Huli Women

Sunrise at Tari Gap

The Huli lands in the Southern Highlands province around Tari are frankly overwhelming. The beauty and the overwhelming kindness of the people is incredible – more so when juxtaposed with an ingrained culture of violence.

Tari Gap

We leave this region tomorrow to head to the Sepik river, and the amount I’ve learned in the past two days is frankly indescribable. The Hulis are people, whom despite the development there’s been and that that’s coming, cling with great pride to their traditional ways. We witnessed spirit dances, sun dances and visited spirit doctors. These men had the power to rid people of spirits haunting them, but to also provide the spells necessary to help others kill. Unlike travel in other slightly more frequented destinations, traditional dress here is real. It is the way of life. Sure people dress sometimes in the standard western cast-offs, but they may be wearing jeans a t-shirt and simultaneously a moss headdress.

The spirit doctor, working on a treatment for a sick man. 

Missionaries and others have tried to “modernize” the culture but have largely been unsuccessful, if that is that term. The above “spirit” practices were all banned, and if you ask now in an official context, they tell you they still are. Dig a little deeper – they’re not. 

This morning we visited a woman’s village. One of the staff members of the lodge is from this village and she has organized the ability for certain groups of guests to visit to witness the “hard life” of a Huli woman. Men have multiple wives and as men need to constantly be prepared for war and clan fighting, women must take care of everything else. Remember the adage of “Land, Women, Pig” – well, the truth is that they are all the responsibility of the women. The Huli gardens are beautiful. They are spacious and abound in fresh vegetables (sweet potatos, herbs) and are habited only by people and pigs. Everything is immaculately clean and organized.

Planting sweet potatoes in the garden. 

The women explained their daily lives as well as their typical travails. Travails they are. Domestic violence is the norm. Women go to the “magic woman” to try to prevent their husbands from getting more wives. They say it works – the evidence does not bear this out.

A house in the women's village.

The Huli people take their inspiration from the birds of paradise that abound in the area. They dance mimicking the way the birds dance around and “show” when trying to mate. It is incredibly ironic that the dancing parodies such harmless creatures when people will kill at will. We heard the comment while here that “if we hear that people are fighting, we will go join in immediately. We do not think twice about defending our clan.” This morning with the women we learned in great detail about “payback” and “compensation”. We learned that the real reason we couldn’t get out at the market yesterday was because four women were dressed in their mourning “compensation” clothes and it was that, not our “whiteness” that could have led to violence at any moment. If they did not receive their adequate compensation, they would inflict payback and kill a member of the opposing clan.

From left to right - traditional clothes, "compensation clothes", mourning clothes

Our time in Huli land ended this evening with a magical musical performance. A few clansmen sang with guitars – brought by the missionaries – and a couple performed Huli dances. It was quite a moment. We’ve done it all here in our 3 days – we’ve seen the birds of paradise, we visited the clans and learned about the culture. I bought my Digicel top-up card and already seen how PNG LNG is altering this area forever.

Spirit dancers

The highlight for Jen was undoubtedly when the cook gave her two of the recipes she wanted. It took him two full days to get her the recipes because the cook can not read or write and had to dictate. The recipes involved phrases like “chop-chop.” The cook was so nice and cute explaining the recipe and how she needed to make them. The cook has five wives. The recipe will be posted when we return. 

Just off the Highlands Highway

On September 11, 2001, a flight of then truly intrepid travelers made it to Tari. Most of the group was American. The news was not fully understood by any of the Papua New Guineans, more accurately, Hulis, working at Ambua Lodge, but they knew that they had always liked the American tourists that had come through. The Huli people, being both protective and violent in nature, were ready to fight for the Americans. They had a map up in the lodge and some of the Americans were showing pointing to Afghanistan on the map to show where the believed terrorists were based. 

Using the Australian map, where Papua New Guinea is in the middle, the Hulis were convinced that the war would take place in PNG since it is located in the middle. To calm down the Huli staff, those explaining the situation said that they should not worry because the soldiers would just go the other way, e.g. overland through Europe. The Huli workers did not understand – they didn’t get that the world was round as they were looking at a flat map. This is really not that surprising when you realize that up until the 1930’s, their universe existed inside of a few mountain ridges and they didn’t have the wheel.

This is the land to which PNG LNG is coming. More than half of our lodge guests right now are PNG LNG workers. They are very nice (and even gave us two PNG LNG shirts as souvenirs since we knew about the project), but they are very, very out of place. Oil workers are used to needing to conduct their business in far off and often dangerous places, but even they confessed that this is a bit different. These workers are actually just here to locate the appropriate places for training facilities, but even their job is tough.

Just off the ever busier “Highlands Highway” that passes through Tari and all of the surrounding villages towards Mt. Hagen, the largest highland city, the 1930’s world is still visible. This morning we visited the tiny homestead of Tigibi. There are not really villages in the traditional sense here since Huli live in family compounds surrounded by high mud walls to protect them from other clan invaders. They performed a sing-sing for us. This was only different from their day to day for the extra make-up and hairwigs they put on – otherwise, this was pretty standard. The sing-sings are performed throughout the year at special events. It was an incredible experience. It was extremely intimate and we were able to speak to them and learn more about the culture and tradition in a setting very comfortable to them. They were very friendly, but one of them had a highly visible stab wound from recent tribal fighting.

Also, just off the road, believe it or not, are PNG’s famous bird of paradise. Early morning birding, feeling very much like the crew of Planet Earth, we set off in search of Stephanei’s Astrapia and the King of Saxony. In a rare feet, we saw both. They were positively beautiful and were undisturbed by the large semi’s passing by preparing for work at PNG LNG. All of this at 6am on a Saturday.

We visited two other small settlements throughout the day and learned about the Huli Wigman tradition where young man go to “wig” school to grow their “everyday” and ceremonial” wigs for 18-36 months at a time. These men could not have yet had “relations” with a woman or killed a pig. Otherwise, the magic spell they use to grow the wigs wouldn’t work.

We returned back to the lodge and had a chat with the manager on politics and business in PNG. Abundant in natural resources, the place should, also figuratively, be a goldmine. But, it seems, as with pretty much every resource rich (and lots of other) country globally, most of the wealth simply lines the pockets of the politicians. Corruption is endemic here and there is essentially zero hope it will get better. That is tragic in a country that could benefit so much from this wealth, but there is almost no optimism from the people that anything will really change. Exxon and the various international agencies that are funding the project have promoted large scale community involvement, but no one thinks this will work due to the government.

The culture is fascinating to a point that is almost beyond words, but the violence is so omnipresent and matter-of-fact that you only wonder what the area would be like if they had handguns instead of bows and arrows as their weaponry. Interclan warfare starts on a dime – we would not stop in the Tigibi market today for fear that our white presence could incite discussions and fighting. MSF staff located in the area that we spoke with at the lodge has been sent here to try to combat domestic violence – this is a term barely even understood by the Hulis as it is not a term that carries a stigma or even really definition.  

The area around Tari is positively beautiful. The waterfalls are spectacular, the terrain is magnificent and the birds are vibrant. The people are friendly. Western development, moors and technology are almost no where to be seen but the aspects that will arrive here first, in combination with the centuries old culture could be quite inflammatory. This will be an interesting place to watch in the coming years. 

Land, Women and Pigs

Primo, the village chief, greeted us on the gravel landing strip in Tari. Wearing full chieftain dress, he strangely looked a bit out of place. Though the airport is actually nothing more than a thatched hut, you sensed development.

It was a bit of a miracle we made it to Tari. Our connection in Port Moresby was less than 30 minutes once we arrived late and the chances of making it were slim. The gracious Air Nuigini staff on the flight from Singapore moved us to Business Class half way through the flight just so we could jump the line at immigration. We were fortunately met by more Air Nuigini staff and hand held through immigration, customs and checking in to our other flight so that we could make it to Tari. It was the only scheduled flight to Tari this week, so we really had to make it.

The Tari airport has no electricity. We had to buy paper tickets and have them mailed. Seems stone age enough, right? That is all about to become very different.

Tari is very much on the cusp of great change. Perhaps that is even the wrong phrase – Tari is about to become the world’s foremost case study in large natural resource based foreign direct investment in the remote and primitive third world. The Tari basin, home to the Huli people, sits above some of the world’s largest and most accessible reserves of natural gas. With ever rising oil prices, that is no small matter. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil, together with a consortium of Japanese and Australian partners, formed a partnership with the local people and government as significant stakeholders and closed the world’s largest ever project financing in the heart of the financial crisis – PNG LNG. Worth more than US$ 14 billion, the project is a behemoth. This find, which was not only the headline of the financial press but has dominated the PNG news media, sits only a few kilometers outside of Tari.

Driving up from the airport to Ambua Lodge, our guide, Paulus explained what we were seeing along the road. The new road, in fact – built by ExxonMobil – that made the drive from Tari airport to the lodge, for better or worse, go from 3 hours to 30 minutes. He pointed out Huli intraditional dress walking along the road, he explained their still very traditional lifestyle led by the concept, in descending order of importance, of the holy trinity of “Land, Women, Pigs.” Despite all of the western influence in his life working at the lodge, he has three wives and more than 10 children. He explained that the concept of “compensation” is very important in Huli culture – if I were to say, kill your brother, I would owe you “15 x 15 pigs”. That debt will take a very long time to repay and I will be shamed until I pay it off.

All of this was described in a very nonchalant fashion. As we were getting closer, to coordinate lunch upon our arrival at the lodge, he drew out his cell phone and called. Ubiquitous cell phone usage, if you can call it that, is also new in PNG. Digicel, the Irish emerging markets telecom operator, started operations here a few years ago. Their marketing is everywhere and people love the service. Paulus explained, though, again in his highly nonchalant manner, that cell phones have been good and bad. He says that day to day life has certainly become easier. This, though, has been at the expense of much more strategic inter-clan fighting. Now, fighters, who execute such battles with bows and arrows and machetes, can coordinate their attacks and retreats via mobile. Probably not the development that the  Digicel CEO had in mind.

After lunch we went for a few mile hike in the highland jungle forest. We saw beautiful pristine waterfalls and vine suspension bridges built by the Hulis to make their way around the forest. The wilderness was striking – all not too far from what is about to be out of the biggest gas projects on earth.

Today has been a fascinating day. We knew to expect this coming to Tari, but to see that change coming so rapidly to an area still so primitive at heart is quite an experience. For Jen and I, it was at least nice to use Digicel to text our family and let them know we arrived safely. We won’t be coordinating any clan fighting – for now.