Desk Report: In Papua New Guinea, on the eastern half of the world’s second-biggest island, 80% of people live in rural villages – and many in the most remote and isolated regions have little contact with the outside world at all. Here, as Mark Stratton found, traditional rituals still survive.The dappled light, cast through the worn thatched roof of the men’s spirit house in Parambei village, reveals the rippling scars across the chests of several male initiates.
The spirit houses – or Haus Tambaran – along the Sepik river in northern Papua New Guinea are the focal points for a regional belief system which reveres spirits manifesting as animals. These houses are richly decorated with murals and carvings of all manner of creatures – from pigs and cassowaries to snakes and eagles. Yet it is the crocodile that truly embodies animist power along the Sepik.In one of the world’s most extreme initiation ceremonies, the men of the Sepik have their backs, shoulders, and upper torsos sliced by razor blades to leave long raised welts resembling a crocodile’s hide.”The boys are brought to the spirit house by their uncles to be cut. It can take about an hour or two,” explains Aaron Malingi, Parambei’s chief-councillor. “Years ago the cutting used to be done by sharpened bamboo”.
Looking at the men’s scarred bodies, I can scarcely imagine the agony of this ordeal.”Some boys pass out from the pain,” Malingi reveals.
“The older men play sacred flutes to soothe them and the cuts are covered with tree oil and white river clay to prevent infection.”
He tells me the scarification symbolises the purging of their mothers’ blood and the gaining of their own adult blood – in a somewhat excruciating metaphorical severing of the apron strings.
Along with the cutting, the young men may spend several months inside the spirit house learning life skills from the initiated men.
“They gain knowledge of the village spirits, how to fish, to carve, and how to support their wife and family,” says Malingi.
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