Kids with Big Knives

I have no experience being a parent, seeing that I am not one. Regardless, this entire post is going to revolve around parenting. I have watched my parents stress, toil, and work endless hours making sure that my two siblings and I are outstanding citizens and functioning young adults.

And may I say that they have succeeded.

Simply crack open a Guide to Parenting and you'll find countless chapters of do's and do not's when raising children. The Western way of parenting is a very intense ordeal if you desire to do it well. Our culture adds the pressure.

Then there is parenting in Papua New Guinea. Driving down an unpaved road into the Sursurunga village we were welcomed by little children (as young as three) standing on the side of the road smiling, waving, and wielding large machetes.

Yes, machetes. These little children simply held on to these monstrous weapons like they were pacifiers.

My first thought was "their parents simply let them HAVE machetes?" My parents wouldn't let me watch Ninja Turtles as a kid let alone hand me a knife. But as it turned out this was just my Western bias surfacing on the subject of parenting.

Parenting in PNG is not like parenting in the States...at all. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Parents do not and feel that they cannot tell their child what to do and what not to do. Superstitious as they are, the people there feel that doing so may alter the kid's "life-force" (or destiny) and ultimately lead them down paths they were not meant to go.

So the kid doesn't want to go to school? So be it. The kid wants to go into the jungle alone? So be it. The three year old wants a machete? So be it. The parenting is so hands-off that I could hardly call it parenting. In many ways the kids ruled over the parents. It blew my mind.

And yet! Here we had little gangs of naked kids running around with large knives and causing no trouble at all. They ruled amongst themselves, raised each other, and instilled their own values and methods of living.

But wait, doesn't that violate some - if not all the rules in the Western Guide to Parenting? Yeah, if you're a Westerner. These parents aren't wrong and neither are their methods; they are simply different than ours. And how often do Americans think "different" and "wrong" are synonymous? Too many times.

I invite you to think outside your cultural norms and see things from a different (not wrong) perspective and consider what out culture may look like if we did things like other people.

Your friendly neighborhood giant,
~Alan

Family Values and the Human Touch

I don't know about you guys but I am a fairly 'touchy' guy. I enjoy hugging people and expressing my friendship and love physically. I generally find that most people are the same minus the few who absolutely hate hugs. After a several weeks in the jungle, I discovered that this method of showing affection is very Western and I was left trying to find new methods of showing such love to people who see physicality in an entirely different light.

People in the Sursurunga tribe see physical touch as a sexual gesture. In their culture, a man and a woman holding hands in public is equivalent to a man and woman having sex in public in our culture in terms of shock value. Hugging is not even considered. 

Which makes you wonder what a family unite must look like.

Once a brother reaches puberty it is mandatory that he leave his house and never interact with his sister. This doesn't mean that he leaves the village, it simply means he can't go back into his house or involve himself in the privacy of his sister.

If a brother and sister are seen going into the same house together it is presumed that they are participating in something sexually deviant.

The men end up raising themselves in what they call "Men's Houses" where the village elders and young men meet, smoke, and discuss life.

If you are married in that tribe you may not engage in sexual activity in your house. Instead, you must take a trip to "the jungle" and finish your business there.

There is such an extreme sense of privacy and a distance from physical emotion in that culture even among family - so much so, that I began to go through emotional withdrawal. You are surrounded by people that you cannot communicate with and cannot interact with physically. How do you show them that you love them? That you care about them?

Emotional improvisation was a unique experience. I hugged and kissed my family when I got home.

Your friendly neighborhood giant,

~Alan

Justice and the Mob Mentality

American criminals have the lovely privilege of plummeting down the bottomless pit of justice laws and criminal rights that promise them a fair trial. Sometimes after falling so far, those criminals will be let off the hook and left to live normal lives regardless of past actions.

I'm not hating on the American justice system although I am not a huge advocate for it either but somewhere down the road there is a point when you want to skip all the legal mumbo jumbo and just beat the crap out of the guy that did you injustice.

Or at least I've thought that...

American law firms and citizens alike would probably agree that that method of justice is wrong. But is it wrong or merely different?

My first day in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (and one the worst cities in the world), gave me a healthy dose of how Papua New Guineans deal with the common crime.

Walking down the busy street amidst street vendors, beggars, and pedestrians, I encountered some trouble. A man walking toward me threw a glass bottle at a car that had just passed in front of me shattering as it met the side of the vehicle; glass bounced off my legs. I stood still, not entirely sure what just happened or who that bottle was intended for.

I looked around and noticed that every person in that market place (about 300+) was looking toward me and this guy. One man from across the street pointed at the bottle thrower and yelled, "HEY! HEY!"

This was a battle cry that caused an entire mob to chase the bottle thrower and take him down. They beat the crap out of him. I couldn't help but watch.

Public justice. Wrong or just different?

I wonder if he still throws bottles...

Your friendly neighborhood giant,

~Alan

Explorative Storytelling [Part II]

I found a definition for the topic in which I am writing about:

[Ethnographic Cinema]

And here I thought I was original with 'Explorative Storytelling.' In my research that led me to this specific genre of filmmaking, I came across an article by Laura Catalán Eraso that I found very enlightening on why Ethnographic filmmaking is important. You can view the website here or the whole article here but allow me to utilize some of its main points to ground my position on why this type of storytelling is so foundational to you and western culture as a whole.

"Ethnographic cinema is a product of social science, especially of anthropology, and as such has mirrored the developments and "crisis of representation" within these fields. Through the audiovisual language, ethnographic cinema has proven to be a unique medium of representation, able to capture sensuality and expressiveness that can hardly be grasped through other languages."

Reason 1: Ethnographic Cinema is a unique medium of representation capable of translating emotions. I have always argued that we are a visual culture and I don't see storytelling to be any exception.

"It demonstrates the role of film in illuminating the "intercultural" dynamics between minority (participant) and majority (researcher) and in challenging the traditional power relations between the researcher and his/her "subjects". Ethnographic filmmaking is a research technique that has evolved considerably since its early colonial usage (based largely around disempowered and stereotyped representations of otherness)"

Reason 2: Otherness. Don't worry, I promise it's important.

The idea behind otherness (or alterity for a fancier word) is crucial. I think all too often Americans see other methods of living, other than their own, as wrong. The correct term should be "different."  "Different" is not necessarily "wrong".

In the next few blog posts I will give examples of different methods of living that I witnessed during my stay in Papua New Guinea that contrast the way we do things here in the States.I challenge you to view these differences as a shift in your cultural norm and allow yourself to see past your Western bias.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Giant,

~Alan

Explorative Storytelling [Part I]

There is a tribe that resides on an island in northern Papua New Guinea that exists in completely different circumstances than we do as middle class Westerners. The food they eat, the way they communicate, their methods of child rearing, their justice system; all these things are vastly divergent from our cultural norms. In the weeks that I stayed in a village there, I was able to experience these cultural shifts of my western norms. These are the stories that I want to dwell on.

This poses an interesting topic of discussing based around the central question:

 'How important are these cultural differences to our Western way of living?'

I had the privilege of living with the Sursurunga tribe in New Ireland. To me, the stories that reside with these people are unlike any stories we have heard here in the States. I was submersed in a culture that radically changed how I saw my own.

In the blog entries that follow this one I want to explore this tribe's methodologies and ideologies and analyze the worth of such beliefs to the common westerner. At this point I am unsure if there is any value in these foreign stories for an American but I want to explore it nonetheless. 

For those interested, here is the trailer for the documentary I am making on this tribe. The stories outlined in the trailer are separate from those that I will be discussing in this blog. I aim to focus on the stories of my experiences as an American rather than the stories of this tribe's cultural history and Christianity.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Giant,

~Alan