Dancing With Fire

Ok I fucked the order up and did it backwards, so this is the oldest backed up post.

I’m totally beaming right now. I just got back from seeing one of the coolest, if not the coolest thing on my trip so far. Matt and I jumped on a tour heading up to a village back in mountains, where the Baining people live. There they were putting on one of their local ritual dances, which takes place at night around a roaring bonfire. I had seen this before on a travel show, but it seeing it on tv could not be compared to seeing it in real life. We arrived to a steady downpour, which ended up lasting the entire dance. Rain couldn’t stop the party though, and the dance and subsequent photography started in full force.

Once the coals of the bonfire were red hot and the flames sky high, the dancers started appearing out of the black jungle, their white ceremonial masks contrasting against the palm leaves that cover their bodies. The mask themselves are made from banana wood, taking four months to carve and decorate. They feature two giant white and red painted eyes set above a white beak, and below it a white and red neck. The dancers head fits into the beak of the mask, giving the masks a tall and imposing stature. The dancers dance between the fire and a group of singers who fill the air with the beat of hollow bamboo poles against a wooden floor, and a constant singing and chanting. As the pace of the dancing increases, the dancers run towards the fire and with a great kick, send the hot coals flying through the darkness, showering themselves in sparks embers, giving them a demonic look. No matter how hard they kick the logs or embers, they keep on dancing, sometimes emerging from the fire with smoke trailing from their palm coverings. The whole spectacle is surreal, what I saw with my eyes is something I cannot fully put into words.

These people have been doing this dance for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and I feel so lucky to have seen this, just as it was done in the past. That really is the magic of this place. The archaic nature of this country holds many treasures, rituals that haven’t changed or been influenced by the modern world, and are still here waiting to be discovered. We were also lucky to see another ritual this morning, a ritual where spirits are called on and emerge from the water, heading up the beach and into the forest. Local tribesmen in canoes chant and sing brining out two spirits (tribesmen dressed in a dome of palm leaves with a painted mask on top) It was a great spectacle, but not nearly as amazing as the Baining Fire Dance.

Alas, these wonders do come at a cost. I knew that PNG was expensive compared to the countries I’ve been traveling on this trip, but being here is slowly starting to sink the reality of the costs into us. Nothing here is cheap, and yesterday things became even more costly for us when we realized that the three Kina to the Dollar exchange rate turned out to be just less than two and half Kina to the Dollar. To give you an example of the costs, thirty megabites of internet usage costs twenty two Kina. A flight from Rabaul to Madang (just over an hour long) cost us about seven hundred and fifty Kina each. And then problem is it’s hard to avoid the costs and keep things cheap. We’ve managed to avoid food costs a little by buying and cooking our own food (which I’ve enjoyed), but flights must be taken due to the lack of roads, and it seems like everything here must be done with a guide.
We will overcome and keep on rocking PNG, hopefully discovering more wonders as we go.