by William Harvey
Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
Friday, 22 August 2008.
3:00 p.m.
Everything is clean here except the air. I am exhausted from a summer of Cultures in Harmony projects, and given the conditions from which we came, I stare at my friend’s spotless apartment in awe. As I unpack my laptop and pour over e-mails, I wonder: should I call my mother?
I have already called her to tell her I arrived safely, but I have not yet told her what I need to tell her. It is hard to know how to handle the incident. People abroad judge Americans by the actions of a few. I do not want Americans to judge people from Papua New Guinea based on the actions of one man.
They should know the context. They should know about the warmth and hospitality of its people, about the beauty of its environment, about bilums, birds of paradise, the kundu drum, and grass skirts. They should know about our outstanding partner, Alex Korom. Judging Papua New Guinea by his actions wouldn’t be so bad.
I will tell my mother of all this later. I pick up the phone, press the speed dial, and tell her about the man who nearly murdered the members of Cultures in Harmony with a machete.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
I met Alex Korom on 5 June 2007 at the Malate Pensionne, a cheap guesthouse in Manila, Philippines. Cultures in Harmony had returned from four days in the country to find that four of us had been placed in a room with three small beds. I insisted on booking my own room, which ended up being on a separate floor from the others. Outside the room next to mine, a man wearing only a towel sat on a wooden trunk.
He was from Papua New Guinea and his employer, the Culture and Environment Global Warming Awareness Team, had sent him to Manila to see how they deal with pollution. Papua New Guinea had never experienced pollution and wanted to keep it that way. In the past, he has used theater to raise awareness about the environment, cultural preservation, and HIV/AIDS. Why not use music? We exchanged phone numbers. Because I pampered myself in Manila last year, I now write these words by the light of a kerosene lamp while sitting on the rough floor of a bamboo house, as insects and birds rehearse their complex chorus in the night.
I saw Alex again yesterday. It took three days to fly from Los Angeles to Port Moresby, the capital of PNG, and after an overnight there, our final flight today on a rickety propeller plane took us to Madang, PNG’s fourth largest city. We also met Warren Jano, a friend of Alex’s who helped him with this project. They drove us to a Lutheran guesthouse to drop off our things before Alex took us for a short walk to the Pacific.
I asked him to explain why that the NGO he works for raises awareness about three seemingly unrelated topics: environment, HIV/AIDS, and cultural preservation. Before, when life was simpler and people followed the old traditions, HIV was not a problem and people were in communion with their environment. But then logging, mining, and fishing companies found the last unspoiled paradise and began to spoil it.
“I am one of the strongest people in my village trying to make sure this doesn’t happen,” he told us proudly. He noted that his village does not have electricity, and that he doesn’t like having to go into town because you have to use money.
This morning, we took our last shower for ten days and set off. Soprano Tiffany DuMouchelle, percussionist Stephen Solook, and I rode in the back of a pick-up truck as the low-lying buildings of Madang gave way to rows of coconut trees that occasionally thinned out to allow a view of the ocean crashing meters from the highway’s edge. Sometimes, the foliage thickened into lush, exotic growth; sometimes, hills rolled dramatically up from the road.
We stopped at one tiny village on the beach to perform for a group of children. They enjoyed the fiddle tunes I played to Steve’s accompaniment and giggled when we let them bang Steve’s drum and pluck my strings. A few had fungus growing on their skin, caused by bad water. Many lacked shirts; none wore shoes. The littlest were naked.
We walked past bamboo-and-thatch huts as the kids scampered along. At the ocean’s edge, the boldest requested more music, so I tossed my case on the sand and played the slow movement from Bach’s A Minor Sonata. The twenty small children stood transfixed, not by the surf crashing behind them or the volcano in the distance, but by the sounds a genius assembled and ordered nearly three centuries ago in a country they never heard of.
We stopped at Bogia so that Alex could convince a government minister to open the workshops tomorrow. A fellow at the lodge where we purchased our last cold drinks for ten days told me happily, “PNG and America are one. You care about us; you help us.” But just before our truck turned off the highway onto the dirt path to Yoro, a man standing by the road had the following request when he learned where we’re from: “Tell that George Bush not to go to war all the time. In affects us here in PNG. Fuel prices go up.”
So warned, we began the bumpy ascent to Yoro, our path occasionally blocked by branches. Alex taught us phrases in Miani, a language spoken by 9,000 people in the area. PNG speaks 820 languages, over a tenth of the world’s total. Pidgin, based on English, amuses the English speaker until you remember that English formed as a pidgin nearly a millennium ago as French conquerors struggled to blend their language with those of Britain’s Germanic tribes.
After passing through the jungle, an abandoned cocoa plantation appeared by the side of the road. Missionaries sold the plantation to the government, and the locals were still trying to raise the 100,000 kina (about $36,000) to buy it back. Just beyond the plantation, we arrived at a gateway. I felt that we were not qualified to pass, such was the sense of holiness emanating from the twin bamboo poles from which dried grasses swayed slightly in the breeze.
Alex urged us to wait so they could welcome us properly, saying with a smile, “This is my custom culture. Respect my custom culture!” We reversed the truck and disembarked at a stream. Gnarled clusters of roots anchored prehistoric trees to the riverbank, while a congregation of tiny frogs jumped excitedly, ignored by dragonflies flitting fitfully from one giant leaf to the next.
Alex returned to teach us four phrases in Miani that we would have to recite in answer to four questions as part of a welcome ritual. We hopped back into the truck, splashed across the stream, and drove back past the cocoa plantation when suddenly, two men emerged from the bush, fiercely painted and clad in loincloths. One held a spear aloft and the other carried a bow with the arrow notched to the string. They shouted. I jumped.
Alex looked at us expectantly and I realized, oh, this is part of the welcome ritual. “One werev,”we chanted. It’s all good. That didn’t seem to pacify them. They shouted again, so we chanted, “Zita we nono ni evana ziribwami.” You invited us here.
They relaxed their weapons, smiling. We jumped out of the pick-up truck, and saw that in the distance beyond the gateway, the villagers were assembled in Western clothing. Yet the warriors still barred our entry under the gateway, and eight men and three women, also in traditional attire, stood behind them. Had that humble bamboo gateway been the entrance to heaven or hell, I would have found it no less awe-inspiring.
In response to the next shouted question, we chanted “Zino ninata maripav ribamwi.” We just want to cooperate. We hoped our answer to the fourth question would do the trick: “Aria tawe jimitovino.” We have nothing to say.
The warriors fell back, and the eight male dancers began a fierce tattoo on the kundu drums, as all eleven began dancing and singing with full-throated force. The men lifted and thrust spears as plumes of animal hair flew back from their heads. Ornate necklaces of beads and shells bounced on the bare breasts of the women. The dancers pummeled the ground with their bare feet in a complex rhythm, enervating the surrounding jungle. The men parted to allow the women to step forward and garland us with necklaces made of flowers and butterflies before reaching into a bowl filled with tiny red berries and smearing them all over our skin, turning it a bright orange.
They began to dance into the village and Alex encouraged us to follow. As I passed beneath the bamboo poles, a wondrous sensation spread through my body: I had entered the Yoro village.
We sat on benches as people filed past to introduce themselves. We enjoyed meeting Andrew, a strong village elder with excellent English. Some men helped carry our luggage to the bamboo-and-thatch house that would be our home in Yoro. Nine wooden poles elevate its living quarters about six feet above the ground.
Alex showed us the outhouse that they had built for us—the first constructed in Yoro. After crashing through the undergrowth, we found a tiny thatch building that blended in with the background. Two entrances lead to the dark cramped interior, where two planks flank a small deep hold in the ground. A nearby stick would serve as our plunger, and we agreed to form X’s at both entrances out of nearby bamboo when the outhouse was in use.
Finally, Alex led us down a narrow path to our bathtub. A series of steps hewn into the bank brought us a shallow river lazily meandering through a landscape untouched by humans. The water’s warmth persuaded us to lie down as the current caressed us. Gazing at the verdant splendor of the riverbank, as Alex stood guard and birds of paradise called to one another in the distance, we gained enough of a respite from the mosquitoes to conclude that those twin bamboo poles had indeed been the gateway to heaven.
Monday, 11 August
Black phantoms etched against grey become palm trees, inchoate vibrations coalesce into buzzing cicadas and crowing roosters, half-forgotten dreams melt into reality as the sun leaks color back into the sky. I pad softly among the ferns, inhaling, reflecting. Today, after one hundred hours of travel and much preparation, our workshops will begin.
At 10 o’clock, we gathered beneath an open structure known as the Center, so that the district administrator from Bogia could open the workshops. He gave a heartfelt speech about the importance of preserving culture. I thanked the people of Yoro for their hospitality, tossing in a few phrases in Miani and pidgin. I emphasized the equality of the exchange, how we came not only to teach, but also to learn about the culture of Yoro. Finally, I laid out the simple goal of our portion of the workshops: the creation of three compositions, one about the environment, one about HIV/AIDS, and one about cultural preservation.
Alex’s Labasia Cultural Theater Group began by presenting an original play about the environment in front of a banner showing scenes from PNG life and the slogan: “Fifty Thousand Years of Culture.” No other country on earth can claim to have lived its culture with so few changes for so long.
The players presented an allegory in which a father, mother, and son in traditional garb sat before us. The father lectured the son about respecting Nature, represented by a woman in an ornate mask and headdress, a grass skirt, and a necklace on her bare breasts. Alex gave a stellar performance as a sinister Malaysian businessman who gives the son money so he can exploit PNG’s natural resources. His associates entered the stage one by one to take away clothing and jewelry from the actress portraying Nature until she is left alone, wearing only sweatpants.
Steve, Tiffany, and I performed works by Glen Velez, Virgil Thomson, Rebecca Clarke, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. The several hundred villagers applauded vigorously, sometimes during a piece, and the little kids laughed and whooped during the Villa-Lobos, whose rhythms they loved. They were so absorbed by the spectacle that Alex had a hard time weeding out those who had not signed up for the workshops. Throughout the week, we would meet with our thirty-two participants in the Center while many villagers looked on from outside.
During lunch, I talked with some young men chewing betel nut, a powerful stimulant people in PNG chew accompanied by mustard stick and lime powder, producing a red saliva that stains the teeth. As the men chewed and spat, they told me of their aspirations. They have heard of the U.S.A. but know little about it, so they were eager to hear a first-hand account.
To ensure the equality of the exchange, we will spend as much time learning as teaching, so in the afternoon session, we asked them to tell us their stories and legends. They dutifully produced two village elders, a bearded man and a radiant old woman named Clara who spoke to me at great length in pidgin, despite my inability to understand. Excitement built as the old man told a long story in Miani, and then a group conferred on how to translate it into pidgin, and then another group worked to render it in English. When a young man finally told us, it turned out that our request had been lost in translation: we heard a list of how things have changed in the village. We asked the translator if he knew any stories, and his face lit up as he told an ancient legend about a mother who gave birth to twins.
After a supper of yams, we climbed into our house to go to sleep as the cicadas struck up their band. I took out my violin in the dark and walked out to our balcony to practice the improvisatory first movement of Bach’s A Minor Sonata. I had scarcely begun when I heard the low notes of a bamboo flute nearby. Matching the pitches, I improvised in the same spirit. When he stopped, I went back to the Bach, and we continued, alternating improvisation with Bach, until the last notes of the flute faded into the insects’ back-up vocals. With an appreciative comment of “Werev nadi,” or very good, my duo partner slipped back into the night.
Tuesday, 12 August
We lounged around the stilts supporting our hut in the watery half-light of dawn as the odd chicken scuttled about and the neighboring was uho (big pig) waddled happily in search of its bliss. Clara approached us with a bowl of yams and a smile, saying in pidgin that she couldn’t eat unless we ate with her. So we peeled our yams as a small crowd gathered. Steve and Tiffany got out their notebooks and began compiling an impressive glossary of Miani, while I held Samson, a chubby little baby who has become quite taken with me, or maybe just my hat, which he believes would be the most delicious meal ever if only he could get it in his mouth. I may have to take him home with me.
Today’s workshop began with large group improvisation and continued with Chris Gross’ excellent lesson plan designed to present the roles of Performer, Composer, and Audience. Since this group ranges in age between 15 and 30, they grasped the concepts quickly. We wrote three-sentence stories, indicating whether each sentence should be Big, Medium, or Small. We then performed the stories, illustrating the three roles in Western classical music. The audience’s effect on performance seemed new to them: they didn’t know about applauding at the ends of pieces, and they enjoyed learning about the option of shouting “Bravo!” or “Bravissimo!”
When we asked students to compare and contrast two pieces based on the score, both before and after having heard them, they had unusually astute observations about the Clarke and Villa-Lobos. I emphasized that the differences stemmed from the fact that they were different people with different experiences, expressing the hope that the pieces we create together will reflect the participants’ experiences. They nodded vigorously, eager to get started. Some of them had walked six hours to be here.
We divided the groups into three pods to write the pieces: Steve got the environment group, Tiffany took the subject of HIV/AIDS, and I chose to deal with cultural preservation, or “custom culture” as Alex calls it. After a game to get acquainted, I asked my pod to list the aspects of their culture they hope to preserve. I was not surprised when they mentioned clothes, language, drums, food, betel nut, and singsing, the traditional celebration that lasts late into the night. Indeed, I eagerly awaited the singsing scheduled for next Monday, our last full day in Yoro.
I was surprised when a young woman expressed the desire to preserve the brideprice, the price a man’s family pays to the woman’s as a reward for giving them a wife. If she spoke up for a custom that measures her worth in pigs, who am I to question her?
After lunch, the participants taught us about their traditional instruments. We loved learning about the kundu drums, made of stretched lizard skin, and the giant garamut drum emblazoned with Gabriamun, the name of an ancient local legend. The participants clearly enjoyed teaching us and appreciated our enthusiasm for their culture, but sadly, none knew how to produce a sound on the conch shell or how to make a kundu drum.
“Do you want to go see the waterfall and some birds of paradise?” Alex asks me. I jump from the table, filled with new energy after a long day of workshops. The others laugh at my enthusiasm. Alex can’t go, but many of the young men from the workshops accompany us.
We file past the buildings at the village’s northern end, turning into a dried-up riverbed lined with giant ferns and garamut and soksok trees. A tiny gap appears in the jungle: “the road to paradise,” one of our guides calls it. We laugh and take pictures of Eden’s entrance.
We clamber up rocks and down gullies, focusing only on the desire to find a secure foothold. We pass a bamboo grove so thick with trees that some Brobdingnagian must have spilled his pencil case, or some organ pipes must have gone wild. I pluck a vanilla flower and instantly smell ice cream parlors, Norman Rockwell, childhood visits to grandmother’s, a Stradivarius violin, high school crush’s first kiss. I carry the sprig with me as we pass cocoa, coconut, sugarcane.
We crash through the jungle, crunching leaves the size of our torsos underfoot. We never see the birds of paradise, though we hear them rattle off an eerie series of yellow and purple whoops.
My sandals chafe against my feet as I struggle to keep my balance, ducking under tree trunks that lie across the stream. The water eddies around the rocks with increasing force. A friend extends a hand to help me up a stone, saying, “This is paradise, I think.”
Before us, giant ferns, vines, and trees form the walls of a natural cathedral. In place of an altar, a ribbon of water cascades ten meters down a steep rock face to a pool that mirrors the sky. I wade into the knife-like cold. As I sit in the water, surrounded by burrowing tadpoles and skittish water spiders, I see constellations of dust motes, slowly spinning in the water, and I wonder: how could anyone want to destroy this? Who could look at the rock and lust after some glittering metal its glistening surface might conceal? Who could stand in the shadow of arboreal emperors and yearn to topple them? Who could observe fish flitting in this pool and think this to be a good spot for a cannery?
Later, I tell Alex, “You bring people here. You want to stop the exploitation of PNG’s environment, you bring them here. Bring the loggers, the mining companies. No one could see that waterfall and want to destroy it.” He smiles appreciatively.
I emerged from the pool feeling at one with Nature, but my feet had other ideas. That night, Steve kindly doctored my blisters by the light of the kerosene lamp as flying foxes soared past the silvery moon.
Wednesday, 13 August
Today’s workshops began with rhythm games followed by Chris Gross’ excellent motive lesson plan, wherein we make musical motives out of pipe cleaners and then interpret them. The participants learned very quickly, so when we divided into pods, we were able to establish a text for a composition by combining poems we wrote for homework yesterday. My pod used parts of four poems: one about the waterfall, one about the Miani language, an ode to the grass skirt, and a celebration of the kundu drum. When I asked my pod to generate rhythms, Patrick quickly came up with a complex pattern in 19/8.
After lunch, the participants taught us traditional songs. One song called “The World War” haunted us with its heartfelt melody and history. Their great-grandparents created it to honor the villagers who had been made to serve in World War II, in which PNG played a role too seldom appreciated in the U.S. Steve and Tiffany copied down the words and learned it with the goal of performing it. Inspired, later I finished composing a setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, “A Musical Instrument,” that Tiffany and I would perform on our concerts.
The sun had set when the villagers invited us to their weekly prayer meeting, conducted in pidgin in a nearby hut on stilts. The meeting would have been familiar to any post-Vatican II Catholic: cheesy guitar music interspersed with lay-led prayer. We imposed our entire belief system on the people of this country, and yet none of them hate us. Well, as we learned later, most do not.
Thursday, 14 August
So much progress today! We illustrated how a good theme grows out of a good motive, using one of the Clarke songs. We taught canons using “Row, row, row your boat.” We taught prosody by singing the ingredients on the back of a Clif bar to the tune of “Row, row…” This illustrated the first of two extremes to avoid when setting words to music: forcing inappropriate words to a good melody, and creating a melody that fits the rhythm of the text but lacks musical interest. We ran into an intriguing cultural difference when I tried to illustrate the second extreme by singing the Clif bar ingredients to a one-note melody. To my surprise, some participants liked this melody, so I reluctantly explained that a Western composer might reject it as boring.
In my pod, we finished our motive. I asked them how we would set our first line of text, and after a deafening silence, they began discussing it in small groups, drawing arrows to indicate pitch direction, debating each interval. At 12:26 p.m., nearly half an hour after we usually break for lunch, they finally agreed upon a beautiful opening for our song.
They took seriously the topic we requested to learn about today: crafts. Men, women, and children from the village joined our participants for a relaxing afternoon making purses, rice cookers, armbands, baskets, toy birds of paradise, noisemakers, and more out of bamboo and other plants. Tiffany, Steve, and I went from one group to another, learning how to make everything, though our friends often had to surreptitiously correct our efforts. Tiffany wove a beautiful basket, and I made quite a spectacle decked out in a crown and armband, blowing a bamboo whistle and whirling a noisemaker.
Later, Steve and Tiffany continued their education in Miani, helped along by a children’s primer Alex gave them. They are becoming quite proficient in one of the world’s most rare languages.
Friday, 15 August
A curious crowd collected as I warmed up this morning, so I explained how and why I practice scales, double stops, and arpeggios. Dry exercises though they may be, I fell in love with them all over again as the full force of the distance between the practice rooms of Juilliard and the Center of the Yoro village hit me. No matter where I go, as long as I carry my violin and practice scales and Bach, I am at home.
We taught our participants intervals with the help of a nearby ladder that happened to have one rung for each note of the scale, so Tiffany could sing the intervals while I hopped around on the ladder. All three of us got on the ladder for Steve’s harmony lesson, enabling our students to quickly grasp the concepts.
My pod finished setting the waterfall section of our song and moved on to the section on the Miani language. They’re very creative, but I discouraged them from adding a battery-powered keyboard accompaniment that sounded like American disco music.
Steve and Tiffany learned farming techniques after lunch, but the heat was getting to me, so I stayed to chat with some guys. They like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Van Damme, whose movies they’ve seen on a generator-powered projector in the schoolhouse. They’ve never heard of pizza or cheeseburgers but enjoyed my descriptions of them. “Number one!” they exclaimed.
I quizzed them about change and they said that some villagers were in favor of getting electricity and some were opposed. I understood both arguments. Electricity would change the rhythm of life dramatically. I suggested that if they were to change one thing, it should be toilets.
Tiffany and Steve returned and kindly gave me a coconut. Its electrolyte-rich milk quickly helped me recover from the heat. Supper included the succulent fruit of the soursap. Its spiny green exterior breaks open to reveal a sweet, sticky, thick white pulp that tastes like a combination of cream and lemons, with notes of pineapple and a buttery finish.
All this talk of food and toilets reminds me of the final trip I take to the outhouse each night. It’s already creepy in daylight to walk to the tiny enclosure to straddle two flimsy planks that barely prevent you from plunging to the waste-filled hole below. Try it in near-total blackness as hordes of unseen flies buzz beneath you while flying foxes flap ominously towards the tree overhead.
Saturday, 16 August
Unfortunately, a number of participants were absent today, but we got a lot done with those who came. Steve taught everyone about chord progressions before we split into our pods. My pod finished creating the music for the first two sections of our piece. When they showed interest in my conducting motions, I got out my baton and showed Vincent how to use it. He did a fine job, and the others seemed proud of him and eager to follow him.
I was also proud of Maculatha, who volunteered a suggestion for the first time. I have tried desperately to include the women in my group on an equal basis with the men, but the reticence of these women in particular plus attitudes about gender roles have made this difficult.
After lunch, some participants taught us about the traditional way of building a house. They presented a miniature model of a house made out of sago palm—apparently they always build such models before construction, though we were touched that they built this one for us. A house typically takes six months to finish, with the entire extended family helping.
A large crowd watched our rehearsal afterward, with some of the young men trying to sing along with Tiffany on the Clarke songs. While Tiffany and Steve rehearsed, I amused the kids by improvising pantomimes with a stick and my PNG hat. The village kids mostly like us a lot, except for a few little ones who scream at the sight of us—“It’s the color of your skin,” the parents explain apologetically. One kid was thrilled every time we presented him with one of our instruments, but sobbed pathetically whenever we had to take it away.
Tonight, we watched Alex do stand-up comedy in pidgin. The villagers were falling off their benches with laughter, which we joined even though we couldn’t understand him.
Sunday, 17 August
Since participants occasionally remain silent or turn away when we call on them, we added a stage presence workshop. I began with my back to the audience, mumbling about my intention to teach stage presence. The participants laughed as Tiffany and Steve gradually corrected me. We selected a few victims to tell me where an imaginary fire was as I stood far away with imaginary buckets of water.
In my pod, we finished our four-part paean to traditional culture. Bamboo flute, kwila rattles, and vocal sound effects evoke the waterfall as we sing a peaceful, ametric chant in Miani. I hand Vincent my baton and he conducts the next section, cueing in the kundu drum, rattles, and then the chorus and violin for a joyous, syncopated tribute to the Miani language. For the third section, Consitta dances in a grass skirt, Elton reads a poem about a grass skirt, and Steve and I improvise on the motive they came up with. Finally, the kundu drum beat out Patrick’s rhythm in 19/8 before we sing a spirited ditty in English honoring the role of that drum. We speak the last line to give it the emphasis it deserves: “Oh my dear, why have you gone and thrown it all away?”
Sunday afternoon means soccer in Yoro. The village gathered on the school campus, where young men in sunglasses peddled goods from Hong Kong, girls shot hoops, children cavorted around laughing, and grandmothers looked after fussy babies. The soccer teams warmed up on either side of the field as the smell of roasted delicacies filled the air. We sampled breadfruit seeds (which taste like nuts) and cheesetree nuts (which taste like cheese). Those villagers who had never interacted with us tried not to stare, except for the children. One small naked boy stared at me unblinkingly, so I went off to help two slightly older boys play with their toy cars. The referees fiddled with the megaphone as anticipation mounted beneath the trees next to the field: would the distant clouds vanish from the otherwise cerulean sky?
The two teams donned their jerseys, slapped hands to wish each other a good game, and began! A carnival atmosphere prevailed by the sidelines, with no one rooting for a team. Wishing to change this, Steve, Tiffany, Alex and I tried standing up and spelling Yoro with our bodies. When that didn’t catch on, we began shouting the name of Yoro’s team (“Wabinum,” which means “From this place”). The folks from Yoro laughed at our antics, though Alex gave us a few phrases to shout: Aria aria aria! Osora Wabinum! Eventually a few villagers joined in our American-style sports fanaticism, and applause broke out when Wabinum scored the game’s only goal.
A few more matches occurred after that, but our energy was spent, so we trundled back to our hut while Alex went off to rehearse for tomorrow night’s singsing. As I played with Samson, his aunt approached Tiffany and me with bilums, the woven bags that are the area’s main handicraft, smiling and saying, “Present from Samson.” She urged us to keep in touch—I gathered that they are grateful for the attention and affection we lavished on Samson. We could write her directly at the Public Works department, where she works, or we could write Samson at his P. O. Box, “and he’ll pass on your greetings to us.” Steve and I grinned at each other. “Samson maintains a P. O. Box?” I wondered. “He picks out great presents, so why shouldn’t he?” Steve shot back.
We continued passing Samson around, bouncing him on our knees, the vibrant colors of our bilums visible in the bright light of a moon that appeared bigger than usual, perhaps because in the coldness of space, it yearned to get closer to the warm tenderness of the scene below.
Monday, 18 August
We awoke to our last full day in Yoro to a delicious breakfast of fried dough and coffee—clearly, our hosts were pulling out all the stops. “I can’t wait for the singsing,” I said as I munched. My colleagues agreed excitedly: tonight would be a night to remember.
We walked to the elementary school to formally give the headmaster some rulers, markers, pencils, pens, flashcards, coloring books, and stickers that Tiffany’s cousin had thoughtfully sent. The students stood smartly in a semicircle on the soccer field, singing their national anthem and pledging allegiance to their flag. They stood quietly for announcements and applauded politely when we gave their headmaster the supplies.
Back at the Center, Alex told us that he, Andrew, and some of the elders were going into Bogia for some meetings and to pick up coconuts. Little could we imagine the effect their absence would have.
We rehearsed our compositions in pods before performing them for each other in the hot sun. All three pieces were excellent, though I felt that we could use more rehearsal, particularly to ensure that they look like they’re having fun. “C’mon guys, smile,” I cajoled my pod, some of whom were stone-faced. “You don’t want people to think you’re bored,” I said, slouching and opening my mouth, feigning a few snores. “Be proud! Be happy!” Finally they grinned at my antics.
Lunch continued the trend set by breakfast: fried wild chicken egg, fresh pineapple, coconut, and sugarcane. We had barely resumed rehearsing after lunch when the entire nature and significance of our project changed suddenly and irrevocably.
A man staggers through a gap in the trees up the road, a boombox on his shoulder playing loud music. He yells indiscriminately at everyone in pidgin and people look embarrassed. He is clearly very drunk, although it is still early in the afternoon. We continue rehearsing as he stumbles down a path away from us. A few minutes later, another man with a brutally scarred face ambles down the road, even more drunk. This one carries a bush knife.
My voice falters in the middle of our song. We keep rehearsing for a bit, until someone tells me softly that we should stop. The man continues down the road towards us, waving the meter-long knife threateningly in the air.
“Someone should take the machete away from him,” I say nervously. Everyone looks embarrassed. “We must wait until Alex and Andrew and the elders come back from town,” one of the young men says. “They will deal with this.” “You guys can deal with him,” I encourage them. There are about thirty young men around. They look as scared as I feel.
An old woman is able to take the drunk gently by the hand holding the machete and lead him into a steel house nearby. No one says anything. The sweat pours down our foreheads in the jungle heat. Suddenly, we hear a terrifying crash inside the house. Is the woman okay?
To our relief, a few minutes later the drunk staggers out of the house with the old woman still patiently trying to convince him to drop the knife. In anger, he wrests his arm away from her and runs to a pile of lumber on the other side of the road, near where Steve is sitting with his group.
With stunning force, he slams the machete into the lumber. Moments later, he sees Steve, and charges at him. Steve’s group prepares to shield him, but fortunately, the drunk stumbles and changes his mind. He wanders back to the main road.
I cannot help peering out at him from where I sit in the Center. I see his blue shirt and yellow shorts from behind the thatch overhanging the roof and the trees shielding the Center. He sees me looking at him.
He starts yelling in pidgin. It sounds like he is wondering why I am looking at him, so I try to look away. It does no good.
“White man!” he screams. “White man!” A short sentence in pidgin follows. The last two words sound like “kill you.” I lean over to my friend Patrick. “What is he saying?” I ask in an urgent whisper. Patrick says nothing for a while. I repeat the question.
“He says that the white man is taking away our culture,” Patrick whispers, clearly wishing he did not have to translate. “He says he will come back…” Patrick trails off. “And kill me?” I continue. Patrick says nothing.
The drunk suddenly decides to charge me. The participants move to shield me, but again, the drunk changes his mind and heads down the road, out of sight.
Tiffany and I begin to pack up our things to head for our house. Steve, who has crossed back to our side of the road, says no. Some of the villagers feel that it would only aggravate the drunk if he came back right away and saw us running from him. We stay in the Center.
The minutes pass by. Steve asks the occasional question, but everyone seems to embarrassed and scared to talk. I am ashamed at myself for wanting to run away. The air fills with the sounds of buzzing insects and calling birds of paradise, no longer so enthralling, and with the sense of impending terror.
Steve tells me, “We can’t keep doing nothing. We can’t just sit here.” I agree. Clearing my throat, I speak out in a wavering voice that becomes stronger as I continue.
“In every project, we have a cultural diplomacy forum. In these forums, we discuss the image of the United States, and whether our relationship with you has changed because of this project. Usually, however, the circumstances are a little different.” My nervous laughter echoes in the stillness, bouncing off vines and distant raintrees. I hope the drunk does not hear me.
At first, no one will answer my questions. But eventually, the participants become bolder. Never has one of our cultural diplomacy forums proven more illuminating. Never has the threat of death hung over every word. When will the drunk come back? When will the truck full of village elders return from Bogia to deal with the problem?
The first thing we learn is that while the village unanimously approved our presence in Yoro at a meeting, not every villager was at the meeting, and most of the villagers who are not actively participating in the workshops do not know why we are here. They know we are here to do music, but they do not know that Cultures in Harmony stands for cultural diplomacy. They do not know that we are here to encourage them to preserve their culture, not to take it away.
Americans in particular are not objects of resentment so much as white people in general. White men came to Papua New Guinea and told its people to abandon their religion and adopt theirs. We came to a land that speaks one-tenth of the world’s languages and forced them to speak just one derogatory language we made up. We press-ganged them into our war. We ruled them, punting them around from the Dutch to the Germans to the British to the Australians like a football. We came to one of the most beautiful lands on earth and cut down its trees, ripped its glittering metals from the ground, and canned and processed its fish. We took the proceeds from these endeavors and left next to no sanitation, electricity, infrastructure, or money.
Steve, Tiffany, and I learn that people like the drunk whose return seems imminent resent the missionaries the most. The missionaries came here about seventy years ago and forced people to give up their old beliefs. Catholicism stayed after the missionaries left because it became a way of life. The Papuans have forgotten what their ancestors believe, so they have little choice but to go to church each Sunday and ask the Pikinini to forgive their sins. The irony of referring to children here by the same derogatory term then used for black children in the American South while expecting Papuans to worship the Son of God doubtless escaped the white men who imposed both indignities.
In spite of all this, many people here love us. As one participant from Bogia put it, “We know that when a white man comes, it is to share knowledge with us.” Coming from a country obsessed with politically correct speech, all this talk of White Men makes me a little uncomfortable, but I soldier on. I ask: have these workshops given you a different view of white men in general or Americans in particular?
The answer surprises me. “Before, we did not appreciate our own culture. We saw it passing away. Now we appreciate it. We see that we can save it. It does not have to pass away.” We came to give them a different view of Americans, but we gave them a different view of themselves. I know without asking that in the process, they have learned that not all white men come to Papua New Guinea to take away its culture.
We are in the middle of the next question when the drunk comes back. This time, he carries no knife, so I relax, but everyone else begins to move away. Go to your house, our friends tell us. “When they say stay, I stay. When they say run, I run,” Steve says. We quickly gather our things and run to our house as women collect small children. A few of the babies begin crying. We clamber up our ladder, shove our instruments and bags in Steve and Tiffany’s room, and shut the door. Underneath our hut, the women and children wait anxiously. Steve grabs a heavy flashlight and Tiffany readies her pocketknife, ready to strike, just in case.
Through a hole in the wall, we see the drunk stagger beneath the meeting house. He now wields a large log. A few of the young men try to soothe him. A few minutes later we hear an enormous crack. Steve peers out the door. The drunk has pulled out one of the posts holding up the Center. The roof teeters dangerously. Next, he ambles over to our hut. The women begin retreating into other houses, covering the children.
We see him through gaps in the floorboards, holding our breath so he does not hear us. The young men coax him down a path to the river, and after several minutes pass, we cautiously emerge, just as a white pick-up truck arrives in a cloud of dust. The elders have come back from Bogia.
We climb down the ladder to see that the Center has been hastily repaired, standing erect once more. Alex and Andrew shake our hands, worry and concern on their faces. They apologize profusely, but we instantly forgive them. “You cannot expect that the one time you leave town is the one time a crazy maniac will run around with a knife,” I assure Andrew. “The show will go on,” Alex bravely assures us.
A commotion near our hut tells us that the drunk has returned from the river, this time carrying several palm fronds. Andrew escorts us to the other side of the road as the young men drag him down the path and onto the main road. Near the gap in the trees, a tall man we vaguely recognize stands ominously by the road, carrying a ten-foot stick.
The young men throw the drunk at the feet of the tall man. In a swift motion, the tall man swings the stick behind his head and screams at the drunk, his voice choked with grief and rage. He speaks in pidgin, but the meaning is clear enough. How could you shame our village? How could you endanger women and children? Andrew whispers to us that this tall man is Elias, the brother of one of the village councilors and the forward of Wabinum, the soccer team we saw yesterday.
Elias brings the stick down with punishing force. After a few blows, he commands the young men to tie up the drunk and take him to the village council house. Alex passes by us, every muscle in his back taut. His eyes are slits. He carries a twelve-foot stick and heads toward where the first drunk, the one with the boombox, hides out. The jungle will know justice today.
The hour for the concert is at hand, yet no one feels like starting. Some of the participants in our workshops have already left for their homes, over four kilometers away. Oddly enough, given the events of the day, one participant receives news that a close relative had died in Bogia, so she leaves to deal with that. After helping gather an audience, Alex leaves in search of the participants from Steve’s group. We will have to play alone until all our participants return.
We begin with the songs by Clarke. People still look uncomfortable, wondering if they should be watching a concert at a time like this. So I address the crowd.
“I understand that many of you may wonder why we are here. Why did these three crazy musicians come from the United States all the way to Yoro village, here in Papua New Guinea? Let me be clear. We did not come to take your culture. We did not come to help. We did not come to reach a hand down and lift anyone up.
“We came to extend a hand outward and walk forward together in friendship. We came because we respect your culture. The music we play—Western classical music—is dying because large companies try to create one global, mass media culture. Those same influences make it difficult for you to preserve your culture. So we came to encourage you in your efforts.
“We hope that in the future, you know that when white people come to cut down your trees, to mine your metals, to destroy your environment, that you think that they are simply bad people, not that they are typical white people or typical Americans. We will do the same for you. We will tell people about Papua New Guinea in our country. We will tell them about the warmth and hospitality of its people, about the beauty of its environment, about bilums, birds of paradise, the kundu drum, and grass skirts.
“We hope that you carry forth this message of peace and understanding when you leave today’s concert. Tell others about what we did and said here today. Finally, we hope you enjoy the concert.”
As I speak, I notice some of the elders smiling and nodding vigorously. Everyone applauds at the end, looking much more relaxed. So we proceed with the concert. When Tiffany and Steve play one of their pieces, I notice a group of participants sitting far away, underneath the meeting house. I go over to them.
“Why are you sitting over here and not at the concert?” I ask Vincent. He looks down. “I am scared of the drunken man.” “Come on,” I encourage him. “We are performing, so if he came back, he would go for us first. Besides, he is tied up now.” After I play in the next piece, I notice him and the rest of those people sitting on a nearby bench. I flash him the thumbs-up.
As usual, the audience greets the rhythmic and comedic Serteneja by Heitor Villa-Lobos with laughter, whistles, and thunderous applause. Since Alex still searches for Steve’s group, we proceed with Tiffany’s group and my group. When Steve’s group still does not arrive, I play some more Bach to keep the audience of small children entertained. The concert has been going for two hours now. I select a small child to help me play Pop Goes the Weasel.
Desperate, we decide to reenact The Three Little Pigs. I make up my own version of the story (involving DVD players made out of feathers), Tiffany acts out all the parts, and Steve provides sound effects. The kids scream in hilarity and roll around on the grass as Tiffany rolls around, oinking happily away. “Was uho,” I say in Miani, pointing at her. The kids roll around laughing.
The sky darkens and the crowds of small children frolic uncontrollably, so we call a halt to the concert, although Steve’s group has not arrived. Later, over dinner, we learn that the group will come tomorrow morning to rehearse. We learn that the two drunks waited until the elders left to make a dangerous alcohol that ferments in twenty minutes from a mixture of coffee, sugar, and yeast. We learn that the one with the machete will be charged with attempted murder, threatening with a bush knife, making illegal alcohol, and public intoxication. The police will come for him tomorrow.
We have looked forward to tonight’s singsing all week. Though it has been cancelled, though the events of the day were shocking and disturbing, we are somehow, inexplicably, satisfied. We learned beyond any doubt that the work we are doing is not merely important. It is essential.
Tuesday, 19 August
The morning of our departure from Yoro dawned so peacefully that no observer could have imagined the previous day’s terror. We finished packing and started chatting with Philip, the head of a group of Papuan employees of World Vision, a European humanitarian organization. They have been coming here to work on bringing water to the village, and today they will start installing 35 toilets. How wonderful that sanitation will finally come to Yoro, and how ironic that it arrives when we leave. Later, I noted the irony that the first white people we saw in days were some missionaries in a truck that passed us on the road. We had come to preserve Papuan culture; they had come to take it away.
We would see our workshop participants again tomorrow, but we had to bid emotional goodbyes to the villagers we might never see again. Little Samson seemed to know we were leaving, and was too sad to turn his face to us. The was uho, on the other hand, knew nothing, and continued rutting contentedly in the undergrowth.
Since we had passed beneath the gateway to Yoro nine days ago, we did not cross it again. Such was its mysterious power that we all felt that having been so elaborately welcomed through it, we should not idly walk back underneath. So after we clambered aboard a pick-up truck today and drove quickly beneath those twin bamboo poles, I felt the ineffable sensation that something precious had been taken from me.
We lunched on fresh bananas and sago on the way to Madang. Sago is the starchy palm of a tree, and tastes like bread, cheese, and Italian seasoning. In Yoro, we sampled nuts that tasted like cheese, so as Steve pointed out, it only makes sense that Papua New Guinea also offers a tree that grows Pizza Minis.
In Madang, Alex found an inexpensive guesthouse whose owner, a slightly rotund man named Phillip, seemed thrilled to have foreigners stay at his place. He talked my ear off with his remarkably well informed, if slightly unusual, political views. He loves George W. Bush: “When America is off fighting, we Papuans can sleep and snore in our beds. If you don’t fight the terrorists, they will come here from Indonesia.”
That evening, we returned to the restaurant at the Coastwatcher’s Hotel for the first time in ten days. We treated Alex and Ronald, our driver, to dinner, and we ordered Enzo’s Pizza. Only a day after escaping a knife-wielding maniac in the jungle, we dined on gourmet pizza and sipped frosty glasses of the outstanding national beer, SP Lager, in a restaurant overlooking the calm azure of the Pacific.
Wednesday, 20 August
After an early morning trip to the crafts market, we went to Divine Word University to wait for our dress rehearsal time in the auditorium. We finally got in around 3:30, and stared around in wonderment at all the electric lights, air conditioners, and sound equipment.
We enjoyed seeing our workshop participants again, especially in this new context: many of them had never performed at all before. As soon as they arrived, I entrusted Steve and Tiffany with the rehearsal so I could go off to Coastwatcher’s and order some Enzo’s Pizza for everyone, remembering how much some of them wanted to try it. Though five jumbos seemed like enough, our participants inhaled them in less than a minute. After dinner, Alex gave everyone a speech in pidgin about appearing happy when they perform, since I mentioned to him that some of my performers had looked scared and miserable.
The usual pre-concert chaos prevailed, with everyone cramming into the tiny bathrooms to change. No one had been designated to collect the admission fee of 50 toya (about 18 cents), so Sharon found a plastic bag. To our pleasant surprise, quite a crowd began arriving a few minutes after 7:00, so we started only a half hour late at 7:30.
Our portion of the program went over very well. During a particularly fast section of my Bach, they burst into applause in the middle of the piece, which they also did during Steve’s virtuosic snare drum solo by Askell Masson. My own new song received its second performance after Monday’s premiere in Yoro. As usual, the Villa-Lobos brought down the house.
The participants did an outstanding job with their three compositions. My group’s improvement impressed me: they not only did justice to their beautiful melodies and lively rhythms, but they also looked like they were having the time of their life. The audience really connected to our message of respect, cooperation, and understanding, plus they enjoyed the music as well. A couple of older Australian men in attendance said it was “like seeing Carnegie Hall through the banana leaves.”
Thursday, 21 August
Alex sat with us for a long time at the airport in Madang, and as he told us of his plans to go see some government ministers later that day, I choked up. He cares so much about his people. He cares so much about the environment, about the best aspects of traditional culture, and he works so hard to preserve them. Let those who are inclined to judge PNG by one person consider him.
Soon after our arrival in Port Moresby, our embassy whisked us away for a press conference. All major media came: the Post-Courier, PNG’s national English newspaper; NBC, the National Broadcasting Corporation; South Pacific, the nation’s main magazine; and three others. We decided to tell them about the machete incident. It showed the importance of the work we do, and showed why it cannot possibly stop now. We also stressed our respect for PNG culture and our belief that PNG’s greatest resource was its people. By the end, the reporters were beaming from ear to ear.
We loved meeting Kimberly Strollo, the embassy’s hard-working Political, Cultural, and Economic Officer. She’s very engaged in PNG culture and is an outstanding representative of our country. We thanked her for doing so much to make our last day in PNG a memorable one.
Long before our concert there, the forum area at the University of Papua New Guinea filled with students, perhaps drawn by the sight of the three white musicians frantically setting up music stands and sound-checking the microphones. We were extraordinarily honored by the presence of Her Excellency, the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, the Hon. Leslie V. Rowe. This is the first time in Cultures in Harmony history that the U.S. ambassador has come to one of our concerts. The presence of PNG’s leading artist, Daniel Waswas, was another honor.
I spoke briefly before our performance, touching on the same themes I addressed on Monday’s emotional concert in Yoro: that we are here not to reach down and lift up, but to reach out and walk together forward. That we respect PNG culture. That PNG’s greatest resource is its people.
Steve and I enjoyed performing our respective compositions with Tiffany. As usual, the Serteneja by Villa-Lobos brought the house down. After our segment, an ensemble of music students from the University gave a stunning performance. Using beautifully decorated kundu drums, bamboo flutes, and a garamut drum the size of a small car, they performed pieces they wrote which combined the musical styles of three regions of PNG. The pulse-pounding ferocity of their rhythms and the near-telepathic coordination they exhibited through every moment made it impossible to stay in our seats. At the end, they invited Steve to the stage for some thrilling cross-cultural jamming that projected the message of cultural understanding far better than any words could have.
*
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Friday, 8 August 2008.
3:30 p.m.
An old woman walks past me, carrying a rusty rake. She is short and dark, a faded floral print bag slung across her shoulder. Who is she? Does she intend to rake the sand? Why? Would that help get rid of the trash that chokes the surf each time it lazily approaches the beach?
She is already gone. I pace slowly to avoid the old juice boxes and potato chip bags. For relief, I look up at the vast expanse of the Pacific. New Zealand is out there somewhere, but after that, nothing, just the bottom of the earth. The water brings a breeze that blows back the palm trees and mutes the boombox at a men’s kickball game that had been so aggressive when I walked to the beach. Kids play in the distance, where mountains begin to ring the bay. I am almost alone.
A tiny boy, smartly dressed in nice shoes, his shirt tucked into his jeans, trundles along. Coming across an old shoe, he hurls it into the water. He doesn’t know that it will eventually return.
Of course, from a distance it all looks spectacular: no trash, only a plate of brilliant blue. Yet I am not here to admire the view.
I am here with two outstanding colleagues to extend a hand outward. We will teach, but we will also learn. As we teach the Yoro tribe how to write compositions about issues affecting them, they will teach us about a way of life that has remained almost unchanged since the dawn of time. We will move towards understanding hand-in-hand, together, no one leading.
I stand in front of a magnificent view. Yet the most beautiful sights I see are not the waters, the exotic flora, or the mountains here on some of the oldest land on earth.
A boy, and a woman with a rake.
