Cargo Cults

These are religious beliefs born out of a confusion of the local native tribes when they come into contact with more advanced civilizations. Cargo Cults arise when natives believe they can induce cargo (that is modern tools, clothing, items) to arrive by mimicking the actions of the Westerns they observed.

A lot of this happened in the Melanesian world around the second World War. First the JApanese and later the Allied forces entered into contact with the natives. The natives became impressed with the Allies technology, some of which is shared with them. Then, when the war ends, the "cargo" stops coming. At that point, the natives start building imitations of airports, control towers, even airplanes, in the belief that their presence will cause cargo to appear.

A specific example of such a cult is the John Frum in Vanuatu. (And more locally in PNG, from what one of the missionaries has said.) Named after a mysterious GI (and likely misheard when saying "John from America/where ever").

Cargo cults are beginning to die out, though, as the magical thinking breaks down when cargo does not appear.

Going up to the Mountaintop

Today, we went to the mountaintop village of Konduk (/KOHN dook/) for a baptism there. We were told it'd be about an hour's walk up the mountain, but we had enough people going that we took one of the Landrovers instead. I'm glad we did, as the road started as a very uneven stone road and then we turned off it onto a dirt road. You can see one of the wooden bridges to the right. Some of the group decided to walk over the bridges rather than ride. I'm not entirely sure I blame them for that, as it was an interesting ride.



When we got there, they were doing a worship service before the actual baptisms. They had several people being baptized today, I believe I heard the number 16, but I'll admit I didn't get a full count. (And some were rededications, and just gave testimony, but more on that later.) It seems one of the elders in the church had recently died of leukemia and that death moved a number of his family to come to the church. The service was in the middle, though its order seemed similar to the Sunday services I've been to here (and elsewhere, to some extent, though I found similarities in worship services in Shinto shrines). They were singing English worship songs, some of which I knew or were similar enough to ones I knew. The spoken parts were a mixture of Tok Pisin and tok ples, that is one of the local languages. In the image, those in white tops and black pants or skirts were the baptisees. The congregation sat in two sides, the left side had most (all but one or two) of the men and a few women, the right was nearly all female. I'm not sure if it's a conscious decision to sit as such, the missionaries do not follow this tradition if it is one.

There was a sermon that I could almost follow in Tok Pisin in places, and then it would switch, I assume to the tok ples and I would be lost for a moment. It was on Matthew 4 and fighting agianst the temptations of Satan, even after baptism. When the sermon finished, we walked further up the hill, past where they were preparing the traditional Papuan feast in a mumu, an oven dug into the dirt, filled with hot rocks and then the food (pork) being cooked and covered with earth, straw and leaves. (See right.)


Up the hill, and past some of the town gardens was where they had dammed up a part of a stream (or it might have been a drainage ditch, or a wadi that only filled when it rained) as the baptismal font. They had thrown flower petals into the water. (This seems to be a tradition here with major events. The missionaries throw flowers for those leaving for extended periods or when they're leaving at the end of their terms. I suspect the missionaries adopted it from the locals, not vice-versa.) The area around the font was hilly and uneven (and muddy, as even in the dry season that the country is in now, it rains nearly daily). Yet, despite the lack of good views, it seems most of the village and likely several from nearby (such as ourselves) had turned out for the baptism. Thus, it was a bit crowded and the footing unstable in places, but everyone seemed helpful in getting through the bad parts and helping us to get a good view.

There was a second sermon here, this time from a woman preacher, which I found striking as almost all the rest of the church leadership I have witnessed here has been male. She preached mostly in tok ples, so I could follow very little of it, save for a few Pisin words that had made their way into it. During her scripture reading, someone read the the Scripture in Tok Pisin first, then she gave it in tok ples, a verse at a time.

What followed were the baptisms. One at a time, they came forward and gave a testimony. Some were rededicating their lives to the church, and thus didn't get immersed, but the others did go in and were immersed in what I can only assume was a cold mountain stream.

A bit of a side note: They are very unaware of the American culture behind a good bit of their clothing. A large amount of the clothing in Papua New Guinea is second hand from Australia and other Western nations. As you can see on the right, one of the elders doing the baptism has a South Park tie, and I will admit while I am fairly liberal in my faith, I am not certain I would wear that tie to a baptism in the US. Simiarly, there was a young man wearing a t-shirt for MTV's Jackass, with the title for the series prominently displayed on the front of the shirt. I doubt that the people here know the culture that these things represent. There was the knowledge that this is the sort of even that one wears a tie to, and I suspect there are not a large number of ties available. (And I doubt that South Park is well known here.)

As Miriam was getting a bit tired, we left about halfway through the immersions. On the way back to the car we did see them taking the pork out of the oven and getting ready for the feast. The natives here feast often, as food is usually abundant.

One other note, we did see the grave of the village and church elder who had died. He wanted to be buried near the church (it's the brown building in the background). This is the traditional grave for those who can afford it here. (Or those who are important enough that their families feel they should spend the money on such grave sites.) Inside the small house is the coffin, above ground, surrounded by flowers. I have seen other such graves along the roads here, both the stone and dirt roads up the mountain and the main road back into Mt Hagen. This is the traditional way to bury Big Men, that is civic leaders. (I need to ask how long the graves stay like this, as I have not seen more than one or two in a village.)

In all, a very interesting day.

Article Notes: Filer, Colin

Custome, Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea
Colin Filer

Comparing Custom (Kastam or Kastom) and Law (Lo)

Law and Custome seemed to have been blurred, especially between the multiple colonial powers/periods and then into independence. This is especially true for land ownership rights, which became a sticking point with petroleum and mineral mining operations tried to lease lands. Anthropologists were rarely asked to be legal experts on traditional customs with regards to land. Originally, "custom" was used to throw out practices that colonial powers and missionaries disliked. Other problems include Tok Pisin words that occupy a larger semantic range than their English roots.

The concept of  Law also ran into problems when it was fragmented into several "rules". Local "Law Men" hashed out the "law", which was mostly whatever they could agree on, usually with respect to amounts due for certain offenses. They would refer to lo bilong tumbuna, that is "Law of the Ancesters" but this was usually as a last ditch effort when losing an argument.

The "Law Men" councils were replaced at independence with a court system. This court system was not always very thorough and these "Law Men" bemoaned their loss of influence. Custom started to gain in strength, though whether these "customs" were actually traditional is up for debate.

Usually, if a company wanted to know about "customs" it was mostly due to land ownership rules and rituals with regards how much they should pay for a lease when starting a mining operation. (See notes on the Society Reform Program). "Customs" however would often change from situtation to situtaion. However, land ownership rights became very important when gold mining started to become more prevelent and the amounts of money being discussed grew. (For a view on this and gender, look at page 12-13 of the document about widow excluded from land rights discussion.)

While some might argue that Custom or customs aren't in practice anymore, they do seem to still be practiced. Customs are practiced, though they may be overly legalized in practice. An example is the mortuary ceremonies.

Notes on Tok Pisin

Note on format: The following syntax will be used
Italics will mark words in Tok Pisin
/Forward slashes/ will be used for pronunciation guides
'Single quotes' will be used for definitions
"Double quotes" will be used for root words
I will try to adhere to this throughout the blog.

Sounds:
Vowels: Pisin uses a 5 vowel system, similar to Japanese: a (/ah/), e (/eh/), i (/ee/), o (/oh/), and u (/oo/).
Consonants: p, b, t, d, k, g, v, s, h, m, n, ŋ, l, w j, r

That said, the vowels can vary, becoming more complex that the basic 5, either though diphthongs or by influences from outside languages.

Grammar:
Verbal system:
-im is a transitive suffix for verbs
Tense is controlled by helper verbs, with the default tense being present. Future uses bai (from "by and by") and the past uses bin ("been"). Present progressive tense is indicated with a stap. (ie, 'eating' would be kaikai stap, or "food stop") Completive/perfective aspect uses the word pinis ("finish").
The only person differences are that verbs with 3rd person subjects use a helper i between subject and verb.

Nounal system:
No number indicator (save for pronouns). Gender does not seem to be indicated by the nouns.

Pronouns:
Here, I'm just going to copy Wikipedia's chart. Interestingly, the 3rd person singular is ungendered.

	Singular	Dual	Trial	Plural
1st exclusive	mi (I)	mitupela (he/she and I)	mitripela (both of them, and I)	mipela (all of them, and I)
1st inclusive	-	yumitupela (thou and I)	yumitripela (both of you, and I)	yumipela or yumi (all of you, and I)
2nd	yu (thou)	yutupela (you two)	yutripela (you three)	yupela (you four or more)
3rd	em (he/she)	tupela (they two)	tripela (they three)	ol (they four or more)

Duals are used often, Trials less so.

Adjectives:
Usually have the pela ("fellow"). Some dialects shorten -pela to -pla. The notable exception to this is liklik ('little'). Numbers used adjectivally use either -pela or a counter depending on what is being numbered.

Prepositions:
There are only two: long and bilong. Bilong is used to make a genitive or construct chain of words. ('My name' being nem bilong mi.) Long is used for all other prepositions, functioning as a indirect object marker.

Reduplication is used both for a form of derivation and also to distinguish between similar sounding words. (sip 'ship' and sipsip 'sheep')

Sentence structure mirrors English.

Wikipedia Source

Observations:
There are a large number of gramaticalizations of the words used in Tok Pisin from the English roots. Words such as "fellow" and "belong" morph through usage to technical grammatical terms (-pela denoting an adjective/pronoun, bilong marking a genitive prepositional phrase). Gras ("grass") is used for anything grass-like, such as maus gras ("mouth grass" or 'moustache').
Roots seem to come from English, German, and Portuguese, though several words are from traditional langauges of the islands.

First Post!

This blog is going to be used by me for relfections and notes while I travel to the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Specifically, I and my family will be at Kudjip Nazarene Hospital. My wife will be working there as a physician. Meanwhile, I will be helping around the compound, watching our two year old girl, and hopefully learning a bit of the local language, Tok Pisin. I hope to come away with an appreciation for the Papua New Guinean culture, a basic understanding of the language, and many new experiences.

This blog is for academic purposes, mostly. Our family blog can be found here.