Life On A Sepik Backwater

Some Notes on Water-Babies, House-Building and Mosquitoes

pROM PASTOR S. H. GANDER, who is making a Survey of the Sepik Villages, New Guinea, in the Seventh Day Adventist Mission Shiv Leleman, which is screened against mosquitoes.

IT is rather difficult for some country folk to find their way among the city streets; but they can always purchase a directory or ask a policeman.

As we move along this mighty Sepik River, with its many tributaries and barads (small channels that take a pin nace or canoe) we are glad when some friendly local offers to show us the way.

Without such a man we would pass many a channel that leads to a dozen villages.

Yesterday, we came to a mouth just sufficiently wide for the ship to enter.

Fifty yards further the water opened into a channel fifty feet wide; then it ex panded to half a mile.

Travelling for half an hour we entered the village of Kambaramba and proceeded down the main “street,” with its 110 houses.

The Sepik water is a dirty, muddy grey, but in these channels (“round waters”) it is the colour of strong tea. I think the first white folk called it “brown” water and now it is known as “round” water.

We anchored in the main thoroughfare, in four and a half fathoms of water. In five minutes we had forty canoes around us, filled with men and women.

The babies here amaze me—only two years old, but trying to paddle canoes, with twenty-five feet of water under them.

They have a child of five or six with them, but what could one of that age do in an emergency?

Wherever you go you see canoes. One mother visits another, in a canoe; there is no other way.

A lass opposite our boat decided to tidy the growth around the house. She is standing in water up to the waist, and pulling grass six feet long.

A dog in a house on the other side be came a nuisance, and the mary decided to thrash it. As she struck at him, the dog jumped into five canoes, before finishing up in the water.

Here is a bright young lass who wants to wash a loin-cloth. She comes down the steps of the house to a log and, using it as a washing board, does her best to produce a Persil finish. Then she has a bath and quenches her thirst—all in the same water, at the front doorstep.

All conveniences are on the one spot, and there the natives bathe, drink and dip for the night’s stew. They are happy and satisfied —it is beyond my under standing.

THE houses would astonish you—huge structures of massive timbers. The centre posts are of quila (like red gum), three feet in diameter, and what a length! Eighteen feet in the ground; from the surface of the water to the floor, fifteen feet; from floor to ridging, twenty seven feet. And all had to be pulled by canoes, two days’ journey!

The houses are one hundred feet long and forty feet wide. The holes for the posts have to be dug in the dry season, as for half the year the houses are sur rounded by water.

I asked what the beds under the houses were for. “Oh,” the people said, “the pigs sleep there, and a man with them. The crocodiles come and steal the pigs at night and when the pig squeals the man wakes up and spears the croc.” Good alarm clocks!

The fowls and pigs are all up on decks, and it is amusing to see the fowls jump ing from canoe to canoe and flying from

house to house. A drake, this morning, did the longest non-stop I have seen— trying to beat the jet machines.

When you first look around you are puzzled. At the rear of the houses there is long kunai grass, something like a

wheat crop, and you see heads moving here and there. Looking closer, you find the natives are in canoes paddling along in little barads.

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The children here spend all their time in canoes, fishing and bird shooting. They were up at six o’clock this morning to fish, and we passed them at eight o’clock spearing cat-fish by the dozen, IN the houses there are four kitchens and, roughly, twenty people live in each house. The sleeping bags are lined up on each side, and they are some thing to see. The bags are large, and closely woven from a rope made from bark. Half a dozen or more natives crawl in for the night, also young pigs, and the bag is not opened for any pur pose until daylight. Mosquitoes could not possibly get into these bags, nor much fresh air.

The mosquitoes are ferocious; and my boys yesterday decided that in future their evening meal would be taken at 4 p.m. because, at sundown, the battle is on. Yet the natives tell me that the mos quitoes (nat nats) are not here yet— and they are correct. Another month will tell the story.

The houses are hot enough, especially under these climatic conditions: but in side the bag it must be a turkish bath.

I intend bringing one home to Australia, so you may really see this central heating apparatus.

Half a dozen houses had occupants who like a little colour, so they had anchored a twelve-foot square of land in front.

This was an island garden afloat—help yourself to the pansies as you go by.

I suppose you find it a nuisance when the grocer has forgotten your salt. Mrs.

Blacklass, of Kambaramba village, goes in her canoe and pulls a species of water lily, with a very strong salt taste, and she cooks a little with all food. Like Marmite, “too much spoils the flavour.”

THE food supply is mainly sac sac, fish and crocodiles. Sac sac is from the sago palm, and it is interesting to watch the marys making it.

Each house has anchored, at the front door, a raft about twenty feet square, and on this are troughs, made from trees. A dipper is made by fixing a coconut shell to a long handle, and this is used to dip the water to wash the sago pulp.

I missed a lovely picture yesterday—a little girl of three years being given her daily bath by her mother. As the water was dipped up and poured over her, the little darling was dancing and crying on the raft.

At 3 pm., before the mosquito war started, crowds of men and women as sembled in one of the huge houses, and I addressed them. The population of this village is around the thousand mark.

I like these people very much. They are most friendly and hospitable.

Mr. Oscar Nordman, well-known mer chant of Papeete Tahiti, accompanied by his daughter Ethel, sailed for Sydney in the steamer Elsudan late in February.