Telling The World That The

Harvest Is In

By Basil Hall

Even Primitive Papuans Had a Public Relations Department

BACK in 193 9, in company with Resident Magistrate S.M.

Chance, I saw in a village beside the Kemp Welsh river in Papua, this 60 ft. bamboo erection as striking in its way as the TV masts that have sprung up around our capital cities.

The idea is as old as time. In 1450 BC, Egyptian masons hewed the 70 ft. obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle from the living rock, and did so to the glory of a reigning king, and for the appease ment of whatever divinity they worshipped. In that they are not alone and ancient Egypt and Papua are alike in this: that earth’s fertility has counted most.

Unmentioned in polite society but looming large in the affairs of primitives, the fertility of gardens is only slightly less important than family fecundity. Both spell the well-being of tribe or clan, the bare bones of the matter being that an assured supply of warriors or food stuffs is a question of survival.

The Papuan male will help to clean a patch of bush for planting, but thereafter it is the women who do the garden work. Such an arrangement is considered a fair division of the household chores, and it is only when the crops have reached maturity that all hands come together again.

Harvesting is a joint and several job, which takes place about the time of the full moon. In preparation for what is the climax of the year, the men shed their air of care-free indolence, and cut the heaviest bamboos thev can find in the gullies, and lug them up a l-in-3 grade to their village on some razor-backed spur.

Why they go to all this trouble, cannot be explained in terms of common understanding. The Papuan native does it because he has always done it, and the mast he fashions is, is some obscure way, an expression of gratitude for a food supply that will keep him in the months to come.

Harvest festivals are not unknown in our culture, but it is difficult to think of a reason which prompts a small community to erect a centerpiece as high as this.

Inquiries along the Kemp Welsh meet with a blank stare. The native doesn’t know why he builds his own version of a TV mast, or why he festoons it with his choicest yams, sweet potatoes, sprouting

coconuts or other produce froms garden plots.

There is one clue, however, 1 during the course of the harv celebrations, it is customary 1 some leather-lunged individual! climb to the top of the mast, in tones that carry far at nig broadcast the glad tidings oh bountiful year.

But let there be no mistake. 1 is not the honest husbandm speaking. It is the marriage broH for, since it is the women who| the gardening work, the resn prove that they are good work and will make good wives. 1 bride price paid for them, \ therefore, enrich the village I another way.

How much taller the Papus could raise their masts is a mat of speculation. In theory, thi seems nothing to prevent th attaining the mystical figure i 300 feet, which is said to have b« the height of the Tower of Bal