100 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 Kowalka. For five years, the Kalka tribe, driven on by Onka, have been struggling to assemble a huge gift, mainly of pigs. to present to a neighboring tribe.
For Onka, assembling and giving this gift is more important than anything in his life. This film is about why Onka so wanted to do it and about his efforts to bring it off. The big man of the tribe who are going to receive the gift is Perowa, who is also the local member of the National Assembly.
One day this July, Perowa set off on his way back home to the highlands. Perowa knew pretty well what the Kalka 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, Perowa, like all Highland men, has been involved in the system of receiving gifts and later repaying them. These gifts are called mocha, and mocha is the most important thing in the lives of the Highland people. When he got home this summer, Perowa thought that Onka's mocha was going to be very soon.
But that's not how it turned out, and Perowa just had to wait till Onka was ready. Early this summer, after years of scheming and manipulating, planning and persuading, Onka began to feel that he might finally be able to bring off his big mocha, and that it could be the biggest mocha ever given. The reason why Onca so wanted to give his big mocha 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 Anka can get status is to outdo his fellow men in Moka, to overwhelm them publicly by the sheer size of the gift that he gives. It's an awful lot of work to organise a big gift, and Anka needed the cooperation of a lot of people.
Big men have no authority over their tribesmen. Anka cannot order people around. He can only persuade. I'm going to go and walk here and there I don't know what to do with it. Onka 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.
What you are supposed to be doing, he said, is getting pigs ready for the mocha, not sitting around eating them. The Kalka 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 Onkar plodded, bringing news, checking on progress and trying to set a date for the big Makar.
The date is always a problem. Big men compete for the status of fixing the date, and a lot of conspiring goes on. I'm going to get you a drink. Onka lives in his men's house, five minutes away from the house of his favourite wife, Rumbakul. Onka has four wives and nine children, but he talks rather wearily about trying to manage more than one wife, and only Rumbakul now looks after pigs for him.
Thank you. Onka talked endlessly about pigs. He said that pigs are the only worthwhile thing. That if money looks after white people, pigs look after them. You have to have pigs for whatever you want to do.
The people of the village are very happy. They Pigs can be used in lots of ways, but there's a rare bird captured in the forest that is used only as a mocha gift, much as the Chinese are apt to give pandas to visiting dignitaries. It's called a cassowary, and Onka hope to give five.
Rumbukul lives with her daughters in her women's house. The pigs live there too, separated off by a fence. The basic food of both pigs and people is sweet potatoes.
Pigs are a lot of work. Hard at it, Rumbukul can look after eight full-grown pigs, maybe ten for a while. Sometimes, Onko went back to his men's house. Sometimes he ate with Rumbakul and the children. You can survive alright without pigs.
Your food, the materials for your house, the traditional clothes, all come from the gardens and forest. And you only eat pig on special occasions. But if you want to get on in life, Because it's not possible to look after more than a few pigs, you cannot accumulate, you can't hoard them.
What you can do is to assemble a lot of pigs and give them away in a big public show. And it's by giving that you impress other people. In his big mocha, Onca himself wanted to give about a hundred pigs. To have that many on the day, there is a system of investment. Over the last four years, Onca had invested pigs with other people, mostly with Rumbacle's father.
The next day, Rumbacle's father was going to show them the pigs he owed, and Onca sorted through his feathers and skins to see what he was going to wear for the occasion. The The next day, Onka's father-in-law Ndamba had some pigs staked out for him to see, returns on the investment Onka had. If Onca was satisfied, these pigs would be given to him later at a small mocha which would feed into Onca's big one. It was not as many as Onca had hoped, but it was a start. Pigs have always been important.
Onca's father-in-law told us about the olden days. I'm a thing I just want to walk on the road one of my petting the man I will find a woman I've got a problem number of ruins in Peter of Bonner one I am very happy to be here. I'm going to go to the mountain and Although Onka had now been promised pigs by his father-in-law, and by other men that he'd invested with, the small mocha ceremonies at which he would actually receive the pigs were not so common. pigs still had to happen, and Onka started to dress up for the first of these.
Before the Australians pacified the area in the 1940s, Onka 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.
Onka 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 enemies lying in wait. Onka hid in a nearby bush and watched while his enemies crept up and drove their spears through the walls, thinking they'd got him inside.
Honka, dressed in his feathers, set off for the first small mocha that would feed pigs into the system. The I'm going to go to the I'm going to go to the While the pigs are tied up in the shade, the donors put on their bird of paradise feathers and dance to celebrate their achievement. Who gets what is all worked out beforehand, but the pigs are inspected and counted again, usually by onker.
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.
Language of their own. Speech making is Onkar's great skill. At one stage in his speech, Onkar 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. Onka got one pig and his fellow tribesmen got the rest, all to be fed into the big mocha. Onka has a surprising quantity of money, 1,800 Australian dollars, sitting in the Mount Hagen Savings Bank at 3.75% interest.
But, highly conscious of the value of money, he refused to pay to put his pig on a truck and walked it the 12 miles home. It wasn't only that Onka wanted to give his big mocha, he had to. Mocha gifts are given and, some years later, they should be repaid with interest.
Technically, mocha is the interest, the extra, that you manage to give back over and above the gift you received. Ten years ago, Onka's tribe were given 400 pigs by their neighbours, and to answer that, Onka wanted to give at least 600. I don't know what to do. I am a I am very happy to be able to speak to you.
To organize 600 pigs, Onca had to do two things. He had to gather in his own investments and push his tribesmen into gathering in theirs. With no authority over them, he can only push. And if he pushes too hard, they won't cooperate anymore. There was one place where he had constant problems.
He told them to stop looking for lice in their wives'aprons and get a movement. I'm going to go to the hospital. I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to do what I can.
Three weeks later, another of the small mockers took place and fed in 55 more pigs for the big mocker. Yeah! We love you!
We love you! At this small mocha, 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 Mokka, but now shells have been replaced by paper dollars, and a big pig is now worth about $250, but £140.
This time, there was a ritual war charge in which extra pigs were brought on. as a surprise to get extra prestige. Within every tribe, big men compete with each other. Onca has one particular rival trying to oust him, Raima. Raima has few of Onca's abilities, but he always told us that he, not Onca, would be the one to fix the date of the big mocha.
In his speech, Onkar said that they all knew the story of the lady who made a lot of noise in her sweet potato garden until a man came along and gave her what she wanted and then she was happy and quiet. And now that I've got what I want, he said, I too am very happy and like that lady, I will sit in my corner and not say any more. Thank you very much.
I'm very happy. I was very happy to see him. I am very happy to be able to do this. As the pigs began to appear, Onka said that they were like a snake half hidden in the grass. He could see its head, but he couldn't tell how long its body was.
Onka went off to the Jimmy Valley two days'walk away to get new feathers for his headdress and to chase up a 40-pig investment. While he was away, something happened to jeopardize all he had been working for. In Anka's enemy tribe, a big man died suddenly. 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.
In their song, a woman sang, O my father, O my father, whom shall I turn to now? In their song, the men sang, O my brother, O my brother, Whom shall I live with now? As the day wore on, visitors brought news of Kalka men of Onka's group, who had been heard singing, drunk, in a truck. People said, it must be a Kalka inner. 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 Kalka houses.
When Onka got home with his feathers, he heard that his group were being accused of the sorcery. At once, he sent a pig down to the funeral with a message to say it wasn't true, and a special branch used in oath-taking to emphasize the truth of what he was saying. He wanted to go down to the funeral himself to tell them that it wasn't true, but he didn't dare go.
Some of his relatives, married into the dead man's tribe, came and took his branch and his pig down along with a pig of their own. Onka's pig was accepted and cooked along with others at a distribution of pork to mark the end of the first period of mourning. But it only smoothed over the accusation. It didn't get rid of the suspicion.
This sort of payment can become the basis of a mocha, and the mocha sequence in which Onka 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 mocha began. The funeral held everything up.
For three weeks, until the mourning was over, the Kalka were uneasy. There were no mockers in case they antagonised the dead man's tribe. and Onkar was given the pinks promised by his father-in-law. But they didn't decorate or dance out of respect for the dead man. Onka did rather better than he expected.
Eighty pigs were given, and Onka got half of them. Ankur was very happy, but more pigs meant more work, and the pressure was really on him, and even more on Rumbakul, to hand the pigs on. We've made down Rumbukul 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. Onka even found an extra wife, a widow whose greatest attraction was her capacity for work. Before the big mocker could happen, there were still three small mockers to go.
Each one meant more pigs and mounting pressure to pass them on. I am very happy to be able to do this. The last few pigs were coming in. Onca began to talk about going down to buy cows as an extra surprise. The big mocha was very close.
Mokka isn't just about pigs, it's about all kinds of things. The Kalka 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, Mokka is a system, a framework. All over the world, people operate within some kind of framework, and Mokka is one of them. Ah!
I'm not ready to be over there. I'm here. I'm here to borrow your things.
I'm here to borrow your things. I'm going to borrow your things. I'm going to borrow your father's things. I'm going to borrow your father's things.
I'm going to borrow your father's things. I'm going to borrow your things. It was one more thing to do before the big moka could happen the next day. The money they had collected to give to Perua and his tribe had to be spread out and counted. They got 10,000 Australian dollars.
Each bundle is $200 and is destined for a particular group. Four, five, six. seven, eight, nine, ten, two thousand, one, two, three. Parowa, the member of the assembly, often says it's...
time they gave up Mokka, but he sat watching the piles of money mounting up. When we asked Onka what he'd do if Perowa didn't one day return the Mokka, Onka said he'd take him behind a bush and slit his throat, but even if he did lose his his investment, he could never lose the glory of having given it. Then it happened.
Suddenly Onca's rival, Raima, did what he always said he'd do and upset the timing of the mocha. Raima put a whisper in Onca's ear and said, ...through the crowd that it was his group who would kill the big man by sorcery. It's not the kind of thing you admit to in public, but it had the effect you wanted.
He broke up in confusion with people angry at Raimah for stirring up old troubles. That night, Onca was still saying the big mocha would happen the next day. In fact, things turned out much worse than Onca had expected.
Early next morning, the group of Kalka married into the dead man's tribe came down in a war charge to get Rhyma. On their way, they came past onkas. To try and stop them, onkas sat down in the road. Onka told them that they must stop this talk of fighting. But when the Europeans first came, they had put ideas of fighting down the lavatory hill, and that's where they should stay.
He told them it was just a hitch that they would finish the big moka together. Onka, with no power to stop them, did it. his best to persuade them.
Some listened, some set off a riot. The next day, there was no Big Mocker. Rhymer went into hiding. A few nights later, they killed four of his pigs. Perowa 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.
Perowa was getting used to delays. The big mocha had originally been planned for a year ago, and Onka and his group had got as far as buying a truck as part of their gift. Perowa said there was no point in the truck rotting away until the big mocha did happen, and that he might as well use it in the meantime.
Shh! Sometime after we two had left, Onca's Big Moka finally did happen. There were 600 pigs, ten thousand dollars, eight cows and twelve casseries. They washed the truck and decorated it with flowers and there was a motorbike. At the end of his mocker's speech, Onka said, Now that I have given you all these things, I have won.
I have knocked you down by giving so much.