Kev's Cult

Back in the early sixties I was a 22 year old kid in charge of a primary school in an isolated part of the Gulf of Papua. Over one week I noticed that almost all the girls were not attending school. I asked the boys what was happening and was told that they were dancing on their ancestors' graves. Being a relatively newby in Papua New Guinea, I thought that it was a traditional thing. In the next village I had noticed a newly built platform around a large tree; a nice meeting spot for villages under the shade of the tree...not!

About a week later I heard loud engine noises and lots of villagers shouting, and as it was late afternoon I went with villagers to see what was happening. To my amazement there was a contingent of native police officers and three Australian kiaps berating the villagers for starting a cargo cult. Apparently the platform around the tree was to receive the cargo. From what I could make out the kiaps (patrol officers) ordered the villages to tear down the platform and gave them some work on a road as punishment for being so silly.

As they left, the whole contingent of police and Kiaps drove past me in Landrovers and neither said anything or even looked at me. Kev was starting to feel that they thought I had started the cargo cult.

Later, on reflection, I figured out what the likely cause was. When I wanted to order some supplies to be shipped out from Port Moresby by coastal trader I would ride into the Government Station at Ihu and talk on the two-way radio to Steamships Trading Company and place an order. When it arrived it was usually boxed and sent out to my school on a government tractor and trailer. When the tractor arrived in the village, school kids would help unload the box and we all waved the tractor driver goodbye as he left......without any money changing hands. I figured that the villagers thought that my ancestors over the horizon (another unfathomable concept) had sent me the goods.

Nothing was ever mentioned about cargo cults and I never heard any talk about what they believed about my 'cargo'. I did talk to the other teachers and suggested that we explain how orders are paid for by cheque. Around that time I had a staff member who disliked me and I did think that maybe he was mixed up in it at some level.

Recently I have tried to access Patrol reports to Arehava, to try and find what it was all about and whether my name was mentioned. Unfortunately most of the Patrol Reports have been destroyed in arson attacks on government stations. The University of Southern California has a comprehensive collection of patrol reports covering most of the colonial period, but they must be accessed in person. The Australian Archives in Canberra also has quite a bit of information on patrols etc. When we visited Canberra a few years ago we did a search, but nothing came up regarding Kev's Cult.

Cargo cults and sorcery

Joan, the kids and I spent 6 years in Papua New Guinea from 1970. It was an absolutely wonderful adventure in a relatively safe environment. Not so now. Cargo cults and sorcery are still rife.

I read of a survey conducted in PNG about the effectiveness of the Justice system. The question asked was..Should sorcery and witchcraft be used as alternatives to solving law and order problems that have remained unsolved over a long period of time?
The results so far: Yeas 55%, Nays 42%, Don't knows 3%.

In the 70s we experienced two major cargo cults; one in the Sepik District and one in the Northern District. In the Sepik District a villager told other villagers that a large obelisk on a hill was actually a stopper to a tunnel overseas where white men (and women) got all their cargo....cars, trucks, boats, planes and of course, money. He had a huge following and some crazy schemes were followed without question. Chinese-made suitcases were purchased and money was put in them and buried. The idea was that at a certain date they were to be dug up and the money would have multiplied. In his village he had a money making factory where silver coins were passed from one room to another through bamboo pipes. The sound was certainly convincing to his followers. It all ended up with a large group of his followers removing the obelisk and carrying it into town. After all the non events, it just died out. I never heard of any disappointed followers getting even a bit cranky. How he explained it all away is not known. I suspect the followers believed that whitey had stymied their operation.

The concrete obelisk was, I believe, part of a geodetic survey of the world by the US Air Force carried out in the late 60s.

When I was single teaching in Papua in the early sixties I was unwittingly involved in a cargo cult in the village I lived in. More about that next post.