Ongka's Big Moka for World Music and Cultures.mpg

[♪]

One hundred miles
off the north coast of Australia

is the territory of Papua New Guinea.

In the western highlands
of Papua New Guinea,

there are many tribes.

One of them is the Kawelka.

[pig noises]

The most prominent leader, or Big Man,
of the Kawelka tribe, is Ongka.

[pig noises]

[speaking to pigs]
Ash, ash, ash...

For five years, the Kawelka tribe,
driven on by Ongka,

have been struggling
to assemble a huge gift,

mainly of pigs, to present
to a neighboring tribe.

For Ongka, assembling
and giving this gift

is more important than
anything in his life.

[pig noises]

This film is about why
Ongka so wanted to do it,

and about his efforts
to bring it off.

[pig noises]
Nah nah nah nah.

The Big Man of the tribe who are
going to receive the gift is Parowa,

who is also the local member
of the National Assembly.

One day, this July, Parowa set off
on his way back home to the Highlands.

Parowa knew pretty well what
the Kawelka were trying to prepare:

five or six hundred pigs,
rare birds, money,

tubes of decorating oil, a truck,
and maybe a motorbike.

All his life, Parowa,
like all Highland men,

has been involved
in the system

of receiving gifts and
later repaying them.

These gifts are called moka,

and moka is the most important thing
in the lives of the Highland people.

When he got home this summer,
Parowa thought that Ongka's moka

was going to be very soon,
but that's not how it turned out,

and Parowa just had to wait
until Ongka was ready.

[bird noises]

[pig noises]

Early this summer, after years

of scheming and manipulating,
planning and persuading,

Ongka began to feel that he might finally
be able to bring off his big moka,

and that it could be the
biggest moka ever given.

[pig noises]

The reason why Ongka
so wanted to give his big moka

is that only by giving can he earn fame
and status for his tribe and for himself.

In the West, you can
get status lots of ways:

from money, from success,
from your job, your possessions.

The only way Ongka can get status
is to outdo his fellow men in moka,

to overwhelm them publicly with
the sheer size of the gift that he gives.

It's an awful lot of work
to organize a big gift,

and Ongka needed the cooperation
of a lot of people.

Big men have no authority
over their tribesmen.

Ongka cannot order people around.
He can only persuade.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

Ongka gave them a favorite speech,

in which he told them to stop
fiddling about in their gardens,

to stop drinking beer and
wasting time with women,

and to get on with it.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

"What you are supposed to be doing,"
he said,

"is getting pigs ready for the moka,
not sitting around eating them."

[speaking Kawelkan language]

The Kawelka are a small tribe,
about a thousand people.

All around are other tribes,
some allies, some enemies.

There are no villages,
just scattered settlements,

around which Ongka plodded,
bringing news, checking on progress,

and trying to set a date
for the big moka.

The date is always a problem.

Big men compete for
the status of fixing the date,

and a lot of conspiring goes on.

[whispering Kawelkan language]

[speaking Kawelkan language]

Ongka lives in his men's house,

five minutes away from the house
of his favorite wife, Rumbakel.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

Ongka has four wives
and nine children,

but he talks rather wearily about
trying to manage more than one wife,

and only Rumbakel
now looks after pigs for him.

Ongka talked endlessly about pigs.

He said that pigs are the
only worthwhile thing,

but if money looks after white people,
pigs look after them.

You have to have pigs
for whatever you want to do.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

The next day, Ongka's
father-in-law, Undamba,

had some pigs staked out
for him to see,

returns on the investment
Ongka had made with him.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

If Ongka was satisfied,
these pigs would be given to him later,

at a small moka which
would feed into Ongka's big one.

It was not as many as Ongka
had hoped, but it was a start.

Pigs have always been important.

Ongka's father-in-law
told us about the old--

Although Ongka had now been
promised pigs by his father-in-law,

and by other men that he'd invested with,
the small moka ceremonies

at which he would actually
receive the pigs still had to happen,

and Ongka started to dress up
for the first of these.

Before the Australians
pacified the area in the 1940s,

Ongka too fought against his enemy tribes,
and sometimes against his allies.

Big men planned the fighting, and the
peace, and the pig-givings that followed.

Big men have always
been especially vulnerable.

Ongka has many stories
about attacks upon himself,

including one about how, one night,
he was about to visit his lavatory hut.

As he walked towards it,
he sensed his enemy lying in wait.

Ongka hid in a nearby bush and watched
while his enemies crept up

and drove their spear through the walls,
thinking they'd got him inside.

Ongka, dressed in his feathers,
set off for the first small moka

that would feed pigs into the system.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

While the pigs
are tied up in the shade,

the donors put on their
bird-of-paradise feathers

and dance to celebrate
their achievement.

[drum beat]

[drum beat, singing]

Who gets what is all
worked out beforehand,

but the pigs are inspected
and counted again, usually by Ongka.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

The donors walk down the line of stakes,
shouting out the name of the man

who will receive the pig
that will be tied to it.

The correct pig is then brought on
and tied to its allotted stake.

Disputes about who gets what should,

at least in theory,
have been worked out before.

[pigs sqealing]

Before the pigs are taken away,
men make speeches of a special kind,

full of allusions and complex metaphors,
a whole language of their own.

[speaking in Kawelkan language]

Speech-making is Ongka's great skill.

[speaking loudly in Kawelkan language]

At one stage in his speech,
Ongka said,

the men's house had fallen down,

the young girl's breasts had fallen,
the young man's beard grew long,

but now that you've given these pigs,
I shall marry the young girl,

find a wife for the young man,
and I shall build the men's house again.

Ongka got one pig
and his fellow tribesmen got the rest,

all to be fed into the big moka.

Ongka has a surprising quantity of money,
$1,800 Australian dollars,

sitting in the Mount Hagen Savings Bank
at 3 3/4 percent interest,

but, highly conscious
of the value of money,

he refused to pay
to put his pig on a truck,

and walked it the twelve miles home.

[rhythmic drumming and whistling]

[singing]

Three weeks later, another of
the small mokas took place,

and fed in 55 more pigs
for the big moka.

Ongka supervised the dancers
to make sure they would perform well

when the big moka came.

[speaking Kawelkan language]

[drumming and whistling]

[singing]

At this small moka,
there was money as well as pigs.

Money, Australian dollars,
comes almost entirely from coffee,

which they grow and sell
to the coffee companies in Mount Hagen.

Until ten years ago,
pearl shells were used in moka,

but now shells have been
replaced by paper dollars,

and a big pig is now worth
about 250 dollars, or 140 pounds.

[pigs squealing]

[drumming and singing]

This time it was a ritual war charge
in which extra pigs

were brought on as a surprise,
to get extra prestige.

[speaking in Kawelkan language]

In Ongka's enemy tribe,
a Big Man died suddenly.

[singing]

If a man, especially a Big Man,
dies suddenly,

it's always thought
he was killed by sorcery,

and the men charge in anger
against the enemy

who must have
performed the sorcery.

[singing]

In their song, the women sang,

"Oh my father, oh my father,
whom shall I turn to now?"

In their song, the men sang,

"Oh my brother, oh my brother,
whom shall I live with now?"

[singing]

As the day wore on,
visitors brought news

of Kawelka men
of Ongka's group

who had been heard singing,
drunk, in a truck.

People said,

"It must be our Kawelka enemies
who killed our Big Man by sorcery,"

that they were singing
because they were pleased,

and there began to be talk of
going down to burn Kawelka houses.

[speaking Kawelka language]

This sort of payment can
become the basis of a moka,

and the moka sequence in which Ongka
is involved began in this sort of way,

as a payment of pigs
for deaths in tribal fighting.

Later, more pigs were returned, and
the to-and-fro exchanges of a moka began.

The funeral held everything up.

For three weeks, until the mourning
was over, the Kawelka were uneasy.

There were no mokas, in case
they antagonized the dead man's tribe.

[shouting]

Eventually, the next small moka
did happen,

and Ongka was given the pigs
promised by his father-in-law,

but they didn't decorate or dance
out of respect for the dead man.

[speaking in Kawelka language]

Ongka did rather better than expected.

Eighty pigs were given,
and Ongka got half of them.

Ongka was very happy,
but more pigs meant more work,

and the pressure was really on him,
and even more on Rumbakel,

to hand the pigs on.

[speaking Kawelka language]

Rumbakel had no
sweet potatoes left.

They had to find them
wherever they could.

At night, with no more
room for pigs inside,

someone had to
sleep out with them.

Ongka even found an extra wife,

a widow whose greatest attraction
was her capacity for work.

[Speaking to pigs]
Ash, ash, ash...

[pigs noises]

Before the big moka could happen,
there were still three small mokas to go.

Each one meant more pigs and
mounting pressure to pass them on.

[singing, drumming]

[pigs squealing]

As the big moka got closer,
the pressure on Rumbakel got worse.

[speaking Kewelka language]

The last few pigs were coming in.

Ongka began to talk about going down
to buy cows as an extra surprise.

The big moka was very close.

[pigs squealing]

Moka isn't just about pigs;
it's about all kinds of things.

The Kawelka say that
it keeps the peace;

it's a way of making
a name for yourself;

it holds the tribe together;

it's the big social event.

On a more general level,
moka is a system, a framework.

All over the world, people operate
within some kind of framework,

and moka is one of them.

There's one more thing to do before
the big moka could happen the next day.

The money they had collected
to give to Parowa and his tribe

had to be spread out and counted.

They got 10,000 Australian dollars,
about five and a half thousand pounds.

[crowd talking]

Parowa, a member of the assembly,
often says it's time they gave up moka,

but he sat, watching the piles
of money mounting up.

When we asked Ongka what he'd do
if Parowa didn't one day return the moka,

Ongka said he'd take him
behind a bush and slit his throat,

but even if he did
lose his investment,

he could never lose the glory
of having given it.

Then, it happened.

Suddenly, Ongka's rival, Rima,
did what he always said he'd do,

and upset the timing of the moka.

Rima put a whisper through the crowd
that it was his group

who had killed the
Big Man by sorcery.

It's not the kind of thing
you admit to in public,

but it had the effect he wanted.

[speaking Kawelka language]

Broke up in confusion,
the people angry at Rima

for stirring up old troubles.

[speaking Kawelka language]

Ulka, married into the dead man's tribe,
came down in a war charge to get Rima.

[people shouting]

On their way,
they came past Ongka's.

To try and stop them,
Ongka sat down in the road.

[people shouting]

[speaking Kawelka language]

Ongka told them that
they must stop this talk of fighting,

that when the Europeans first came,
they'd put ideas of fighting

down the lavatory hole,
and that's where they should stay.

[speaking Kawelka language]

He told them it was just a hitch, that
they would finish the big moka together.

Ongka, with no power to stop them,
did his best to persuade them.

Some listened;
some set off for Rima's.

[people shouting]

The next day, there was no big moka.

Rima went into hiding.

A few nights later,
they killed four of his pigs.

Parowa had been waiting three months,
but now he had to go back to the Assembly

to discuss the new constitution for
the independence of Papua New Guinea.

Parowa was getting used to delays.

The big moka had originally
been planned for a year ago,

and Ongka and his group had got as far
as buying a truck as part of their gift.

Parowa said there was no point
in the truck rotting away

until the big moka did happen, and that he
might as well use it in the meantime.

At the end of his moka speech,
Ongka said,

"Now that I have given you
all these things, I have won.

I have knocked you down
by giving so much."