Independence Day in Margarima
by Nancy Sullivan

Beautiful Margarima, where the old airfield sits on top of the world. Everywhere you look a wide blue sky floats above the ring of close mountain ridges. It's September 16, Independence Day 1998, and all of Margarima has turned out for a spectacular singsing with neighbouring Huli, Wola, Duna and Mendi people. The whole airfield is packed with men and women in dramatic handsome Southern Highlands dress. I've brought Jodi Cobb, a National Geographic photographer on an assignment to capture graphics of human beauty around the world. From the catwalks of Milan to the deserts of Ethiopia, Jodi has been documenting the sublime and the terrifying ways we make ourselves attractive to each other, and now, high in the Doma Peaks of Papua New Guinea, she's seeing the living breathing representation of Highlands glamour. Magnificent wigs, dramatic face paint and phalanxes of marching men with bird of paradise feathers swaying together above their headdresses.

Sixty three years ago Jack Hides and Jim O'Malley brought the first patrol through this region. They came north over the great humid Papuan Plateau and the rugged wastes of the Karius Range to enter the Tani and the Tari valleys, land of the Huli. From there, moving east, they entered the Was valley, where the tall wigs of the Wola men reminded Hides of 'black Pharaohs.' "We are now in a country of different people," Hides wrote at the time, "--bewigged, dark-skinned men, with voices deep and guttural." But, while the Huli struck both men as proud and arrogant, disinterested in what the patrol had to offer, these Wola men overtly unfriendly, in Hide's words, even "despicable." The patrol was repeatedly attacked. And yet the Wola and Huli peoples were all hungry for shells. "All these people wanted pearl and cowry shell," Hides wrote, "though I could see little of this among them. They held up little broken pieces of pearl shell and with a questioning look asked if we had any." A couple of desperate individuals even stole the pearl buttons off the patrol officers' shirts. (J. Hides, 1936, Papuan Wonderland, Glasgow: Blacke and Sons, pp 111-116).

Of course these shells were valuable items of trade. But they were also pieces of self-decoration, something no respectable Southern Highlander could do without. These visiting patrol officers were carrying the equivalent of precious gems when they walked through. A year later, when Government anthropologist F.E. Williams flew over Margarima and the Was valley, he threw out handfuls of shells which, he wrote, "could be seen for a long time as diminishing white specks far in our rear. No doubt some of them were found, picked up and marvelled at as gifts from the great bird." He went on to say he hoped none of them struck an upward-gazing villager between the eyes! ( F.E. Williams, 1936, Aerial reconnaissance of the Hides-O'Malley area, Port Moresby: Government Archives). The same year, Champion and Adams took a patrol through the area and, in an attempt to inspire villagers to sell them food, they threw open their patrol box filled with shells. Unfortunately this only inspired the awestruck highlanders to turn and bolt in confusion. (Woops!) (As in P. Sillitoe, 1979, Give and Take, Exchange in Wola Society, Canberra: ANU Press.)

The best part of being in Margarima this September 16th is our completely good-humoured reception. We've driven over the cool lonely Tari Gap with friends from Ambua Lodge, and a Provincial Police Commander, Joe Wija, whose smile and reputation parts waves for us through the crowds. And everywhere kids, old people, teenagers and whole singsing cadres greet us enthusiastically (apart from a couple of missionaries, we guess that we're the only outsiders amidst the hundreds of participants), throw their arms around each other to pose, and proudly adjust their shells, wigs and headdresses for Jodi's camera. She's overwhelmed, and so am I.

The anthropologist Paul Sillitoe worked around here in the seventies, and he mentions that the people in Margarima sometimes dress transitionally, somewhere between Huli and Wola traditional dress. They speak Huli, border upon Wola-speaking territory, and often wear the Huli crescent-shaped wigs along with Wola bark belts, or some such mixture of key bilas pieces. In fact, the Margarima people speak a dialect of Huli called Kaerinj, and often refer to themselves as Kaerinj people, to underscore the cultural differences that also exist between themselves as the more formidable Huli of the Tari Valley.

Probably the clearest demonstration of this difference, on independence Day, is the circular dancing that goes on all morning long. Men and women linking arms and dancing, hopping, stomping, in wide circles, with all the fervour and joy of an open-air disco. Except that this is better--much better. Never would you see men and women dancing openly together in Tari. Here in Margarima it's clearly the most popular singsing form, and best part of the day for everyone involved. Across the field Holli Maeia is belting it out at the grandstand while lots of single Huli blokes rock away in their yellow face paint and wigs. But the Margarima men and women are having the better time--arm in arm, chanting, laughing, telling rude jokes and breaking in to take the arm of their favourite partner.

Although this singsing was utterly unlike a Margarima singsing of sixty years ago, when Hides and O'Malley came through, something about it seems eternally true: all the strutting and hauteur of beautiful people catching the eye of the opposite sex. We everywhere see handsome, oiled men, young and old, and lovely, coy young girls and their mothers and aunties, strikingly painted and decorated, or covered with black ash, and strolling along purposefully, avoiding the direct glances of people from other clans, tribes and areas. Here and there are boyfriends and girlfriends palming gifts of betelnut, hot buns and Hubba Bubba bought at the roadside markets. There's a young girl wearing a pussycat hat; and old man in a flowered Huli wig, with glitter and wrap-around sunglasses. Double phalanxes of serious Huli dancers come jumping in as their minders clear the crowd with whipping-twigs, and everyone turns to admire them. Mendi groups cluster around wearing their magnificent wigs. Young boys have painted their faces half ochre-half white clay, their heads crowned with soft ferns. The Wola men, in free as tanget and thin bark covering on their mushroom-shaped wigs, are the first to take out umbrellas when it starts to drizzle. Soon the field is dotted with pink and white plastic bags wrapped around precious wigs, in that flashy way only Southern Highlanders know how to mix old and new. It's all about style, colour, and shock value here. There's even a man dressed up as a widow--who, when I ask where his susu have gone, laughs and says that all his kids have sucked them dry--then taunts-- "Na yu? Husat dringim susu bilong yu?!"

Those of you who have never been to the Southern Highlands, should give it a try. Fly Air Niugini to either Tari or Mendi, and try to take a 4WD out along the Highlands Highway to Margarima, where the mountain views flecked with tidy hamlets and gardens are some of the best sights in all of the highlands.