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delta force
By Liz Light.
Published in the July-September 2012 issue.
For the Huli clans of Papua New Guinea, life’s a runway. And in this part of the world, it’s the men who steal the spotlight with dramatic jewellery, painted faces and immaculately maintained wigs.
In Huli culture, it’s the men who primp and preen, shine their bodies, paint their faces, wear wigs and decorate their hair. Often, the only western possession men have in their woven bags is a small pocket mirror – I spot one that has a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the back of it.
The Huli clans, one of the most culturally intact groups in Papua New Guinea, live in the Tari Basin, lying at between 1,000 and 2,000 metres above sea level in the centre of the country’s southern highlands. These people were only “discovered” by the outside world in 1935, with the basin one of the last areas to come under government control.
Despite the remoteness of the destination, the Huli love to party: getting dressed up, singing and dancing. Hunts call for a celebration, as do marriages and Independence Day; sometimes, a good crop is excuse enough for a sing-sing (musical gathering).
We arrive early to a sing-sing and are lucky to get there in time to watch the men prepare for the event. It’s a bit like being behind the scenes at the opera.
Plank seats edge a large circular area where the earth is beaten hard. I sit and watch a dozen Huli men on the other side of the circle painting their faces. Yellow is the predominant colour, with stripes of red or white coming down the forehead and the bridge of the nose. The lips are accentuated with lashings of red so they look bigger and brighter.
Layers of necklaces include black quills from cassowary tail feathers, cowry shells from the faraway coast and pig tusks. The long pointed beaks of hornbills hang down the centre of the dancers’ muscular backs.
But the most remarkable items, ones they all wear with pride and fuss over until they’re decorated just so, are the large and lavish wigs. These astonishing creations are made of human hair; our guide explains that the smaller wigs take 18 months to grow, while a larger one could take three years.
While young men are growing their wigs, they remove themselves from society and attend “wig school,” where they concentrate on their hair: combing it, dampening it, and learning to sleep on it in a way to avoid denting the mushroom of fuzz. At wig school they also learn the arts of warfare, makeup, body decoration and dancing, and when they graduate, they are so dazzlingly beautiful that they’re able to entice a girl into marriage without having to pay the full bride price in pigs.
The Huli we watch getting ready to dance are older wig-school graduates, all of them now married. But wigs are lifelong treasures, adorned with carefully collected ornaments such as bird of paradise feathers. It takes the tails of two birds of paradise to create the shimmering crown of apricot feathers that adorns most wigs. I also notice iridescent blue breast feathers from the superb bird of paradise on the front of some wigs and the long black tail feathers from the black sicklebill quivering on others.
The dancers are already wearing their everyday grass skirts and, after the face-painting is completed and the final feathers have been affixed to their wigs, they add a fanlike tail of pink and green leaves to hang down over their buttocks and then secure a much longer tail above this with a tight, beautifully woven cane belt.
Then the dancing begins. The beat is led by wooden drums and singing includes a high-pitched, almost shrill hum along with low-toned chanting. The dance is perfectly choreographed, with the men forming lines and circles, often jumping in sequence and moving in such a way that the plumes on their wigs flutter and their tail attachments undulate to the rhythm.
The wig decorations and the singing, strutting and preening all relate to the bird of paradise. For the Huli people these birds are the most beautiful things imaginable and they consider them to be, as their name implies, birds from the gods. Thirteen species of bird of paradise live in the primeval rainforest surrounding the Tari Basin and, for centuries, the Huli have been watching the male birds sing, strut and puff up their plumage to attract females of the species.
Over the years, sing-sings and spirit dances have evolved to imitate these gorgeous birds. But it’s not until I see a Raggiana bird of paradise flying, with its elaborate tail plumages rhythmically undulating behind it, that I realise just how accurate the Huli imitations of it are.
For the Huli clans, battles, beauty, singing and dancing is a male thing; the women stay backstage. So when Alice, who works at Ambua Lodge where I’m staying, invites us to visit her village to get a glimpse of the life of Huli women, we jump at the chance.
Alice’s property is fenced off to keep the family’s pigs in and those belonging to neighbours out. We walk through an arched gateway and down a pretty garden path to an area near a stream where there’s a cluster of houses. They have wooden frames, walls of woven bamboo and thatched roofs.
The scene is Eden-like. Flowers are plentiful and the huts are surrounded by fecund vegetable gardens: raised mounds on which sweet potatoes, the Huli’s staple food, are planted. The role of the women, Alice explains, is to look after the cooking, gardens, children and pigs – which, from what I can see, means handling most of the daily chores.
The children here do what children everywhere enjoy. Boys entertain themselves with a mudslide; girls play with flowers and help their mothers; and toddlers stagger about randomly. No one worries about getting dirty; the girls wear grass skirts and the tiny tots wear nothing but bright, striped, crocheted hats.
Crocheted hats and carryall bilum bags in various sizes were traditionally made from a flax-like fibre but now, bright coloured cottons are the rage. The women crochet them using needles they have fashioned from broken umbrella frames. Other than the crocheted bags and hats, there is little evidence of western commodities: a couple of battered aluminium cooking pots, matches, metal spades and machetes, and – for some who have access to cash – a few western clothes that they wear when they leave the village.
I peer into a bilum bag that a woman wears slung from a wide strap across her forehead. The bag rests on her lower back, the baby in it lying in a bed of banana leaves, cooing and grinning, attuned to the rhythm and warmth of his mother’s body.
This child will grow up into a different world than the one steeped in tradition that I see. Gas has been discovered near Tari, and ExxonMobil is investing US$16 (AU$15.6) billion in widening and improving the road, extending the airport and building a massive refinery before piping the end product to Port Moresby and shipping it to China.
Money will bring jobs, more schools and better medical care to the region, but whether life for the Huli people will be better or not is an impossible judgement to make. I wonder if this little boy, beaming from his bilum bag, will grow up to attend wig school, learn the arts of beauty, and enjoy dressing up in leaves and feathers with his friends at sing-sings like his father did.
It seems unlikely, and the thought saddens me. •
Photography by Liz Light.
Getting there
Air Niugini flies from Australia to Port Moresby, and there are three Air Niugini flights a week to Tari.
1300-361-380; airniugini.com.pg
When to go
April through October are better months to travel to PNG than the summer months, which tend to be hotter and wetter. The highland areas, though, are a comfortable temperature throughout the year.
Where to stay
Ambua Lodge, on the hill above Tari Valley, has won numerous eco-tourism awards. Guests are accommodated in luxurious huts with modern facilities and can participate in activities ranging from bird-watching to village visits. All meals, ground transfers and guides are included in the lodge’s accommodation packages.
Ambua is one of five Trans Niugini Tours lodges in areas of special scenic, cultural and ecological interest. It’s worth spending a week or more in the highlands and booking a package that includes visits to a few highland areas.
67-5/542-1438; pngtours.com
Further information
Contact the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotions Authority for information on travelling around the country. papuanewguinea.travel
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