New Guinea’S Jungle Foods

Americans May be Miracle-workers, But-!

By Judy Tudor

't'hus r b. Leonard a war correspo “ de , nt „ * ew P umea l- „ .

New is JT X perimeit Such ™ m ume haef a afreet ing upon the diet of the troops.

Two officers have left a jungle base without ordinary rations, on an experimental trek, during which they will live on native fruits and vegetables which grow profusely in the area. 0-u- i i iTT ii t , H, yeah! Well, I suppose the Yanks do like their little bit of salad—but how far are the meat-eating, teadrinking Aussies going to travel on a stomach full of leaves? And leaves are about the only thing the New Guinea jungle does produce.

I have seen hundreds of miles of New Guinea jungle; but never any portion of it where ‘‘fruits and vegetables grew in profusion”—except in the village gardens.

Many of the trees do produce good look ing fruit—red, yellow and purple wooden balls—fine food for a buzz-saw. Others have mis-shapen caricatures of seeds and nuts that look as though the Creator, when he tired of creating, jammed all his left-overs together and gave them to the New Guinea bush. These cannot be eaten, either.

Then there are plants that look like bananas—and are not; and others that look like taros—and also are not. I spent my first six months in the country, dis covering taro patches—only to be told with much belly-rubbing and eye rolling; “’E no taro, missus—something no good, tha’s all!”

THE natives are a fair guide as to what food may be had from the bush. If it were possible for them to wander out into the jungle and gather sufficient food to keep their souls within their bodies, then that they surely would do without the bother of cultivating gardens.

The men cut down the timber, burn it off and make the bamboo fences to keep out the pigs. The women and “monkeys” plant and work the plots—and they do all this, not because they are particu larly enamoured of the job, but because they must eat.

Around the village itself are the paw paw groves, the banana patch and—if the village is not too high up the mountains or too far inland—coconuts. Down in the valley, somewhere in a nearby swamp, but still in village territory, grow the sago palms. Where recruiters have been, and there are “time-finish” boys, it is possible to find tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, pump kins, sweet-corn and lemons.

A man may five “on the country” in definitely—but only in close proximity to a village. The natives have done just that for centuries, after all—and they get along.

WE once had six boys who would have been a godsend to those two US officers, in their back-to-nature quest. They came from the mountains, near the Dutch border, and the only previous visitors to their primitive village had had to fight their way out again. It seems now, on mature reflection, that the only reason they had consented to come out and work for us was that somehow, on the jungle wind, they had gathered vaguely that to work for a “master” also meant food in quantity—and food was their passion, their god.

Those Palis, for the first two months of their working lives, were given rations and-a-half—to protect the rest of our labour line from being murdered in then sleep for anything they might possess in the way of food. At week-ends, the Palis walked miles to the nearest village to trade away their lap-laps (which we pro vided to cover their nakedness) for yams and taros; or else they dammed the near by creeks to catch the half-dozen, inch long fish they contained. They rose in the dead of one night and stole all my young pumpkin plants; and, on another, all the green paw-paws.

To walk through the bush with them was an education. They fastened on to any stray cricket, nipped off its legs as some of us nip the whiskers from a prawn, and ate it on the hoof, there and then.

A certain species of ant, which lived by gnawing the inside of fallen trees, filled them with ecstasy. The eggs of the bush-hen, which she conveniently left in conspicuous mounds to hatch, made them scream with delight.

But these things they treated as ap petisers, mere palate-teasers for the real food, which we were there to provide.

There was nothing, they felt, like the good old rice and bully-beef—for that alone were they (as obstinately opposed to labour, in principle, as any human be ings could be) prepared to work on a sluice-box from sun-rise to sun-set.

AWAY from the coast, and its un limited supply of fish and coconuts, the New Guinea bush is an in hospitable place, supplying little in the way of uncultivated food. Game is scarce in the mountains, although various kinds of pigeons are to be found in the more open ridges and creeks. Pigs (more snout than pig), and bush-hens are not plenti ful, but they can be found if one cares to rise at dawn and stalk them.

Making sago—after the tree is located —is a man-sized and tedious job. It in cludes cutting down the palm, splitting the trunk, washing the inside pith in running water to separate the starch, tying the lump of starch in a basket of leaves, and smoke-curing it over a fire.

To prepare the sago for eating, it is crumbled and mixed with boiling water, whereupon it turns into a transparent and, apparently, tasteless gruel. Eyen the kanakas turn up their noses at it, unless it is garnished with coconut, pig or some other well-flavoured edible.

Nevertheless, the Americans, who gave us doughnuts, baked beans, Mr. Heinz and his 57 varieties, and Chicken a la Maryland, may yet be able to introduce us to new gastronomic delights, straight from the New Guinea jungle, and win over our army from its traditional diet of stew and bully-beef.

How very nice to wake on a balmy, tropic morning, fill one’s lungs with damp mountain air, and dash out to pick a bunch of leaves or a bowl of grass hoppers !

Sir Owen Corrie, MC, Chief Justice in Fiji, who formerly served in the Royal Artillery, has been granted the temporary rank of Captain in the Fiji Home Guard, and will serve as Adjutant.