the area in which i live, through which we drove
We bumped along at first in the 4WD, but soon the road improved (it was actually a remarkably good road; and yet, only leading to a mission station…Roads around Goroka tend to be pitted, muddy, shoddy; and the road I live off is one of the worst in town (it can be a little embarrassing, getting a lift home from people who live on the east side of town (which now has a nice smooth road): their horror and disbelief as the car lurches round the corner and hits, right on target, that sneaky metre-wide pot hole. “My god the road…” they wince, and you can see them thanking their lucky stars that they don’t live out west). The highway – the Highlands Highway – is good, and exists through Ausaid – which is true for many of the good roads, if not AUSaid then sponsorship from a private company (ie. Logging/mining)).
Anyway, we couldn’t get into the actual town because of a mudslide, so we pulled over at a wide stretch of road instead, and got out of the car on a gravely clearing. The locals knew we were coming, and in about 15 minutes at least 50 people – probably more – had arrived, coming in from surrounding areas. They were there to sell woven baskets and trays.
an arc of the basket market
People spread their gear out on the ground and sat behind it, making an impromptu market. Altogether they formed a loose circle.
With a few shouted words from one of the community’s big men, the business began: Ute – the woman I went with who was doing the buying – slowly and intently walked along the circle, looking at each person’s goods, picking out from one here and one there what she wanted to buy. First off she wanted small bread baskets; the man picked one up, held it above his head and yelled to everyone that this was the type she was buying first. She would find something she liked, then ask the price from the sellers (mainly women; the men often stood back or walked around with Ute). When a fair price was agreed to, she would take cash out of a box – quite visibly – and exchange the money for the baskets.
She walked around about 6 times (at least), each trip buying a different kind of item.
crowd
She spent a LOT of money, and seemed to buy a thousand and one woven items; Ute sends them back to Germany and they are sold in a Lutheran-run shop, raising money for her church. This might sound dodgy, but she pays the Rongo people fairly, and indeed well; several times she rejected named prices as too low; she’d insist on the hours spent making it etc and make the woman accept a higher price. (Ute explained later that this was also because the woman’s husband afterwards, in private, would be very cross at the small price and there’d be consequences.)
The whole thing was quite an experience. I must admit that I hid behind my camera a bit. For the obvious psychological distancing (standing inside that crowd, being an object of so many different stares for about an hour and a half, you need something to forget you’re a white git), but also because I’m finding it also works the other way around: when people can see you occupied with an activity, you are less threatening/offensive: you are not simply staring at them as if they are freaks.
(I realise that taking photographs might sound like a more final version of exactly that, but I find being out with a digital camera very interactive: you might ask to take photos of people and begin talking to them, you might try and get them in some type of position with gestures or words, then you can show them what you have taken, and it is always the cause of great interest and laughter and a bit of shy pride – and often you then have to take another one because Michael reckons he wasn’t visible enough etc etc…)
(an eg: kids i played with. men in general and kids are easiest to talk with; without some type of introduction, women tend to be more hesitant, more wary. two white kids who came with us - who've been raised in png - were freaked out by the states of the locals; they used the baskets to build up a bunker in the car, and hid in it until we left.)
The woven stuff from Rongo is well-known and unique. The men of the area weave these things from what they call rope plants (I guess some type of reed). They place the rope strips in different muds to get different colours, and they get ideas for designs from books.
It will take 2-3 weeks to make a basket, given that usually weaving is done after working during the day on fences or in the gardens. Sometimes though men will go off walking for a few hours to get to a particular rope plant, and spend a few days out there dying the strips and starting to weave. This I learned from the fellas I was talking to. I also learned that they had electricity – hydro powered – but only the local missionary knew how it operated. Unfortunately, the aforementioned missionary was on holidays; though the power had lasted for a few days after he left, it soon died away, and no one here has the knowledge to fix it, or turn it on or off or whatever needs to be done. So they hope he will return one day. (missionary must have skipped the capacity-building seminar…)
Ute did her thing for about an hour and a half. Then we squeezed back into the car. To get into the car we had to get through a small mob of people waving baskets in the air and shouting: ‘you didn’t buy any from me’, ‘buy this, you must buy this’ etc etc. Cash can always cause tensions. But Ute had kept all of her money in the box, and it was always very visible when she paid people, and everyone could see when the box was empty. It was empty; she held it up one more time to prove it. Em tasol. A few people cursed her, but, she said, this was the normal end to things, and we drove back down the hill without incident.
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