We asked Larry Rinder about his trip and how he felt about it. His response was informative and heartfelt:
I must admit I was quite apprehensive about going to do a "studio visit" in Papua New Guinea. I frequently visit artists in San Francisco, New York, and LA, but this was going to be something altogether different. I'm also afraid of flying and wasn't looking forward to a 16-hour plane ride, some legs of which involved crossing jagged, cloud-shrouded mountain ranges and landing on grass airstrips after dive-bombing them once or twice to scare away the cattle. Lafcadio and I didn't know for sure that our letters and faxes had actually reached the village informing them of our arrival. Uiaku has no electricity and is more than an hour by ocean-going dinghy from the nearest phone.
Luckily, our hosts were indeed there to pick us up at the Collingwood Bay airstrip, saving us from a five-hour slog through the mangrove swamp to their village. The Maisin villagers were dressed in regular Western clothing and most of them spoke English. One of the men, who was to be our guide for the week in Uiaku, wore a baseball cap that had "Malcolam X" (sic) embroidered across the front and a big hibiscus flower tucked behind his ear.
After an hour on the water, we approached the village. As we neared the shore, two men dressed as warriors ran out from between the houses and hurled enormous spears in our direction. From their hiding places, the villagers burst into laughter when they saw our terrified faces. This hurling of spears is, they told us, their traditional form of greeting newcomers to their village. (John Barker, an anthropologist who spent two years living in Uiaku, was horrified when he heard this story. "But they never actually throw the spears," he said, aghast, "they're only supposed to shake them!")
With some trepidation we climbed out of our boat onto the bank and proceeded into the center of the village, led by a double line of chanting women dressed in tapa skirts and adorned with flowers, leaves, and necklaces of shells, seeds, and teeth. The women were soon joined by a group of men, also in traditional dress, who pounded on long, thin drums. The aggressive warriors who had hurled their spears at us earlier lurked in the background. Soon we were in a sandy main square where most of the Uiaku villagers had gathered to welcome us. As the drumming and chanting faded, a young man came forward and addressed us. Speaking in perfect English, he told us that his people had been lied to many times in the past by white visitors. He said that they welcomed us and looked forward to working with us on the exhibition of their tapa paintings, but that if it was our intention to deceive them, it would be best for us to leave right away.
I did my best
to respond to his speech, greeting the villagers on behalf
of the museum and university, sketching out briefly what
we were prepared to offer them, and explaining that we had
come to Uiaku to work collaboratively on the show so that we
would all benefit from the experience. After some more
speeches, the village school children sang the Papua New
Guinea national anthem as well as a wonderful song they had
composed in our honor. It was touching to hear these people
who live half-way around the world from me singing a song
that actually included my name in the lyrics.
Our home in Uiaku was to be with the family of the village doctor, Sylvester Moi, and his wife Rebecca. Sylvester holds an M.D., which he received at a university in Australia, and practices both Western as well as traditional medicine. The Mois's house is typical of Uiaku architecture, except that - perhaps like the homes of doctors everywhere - it is a bit larger. It is made entirely of jungle materials: split palm-bark floors, walls of lashed-together poles and intricately woven leaves, and a thatched roof. It is supported 8 feet or so off the ground on strong timbers. The space underneath is used as a kitchen area and the rooms in the main house are divided by thin screens. Lafcadio and I had our own private rooms, with comfortable beds covered with a tent-like mosquito net, writing desks, and beautiful small tapa paintings hanging on the wall. There was a simple elegance that reminded me of Japanese-style design. Althoug the entire village and surrounding forest was ablaze wit colorful flowers, the Mois's had placed a single, cut blossom in a small vase on each of our writing desks.
Somehow I had expected that my time in Uiaku would be spent primarily laying around in a hammock reading (I had brought a Pasolini novel for that purpose); however, immediately after our welcome ceremony, we were handed a sheet of paper on which was written in neat script, "Agenda for First Day," followed by a list of meetings with variou village groups. There were one or two 15-minute break indicated. This serious business schedule was followed for each of the five days we were in the village. In fact, w were so busy with meetings that we didn't even have time fo a hike into the beautiful jungle that surrounds Uiaku. The clan leaders of Uiaku had wanted us to meet as many people as possible and to travel to a half-dozen Maisin villages so that the entire community would be adequately informed and would have the opportunity to give us input and ask questions.
We were impressed with the efficiency and orderliness of every aspect of our visit. They did everything to make sure we were comfortable and happy but also made sure that we got our job done. The Maisin communities, in general, seemed to be incredibly harmonious. This may be, in part, because there remains a strong sense of hierarchical authority, with much of the power residing in the hands of 20 or so clan leaders, all of whom are older men. Women do not attend important decision-making meetings and, in general, seemed to me to occupy a distinctly second-class position in the society. Indeed, even though virtually all the tapa artists are women, we had to argue quite strongly for the necessity of having a separate meeting with the women's group and to insist that our translator for that meeting be a woman as well.
We wanted to know how the young people felt about living within such an apparently rigid social framework. One young man answered without any evident irony, "It's great here. The older men make all the decisions and we young men do al the work." When you consider the alternatives to village life, such a response may not seem so strange. In much of Papua New Guinea, especially in the capital, Port Moresby, or in towns linked to it by roads, there is much poverty and crime. The country is plagued by violent gangs whose members are known as "rascals." Port Moresby is a city in which the residents live in virtual prisons behind high walls topped with razor wire. The few restaurants open at night are guarded by machine gun-toting security officers stationed at the driveway and front door. It is like a nightmare vision of a future Los Angeles. Many of the Maisin people have traveled throughout Papua New Guinea and some have eve traveled abroad. The community is strengthened by the fact that the Maisin have a broad perspective on modern life but have chosen to return to the village to enjoy its unique pleasures.
On our last day in Uiaku, the clan leaders called us into a meeting to tell us their various decisions regardin the exhibition. They told us that they were very pleased with the project, not only as a way of presenting their unique art to an American audience but also as a means to develop alternative income sources. They said that they had agreed to create for the museum a new work - at 16 x 20 feet it would be their largest ever - which would be made as a collaboration between the finest artists from all of the Maisin villages. Such collaboration, they felt, would be helpful in reinforcing the kind of spirit of unity that would be necessary to resist the divisive pressures of the logging companies. They told us that the clan leaders wanted to give the museum an example of each of their sacred clan designs, along with a description of their meaning. These designs had never before been out the village, they told us. It was their hope that, in the exhibition, these designs would help viewers get a deeper understanding of Maisin culture.
Finally, we were told that since it was out last day in Uiaku, there would be a goodbye party for us that night. Around dusk, the villagers began assembling at the square in front of Sylvester Mois's home. The drumming, singing an dancing went on for hours until it was completely dark except for the glow the torchlight cast about the square. One of the village chiefs asked the dancers to stop and he explained to us that since there is no word for thank you in the Maisin language, each person who wished to express their gratitude would now bring us a gift. Then, for what seemed like an hour, nearly every person we had met, or simply smiled at, came forward one at a time, covering u with handmade necklaces of shells, tusks, teeth, and nuts placing woven and carved armbands on our arms, offering tapas, hats, carrying bags, and other fantastic gifts until we had a huge pile in front of us. It was very emotional. I felt grateful and at the same time embarrassed that such generosity has been so diminished in our own culture. I began wondering how we would honor our Uiaku guests when they came to Berkeley.
I learned about another of their customs during a late-night chat with some of our host's kids. They were relieved, they revealed to me, that I hadn't fallen off of the precarious log bridge that crosses one of the streams running throug their village. "We would have had to throw ourselves in after you," they said. "To save me?" I asked. "No," they laughed, and explained that it was customary that whe something embarrassing happened to someone, whoever saw it happen had to imitate the embarrassing action. So if I had fallen in the river, anyone who saw me would have thrown themselves in after me. The point was to never let anyone b embarrassed alone
After Lafcadio and I had been loaded with presents, we decided that one way to repay the generosity of the Maisin was to get up and dance with them. As soon as we took our shirts off they knew what we had in mind and herded us off into a corner where the women decorated us with leaves and flowers. Then they sent us to the middle of the square where, to their amazement, we did our best to catch the groove When I finally got tired, I sat down for a moment to rest One of the young men came over and said, "That was great. You know, no one has ever danced with us before. Lots of people come to visit us, or study us, or buy tapa from us but no one has danced with us before. Frankly these dances were getting a little boring. Every festival it's the same old thing. But we will talk about tonight for a long time. You will go back to your people and tell them about this amazing night, too." And so we have.