Week 2 Part 1: To the Garden

      Gardens are a key part of life here in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Most Papua New Guineans scoff at the idea of getting all of your food from a grocery store. They will tell you, with a hint of pride in their voice, that although they have to work hard to clear, plant and tend a garden, they get all of their food for free. Each family in PNG has whole swathes of land that have belonged to their family or clan for generations, and each section is carefully passed down to the children (sons or daughter depending on the area) in each. Our host sister Philda told us that each family generally has at least 3-4 gardens with different kinds of food in each: cooking bananas, kaukau (sweet potatoes), yams, kumu (greens), buai (beetlenut that is chewed with lime and a green plant called daka for a caffeine-like buzz) and much more. Sometimes families have one plot of land that is just for cash crops like coconuts, buai or tobacco and the rest of their land is for day-to-day foods. Life literally revolves around working your garden and everything else fits around that work.

     Our second week in Wargiden, Philda announced that she and our host Mama would be taking us to one of the family gardens to learn to clear it and prepare it for planting. She handed us each a bush knife (machete), a sturdy plastic canvas bag to carry garden produce back and started off up the hill to the gardens. We wove up and down small tracks cut into the hillsides by scores of feet tramping to family gardens. Finally we arrived at the garden Mama and Philda planned to clear. Mama set to work building a fire from the smoldering branch she’d snatched from the breakfast fire. The fire would help discourage mosquitoes (did I mention there’s about nine zillion mosquitoes in the coastal areas of PNG?), and we could use it to burn the brush we would clear if it was dry enough.

     Once the fire was strong and crackling, Mama and Philda showed us by example how to clear away all the old garden brush, leaves and branches that covered the ground and pile it in stacks to be burned. Soon we settled into a steady rhythm of hacking at tree branches with our bush knives, scooping up piles of debris and tossing them in heaps to be burned later. After about 1-2 hours we had cleared the entire plot and were ready to set out back for home. Philda had gathered a pile of firewood for April and I, and Mama had collected gaden kaikai (garden food) for the family. Each of us slung a bag or rope full of wood over our heads, and we headed back down to the village. That night we celebrated with some fried cooking bananas that our Mama had given us from the garden and talked with our host family about the day’s work in the garden as new members of the family.