Papua New Guinea is best known as the malarial graveyard of 8,000 Australians in World War Two and the jungle spot where oil heir Michael Rockefeller vanished on a 1961 canoe trip. He is believed to have been eaten by tribespeople. Here is where Tony Robinson-Smith and his wife Nadya, of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., decided to take their holiday.
The point of travel is to see, smell and taste a different world. Of Canoes And Crocodiles achieves this with humour and meticulous note-taking. The couple set out to cover the 1,126-kilometre Sepik River by dugout canoe. “It will be dangerous,” warns one villager. “You should not go alone,” says another.
They carry no firearms but 20 cans of tuna, instant coffee and mosquito netting. The result: Of Canoes And Crocodiles is the best of travel writing, rich and vivid. “It is an overcast, windless day and the air seems soupy and stale,” writes Robinson-Smith. Any reader could smell it.
Papua New Guinea is partially recognizable to any Canadian who ever backpacked through the Third World. It is a very remote 21st century village that remains untouched by Adidas T-shirts, tailor-made cigarettes or Christianity.
The Third World is also small and dark, literally. There are no good roads or municipal lighting. “Parrots, their bright colours now dull in the fading light, bullet by low overhead in bands of three of our, screeching uproariously,” writes Robinson-Smith. “I scan the banks nervously for crocodiles.”
Villagers hunt crocodiles with spears and jacklighting. “The light makes crocodiles come to the canoe,” a hunter tells the travelers. “That sounds dangerous,” says Nadya. “Yes,” the hunter replies.
Our correspondents paddle the Sepik. It is no Rhine cruise. “The day’s paddle ends when we run up on a mud bar in front of two huts leaning out over the water. Both are in miserable condition, slats missing from the walls, stilt legs at odd angles, palm leaf roofs patchy and sagging.”
Food is fresh and quickly monotonous. “Slurping coconuts on our seventh day in paradise, we discuss options,” writes Robinson-Smith. Of Canoes And Crocodiles is warm and human. “What do you do for fun?” the author asks one Papuan. “Fish and carve masks,” the villager replies.
Papuans have cash crops, vanilla pods and crocodile skins. Chickens are free range but not kept for eggs or meat. “Chicken eat insect,” a villager explains. “Then insect do not eat our food.”
The jungle menu is coconut, coconut, coconut, wild pig and cuscus, smoked piranha, catfish and sugar cane for snacks. This is the reason there are so few Papuan restaurants in our cities. Breakfast is pancakes made of flour from the sago palm.
Processing sago flour by hand is hard work. Everyone works in the Third World. Even love is work. A bridal dowry is a fortune, the equivalent of $2,000, representing a substantial investment by aunts, uncles and cousins.
A husband explains that once married, men “make canoes, hunt animals, build houses, clear forest for gardens and cut down sago.” A wife explains women “fish, cook meals, look after children, go to market, look after house.” There is some dispute as to who does the most labour, but a 32-hour work week is unthinkable.
“I will return to Canada with images of a tribal life that is robust and enduring,” writes Robinson-Smith. “The men and women we met on the Sepik were lean, fit, cheerful, practical, self-reliant and fiercely proud.”
By Holly Doan
Of Canoes And Crocodiles: Paddling The Sepik In Papua New Guinea, by Tony Robinson-Smith; University of Alberta Press; 240 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-7348; $26.99
