Tracing the Melanesian Person: Emotions and Relationships in Lihir

Front matter

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Part III: Loss and its transformations 7 Dying, grieving and forgetting 231

8 Relations at stake: performing and transforming personhood, 261 emotions and relations Afterword: Being Lihirian and tracing the Melanesian person 287

Bibliography 291

Map 1 Map 2 Map 3

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4

Figure 8 Figure 9

LIST OF MAPS AND FIGURES

Map of Papua New Guinea and New Ireland Province.

The Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province.

Kuelam Village, Mahur Island.

Aerial view of Masahet (foreground) and Mahur Islands. View from Niolam of Masahet (left) and Malie (right). The author doing fieldwork in Kuelam village.

Lalakam a rih (men’s house) in 1998. This is a ‘family’

men’s house and so has no ‘Y’ shaped stile.

Linge and Kso clearing a garden atop Mahur. Note the rockiness of the terrain.

Toetna practising yientnes: digging under a yam to loosen the soil to encourage further growth.

A carefully weeded mature yam garden with long poles on Mahur.

The large yams produced by intensive gardening.

Wengbeh descends one of the difficult and steep paths from the gardens to the beach on Mahur with a basket of tubers suspended from her head.

viii Tracing the Melanesian Person

Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13

Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17a Figure 17b

Figure 22 Figure 23

Figure 24 Figure 25

Boats such as these provide an easy source of mobility for most Lihirians. Photo taken of Londolovit boat harbour

1999; Kuelam’s new church built in late 1998.

Celebrations for Confirmation/pindik.

One of the altars present in each hamlet with a statue of

Mary.

Preparation of the pako (canoe) for Sion’s burial. Painting the pako.

Sion’s burial.

Heating stones atop a /on (ground oven).

Constructing the /on: spreading out the hot stones.

Constructing the /on: placing leaf parcel of pork and vegetables on top of the hot stones.

Food distribution within the rih (men’s house). Note the Y-shaped stile.

Pigs lined up at Malie feast 1999.

Lawrence Klamga calling out the person each pig is dedicated to.

Zna bol: to bring pigs to the feast. Malie Island. Sham fighting between Aukarot (hosts) and wasir (pig donors).

Zna bol with sham fighting.

Making relations visible in the dance. Nalo and Kolie approach their cross-cousin Niez to put lime on him.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not exist without the knowledge, encouragement and nurturance I received from many people. My greatest debt is to the people of Lihir. A puet sna e makil yo se muel torme te die. Go i tnien puet te e yo na e nien ka erem puet. Yo nanse mle e pu snieng torme ki giet i anio. Yo kasi ertawet no nanse baliye go i Mahur. Special thanks go to Wengbeh for her gift of friendship, and to her son Gas, who gave me coconuts. Thanks go to the families of Kso, Wengbeh, Pangpang, Tumdi and Nalo for many hot meals. Also to Pangpang and Atzo for providing accommodation while on Mahur, and to the Tniltalgo clan for building my house. My gratitude goes to the patience and perseverance of Isidore Lakiah, who schooled me in the Lihir language, and to Loeng, who conveyed the nature of Pindik and other customary matters to me. Thanks also to Denita Kaimua for providing me with the first opportunity to laugh on Mahur.

At Samo village thanks are due to the family of Aisoli, who accepted my occasional visits over a period of many years, and who accepted me and my son Oliver as part of their family. On Malie I owe a debt of gratitude to Morpo for his interesting conversations about matters of kastam, and to Biorbi and Pulerau for accepting me as part of their family. Also to Moktel for demonstrations of the continuing practice of trepanation.

My time on Lihir was enriched by many of the staff of the Lihir Management Company, particularly members of the Community Relations

Department. Especially notable are Mesulam Aisoli, Leonard Lagisa, Martin x Tracing the Melanesian Person

Asu, Emma Zanahien, Clothilda Molong and Jacky Membup, both for their encouragement during my doctoral fieldwork, and later as my colleagues and friends.

This book began life as a doctoral thesis first through La Trobe University and later the University of Melbourne. La Trobe University supported me with a generous fieldwork grant, and a context to engage with fellow students. Wendy Mee, Ju-Lan Thung and Yekti Maunati in particular enriched my experience there. I followed my doctoral supervisor, Dr Martha Macintyre, to the newly formed Centre for the Study of Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. I am deeply indebted to her, particularly for the integrity I have seen in her dealings with people both in academia and in the field. Having someone to discuss issues and situations with who worked in the same field site made the experience far richer for me. I am very grateful for her ongoing friendship.

My deep gratitude goes to the original examiners of the thesis, and the reviewers of this manuscript. In particular I would like to extend my thanks to Dorothy Billings for her unique contributions to New Ireland ethnography and for the support she has shown me over the years.

I thank my colleagues at the University of Adelaide, and in anthropology more generally. Nick Bainton followed me to Lihir for his doctorate, and I am very grateful for many conversations over the years, and his astute observations and analysis. More recently, Kirsty Gillespie has provided new insights into Lihir culture through her work on songs and stories. In particular, discussions with Alison Dundon enriched the sometimes isolating process of book writing and reviewing. The many coffees with fellow staff and postgraduate scholars in Adelaide eased the frustrations of writing. Thanks also to Sharon Lewis for many discussions and laughs.

Finally, to my friends and family, who accepted my disappearance to another country for a year with grace, and then later for another two years.

Thanks to Melissa, Anne and Lucy for continuing friendship, support and

Susan R Hemer xi advice. Thanks especially to Catherine: this book would not exist but for her. During my doctoral fieldwork my mother, Jo Hemer, managed my finances and kept a group of friends and family in touch with photocopies of letters. She also kept me supplied with food parcels and a fruity birthday cake. My family gave me life, and gave me the resources to seize the opportunities it presents.

Finally, to John, Oliver, Lucy and Adele, thank you for your love and support during this time. This monograph and the fieldwork on which it is based has been the context for the experience of great love.

Prologue

YUMI LUS PINIS

On Wednesday, 6 May 1998, a boat called ‘Maria belonging to the Tnialen clan of Mahur Island went missing. In it were two adult men, Nezik and Ngalbolbeh, and two boys, Gilas (sixteen years old) and Michael (Ngalbolbeh’s son, eight years old). The boat had gone to the main island of the Lihir group, Niolam, but did not return late Wednesday afternoon as was expected. People on Mahur, including myself, became increasingly anxious about the welfare of those in the boat as the days passed. Stories were told of other lost boats, prayers were said in church, and dreams and other signs were interpreted for clues as to the fate of those in the boat. Eventually, the following Monday, the boat and all of its occupants returned safely.

This incident became a critical point of reflection and reflexivity for my view of the emotional lives of Mahurians. Some aspects of their reaction to this loss were so familiar, such as their fear and anxiety, while others were incomprehensible to me, for instance, the apparent lack of relief at the return of the boat. Additionally, the loss of this boat corresponded to the time of confirmation in the Catholic Church, which for Catholic Lihirians incorporates the local kastam (T.P.) of pindik.' Confirmation/pindik became central in explanations about the loss of this boat, although later less esoteric explanations such as a lack of petrol prevailed.

I employ the loss and return of this boat as a window onto themes about life in Lihir that I explore in this book. The emotional reactions of Mahurians, the importance of Christianity to Lihirians, and my positioning in the flow of life on Mahur are all critical to my argument. Their entailment in the story of this missing boat allows me to pose questions that I address in the body of this work.

Tripping to Tabar

Negalbolbeh, Nezik, Gilas and Michael left Mahur Island on Wednesday morning, 6 May, to go to Samo village on the south-west coast of the main island, Niolam. Their aim was to collect Ngalbolbeh’s wife’s father, Zikmandawit, and take him to Mahur for a major celebration planned for Friday, 8 May: confirmation in the Catholic Church for the grade five school children. Ngalbolbeh’s oldest son was to be confirmed, as was Gilas. Those aboard the boat attempted to collect Zikmandawit from Samo village, but he was unwell and did not want to go. He watched them push the boat out and begin the two-hour journey back to Mahur.

Ngalbolbeh and Nezik thought they had enough petrol to make it to Mahur, but they also knew it would be a close call. Ngalbolbeh told Nezik

! Throughout this book I indicate Lihirian words by the use of italics, for example, pindik, while words in Tok Pisin (a creole widely spoken throughout PNG) are also in italics followed by ‘T.P in brackets, for example kastam (T.P). In general I use the Mahurian dialect of the Lihir language, which is often known as ‘shortcut’ due to the dropping of certain vowels in comparison to dialects on the main island of Lihir. I also use the spelling of Lihir and Mahur terms that was used throughout my fieldwork. Recently there has been a decision to drop the use of a ‘2 in favour of ‘ts’, amongst some other changes. This is altering the names of some villages (e.g. Zuen is changing to Tsuen) yet Lihirians recognise both and many favour the former practise. There is little difference in the dialects of the three outer islands, but some Mahurians said they had some difficulty understanding the dialect of Matakues (on the southeastern side of the main island, Niolam).

to check the petrol when they were at Kunaye village,’ and if it was low, said they should call in and collect some from Ngalbolbeh’s wife’s sister. Nezik did check, but felt there was enough petrol to make it to Mahur.

Nezik ran the boat slowly, and by the time they approached Mahur it was dark. They were close enough to see the light of lamps, and hear the beat of kundu drums practising for the confirmation celebrations ... and then the petrol ran out. The boat had no oars, torches, canvas or raincoats, life jackets, flares, cooked food or water. Nezik and Ngalbolbeh pulled up the planking in the bottom of the boat and fashioned some oars from this. They then did their best to row to Mahur, but the tide was strong, and after a long effort, they gave up. They anchored for the night using a fishing line off the village of Lakamelen on the south side of Mahur, checked that this anchor would hold, and slept.

Towards dawn the anchor slipped and they began drifting to the western side of Mahur, to the village of Kuelam, where they had left the previous morning. Again they tried to row ashore, but found the tide was too strong. They tried to signal using a mirror, but it was too cloudy. They managed to stay within sight of Kuelam until about 10 a.m., but by this time the tide was pulling them to the northern side of Mahur. If they had followed this current they would have been drifting north with no islands in their path. At this point they realised they were actually in trouble and Nezik commented ‘Yumi lus pinis (T.P. ‘We are lost’). Until this time they had felt they would be seen or would be able to row to Mahur—they had not been afraid until this point. Luckily, the wind was blowing to the Tabar islands* and thus they decided their only chance was to head quickly for there. They had to think about young Michael, and the dangers of dehydration. They rigged up a sail from Gilas’s /aplap (T.P. sarong) and set sail.

? Kunaye is the northern-most village on the main island, Niolam, and is the last point of call before setting out for Mahur.

3 A group of four islands to the west of the Lihir group. It is only about three hours by boat between Lihir and Tabar, when under engine power.

Night fell. They were very close, and spotted lights on the southern-most island of the Tabar group, Big Tabar. They tried to aim for the lights, but adjacent to Tabar there was a current and they were unable to make it. They paddled, and eventually landed on a small, uninhabited beach at about 8 p.m. Ngalbolbeh carried Michael to a cave for shelter; he had vomited three times from lack of food and water, and was crying for his mother. They made a fire and cooked some mami‘ (T.P) that they had got from Zikmandawit at Samo village, while Ngalbolbeh looked for water. Finding none, he sent Nezik to climb a coconut tree (one of two on the beach), despite it having a go/gol (gorgor T.P.)? taboo on it. They got six coconuts, which they shared and ate with the mami and then they settled down and slept.

In the morning Ngalbolbeh climbed up the cliff hoping to find nearby inhabitants. He found a road that he followed a little way in both directions, and found a few fallen coconuts. These he took back and they ate them with the last two mami. Then they all climbed the cliff and set off to find some people. They wandered into a hamlet where an old man and woman and a young boy were staying. They were startled, and the old woman tried to talk to them in the local Tabar language. Ngalbolbeh and Nezik then explained their story.

They were taken into the main camp where they were fed and looked after. Ngalbolbeh recognised some people from his days in high school on the New Ireland mainland. By this time it was Friday (8 May) and it was obvious that Gilas was going to miss his confirmation, which was to be held that morning. Ngalbolbeh did his best to send word to Mahur that they were safe but this was by a very circuitous radio route, and those of us anxiously waiting on Mahur never received this message.

Thinking that the people of Mahur knew they were safe, Nezik and Ngalbolbeh agreed to stay and have a proper, though small, feast in their

4 Mami is a starchy tuber much like a yam, and is common in Papua New Guinea. 5 A golgol is a piece of plant (generally a form of ginger) tied around a tree to taboo it from use.

honour.° The women went to the gardens to get vegetable foods, while the young men went and retrieved the boat from the uninhabited beach, and caught fish for the feast. Meanwhile the four ‘trippers’ had a proper meal and then slept. That afternoon they feasted and then prepared to leave early the next morning.

Next morning, Saturday, they pushed the boat out and were farewelled by the Tabar people. They started to motor away when something in the boat motor burst into flame. They had to row all the way back to the shore, and were in grave danger of drifting again. The boat motor was fixed, but they hesitated to leave that day, fearful after nearly being lost a second time. Instead, they waited until Monday morning when they were able to be accompanied by Bruno, a Tabar man, with his boat motor as a back-up to their own. They finally arrived back on Mahur on Monday, 11 May at 1.30 p.m.

Fieldwork on Mahur Island

This incident came about half way through my twelve-month doctoral fieldwork stint in Papua New Guinea. Mahur Island is the northern-most island of a group of four called Lihir, located to the north-east of central New Ireland. The main island of Lihir, Niolam, is the southern-most island in the group, and is home to a large gold mine that began production in 1997.” The island group was home to about 10,000 people in 1998, 800 of whom lived on Mahur. The population has since grown in number through natural increase and migration for employment, with about 14,000 Lihirians and 6,000 non- Lihirians resident in the islands in 2008 (Bainton 2010:21).

€ It seems to be the custom on Tabar, as it is in Lihir, to treat visitors extraordinarily well and supply them with all the food, betelnut, tobacco and so on that they want. On Mahur this is called feeding (pniarz) the visitors (wasir). See Chapters 3 and 5 for further discussion of pniari wasir.

7 The Lihir gold mine was constructed by Davey Kinhill Flour Daniel before being managed by Lihir Management Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, until 2005. It then operated as Lihir Gold Limited, before being bought by Newcrest Mining Limited in 2011.

These islands were the site of my doctoral fieldwork of fifteen months duration, from November 1997 to October 1998, plus shorter trips of June to July and December 1999. Most of my time I spent on Mahur Island, living in Kuelam village. In addition I spent time living in Samo village on the south-western side of Niolam, and time in the mining town, Londolovit, on the eastern side. I also visited the other two islands in the group, Malie and Masahet. Between 2000 and 2002 I spent more than two years largely on Niolam researching health, education, women’s development and the relocation of Kapit village for the mining company. I made short return trips to Lihir in 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2012 to conduct extra fieldwork and maintain relationships.®

I went to Lihir initially with the intention of studying emotions, particularly grief. I was interested in how Lihirians spoke about grief, local notions of grieving, whether and how they expressed grief, and whether they had a gendered view of emotions in general. However, on arriving in Lihir I found it extremely difficult to elicit information about grief, which was complicated by the lack of any deaths on Mahur Island, and therefore funerals, for the first four months of my twelve-month fieldwork period. I hoped, given the context of a recent death, that it may be easier for people on Mahur to speak about grieving. Yet I was disappointed when, on the death of two children in a period of a month, people still were not interested in discussing their own or others’ emotional reactions. I experienced a period of doubt in my abilities as an ethnographer, believing that the material was there to gather. I decided that I was asking questions in the wrong way, always assuming that people did not understand my intentions, or that I was asking the wrong people. This was partially correct, as I came to understand over the course of the twelve months. The issue was not that there was a pool of information about grief in Lihir that I simply had to tap, but that the people's reticence or even silence was in itself a statement about the nature of grief.

Lihirians experienced and expressed grief differently from people in my own

8 All references in the present tense to Lihir indicate at the time of publication.

society and in ways not susceptible to many of the analytical assumptions of Western studies of grief (Hemer 2010).

I also came to realise that my idea of simply ‘studying grief’ was naive. I had assumed, following dominant theory in psychology, that grief was the automatic reaction to the loss of significant others in a person’s life. Yet none of these concepts could be assumed in a different cultural context. What was the nature of death in Lihir and the meaning of ‘loss’? In what ways were people ‘significant’ to one another? I broadened my perspective, and the result is this ethnography of the nature of persons, their relationships to one another, and of emotions.

It is attention to the context of emotion that interests me. While it is necessary that the study of emotion in anthropology be approached through language, it should not be limited to this. In the words of one contribution to the literature:

In the study of emotions anthropologists often analyse these as ‘terms and concepts’ which are subsequently located within ‘webs of significance’. As a consequence the focus tends to become lexical and the studies frequently constitute meta-semantic exercises. Accordingly, it has been argued (Rosenberg 1990:171) that the contextualisation of emotive terms and concepts really amounts to nothing but a reduction of situated discourse to a discourse about situations which eventually may even end up in a discussion on the appositeness of particular terms in given situations. (Rosengren 2000:221)

Given this risk of reductionism, in this book I have chosen not to organise chapters around particular emotions but on other thematic issues.

Thus, the loss of this boat and the reactions to it were central to my study. In another way it was central to me because I was living in the hamlet where Ngalbolbeh and Michael had been resident. They had become my friends and part of my day-to-day life.

8 Tracing the Melanesian Person My reaction: a little self-reflection

I first heard about a boat being missing on Thursday afternoon, 7 May. At first it seemed nothing important, and no one seemed particularly worried. Instead, most attention was directed towards the preparations for confirmation to be held the next day. During that particular period I had been spending time in the neighbouring hamlet, and was unaware that the immediately affected families were already worried. It was that night that Lolot’ went to ask that a radio call be made early Friday morning to the neighbouring island groups of Tabar and Tanga, to check if anyone had seen the boat. Even so, at this stage there was not much talk about this boat, and I assumed, with others, that it had simply gone ashore and spent the night at Masahet or on Niolam.'®

The following day, Friday, was the day of confirmation, and I was very busy recording this event. At about 2 p.m. the parish priest, Father Steve Boland, and the Bishop of the New Ireland Diocese, Ambrose Kiapseni, left Mahur to go to perform confirmations on the neighbouring island of Masahet. By this stage I was getting a little anxious, especially with the stories Steve

Boland told me of other lost boats.

I was connected closely with the family of Ngalbolbeh and Michael: my house on Mahur was located in their hamlet, and I ate with them quite often. I knew Gilas’s family less well at the time of confirmation but by the end of my fieldwork Gilas’s father was one of my better informants.

By Friday afternoon my worry for them was growing, especially as it became obvious that they were truly missing. Gilas would not have missed his own confirmation without very good reason.

By Saturday I was truly afraid. The time passed with no word except from Tabar and Tanga to say that no one had seen the boat. On Saturday at sunset I went down to sit on the beach. At the time I wrote:

? Lolot is the sister of Kwildun, whose husband Ngalbolbeh and son Michael were missing. 1 This is quite a common occurrence if the weather is bad or the sea is rough.

I can't find peace on the beach tonight. Kwildun stands with Eric [her fifteen-month-old son] and a pipe on the shore—looking out. Each time I look at her I have to fight back tears. Where are the planes to search for them? Where are the boat safety measures (like flares)? ... Where is the coastguard? Here the ocean simply swallows people up. If they had touched land there would be word on the radio. There is silence. They are already three days without water. And Michael is so young. This place certainly isn’t ‘Death Without Weeping’.'! (Personal Journal 9 May 1998)

As time passed, I became certain that they were properly lost. This would mean either no trace of them would be found, or the boat and possibly some survivors would turn up two or three months later in some distant place like the Solomon Islands or Fiji.’

By Monday morning I had basically given up hope that the boat and occupants could all be found safely. At 1.30 p.m. I was just finishing a language class when two boats went past to go ashore at the wharf. I paid little attention until I noticed some of the young children from my hamlet running to the wharf. I asked one what boat it was and she said ‘Maria’. In amazement | turned and walked very quickly to the wharf. All four occupants were safe and sound. I was nearly in tears from relief. I expected to see Kwildun at any moment sprinting to the wharf to hug her child to her and check he was still in one piece, but she didn’t arrive. The only person who seemed to be amazed was me.

The families’ reactions

Three immediate families were involved in this boat’s disappearance. The family that seemed the least involved was that of Nezik. Nezik and Ngalbolbeh

1! Scheper-Hughes (1992).

12 There are a number of stories of previous boat losses involving Mahurians. For example, one boat drifted for four months before arriving in Tuvalu with half of those originally on board alive. Another boat drifted for a number of months before arriving in the Solomon Islands with only two survivors.

were closely related and called each other sunglik (‘brother’: actually FBS). However, Nezik’s family lived on Malie, another small island in the Lihir group, and at first they didn’t even know he was missing. Eventually they were told, but I was not able to observe their reactions.

The second family involved was that of Gilas. His father, Bale, was one of the leaders of the customary celebrations for pindik in 1998 (Ngalparok, Ngalbolbeh’s father, was the other main leader). Bale was withdrawn while the boat was missing, and he and his wife did not go to the wharf on Friday to see the Bishop and Priest off—they stayed in their hamlet and worried (// zket, T.P. wari). Later Bale told me that by the end of the time that Gilas was missing they had begun to believe that he would die.

My most detailed knowledge is of the third family immediately affected by this boat loss: the family of Ngalbolbeh and Michael. Ngalbolbeh’s father, Ngalparok, was one of my main informants, and I could see that he was very worried. Ngalbolbeh’s wife, Kwildun, was one of the owners of the hamlet, Lalakam, where I resided. I knew Kwildun, her sister Lolot, and their children well.

Boats were normally greeted in this hamlet, Lalakam, by shouts from the children as they guessed the identity of the boat. During the five days this boat was missing I never heard one child shout the name of an approaching boat. The atmosphere, even among the young children, was very subdued.

Thursday morning Kwildun was seen sitting on the beach staring out to sea with her children.'* Her distress was not obvious until Friday, when she did not go to the feasting following confirmation, despite the fact that her oldest son was confirmed that day. On the Saturday and Sunday afternoons she stood on the beach holding her fifteen-month-old child watching as the sun went down—something very unusual for her. Saturday evening I could hear her

13 The acronym FBS refers to Father’s Brother’s Son. 14 This was reported to me by one of the people in the neighbouring hamlet on Saturday—it was made as a comment on Kwildun’s distress.

crying (from the neighbouring hamlet). That day her face was a study in fear and distress. She did not finish betelnut when it was given to her. People told me that this was the effects of /i/ zket (T.P. wari).

Lil zket

Lil zket is a Lihirian term that translates as ‘bad feelings or in the form a ling sa zket as ‘my insides are bad’. They translate it in Tok Pisin as wari, or worry.” This was the term constantly applied to Kwildun (particularly) and also the family of Gilas.

Lil zket is something to be guarded against. Kupulie (a very close informant) said at one point that Kwildun was feeling so much lil zket that she was nearly sick from it, and that if it continued she would be sick. In previous contexts I had been told that lil zket can kill.

It was seen as very important to prevent Kwildun from focusing on this lil zket or at least not to increase it. People thus went and talked about other subjects, seeing it as crucial not to mention any signs that suggested the boat was permanently lost. The only sign that was told to Kwildun was a positive one. On Thursday Ngalparok had a stone thrown at him—but not by a human being. It was a stone from the beach (rather than from deep under the sea), which suggested that the occupants of the boat had (or would) reach land safely. This stone was said to be thrown by a kanut (spirit of a dead person).