Day 20: Haus Tamborans
Papua New Guineans call their country the "Land of the Unexpected." I never would have thought eight days ago, when a tropical storm ended our hopes of paddling to Kaminabit, that we would relaunch our canoeing expedition for a third time. But here we are, Nadya with a short paddle, me with a long one, digging into the muddy, brown river, bound for Angoram, largest and last significant village on the Lower Sepik. Our company for the final three-day leg of our voyage is Cyril Tara, an exuberant tour guide; Nick Lumat, wood carver and Seventh-Day Adventist; and Chris Tupma, carpenter and canoe maker.
Cyril's canoe is a fine specimen: no leaks and plenty of room for four people, their bags, three plump papayas, a plastic bin of mugs and plates, even two wicker chairs with backs and armrests. With a 45 HP outboard engine weighing down the stern, the paddling will be as hard as before, but Nadya and I have never had it so good. For the first time, I can stand up in a single canoe and paddle like a Papuan and
not feel like I am going to lose balance and tip the boat over. On this stretch, we will not be troubled by wind and waves as the canoe rides high out of the water.
We have a copy of Bruce Beehler's bird guide on board, so I am able to get the Sepik avian community straight as we continue east. The white stork that is everywhere on the river is the Great Egret (84 cms tall), and, as we have frequently heard, it makes a "low growl when startled" (Beehler, p.57). A relative that is on the Middle Sepik but not the Upper and Cyril calls "a Snakebird" is the Darter, a bird like a cormorant with a "snake-like neck." This bird has a "long white face stripe and mottling of buff and white on its wings and back" (p. 54). Also here but not on the Upper Sepik are the extraordinarily coloured Rainbow Bee-eaters, flashes of orange and green shooting out from the wild sugarcane fringing the river and spearing flying insects. For a while, I figured I was seeing a Papuan drongo with its dark, stocky body, but the white, circular windows in its wings didn't fit. "A chunky, broad-billed and large-headed bird with very short legs and long wings which in flight show pale, rounded 'dollar-marks,' " Beehler says (p. 145). A Dollarbird.
The Middle Sepik is the stretch of the river that attracts tourists, although in early May
we encounter none. The tribes here are skilled artisans who carve masks and images of crocodiles, egrets, dug-out canoes, well-endowed warriors, and river deities. Each village has a "Haus Tamboran"or spirit house, which has carved supporting pillars narrating local legend and bath-size "garamut" slit-drums (hollowed-out hardwood trunks sounded with wooden clubs). You enter a haus by sweeping aside a "door" of hanging grasses and behold... men, sitting cross-legged on waist-high wooden trays or berths lining the walls. With the exception of a "white meri" (i.e. Nadya), women are forbidden to enter. The Haus Tamboran is the place men congregate to discuss important matters like territorial rights and share secrets while chewing betelnut and smoking. It is where teenage males gather to prepare for their initiation into manhood.
The first spirit house Nadya and I visited was in Yentchen, a village upriver from Kaminabit. Here we met Sukundimi, deity of the river, incorporated into the back of a wooden stool positioned in the centre, an oval-faced, mouthless entity with cowrie-shell eyes. When the chief wishes to address the house, he sits on the stool so that the river god inspires his words and endows him with wisdom. In a debate, speakers come forth in turn from their berths, holding leaves. To deter garrulity, they must tuck these into Sukundimi's necklace and utter brief, well-considered statements (a system that could usefully be implemented at board meetings back home). Near the entrance, we met Suabandi, another large-headed spirit but with pig tasks piercing his septum. Before heading into the forest with their spears and bows to hunt for wild pigs, bandicoots, or cus-cus, men put betelnuts into the grass pouch of the warrior spirit and petition for luck.
Nadya and I walked once around the haus, shaking the mens' hands and introducing ourselves. Each man sat in his clan (family) berth, the pillars in that quadrangle decorated with the clan totem animal (a crocodile, pig, eagle, or rat). I looked closely at the images on the pillars. Many depicted grotesque hybrid creatures -- a man with an eagle head and a crocodile tail, a man with a pig's head. Maybe legend told of cross-faunal liaisons, of mutant offspring, or maybe these were simply artistic representations of tribal people living close to nature. No. I would learn on a visit to another spirit house later that the images are, in fact, totemic. Tribal people are the creatures collided in the imagery, and their clan designations reflect this.
Most revered creature in the Sepik is the crocodile. To become crocodile men, initiates must endure skin-cutting: hundreds of slits across back and shoulders and around the nipples, imitating the scales of the holy reptile.
Cyril's canoe is a fine specimen: no leaks and plenty of room for four people, their bags, three plump papayas, a plastic bin of mugs and plates, even two wicker chairs with backs and armrests. With a 45 HP outboard engine weighing down the stern, the paddling will be as hard as before, but Nadya and I have never had it so good. For the first time, I can stand up in a single canoe and paddle like a Papuan and
not feel like I am going to lose balance and tip the boat over. On this stretch, we will not be troubled by wind and waves as the canoe rides high out of the water.
We have a copy of Bruce Beehler's bird guide on board, so I am able to get the Sepik avian community straight as we continue east. The white stork that is everywhere on the river is the Great Egret (84 cms tall), and, as we have frequently heard, it makes a "low growl when startled" (Beehler, p.57). A relative that is on the Middle Sepik but not the Upper and Cyril calls "a Snakebird" is the Darter, a bird like a cormorant with a "snake-like neck." This bird has a "long white face stripe and mottling of buff and white on its wings and back" (p. 54). Also here but not on the Upper Sepik are the extraordinarily coloured Rainbow Bee-eaters, flashes of orange and green shooting out from the wild sugarcane fringing the river and spearing flying insects. For a while, I figured I was seeing a Papuan drongo with its dark, stocky body, but the white, circular windows in its wings didn't fit. "A chunky, broad-billed and large-headed bird with very short legs and long wings which in flight show pale, rounded 'dollar-marks,' " Beehler says (p. 145). A Dollarbird.
The Middle Sepik is the stretch of the river that attracts tourists, although in early May
we encounter none. The tribes here are skilled artisans who carve masks and images of crocodiles, egrets, dug-out canoes, well-endowed warriors, and river deities. Each village has a "Haus Tamboran"or spirit house, which has carved supporting pillars narrating local legend and bath-size "garamut" slit-drums (hollowed-out hardwood trunks sounded with wooden clubs). You enter a haus by sweeping aside a "door" of hanging grasses and behold... men, sitting cross-legged on waist-high wooden trays or berths lining the walls. With the exception of a "white meri" (i.e. Nadya), women are forbidden to enter. The Haus Tamboran is the place men congregate to discuss important matters like territorial rights and share secrets while chewing betelnut and smoking. It is where teenage males gather to prepare for their initiation into manhood.
The first spirit house Nadya and I visited was in Yentchen, a village upriver from Kaminabit. Here we met Sukundimi, deity of the river, incorporated into the back of a wooden stool positioned in the centre, an oval-faced, mouthless entity with cowrie-shell eyes. When the chief wishes to address the house, he sits on the stool so that the river god inspires his words and endows him with wisdom. In a debate, speakers come forth in turn from their berths, holding leaves. To deter garrulity, they must tuck these into Sukundimi's necklace and utter brief, well-considered statements (a system that could usefully be implemented at board meetings back home). Near the entrance, we met Suabandi, another large-headed spirit but with pig tasks piercing his septum. Before heading into the forest with their spears and bows to hunt for wild pigs, bandicoots, or cus-cus, men put betelnuts into the grass pouch of the warrior spirit and petition for luck.
Nadya and I walked once around the haus, shaking the mens' hands and introducing ourselves. Each man sat in his clan (family) berth, the pillars in that quadrangle decorated with the clan totem animal (a crocodile, pig, eagle, or rat). I looked closely at the images on the pillars. Many depicted grotesque hybrid creatures -- a man with an eagle head and a crocodile tail, a man with a pig's head. Maybe legend told of cross-faunal liaisons, of mutant offspring, or maybe these were simply artistic representations of tribal people living close to nature. No. I would learn on a visit to another spirit house later that the images are, in fact, totemic. Tribal people are the creatures collided in the imagery, and their clan designations reflect this.
Most revered creature in the Sepik is the crocodile. To become crocodile men, initiates must endure skin-cutting: hundreds of slits across back and shoulders and around the nipples, imitating the scales of the holy reptile.
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