Again in the Highlands, we have come to witness a ‘compensation’ meeting.
After the requisite greetings, the two tribes sit down facing each other
along the mountain terrace.
The tribe on the left have to pay compensation to the other tribe.
One of them killed a man from the other tribe,
and they are now going to discuss how much they will have to pay his family.
Each group has its own interpreter,
who understands either the language of the other tribe,
or Pidgin, the lingua franca which is spoken by more and more people.
It is the only way to communicate in a country with over eight hundred different languages.
Every day, across the whole country, there are meetings to decide compensation.
People go to them with axes, machetes and bows.
If an agreement is not reached, it might turn into a bloody fight.
There are more and more deaths, because, in tribal battles,
firearms are increasingly replacing the traditional bows and spears.
They may talk for hours, or even days, discussing the quantity of kinas,
or the number of pigs the injured family should receive.
But, in the end, they almost always come to an agreement.
An important institution for these peoples is the Tanimet,
or courting ceremony.
This man, dressed in huge feathers, is the matchmaker,
and he is in charge of the courting ceremonies.
A Tanimet can last for days or weeks.
The men invite the women from a different village.
The Highlander culture is exogamous
it is forbidden to marry relatives
and so they have to look for wives outside their own village.
Men can have as many wives as they can support,
but the women can have only one husband.
The songs speak of love affairs, and list the obligations of the future spouses.
Following the indications of the matchmaker,
and under the watchful eye of the older women,
who have brought the girls here, the men constantly move around,
courting all the women.
They cross their legs and take hold of each other’s hands.
They are all wearing their finest traditional clothes,
and wear provocative make-up.
Both the man and the woman must agree before the matchmaker will give his consent.
The wedding is very simple.
The two families get together,
and the groom pays the dowry to the parents of the bride:
from fifteen to thirty pigs, domestic utensils and a few kinas,
which the bride will attach to her dress.
Once the dowry has been handed over,
the bride and groom and the bride’s family go her village.
In the north of Papua New Guinea we find a very different region to the highlands,
around the Sepik river, which flows from west to east.
It is 1,126 kilometres long, and its basin covers 78,000 square kilometres.
It is a river of deep, slow-running waters, and it carries enormous quantities of mud.
When it flows into the Bismark sea, its brown waters stain the sea for miles out.
Human activity in the basin of the Sepik river goes back around forty thousand years.
About two hundred different languages are now spoken here.
The first contacts with foreigners were with the Chinese or Malaysians
who came to hunt the birds of paradise.
In 1885, the German zoologist, Finsch, was the first European to reach Sepik,
and he called it the Kaiserin Augusta,
in honour of the wife of the German emperor.
Despite the fact that there are hundreds of different tribes,
they do have some common characteristics.
One thing they all have in common is the enormous houses they build,
and for this bamboo is the most important material.
With strips of bamboo, they tie and join the frame, and make the floor.
The walls and the roof are made with bark from palm trees and banana trees.
On the outside of the house, the effigy of the family spirit protects those who live there.
Several generations of the family live in the same house.
They only build a new house when they need more space.
Fish is their main source of protein.
The river has an enormous variety of fish.
Many species have been introduced recently,
like these, introduced from Africa, and which have rapidly increased in numbers.
They trade in dry fish with the other tribes,
from the north of the island to the highlands.
This is also the land of the crocodile men,
the sacred animal of the Sepik.
The spiritual life of these people is centred on the tambaran or house of the spirits.
The drawings represent gods, shown in their dreams and going about their daily lives.
The greatest god of all is the crocodile, the king of the river.
The tambaran itself is built in the shape of its powerful jaws.
The tambarans, also called boat houses, are generally in the centre of the village.
They are large, up to forty metres long,
and are generally in places where the waters do not reach,
even when the rivers flood.
Women are forbidden to enter.
Inside, the men meet to invoke the spirits,
and to take decisions which will affect the community.
On special occasions, they get together,
dressed in traditional costumes, and dance around the tambaran.
In this way, they call on the spirits that protect them.
From within the Tambaran, comes the magic music that tells the dancers what they must do.
Inside the house of the spirits, the initiated beat the ‘garamut’
a kind of enormous tom-tom
and play the ritual flutes.
These calm waters of the Sepik hide a mortal danger.
In PNG there are two species of crocodile,
the New Guinea crocodile, which can be up to four metres long,
and the marine crocodile, which is the largest crocodile in the world.
It can grow to over seven metres,
and can live in both fresh water and sea water.
In captivity, there have been examples of crocodiles weighing over a tonne.
They are naturally aggressive, true ‘maneaters’.
This crocodile is worshipped in Sepik.