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[♪]
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One hundred miles
off the north coast of Australia
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is the territory of Papua New Guinea.
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In the western highlands
of Papua New Guinea,
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there are many tribes.
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One of them is the Kawelka.
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[pig noises]
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The most prominent leader, or Big Man,
of the Kawelka tribe, is Ongka.
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[pig noises]
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[speaking to pigs]
Ash, ash, ash...
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For five years, the Kawelka tribe,
driven on by Ongka,
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have been struggling
to assemble a huge gift,
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mainly of pigs, to present
to a neighboring tribe.
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For Ongka, assembling
and giving this gift
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is more important than
anything in his life.
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[pig noises]
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This film is about why
Ongka so wanted to do it,
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and about his efforts
to bring it off.
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[pig noises]
Nah nah nah nah.
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The Big Man of the tribe who are
going to receive the gift is Parowa,
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who is also the local member
of the National Assembly.
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One day, this July, Parowa set off
on his way back home to the Highlands.
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Parowa knew pretty well what
the Kawelka were trying to prepare:
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five or six hundred pigs,
rare birds, money,
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tubes of decorating oil, a truck,
and maybe a motorbike.
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All his life, Parowa,
like all Highland men,
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has been involved
in the system
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of receiving gifts and
later repaying them.
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These gifts are called moka,
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and moka is the most important thing
in the lives of the Highland people.
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When he got home this summer,
Parowa thought that Ongka's moka
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was going to be very soon,
but that's not how it turned out,
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and Parowa just had to wait
until Ongka was ready.
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[bird noises]
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[pig noises]
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Early this summer, after years
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of scheming and manipulating,
planning and persuading,
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Ongka began to feel that he might finally
be able to bring off his big moka,
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and that it could be the
biggest moka ever given.
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[pig noises]
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The reason why Ongka
so wanted to give his big moka
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is that only by giving can he earn fame
and status for his tribe and for himself.
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In the West, you can
get status lots of ways:
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from money, from success,
from your job, your possessions.
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The only way Ongka can get status
is to outdo his fellow men in moka,
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to overwhelm them publicly with
the sheer size of the gift that he gives.
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It's an awful lot of work
to organize a big gift,
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and Ongka needed the cooperation
of a lot of people.
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Big men have no authority
over their tribesmen.
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Ongka cannot order people around.
He can only persuade.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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Ongka gave them a favorite speech,
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in which he told them to stop
fiddling about in their gardens,
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to stop drinking beer and
wasting time with women,
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and to get on with it.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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"What you are supposed to be doing,"
he said,
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"is getting pigs ready for the moka,
not sitting around eating them."
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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The Kawelka are a small tribe,
about a thousand people.
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All around are other tribes,
some allies, some enemies.
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There are no villages,
just scattered settlements,
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around which Ongka plodded,
bringing news, checking on progress,
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and trying to set a date
for the big moka.
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The date is always a problem.
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Big men compete for
the status of fixing the date,
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and a lot of conspiring goes on.
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[whispering Kawelkan language]
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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Ongka lives in his men's house,
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five minutes away from the house
of his favorite wife, Rumbakel.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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Ongka has four wives
and nine children,
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but he talks rather wearily about
trying to manage more than one wife,
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and only Rumbakel
now looks after pigs for him.
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Ongka talked endlessly about pigs.
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He said that pigs are the
only worthwhile thing,
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but if money looks after white people,
pigs look after them.
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You have to have pigs
for whatever you want to do.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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The next day, Ongka's
father-in-law, Undamba,
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had some pigs staked out
for him to see,
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returns on the investment
Ongka had made with him.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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If Ongka was satisfied,
these pigs would be given to him later,
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at a small moka which
would feed into Ongka's big one.
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It was not as many as Ongka
had hoped, but it was a start.
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Pigs have always been important.
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Ongka's father-in-law
told us about the old--
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Although Ongka had now been
promised pigs by his father-in-law,
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and by other men that he'd invested with,
the small moka ceremonies
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at which he would actually
receive the pigs still had to happen,
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and Ongka started to dress up
for the first of these.
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Before the Australians
pacified the area in the 1940s,
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Ongka too fought against his enemy tribes,
and sometimes against his allies.
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Big men planned the fighting, and the
peace, and the pig-givings that followed.
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Big men have always
been especially vulnerable.
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Ongka has many stories
about attacks upon himself,
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including one about how, one night,
he was about to visit his lavatory hut.
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As he walked towards it,
he sensed his enemy lying in wait.
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Ongka hid in a nearby bush and watched
while his enemies crept up
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and drove their spear through the walls,
thinking they'd got him inside.
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Ongka, dressed in his feathers,
set off for the first small moka
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that would feed pigs into the system.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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While the pigs
are tied up in the shade,
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the donors put on their
bird-of-paradise feathers
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and dance to celebrate
their achievement.
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[drum beat]
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[drum beat, singing]
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Who gets what is all
worked out beforehand,
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but the pigs are inspected
and counted again, usually by Ongka.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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The donors walk down the line of stakes,
shouting out the name of the man
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who will receive the pig
that will be tied to it.
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The correct pig is then brought on
and tied to its allotted stake.
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Disputes about who gets what should,
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at least in theory,
have been worked out before.
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[pigs sqealing]
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Before the pigs are taken away,
men make speeches of a special kind,
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full of allusions and complex metaphors,
a whole language of their own.
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[speaking in Kawelkan language]
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Speech-making is Ongka's great skill.
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[speaking loudly in Kawelkan language]
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At one stage in his speech,
Ongka said,
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the men's house had fallen down,
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the young girl's breasts had fallen,
the young man's beard grew long,
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but now that you've given these pigs,
I shall marry the young girl,
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find a wife for the young man,
and I shall build the men's house again.
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Ongka got one pig
and his fellow tribesmen got the rest,
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all to be fed into the big moka.
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Ongka has a surprising quantity of money,
$1,800 Australian dollars,
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sitting in the Mount Hagen Savings Bank
at 3 3/4 percent interest,
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but, highly conscious
of the value of money,
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he refused to pay
to put his pig on a truck,
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and walked it the twelve miles home.
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[rhythmic drumming and whistling]
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[singing]
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Three weeks later, another of
the small mokas took place,
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and fed in 55 more pigs
for the big moka.
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Ongka supervised the dancers
to make sure they would perform well
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when the big moka came.
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[speaking Kawelkan language]
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[drumming and whistling]
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[singing]
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At this small moka,
there was money as well as pigs.
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Money, Australian dollars,
comes almost entirely from coffee,
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which they grow and sell
to the coffee companies in Mount Hagen.
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Until ten years ago,
pearl shells were used in moka,
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but now shells have been
replaced by paper dollars,
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and a big pig is now worth
about 250 dollars, or 140 pounds.
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[pigs squealing]
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[drumming and singing]
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This time it was a ritual war charge
in which extra pigs
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were brought on as a surprise,
to get extra prestige.
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[speaking in Kawelkan language]
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In Ongka's enemy tribe,
a Big Man died suddenly.
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[singing]
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If a man, especially a Big Man,
dies suddenly,
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it's always thought
he was killed by sorcery,
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and the men charge in anger
against the enemy
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who must have
performed the sorcery.
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[singing]
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In their song, the women sang,
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"Oh my father, oh my father,
whom shall I turn to now?"
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In their song, the men sang,
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"Oh my brother, oh my brother,
whom shall I live with now?"
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[singing]
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As the day wore on,
visitors brought news
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of Kawelka men
of Ongka's group
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who had been heard singing,
drunk, in a truck.
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People said,
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"It must be our Kawelka enemies
who killed our Big Man by sorcery,"
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that they were singing
because they were pleased,
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and there began to be talk of
going down to burn Kawelka houses.
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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This sort of payment can
become the basis of a moka,
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and the moka sequence in which Ongka
is involved began in this sort of way,
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as a payment of pigs
for deaths in tribal fighting.
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Later, more pigs were returned, and
the to-and-fro exchanges of a moka began.
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The funeral held everything up.
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For three weeks, until the mourning
was over, the Kawelka were uneasy.
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There were no mokas, in case
they antagonized the dead man's tribe.
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[shouting]
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Eventually, the next small moka
did happen,
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and Ongka was given the pigs
promised by his father-in-law,
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but they didn't decorate or dance
out of respect for the dead man.
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[speaking in Kawelka language]
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Ongka did rather better than expected.
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Eighty pigs were given,
and Ongka got half of them.
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Ongka was very happy,
but more pigs meant more work,
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and the pressure was really on him,
and even more on Rumbakel,
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to hand the pigs on.
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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Rumbakel had no
sweet potatoes left.
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They had to find them
wherever they could.
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At night, with no more
room for pigs inside,
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someone had to
sleep out with them.
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Ongka even found an extra wife,
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a widow whose greatest attraction
was her capacity for work.
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[Speaking to pigs]
Ash, ash, ash...
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[pigs noises]
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Before the big moka could happen,
there were still three small mokas to go.
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Each one meant more pigs and
mounting pressure to pass them on.
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[singing, drumming]
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[pigs squealing]
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As the big moka got closer,
the pressure on Rumbakel got worse.
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[speaking Kewelka language]
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The last few pigs were coming in.
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Ongka began to talk about going down
to buy cows as an extra surprise.
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The big moka was very close.
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[pigs squealing]
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Moka isn't just about pigs;
it's about all kinds of things.
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The Kawelka say that
it keeps the peace;
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it's a way of making
a name for yourself;
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it holds the tribe together;
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it's the big social event.
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On a more general level,
moka is a system, a framework.
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All over the world, people operate
within some kind of framework,
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and moka is one of them.
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There's one more thing to do before
the big moka could happen the next day.
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The money they had collected
to give to Parowa and his tribe
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had to be spread out and counted.
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They got 10,000 Australian dollars,
about five and a half thousand pounds.
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[crowd talking]
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Parowa, a member of the assembly,
often says it's time they gave up moka,
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but he sat, watching the piles
of money mounting up.
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When we asked Ongka what he'd do
if Parowa didn't one day return the moka,
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Ongka said he'd take him
behind a bush and slit his throat,
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but even if he did
lose his investment,
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he could never lose the glory
of having given it.
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Then, it happened.
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Suddenly, Ongka's rival, Rima,
did what he always said he'd do,
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and upset the timing of the moka.
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Rima put a whisper through the crowd
that it was his group
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who had killed the
Big Man by sorcery.
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It's not the kind of thing
you admit to in public,
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but it had the effect he wanted.
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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Broke up in confusion,
the people angry at Rima
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for stirring up old troubles.
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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Ulka, married into the dead man's tribe,
came down in a war charge to get Rima.
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[people shouting]
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On their way,
they came past Ongka's.
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To try and stop them,
Ongka sat down in the road.
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[people shouting]
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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Ongka told them that
they must stop this talk of fighting,
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that when the Europeans first came,
they'd put ideas of fighting
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down the lavatory hole,
and that's where they should stay.
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[speaking Kawelka language]
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He told them it was just a hitch, that
they would finish the big moka together.
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Ongka, with no power to stop them,
did his best to persuade them.
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Some listened;
some set off for Rima's.
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[people shouting]
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The next day, there was no big moka.
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Rima went into hiding.
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A few nights later,
they killed four of his pigs.
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Parowa had been waiting three months,
but now he had to go back to the Assembly
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to discuss the new constitution for
the independence of Papua New Guinea.
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Parowa was getting used to delays.
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The big moka had originally
been planned for a year ago,
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and Ongka and his group had got as far
as buying a truck as part of their gift.
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Parowa said there was no point
in the truck rotting away
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until the big moka did happen, and that he
might as well use it in the meantime.
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At the end of his moka speech,
Ongka said,
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"Now that I have given you
all these things, I have won.
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I have knocked you down
by giving so much."