This was my third trip to Papua New Guinea, and it will be my last. For a number of reasons this was one of the worst trips I've done:
1. I didn't receive my visa until literally the day before I was due to leave.
2. It involved 12 flights and the trip cost was twice what I had paid before. With long layovers, two cancellations and the rebooking involved I spent more time waiting in airports and on planes that I did actually at my destination.
3. Myself, Anny a woman from France, and Sandy a veteran traveler from New Zealand found ourselves lumped in with eleven people from Poland who treated us like we were invisible. After an initial confrontation with them where they kept an entire village waiting for them for two hours while they insisted on a hot meal for a second lunch, we spent the rest of the trip trying to avoid them. That meant constantly changing our itinerary, and them bumping us from the best accommodations.
4. We encountered "civil unrest" which closed down the airport for most of a day on our return trip, and the sound of gunshots. Sandy experienced even more violence when he returned from the post-trip scuba diving on the coast where there were riots in the town of Kimbe, and he needed a police escort to get to the airport with roads blocked by burning trash, and then the airport there was also closed for most of a day.
The highlights of the trip involved my travel companions Anny and Sandy, my reunion with Big Man Ronnie and his son Jonah in their village Kuminabit, and the primary reason I went: to attend the Goroka Sing-Sing.
On my first trip to PNG I photographed Jonah when he was eight years old in 2015. You can see that photo by going to that post. He is standing buck naked with a crocodile over his shoulder. When I returned in 2017 he knew I was one of his favorites, despite being deaf since birth, and when I left the village he presented me with a penis gourd. This time the gift was a crocodile skull wrapped in a woven enclosure.
Here is Jonah, now fifteen years old. He has learned to read and write by attending school and just being very observant despite the fact that he can't hear or talk. He has developed his own sign language. His name for me is rubbing his arm, referring to my white skin, and then stroking his chin, referring to my beard.
The other highlight was the Goroka Sing-Sing. In 2015 I attended the Mount Hagen Sing-Sing and this was similar, although with some different tribes. They all spend hours putting on their makeup and costumes, then march, dance, drum, and sing their way into the arena. They don't stop once there and it ends up a cacophony of sounds, and a profusion of colors. At first only tourists (mostly with cameras) are admitted - which prove difficult to keep out of the background of my own photos - until 2pm when they let the locals into the arena. At that point it is packed with people. It is a two-day event and due to a plane cancellation, we were late arrivals on the first day. The total number of trip photos I came home with were a fraction of my usual.
The Sing-Sing experience is an explosion of sound and sights with many tribal performances going on all at the same time in a large field. Photographers are free to roam around and capture the action up close. Fill flash is important for stills because of the sun and time of day, but the best to capture the experience is video. Filmed in 2022.
https://vimeo.com/811809911
