Our Host Family Cooking Their Dinner

Typical Sepik River View of Families Out Fishing

The villagers are self-sufficient, netting fish, growing vegetables, bananas and papaya, scratching out the innards of sago palms for starch to make a bread-like pancake, and collecting the juicy, white grub worms from the sago to roast over the fire. After we had our meal, Matthew’s family cooked and ate their meal with fingers off one large serving tray. They smoke their extra fish to trade at market for clothes and utensils. The village receives $4 to $8 per person per night for housing tourists so we felt good helping the economy. Usually the cooking and fish-smoking go on inside the house so we had a distinct “eau de campfire” smell about us, but I think it keeps down the mosquitoes.

Traveling between villages took several hours in our dugout. We passed a couple of other motorized dugouts each day, usually full of passengers and goods on the way to/from market. Most of the boats we passed were small non-motorized dugouts. We could see the fine, white fishing nets that they drag.