Week 1 Part 3: Wasim Saksak (Washing Sago)

    “Philda’s here,” April’s voice came up through the floor boards of our house to where I was washing the dishes from the night before. Today was the day we were going to learn how to wasim saksak (wash sago). I was excited but also puzzled. First of all, I really didn’t know a thing about washing sago, and second, I had no idea what sago really was rather than the head knowledge that it’s a type of palm tree that some people in the world eat as a main starch. Helpful starting point – not. I dried my hands, grabbed my bag and headed down to meet April, Philda and another sister Immaculata (Imma). We trekked out onto the road and picked up an “aunt” and her kids along the way because we were going to the part of the sago forest that belonged to her and her husband. We tramped out through the garden area and then dipped down into the soggy, rain drenched sago palm forest.

Sago with coconut inside cooked
 in cocoa leaves on the fire

     Our Aunt Sempi (so called by Philda because she’s from the village of Sempi) guided us to the small bend in the river where we would be washing the sago. She then showed us the incredibly ingenious set-up that’s used to wash sago. As I found out, sago for eating is made by felling a sago palm that has begun to bloom at the top. Then, you use a chipper or a small hammer and chip the bole of the felled palm into tiny chips. After that, you haul the chips to an area with water and then proceed to use the washing “table” invention to wash the edible starch from the tiny chips and collect it while draining off the wastewater. They do this on a table that is set up in tiers using materials from the surrounding bush including sago and another tree called a limbum tree. The limbum has multiple portions that are used for timber, brooms, mats/water collectors/scoops, and much more. The saksak washing table has a screen that is fitted to the top where you put the sago chips. Underneath is a limbum bark piece that is like a leathery mat. This is where the edible portion of the sago settles as you wash it. This piece of limbum is positioned so that the water overflows and runs into a lower tier with yet another limbum mat with a hole in the center that has a sago frond “filter” that catches the water as it drains from the hole and drains into the final tier of the washing table which is another limbum mat that drains into the river. The top level of the washing table catches most of the starch that goes from the pink of the chipped sago to a pure white like a cornstarch.

The finished product! Crunchy, sweet and super yummy!

     As soon as Imma brought the first load of chips to the washing table Aunt Sempi jumped in with gusto to show us how to wash sago. She dumped a heap of chips onto the screen and then poured a bucketful of water over the top. She kneaded it and squeezed it until the chips were dry. She repeated this another two times and discarded the chips after that. When she’d finished, she turned to us and asked us if we wanted to try, and for the rest of the day April and I took turns with Aunt Sempi, Imma and Philda washing sago until our arms were tired and our skin was pinkish-purple from the sago itself (for days afterward everyone asked us if we’d be wasim saksak because of our tinted skin). Finally, when all the sago was washed Aunt Sempi built a little fire and prepared our first taste of sago called tanim saksak (turned/stirred sago) which is sort of like a pink gelatin when it was finished. We took a taste of this hot, pink jelly combined with garden greens and two-minute noodles. It was good and very filling (and looked a lot more appetizing to me than the sago beetles the kids had found earlier in the day, plopped into the fire and munched on like popcorn). Later Philda taught us four or five other ways to cook sago and she said that was just a few of the ways we could eat it. All in all it was a great day and a great experience in the life, work and foods of our Papua New Guinean family.