it was Brother Robert and the dancing men from Wednesday coming down the road all painted and decorated, so we got to see them again.  You'l notice their loincloths are a different print than some of the others - apparently, that's the Hagen cloth. 

Once they'd passed (by now there was a string of five separate dancing groups, each with its own accompanying crowd, all shouting something different and heading down to (we presume) the place of the cow exchange, the road was finally clear.  With Miriam dozing in the Tracker and the rest of us exhausted from sun and heat and the primal excitement of the whole thing, we headed back home to nap.