The cost of a woman's life in papua new guinea Multicolored Papuans from Papua New Guinea

After living with the Papuans for a year, I got used to the fact that they can walk the streets naked, sleep on the ground by the fire and cook food without salt, pepper and spices. But the list of Aboriginal quirks doesn't stop there.

They "sit" on nuts like drug addicts

The betel nut is the most bad habit Papuans! The pulp of the fruit is chewed by mixing with two other ingredients. This causes profuse salivation, and the mouth, teeth and lips become bright red. Therefore, the Papuans endlessly spit on the ground, and "bloody" blots are found everywhere. In West Papua, these fruits are called penang, and in the eastern half of the island - betelnut (betel nut). Eating the fruit has a slight relaxing effect, but it is very damaging to the teeth.

They believe in black magic and punish for it

Previously, cannibalism was an instrument of justice, not a way to satisfy your hunger. This is how the Papuans punished for witchcraft. If a person was found guilty of using black magic and harming others, then he was killed, and pieces of his body were distributed among the members of the clan. Cannibalism is no longer practiced today, but murders on charges of black magic have not stopped.

They keep the dead at home

If Lenin "sleeps" in our mausoleum, the Papuans from the Dani tribe keep the mummies of their leaders right in their huts. Gnarled, smoked, with terrible grimaces. The age of the mummies is 200–300 years.

They allow their women to do hard physical labor.

When I first saw a woman in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy chopping wood with an ax, while her husband was resting in the shade, I was shocked. Later I realized that this is the norm among the Papuans. Therefore, women in their villages are brutal and physically hardy.

They pay for their future wife with pigs.

This custom persisted throughout New Guinea. The bride's family gets the pigs before the wedding. This is a mandatory fee. At the same time, women take care of piglets as if they were children and even breastfeed them. Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay wrote about this in his notes.

Their women self-mutilated

In the event of the death of a close relative, women of the Dani tribe cut off their phalanxes of fingers. With a stone ax. Today this custom has already been abandoned, but in the Baliem valley you can still find fingerless grandmothers.

Dog Teeth Necklace - best gift wife!

For the Korowai tribe, this is a real jewel. Therefore, Korowai women need neither gold, nor pearls, nor fur coats, nor money. They have completely different values.

Men and women live separately

Many Papuan tribes practice this custom. Therefore, there are male and female huts. Women are not allowed to enter the men's house.

They can even live in trees

“I live high - I look far away. Korowai build their houses in crowns tall trees... Sometimes it is 30 m above the ground! Therefore, children and babies need an eye and an eye here, because there are no fences in such a house.

They wear kotekas

This is a phallocript, which the highlanders use to cover up their masculinity. Koteku is used instead of panties, banana leaves, or loincloths. It is made from local pumpkin.

They are ready to take revenge to the last drop of blood. Or until the last chicken

Tooth for tooth, eye for eye. They practice blood feud... If your relative has been harmed, maimed or killed, then you must respond in kind to the offender. Broke your brother's hand? Break it and you to the one who did it.
It's good that you can buy off blood feud with chickens and pigs. So one day I went with the Papuans to the “arrow”. We got into a pickup truck, took a whole chicken coop and went to the showdown. Everything was done without bloodshed.

The outskirts of Port Moresby, the capital of New Guinea, are one of the most disgusting cesspools in the world. Recent years 12, the city consistently ranks 137th out of 140 places in the ranking of capitals in terms of living standards. One of the main reasons for such low ratings is the rampant local crime. A particularly large role here is played by the youth gangs of urban Papuans - the reskols. They patrol their neighborhoods with homemade weapons, witch hunts and tribal wars of real Papuans from the jungle - sounds like the daily life of post-apocalyptic raiders.

(10 photos total)

Many argue that Port Moresby is the worst city on earth and is ruled by youth gangs. This is a clear exaggeration. There are worse places like Dhaka in Bangladesh or Kabul in Afghanistan. However, the Raskols, young bandits from the Papuans who settled in the cities, do rule some areas to a much greater extent than the police or officials.

Slums of Port Moresby (and not the worst area of ​​the city).

Firstly, only a few survive to middle age, so there are no other gangs, except for the youth ones. Secondly, locals They support the Raskols in their own way, because they are often seen as Robin Hoods, who rob the rich and "punish" the corrupt government. In fact, these bandits more often steal not from the rich, but from residents of neighboring areas and, as a rule, entertain themselves not by distributing money to the poor, but by rape and thefts from warehouses with humanitarian aid sent by Australia.

However, for the inhabitants of the city bottom there is not much difference: the reskols perform in many ways the same role that the yakuza once performed for the slums of Japan. They establish at least some semblance of order and hierarchy on the ground that calm people and create the illusion of a working system. In the end, if there is no police here, all your neighbors are drunk from morning till night, and the old gods are dead, then there is no one else to turn to for help.

You need to have steel balls in order to enter the area, being white, to come to the leader of the local bandits and ask him to take a photo session with weapons in hand. Stephen Dupont is an Australian photographer who has succeeded. Moreover, the whole story of his adventures in the slums came out even more crazy and unexpected.

Stephen Dupont.

In 2004, he and his fellow photographer came to Port Moresby hoping for some hot stuff. The opportunity arose immediately: both Australians were invited to accompany her on a "business trip" by a certain Lady Cudy, the local official in charge of the southern districts of the city.

It turned out that these days a tribal war broke out here between the Papuan mountaineers from the Tari tribe and the Polynesian farmers of the Motu people. A drunken mountaineer beat the motu woman to death with a spear. Her kinsmen staged pogroms in the city, destroying tari houses and shops, and preparing to start a massacre, going to the mountains. Lady Kudi apparently had considerable power in her domain, so that she was able to convene a council of chiefs for the Kaugeri urban area. The leaders and local bigwigs managed to agree and prevent a real massacre.

Among the local nobility there was also a certain Alan Omar, the leader of a Raskol gang called "Kips Kaboni", that is, "Devils in Scars" (which for some reason we always translate as "Red Devils"). He, along with his brothers, defended the highlanders from pogroms throughout the conflict, which aroused genuine respect and interest in Dupont. Alan himself also appreciated the photographer's courage - it was so brave and stupid to come to his area white, and even during the tribal war, that the head of the gang received them as the best guests. He brought Stephen to his headquarters and allowed photographs of his fighters with weapons in their hands.

After such a reception, Alan Omar and Stephen communicated quite well. Yet Kips Kaboni, unlike many local gangs, evoked at least some sympathy. "Rescoli" is a warped by a local pidgin english word rascals, that is, "rogue", "hooligan". Thus, raskols, in a free interpretation, are a kind of vernacular like "zhulbans" or "fulyugans".

The Scarred Devils gang corresponds to the original meaning of the word and trades mainly in racketeering, small things and carjacking. In other words, against the background of their colleagues, they look almost like the local intelligentsia. Among the Rascals, there are much more disgusting and unscrupulous gangs, such as the Dirty Dones 585, that specialize in kidnapping, rape, and robbery of women.

Raskol from Dirty Dones 585.

Now DuPont has established a kind of friendship and cooperation with the leader of Kips Kaboni. He periodically comes to the Kaugeri area and even helps the local municipality, and the local raskols, in turn, protect him from the encroachments of other gangs and help with filming. Stephen sponsors the local Cowhery Bulldogs rugby team and films documentary about rugby league in Port Moresby. Since 2004, the crime rate in both this area and the capital of Papua New Guinea has dropped slightly, so this story may have a more or less happy continuation.

Except for Stephen Dupont, criminal life New Guinea managed to uncover Russian journalist Vlad Sokhin, who created the Crying Meri series, dedicated to witch-hunting and violence (especially against women) in the slums of modern New Guinea. But it is worth warning: against the background of this cycle, the story of Dupont looks like a pleasant out-of-town walk. It all starts with innocent photos of the same raskol, but gradually builds up to a real hell of cannibals, after which you risk falling under the most unpleasant impressions for a long time.

As you know, each country has its own customs, and representatives of one ethnic group do not always understand the peculiarities of the mentality of another. The traditions of the Papuans, for example, simply shock and repulse many. It is about them that will be discussed in this review.

The Papuans, in their own way, show respect for the deceased leaders. They do not bury them, but keep them in huts. Some of the creepy, distorted mummies are between 200 and 300 years old.

The largest Papuan tribe in the east of New Guinea, the Juli, was infamous. In the past, they were known as bounty hunters and human meat eaters. Now it is believed that nothing like this is happening. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that dismemberment of a person occurs from time to time during magical rituals.

Papuans living in the highlands of New Guinea wear kotekas - cases worn on their male dignity... Kotek are made from local varieties of calabash pumpkin. They replace panties for the Papuans.

The female part of the Papuan Dani tribe often walked without finger phalanges. They cut them off for themselves when they lost close relatives. Today, you can still see fingerless old women in the villages.

Obligatory bride price is measured in pigs. Moreover, the bride's family is obliged to take care of these animals. Women even breastfeed piglets. However, their breast milk other animals also eat.

In the Papuan tribes, all the main work is done by women. Very often you can see a picture when Papuascans, being on last months pregnancy, chopping wood, and their husbands resting in the huts.

Another tribe of Papuans, the Korowai, surprise with their place of residence. They build their homes right in the trees. Sometimes, to get to such a dwelling, you need to climb to a height of 15 to 50 meters. The favorite delicacy of the Korowai is insect larvae.
No less interesting customs present in the Papuan tribe April 27th, 2015

It is very logical to start the story about our trip to Papuan with a story about the Papuans themselves.
There would be no Papuans - and half of the problems in the hike to the Karstenz Pyramid would not be there either. But there would be no half of the charm and exoticism.

In general, it is difficult to say whether it would be better or worse ... And not why. At least now - while there is no escape from the Papuans on the expedition to the Karstenz Pyramid.

So, our expedition Carstenz 2015 has begun, like all similar expeditions: Bali airport - Timika airport.

A bunch of trunks sleepless night... Futile attempts to get some sleep on the plane.

Timika is still a civilization, but already Papua. You understand this from the very first steps. Or from the first ads in the toilet.

But our path lies even further. From Timika on a small charter plane, we need to fly to the village of Sugapa. Previously, expeditions went from the village of Ilaga. The path there is simpler, a little shorter. But the last three years, so-called separatists have settled in Ilag. Therefore, the expeditions start from Sugapa.

Roughly speaking, Papua is a region occupied by Indonesia. The Papuans do not consider themselves Indonesians. Previously, the government paid them money. Just. Because they are Papuans. For the past fifteen years, money has ceased to be paid. But Papuans are used to white (relatively) people giving them money.
Now this "should give" is displayed mainly on tourists.

Not so cheerful after the night flight, we moved with all our belongings to the house next to the airport - from where small planes take off.

This moment can be considered the starting point of the expedition. All certainties end. Nobody ever tells accurate information. Anything can happen in five minutes, or in two hours, or in a day.
And you cannot do anything, nothing depends on you.
Nothing teaches patience and humility more than the road to Carstenzs.

Three hours of waiting, and we move towards the plane.
And here they are - the first real Papuans waiting to fly to their villages.

They really don't like being photographed. And in general, the arrival of a crowd of strangers does not cause them any positive emotions.
Well, okay, we have no time for them yet. We have more important things to do.
First, our luggage is weighed, and then all of us with hand luggage. Yes, this is not a joke. In a small plane, the weight is in kilograms, so the weight of each passenger is carefully recorded.

On the way back, when weighing, the live weight of the participants in the event decreased significantly. And the weight of the luggage too.

We weighed in and checked in our luggage. And wait again. This time in the best airport hotel - Papua Holiday. At least nowhere does one sleep so sweetly as there.

The "time to land" command pulls us out of our sweet dreams.
Here is our white-winged bird, ready to be carried to magic land Papuan.

Half an hour flight, and we find ourselves in a different world. Everything here is unusual, and somehow extreme.
Starting from a super short runway.

And ending with the suddenly come running Papuans.

They were already waiting for us.
A gang of Indonesian motorcyclists. They were supposed to take us to the last village.
And the Papuans. There are a lot of Papuans. Who had to decide whether to let us go to this village at all.
They quickly grabbed our bags, dragged aside and debated.

The women sat down separately. Get closer to us. Laugh, chat. Even flirt a little.

The men in the distance were busy with serious business.

Well, finally, I came to the customs and customs of the Papuans.

Patriarchy reigns in Papuan.
Polygamy is accepted here. Almost every man has two or three wives. The wives have five, six or seven children.
Next time I will show a Papuan village, houses and how they all live there in such a big, cheerful crowd

So that's it. Let's go back to families.
Men are engaged in hunting, home defense and solving important issues.
The rest is done by women.

Hunting does not happen every day. The house is also not particularly protected from anyone.
Therefore, a man's usual day goes like this: waking up, he drinks a cup of tea or coffee or kakava and walks through the village to see what's new. Returns home for dinner. He is having lunch. He continues his walks around the village, talking with neighbors. Dinner in the evening. Then, judging by the number of children in the villages, he deals with demographic problems, and goes to bed in order to continue his hard days in the morning.

The woman wakes up early in the morning. Prepares tea, coffee and other breakfast. And then he takes care of the house, children, garden and other nonsense. All day from morning to evening.

All this was told to me by the Indonesian guys in response to my question: why do men carry practically nothing, and women carry heavy bags.
Men are simply not adapted for heavy daily work... As in a joke: the war will come, and I'm tired ...

So. Our Papuans started discussing whether to let us through Sugapa or not. If you let it go, then on what conditions.
Actually it's all about the conditions.

Time passed, negotiations dragged on.

Everything was ready to go on an expedition. Boots, umbrellas, weapons and other necessities.

A couple of hours passed in conversation.
And suddenly new team: on motorcycles! Hurray, the first stage is over!

Do you think that's all? No. This is just the beginning.
The village elders, two military men, two policemen, sympathizers of the Papuans, set off with us.

Why so much?
To resolve emerging issues.
Questions arose literally at once.

As I already wrote, somewhere since the seventies, the Indonesian government has been paying money to the Papuans. Just. All you had to do was go to the bank once a month, stand in line and get a bunch of money.
Then they stopped giving money. But the feeling that money should be just like that, remains.

The way to get money was found quickly enough. Literally with the arrival of the first tourists.
This is how it appeared favorite entertainment Papuans - genus Blocks.

A stick is placed in the middle of the road. And you cannot step over it.

What happens if you step over the stick?
According to the Indonesian guys, they can throw stones at them, they can do something else, in general, please don't.
This is puzzling. Well, they won't kill you ...
Why not?
Human life it costs nothing. Formally, Indonesian laws operate on the territory of Papua. In reality, local laws prevail.
According to them, if you killed a person, it is enough to pay a small fine in agreement with the relatives of the victim.
There is a suspicion that for the murder of a white stranger, not only will they not take a fine, they will also endure gratitude.

The Papuans themselves are quick-tempered. They quickly withdraw, but at the first moment in anger they do not control themselves very much.
We saw how they chased their wives with a machete.
Battering them is in the order of things. Towards the end of the journey, the wives who set out on the journey with their husbands walked around covered with bruises.

So, they will throw stones or shoot from a bow in the back - no one wanted to experiment.
Therefore, negotiations began with each stick laid on the ground.

At first it looks like a theatrical action.
Ridiculously discharged people in shorts and T-shirts, adorned with colored plastic beads and feathers, stand in the middle of the road and begin to make a fiery speech.

Speeches are delivered exclusively by men.
Perform one at a time. They speak ardently, loudly. In the most dramatic moments, throwing hats on the ground.
Women sometimes get into a skirmish. But somehow always in chorus, creating an unthinkable hubbub.

The discussion flares up and dies down.
The negotiators stop speaking and disperse in different directions, sit and think.

If we translate the dialogue into Russian, it would look something like this:
- We will not let these white people through our village
- You must let these nice people pass - these are already paid elders of other tribes.
- Okay, but let them pay us and take our women as porters
- Of course they will pay you. As for the porters, we'll decide tomorrow.
- Deal. Give us five million
- Yes, you are crazy

And then bargaining begins ... And again hats fly to the ground and women are wailing.

The guys seeing this all for the first time, quietly get sick. And they say quite sincerely: "But you certainly did not pay them for this performance?"
It all looks too much for real.

And most importantly, local residents, especially children, perceive it all as a theatrical show.
They sit and stare.

Half an hour, an hour pass, in the worst case - two hours. Negotiators go up to the generally accepted amount of one million Indonesian MNT. The stick moves back and our cavalcade rushes on.

It's even funny the first time. The second one is still interesting.
Third, fourth - and now it all starts to strain a little.

From Sugapa to Suangama - the final destination of our trip - 20 kilometers. It took us more than seven hours to overcome them.
There were six road blocks in total.

It was getting dark. Everyone was already wet in the rain. It was beginning to get dark and it became frankly cold.
And here, more and more insistent proposals began to come from my valiant team to switch to commodity-money relations and to pay the Papuans as much money as they want, so that they would just let us through as soon as possible.

And I tried to explain that everything. These very commodity-money relations do not work.
All laws ended somewhere in the Timika area.
You can pay once. But the next time (and we’re going back and forth) will be asked to pay much more. And there will be not six, but sixteen blocks.
This is the logic of the Papuans.

Somewhere at the beginning of the trip, I was asked perplexedly: "Well, they were hired to work for us, they must fulfill their obligations." And from these words I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

The Papuans have no concept of "obligation". Today one mood, tomorrow another ... And in general, the Papuans are somehow tense with the concept of morality. That is, it is completely absent.

We crossed the last block in the dark.
The protracted negotiations began to strain not only us. Motorcyclists actively began to hint that they needed to return to Sugapa. With or without us.

As a result, in the dark on a mountain road in the rain on motorcycles without headlights, we got to the last village in front of the jungle - Suangami.
The next day, there was another show called "Porters are hired on an expedition." And how it happens, why it cannot be avoided and how it all ends, I will tell you next time.

The villages where fire is still produced by friction, and the land scarce for vegetation is cultivated with wooden digging sticks - this is a story about Papua New Guinea. How do Papuans raise their children? No way - from our point of view. But they teach them the main thing: how to survive from their position of logic.

Time stopped here - or, on the contrary, for some reason it got mad and went backwards. People are born here, live without getting out for several decades, at forty they all look very old, die and ... are born again. They are very simple, ingenuous people, and they have surprisingly joyful faces.

Who is dad to whom

The Papuan tribes have a very rigid hierarchy. They live in families-villages, in which there can be up to 200 people - and they all have a complex relationship.

The elder-priest rules everything, with whom no one can argue. The distinction between wives and husbands is rather arbitrary: one man can have several wives. Women, however, are also not far behind, and readily marry several men.

Men live in huts separately from women and children - it is forbidden even to approach men's houses. And for love there are specially built houses: they retired - and went back.

Children's question

Since there is no contraception at all, and sex is quite active, a lot of children are born. At the same time, no one particularly asks about paternity: since there are several husbands, someone is definitely a dad, so they feed the babies all together. They don't worry about food for children: ate a breast and reached for a banana? Take a banana and eat it. Didn't like it and spit it out? Well, don't eat, you'll get hungry - you'll dig something up yourself (or you'll suck on your chest again).

Pregnancy and childbirth - trifles and everyday business

Nobody makes special allowances for pregnant women.

Can you walk? Go and collect the roots. ? Go to that hut farther away, and there mind your own business. Sometimes a midwife or a compassionate neighbor drops in to see a woman in labor.

Women give birth hanging on a large tree. And as soon as everything is done, they get up and go back to work (tying the child to themselves with a rag to feed them more conveniently).

It seems to us that such a life is hell and savagery, just as it is ours for the locals. During my work in this country I volunteered for all Europeans in mandatory sent to civilization every two months (so as not to go crazy). And when we showed the Papuans photographs of cities and people in clothes, they openly laughed at us. I saw how the tribe was given a car - no one drove it anywhere, they hung it with flowers and made an altar (“The spirits of water came, left a memory”).

These people are really happy - with the unclouded, pure and quiet happiness of a person who does not ask questions: why and for what does he live? Women do not have "psychosis and toxicosis" during pregnancy, they do not know what postpartum depression is - and they hardly get sick! If a priest says that a person has been cursed, he simply goes to his hut, lies down and dies. If the priest says that "You are actually healthy, boy" - the person gets up and walks. Almost always.