Down with the Chief

No Tears were shed, no facial groping. In fact, when we got to Omarakana, the chief's digs, Chief Pulayasi, his Highness, was maxing in a baseball cap and jogging shorts and gave us a nod and the Trobriand equivalent to "Wassup." Much to her dismay, Kelly immediately subverted protocol and walked at full height behind the chief in search of the perfect shot.

As anti-climactic as the scene was, Pulayasi was a very pleasant man and he seemed to appreciate the Betel nut. Zach recounted the story of his father and Malinowski's ghost at the Yale cemetary in his broken, Indian-English accent, only to have the story translated to Kiriwinian by Linus. The chief didn't have too much to say and all in all he reminded us of a Trobriand George bush(baseball cap included), riding on the coat tails of his ancestors' political success.

At the time when Malinowski lived in Omarakana, the Paramount Chief To'uluwa had 30 wives which established alliances all over the island. Pulayasi has a measley 4 wives and thus limited political reach. We also heard that he bought his son's seat in PNG Parliament. Linus took our meeting with Pulayasi as an opportunity to let him know that he would be contesting his son's seat in Parliament in the next election. Gulp.

What we walked away with: the endorsement of the chief for filming on the island, stories about communication with ancestors in dreams, location shots of where Mal lived and worked during his first expedition to Trobs. We visited Touluwa and Mitakata's graves but unfortunately the chief was too lazy to get his butt off his throne and show us the graves himself (OK...it was raining).