#33 Papua New Guinea

Oceanian countries haven’t filled me with enthusiasm thus far, and PNG is no exception. Roots, coconuts, bananas. I get it.

The country is far more interesting than the food.

Remember my map from Indonesia? PNG makes up the eastern part of the island of New Guinea, along with some smaller islands. New Guinea, incidentally, is the second largest island in the world, behind Greenland.

PNG is the most rural country in the world, with over 80% of the population living outside of urban areas. It’s also incredibly diverse, with over 800 languages being spoken. Most people live a sustainable lifestyle in small tribes and have little contact with the modern world outside. PNG is also one of the least explored places on earth and it’s thought that it’s probably host to yet undiscovered species of flora and fauna.

For tribes in the mountainous rainforest that have little contact with the rest of the world, life is hard. There’s little access to modern medicine and countless ways in which you can die: snakes, saltwater crocs, giant tarantulas (eek I’m not enjoying this blog!), TB, HIV, kuru disease, which occurs from eating human brains (NOTE: not applicable to the tribe described below), to name but a few.

Some tribes, famously the Korowai, believe that when someone is sick and dying, that it’s because a khakhua (an evil demon or a witch) has killed them by possessing the body of another person who may or may not be in the same tribe. The dying person on their death bed often reveals the name of their spirit-possessed killer and the tribe then seek to rid the demon from amongst them by killing and eating the khakhua. They do not believe that they are eating their Uncle Bob or Terry from the tribe next door because they believe that the khakhua has already killed their uncle or neighbour. It almost makes sense when you put it like that right?

Cannibalism is dying out, or has died out, depending on what you read, due to the indigenous ways of life dying out. The following link is to an article by a journalist who visited some of these people and his experiences. It’s from 2006 so things may have changed now but it’s a great read: Sleeping with cannibals.

The above doesn’t make PNG sound all that appealing, and I’ve read many more things about it that sound equally unappealing, but it also has a lot going for it! For instance, it’s written into the constitution that indigenous ways of life should be protected, sorcery is no longer a legal defence for murder and it’s one of the last untouched wildernesses in the world. The bird of paradise is the official national bird…

…I had no idea that countries have national birds! Some are officially designated and some, like the United Kingdom’s robin, are unofficial. Fun fact!

Let's talk briefly about food

Coconut and other tropical fruits are ubiquitous.

The diet is largely vegetarian, with chickens and pigs being eaten for special occasions only.

Sweet potatoes are known as kaukau and, although not native to PNG, they account for the majority of calories eaten every day. Another staple in the PNG diet is sago, a starch extracted from the centre of palm trees which can be made into breads and puddings, usually by pairing with bananas and coconut.

Coconut kaukau

I took inspiration from 196flavors, another, more professional world food blog, for my lunch à la Papua New Guinea and tarted up a lunchtime jacket sweet potato into coconut kaukau. This is simply a baked sweet potato with the flesh scooped out and mixed with tasty tropical ingredients and put back into the skins for a few more minutes of baking. The tasty tropical ingredients are: coconut cream, onion, garlic, ginger, orange juice and desiccated coconut.