chewing the fat

Lamb flaps – usually imported from NZ – consist of teeny tiny bits of less-than-choice, even unidentifiable- meat, and lots and lots of fat. Until now I’ve opted not to eat the flaps, but yesterday, to be polite, I succumbed.

I was at a friend’s birthday party. It was supposed to be a “high tea”: 2pm, cakes, bring some bubbles etc. But this is the highlands of papua new guinea; cake is all well and good, but where’s the meat? Where’s the fire? And so it turned into a mumu. The birthday boy, conceding this, bought some lamb chops; he’s Australian, and in Australia a lamb chop would be valued over the flaps. But not here; he was told that chops aren’t the thing, it’s lamb flaps. So it was another trip to the supermarket, and a box of the best.

There was plenty of good food – a savoury sago with fish, and a sweet one; the usual savoury, mumu-ed bananas and greens; and the old aussie classic, potato salad – so it was easy to push the meat to the side of the plate and ignore it after my first few tries (I couldn’t break down the fat! Just chewing and chewing); I don’t think anyone noticed.

And the party was a good one. The hosts are two of the only people I know who manage to successfully combine PNGians and whiteskins at parties. Sometimes people try, and it’s uncomfortable and after a few sentences two distinct groups form; and often people don’t try: it becomes an either/or situation: either I am hanging out with my whiteskin friends, or I’m hanging out with my pngian friends.

This is usually the case, up here, amongst the people I am friends with. There are lots of reasons for it, and I think racism is actually one of the least likely – again amongst the people I know, who are almost all working for socially-orientated NGOs and/or volunteers; talking about moneyed expats is another story.

The most common reason for this split is a simple and banal one – but one that people sometimes shy from admitting: you find an ease is there when you’re with people who come from where you’re from (in my case, the west), that is not there with people who aren’t. This is not meant as a derogatory comment. I mean, in my muddled way, to point out that you appreciate different things when hanging out with different people; hanging out with whiteskins, for instances, I appreciate the ease with which I can … say something in a particular tone, and it’s meaning will be understood. Hanging out with PNGian people I know, I behave differently, and a bit more self-consciously; I pay attention a bit more because the cultural cues are ones I’m learning, not ones I grew up with. Cultural differences are real, and have a force. No one who lives here, wherever they are from, would pretend that there are no differences between people. What is tricky to talk about, however, is what these differences mean, and where they are felt.

So when someone combines different people and different groups together at a party, and it works and people mix, everybody there enjoys it and appreciates it. It was the kid’s 30^th birthday, and throwing such a party was a very cool way to mark it.