[Music] bye [Music] 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 cowell cup the most prominent leader or big man of the kalka tribe is ankara [Music] for five years the kawka tribe written on bianca have been struggling to assemble a huge gift many of pigs to present to a neighboring tribe for anka assembling and giving this gift is more important than anything in his life this film is 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 peru set off on his way back home to the highlands parawa knew pretty well what the culker 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 hello like all highland men has been involved in the system of receiving gifts and later repaying them these gifts are called maca and maca is the most important thing in the lives when he got home this summer peru thought that anka's mocha was going to be very soon but that's not how it turned out and pero just had to wait until anka was ready early this summer after years of scheming and manipulating planning and persuading monster began to feel that he might finally be able to bring off his big mother but it could be the biggest himself in the west you can get status lots of ways for money from success from your job your possessions the only way anka can get status is to outdo his fellow men in mokka to overwhelm them publicly by the sheer size of the gift that he gives it's an awful lot of work to organize 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 [Music] foreign [Music] 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 he's getting pigs ready for the mockery [Music] some allies some enemies there are no villages just scattered settlements around which anchor plotted bringing news checking on progress and trying to set a date for the big mocker the date is always a problem big men compete for the status of fixing the date and a lot of conspiring goes on ah [Music] lives in his men's house five minutes away from the house of his favorite wife has four wives and nine children but he talks rather wearily about trying to manage more than one wife and only rumbacall now looks after pigs for him anka talked endlessly about pigs he said that pigs are the only worthwhile but if money looks out to fight people pigs look after them you have to have pigs for whatever you want to do foreign 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 of the chinese who have to give pandas to visiting dignitaries it's called the kassori and anka hope to give five [Music] [Music] 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 with sweet potatoes pigs are a lot of work hard at it rumble can look after eight full-grown pigs maybe ten for a while [Music] hmm sometimes uncle went back to his men's house sometimes he ate with rhombucal and the children you can survive all right 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 or even marry then you've got to have [Music] [Music] pigs [Applause] 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 it's by giving but you impress other people in his big mocha anka himself wanted to give about a hundred fig have that many on the day there is a system of investment over the last four years anka had invested pigs with other people mostly father the next day ramacal's father was going to show them the pigs and anka sorted through his feathers and skins to see what he was going to wear for the occasion [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] yes the next day anka's father-in-law and amber had some pigs [Music] if uncle was satisfied these pigs would be given to him later at a small mocha which would feed into ankar's big one but it was a start pigs have always been important anka's father-in-law told us about the old [Music] okay [Music] [Music] foreign although anka 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 still had to happen and anka started to dress up for the first of these before the australians pacified the area in the 1940s anker 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 anka 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 anka 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 wonka dressed in his feathers set off for the first small mocha that would feed pigs into the system [Music] by the well the pigs are tied up in the shade the donors put on their bird of paradise feathers to celebrate their achievements [Applause] [Music] who gets what is all worked out beforehand but the pigs are inspected and counted again usually by honkers [Music] 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 before the pigs are taken away men make species of a special kind full of illusions and complex metaphors the whole language of their own great skills [Music] [Music] one stage in his speech [Music] but now that you've given these pigs i shall marry the young girl find a wife a young man's house again [Music] [Applause] got one pig and his fellow tribesmen got the rest all to be fed into the big mocha anka has a surprising quantity of money one thousand eight hundred australian dollars sitting in the mount hagen savings bank at three and three quarter percent interest but highly conscious of the value of money he refused to pay to put his pig on a truck and walked it 12 miles home it wasn't only that anka wanted to give his big mocker he had to mocha gifts are given and some years later they should be repaid with interest technically mocha is the entries the extra that you managed to give back open above the gift you received ten years ago ankur's tribe were given 400 pigs by their neighbors and to answer that anchor wanted to give at least 600 [Music] me [Music] romantic to organize 600 pigs anka 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 foreign uh foreign where are you guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] three weeks later the mother of the small mockers took place and fed in 55 more pigs supervised the dancers to make sure they would perform [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] until 10 years ago pearl shells were used in maca but now shells have been replaced by paper dollars and the big pig is now worth about 250 dollars [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this time there was a ritual in which extra pink was brought on as a surprise to get extra prestige [Music] within every tribe big men compete with each other anka has one particular rival trying to ice cream [Music] [Music] until a man came along and gave her what she did foreign foreign as the pigs began to appear anka said that they were like a snake half hidden in the grass he could see its head he couldn't tell how long his body was ankur 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 [Music] oh in ankara's enemy tribe the big man died [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] if a man especially a big man dies suddenly it always thought he was killed by sorcery and the men charge in anger against the enemies who must have performed the surgery [Applause] [Applause] hey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey [Music] [Applause] in their song women saying oh my father and my father whom shall i turn to now in their song the men sang o my brother and my brother whom shall i live with now [Applause] [Music] uh uh hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] as the day wore on visitors brought news of kalka men ivanka's group who had been heard singing drunk in a truck people said it must be a kawka enemies who killed our big man by sorcery that they were singing because they were pleased and they began to be talk of going down to burn kalka [Music] houses [Applause] [Music] so when anka 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 was accepted and cooked along with others at a distribution of pork to mark the end of the first period it only smoothed over the accusation it didn't get rid of the suspicion this sort of payment can become the basis of a mocker and as a payment of pigs for deaths and tribal fighting later more pigs will return to and fro exchanges the funeral held everything up for three weeks until the morning was over the kulka were uneasy there were no mockers in case they antagonized the dead man's tribe [Music] oh [Music] out of respect for the dead man [Music] foreign [Music] did rather better than they expected 80 pigs were given an ankle got harder anka was very happy that more pigs meant more work and the pressure was really on him and even more on rumble to hand the pigs on had no sweet potatoes left they had to find them wherever they could [Music] at night but no more room for things inside someone had to sleep out with them for work [Music] before the big mocker could happen there were still three small mockers to go each one meant more pigs mounting pressure to pass them on [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] huh [Applause] [Music] as the big mocha got closer the pressure on rumbacle got worse [Music] foreign foreign the last few pigs were coming in bonker began to talk about going down to buy cows as an extra surprise but the big mother was very close [Music] mocha 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 [Music] on a more general level mocha is a system a framework all over the world people operate within some kind of framework and mocker is one of them foreign it was one more thing to do before the big motta could happen the next day the money they had collected to give to peru and his tribe had to be spread out we've got 10 000 australian dollars each bundle is 200 and it's destined one two [Music] when we asked her what he'd do if pero didn't one day return the motto said he'd take him behind a bush and slit his throat but even if he did lose his investments he could never lose the glory of having given it then it happened suddenly anka's rival rimer did what he always said he'd do and upset the timing of the mocker rima put a whisper through the crowd that was his group [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for stirring up that night anka was still saying the big mocha would happen the next day in fact things turned out much worse than ankar had expected early next morning the group of culker married into the dead man's tribe came down in a war charge to get rhymer [Music] [Applause] ah [Applause] on their way they came past uncle to try and stop them uncle sat down in the road [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh foreign his best [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] the next day there was no big mocker rimer 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 heroia was getting used to delays the big mocker had originally been planned for a year ago and anka and his group had got as far as buying a truck as part of their gift pero said there was no point in the truck rotting away until the big mocker did happen that he might as well use it in the meantime sometime after we two have left bonkers big mocker finally did happen there were 600 pigs 10 000 8 cows and 12 casseries they washed the truck they traded it with flowers now that i have given you all these things i have won i have knocked you down by giving so much