‘Europeanisation’ In The

Ng Highlands

AMONG the crowd which gathered to watch the plane come in to the Mount Hagen airstrip in Central New Guinea, I noticed a tall man of good bearing. He was pointed out to me as an interest ing example of how a man, after experience of European contact, re turns to village life. He gave some years of good service in the New Guinea Police Force, learned Pidgin English, lived in semi-European fashion and wore the well-known uniform: and when his term ex pired he returned to his village.

When I saw him he wore the com mon native costume—a small apron of plaited material, a bunch of leaves poised over his posterior, and a kind of net arrangement around his head, while draped around his neck was his wealth expressed in terms of gold-lip shell.

A primitive savage, perhaps; and yet a completely dignified citizen of the Highlands.

In the four years since I last saw the Highlands’ natives, the progress of Europeanisation has been rapid.

Four years ago very few of them had altered their attire. But, to day, at least 50 per cent of them around Goroka wear a laplap in stead of the small native apron and that rear bunch of green leaves. In one horrible instance, a man wore a pair of decrepit shorts. All, however, follow the ancient practice of plastering themselves with pig-fat as protection against the cold, and practically all of them still wear the plaited native hood hanging from the back of the head, which is so characteristic of the Highlands’

native.-

-Rwr.