New Britain Survey: Parting Shots

It's almost Christmas, and I'm still milking my New Britain survey trip for blog posts. This is the last one; I promise. (Look for a Christmas post soon.)

Of the south coast villages we visited, we saw (and slept in) a variety of kinds of houses. Some people have houses built with sawn timber and sheet metal roofs; others have traditional-style houses with woven walls and grass roofs. (You can see both kinds in the picture below.) We saw some houses that were unusual - they had sheet metals for the walls and grass roofs!

In many places in PNG, pigs play an important role in traditional culture. While I've seen pigs in almost every village I've visited in PNG, I'd never seen them on the beach before! This struck me as really funny, so I thought I'd share it, but maybe it's more of one of those "you had to be there" moments...

Here's a pig eating (coconut shells) on the beach (above), and another just keeping cool in the sand (below). Hey, when a pig doesn't have mud to wallow in, he might as well use the next best thing... sand.

Papua New Guineans I've met on survey have always been very friendly and hospitable. I thought this sign, above a door at a house we stayed at said it well... (Well Come)

Last, but not least, is this image, taken in a PNG house we slept at:

A clock with no hands captures the essence of PNG so well! PNG culture is very relaxed and relationship (rather than time) oriented. People don't mind waiting or having plans changed. They are very flexible and unaware of time (in the Western sense), just like a clock with no hands.