The State of Origin

My first birthday in PNG was an interesting mixture of fieldwork, hassle and home comforts. I was emailed a few weeks ago by 2 PhD anthropologists coming to Goroka for a few weeks as a preliminary. Chris and Melissa, Canada and America, who could so easily have turned out to be dry, research driven purists, turned out to be sarcastic and sardonic kindred anthropologists, the like of which are rare at least in my experience. They have been staying in rooms next to mine, and took me to the decent hotel for dinner on the night, and the fact we knew we would be ill the next day as we ordered made it all the more amusing. The volunteers who live in the individual houses section of my compound dressed my door and donated a CHOCOLATE cake, which Chris and I immediately demolished for breakfast. I had arranged with my family in Kanchul Kemp to have a kind of party (denoted by the buying and eating of meat) which fell apart, as most research events have since the others arrived. Michael had work, and I was paying for almost everything (as it turned out), including the obligatory ‘lamp plaps’ (the very fatty belly of sheep or mutton), so this came as welcome relief. I was very touched though when yesterday they took me to the same hotel where one of them works and clubbed together for a pizza, which we shared, and I got the drinks as they were going to overwhelm me with their generosity. Incidentally we had to organise this and convince them that I was part of it in order for them to be allowed in. In the morning of the actual day I went and picked up the cake I had bought for everyone and ‘scaled’ it, taking half or so to the settlement to share out with my family and friends, and half for the NSI people. I then had an interview with Boski, the man who had a brideprice recently, and attempted to make sense in some gaping holes in my understanding. This included one of the most remarkable objects so far, and unwittingly my best present, an excel spreadsheet of brideprice contributions on flashdrive. I will interview him again to contextualise these names, numbers, and boxes of lamb flaps (60 kilos a go).

Enough of that, I have been less busy due mainly to helping the new guys, and partly because I enjoy their company. But I did some work at the pokies, Kanchul Kemp, and squeezed in a number of interviews (these are easier and more manageable). The most important thing, outside of my growing love of Friday night pokies and its world of high rollers and political machinations, was watching the State of Origin at Kanchul Kemp. The latter was an enormous breakthrough, in the last few weeks people have taken less notice of me and let me in on the ever present threat of witchcraft and poisoning, but it was this night that cemented me as a part of the life of this settlement. I arrived there some two months ago now, origin unknown, with a notepad and heart palpitations, telling my story to anyone, making crude maps, and catching glimpses of card games at every corner. Slowly people began to know me, and as my Tok Pisin improved I became a real person with a sense of humour, a goal, and a desire to know all about them. Flattering vanity in some senses, many of my first contacts were those whose sense of self-worth or importance demanded my attention. And as these people dwindled or completed their stories, a space opened up for others, those who thought I was busy, but I gave enough attention to not neglect their smoking habits, began to offer their thought provoking questions and reservations, which tested my Tok Pisin and mettle, and led to my acceptance. Nevertheless, it was on the day after my birthday, when I went down to see just what transformation occurred there during State of Origin, despite talk of gender violence, shirt colour affiliation based murder and spakmen roving the muddy dark streets like glass armed zombies. This, again, is not to showcase my research risk pedigree, or recklessness, but I have learnt to take these stories with a pinch of salt, but only when I am a familiar face (though I did admit a high degree of nerves). These stories are as much a part of my research as anything else, which is not to say they do not happen. In any case, I was welcomed by some drunken young men at 5.30pm, and went and sat with Peter and them to wait out the beginning of the match, find out the betting thus far, and generally gather the ambience. The boys, who I gave cigarettes to a number of times before, turned out to be raskols, whose recent escapades (here left out for propriety and ethnographic ethics) had left them wealthy to the tune of K600, laid out their life as a raskol, gave me beer, brus (newspaper rolled tobacco) and lamp plap kebabs, I reciprocated later with more beer. This was the first self identification of such activity involving actual examples, and they looked after me all evening, and I felt as if they gave me the keys to the settlement, all fear of attack subsiding with their approval. You may think I am in trouble if I ever piss them off, and I might, but there is no obligation to be like them, and they understood my purpose and my relative poverty compared to the other whitemen. Above all people appreciate your straightness with them, coinciding with anthropological ethics rather nicely.

So we watched the game outside a house which was charging 50 toea for a view of the small screen. They talked me through the rules of rugby, an inevitable aside to talking to drunken people as a foreigner. I got up and asked everyone in the 50 strong crowd to volunteer their betting at half time, which the raskols helped me with, and at the end of the night, despite smouldering animosity to some over exuberant supporters, and obvious over consumption on their part, elected to walk me back. It was the next day that I learnt how I had ‘brukim history’ that night, that the fact I went, sat with, drank with, and chatted to people at such an event was the talk of the settlement. Michael said now I can go all on my own, which I think is true. So all is going well here, I think the rapidity of my integration so far is a matter of overwork and the current rate of work is welcome respite, giving me the opportunity to reflect and assess my priorities research wise. I have lost the need to pretend that my fieldwork somehow needs to be total ‘immersion’, and the guilt of having a day off (though to be honest I get so behind in my note taking that this is more a day not ‘out there’ than it is a day off. The town is a valid space of fieldwork, and people go back home and cook their own food in the best place they can manage, so do I.

So, State of Origin, fascinating.

P.S.’s: Many of my course mates must be viva’ing and heading off to the field, good luck and enjoy. Fiona, is the little one here yet? When will you head over here?