Daily Living

Above is a typical close up view of a canoe. You can sit or stand quite a few people. This is the main mode of transportation besides walking. Sometimes we get patients who come from some village half a day away on canoe. Obviously sometimes some of these patients do not make it to the hospital. The other day I heard wailing coming from the morgue at the hospital. I was told that there is a junction on the river that narrows and there are rapids. Somehow there was one boat whose motor broke and at this junction, the boat overturn and all 4 adults and one child did not make. Three of the adults' bodies floated downstream and landed about 40min away from the hospital and the bodies was brought over to the morgue. They had not found the body of the child. Whenever someone dies here, the people wail very loud for many hours. I am told that if you do not wail loudly then people may think that you were the reason that the person died. They are quite superstitious and even here there is the peer pressure. If one does not wail, one maybe accused for causing the death one way or another. I think wailing is great way to mourn the loss but the pressure of how loud and how long one wails should not be judged.


Above is a picture of a mother who is carrying her little baby. There are no prams but they make a 'bilum' to carry their baby.
Look below to see how they make a 'bilum'


Above is a picture of how they make the thread for the bilum. They take what looks like dried straw and they roll small strings into threads


Above is a lady weaving a 'bilum' from the thread the grandmother has made. Once completed it can be a regular bag that one carries around, bags to put pots and pans in the kitchen, or as the earlier picture shows a bag to carry their babies