Bananas, bows and arrows, bilums, and brus

July 17, 2014

Yobai

Yobai, Tok Ples for bananas, were a staple of the local diet.  Green, they were a good breakfast easily prepared over a tiny fire resurrected from the glowing coals of the previous night's fire. Ripe and soft, they were a welcome snack.

1429

A slit stick was used as tongs to turn the roasting bananas.

1427

People's fingers were toughened by years of handling hot foods.

1428

 

Bunara

The Tok Pisin term for bows and arrows, bunara, was already widely used fifty years ago when these ubiquitous tools and weapons were never far from the hands of each man. 

 

Young boys started out with tiny bamboo bows and arrows made of stiff grasses, which they made for themselves,  ready to shoot any lizard or small bird that would catch their eye.  Men made their bows out of black palm wood - strong and flexible.  The string was made of a carefully shaved length of bamboo.  They always had their bunara within easy reach in case they came across a wild boar in the forest.  

 

Additionally, in spite of the  Pax Australiana which had been established in this area in 1959, in the back of their minds there was always the possibility that an enemy might surreptitiously be intruding on the clan territory.  

1443 Black palm bow

1445 Four-pronged bird arrow

1261 Pig arrows

 

1444 -  Father Nicholas tests his strength against a local man's bow.

Two other tools were in constant use. 

Akis

Axes, like bows and arrows, were used almost exclusively by men, and were crucial for clearing new gardens in the second-growth forest in order to keep the Maring swidden gardening cycles going.  Axes were not as ubiquitous in 2014 as I had remembered them.  

 

Back in the 1960s each man had carved his own axe handle, shaping it long, smooth and polished from a local wood so that it could slip easily through his bark belt and be carried with him at his waist.  The favored axe blades were from Sweden. Often they arrived at trade stores still attached to the Swedish axe handles. These were short and stout with a thick, blunt end  -  entirely useless for slipping into a belt.  They were immediately dispensed with and the blades were adapted to Maring usages.

 

A few women possessed old axes. They were very handy for reducing the tree trunks downed by the men into shorter lengths which they would carry home for firewood.  A woman's main tool was, however, her digging stick -  yinga.

 

Bushknives

 

1328

 

Bush knives were owned and used by both men and women to clear underbrush.  I noticed that they were not as much in evidence in 2014 as they had been in the1960s, but all the same, children got used to handling them at an early age.

 

1534

 

 

Kun  -  Bilums

Bilums, in Maring called kun, were used by both men and women.  The men's bilums,  yir kun, were carried over one shoulder, and were only large enough to hold a bit tobacco (yir) for rolling cigarettes (smok).  Women's bilums, slung from the top of a woman's head so the weight was borne by the neck and back, were of many sizes.  Some were large enough to carry a baby. Even larger ones were used to carry the daily harvest of all the tubers and greens (kumu) needed to feed a family.  

 

Women 's hands were always busy.  If they were not gardening or caring for children, they were twisting the twine to make fringed skirts (pulpul) for themselves and their daughters, netted loincloths (minja) for the men of the family, or bilums.

 

Whatever the bilum size, the technique involved stitching loops of hand-twisted twine  around strips of stiff pandanus leaf about two feet long.  This kept the stitches the same size. 

 

1449

When we had first arrived in the 1960s, most women threaded the twine through a needles made of the wing bone of a bat, but steel needles had been introduced and were greatly prized. 

As the rows progressed, pandanus strips were made anew and inserted, one after another. Over the time it took to complete a bilum, the pandanus strips dried out. Once the bilum was complete, the strips were taken out and the bilum could stretch flexibly to expand and contract around the shape of whatever was being carried.

1451

Gaua

Women made twine (gaua) from local fibers,  most often from the inner bark of nongamba or  pukuna saplings.

 

1467

 

Some twine was colored it by rubbing it with the juices of purple leaves or the bright orange oily seeds of the karom shrub.

1458

A toe is a good anchor for the other end of the string being dyed.

1457

 

The most prized bilums were made of twine into which soft possum fur had been incorporated, tuft by tuft, during the twisting process.

 

Brus  -  Smok  -  Tobacco

Tobacco plants were grown along the sides of houses.  The mature leaves were picked and hung from the fire rack over the hearth.  A quick smoke could be had by drying a freshly picked leaf and laying it carefully on the hot stones by a fire.  In the past, the leaves were used for both the inside and and outside of a cigarette, but already in the 1960s people preferred to roll the crumbled tobacco in small squares of newspaper.  In 2014,  packets of such squares were an important item offered by the people who brought wares to market places.

Taking a break from bilum-looping, the women each roll a cigarette and share a light.

1468

1469

 

1470

1472

When the lighter doesn't work,  I see another sight familiar from the past:  a toddler is asked to bring a burning coal from a nearby fire and hold it out so as to light an adult's cigarette.

1474

 

A cigarette was often shared, being passed from the eldest person who had made it and lit  it, on to others as it got shorter and shorter. Children were "at the bottom of the totem pole," receiving the tiniest stub remaining.

 

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