Ringing in the New Year in Papua New Guinea, Village Style
Patrick Nomos | 1/1/2019
My late grandmother was a traditionalist in many ways, including her chosen method of ringing in the New Year. Each New Year's Eve she would prepare several pots and pans, together with a suitable stick with which to beat them at mid-night. While older people in the village still follow this practice, young people now drag pieces of roofing iron on the road or roll empty 200 litre steel drums to maximise the noise output.
While this has become the usual way making noise to celebrate the arrival of the New Year in my mother's village, on a visit there during the Bougainville Crisis an M16 machine-gun was fired into the air at close range at midnight, which was followed by answering bursts of machine-gun fire from neighbouring villages.
On another visit following the Crisis, after many of the high-powered weapons used by the ex-combatants had been handed in or destroyed, the arrival of the New Year was celebrated by the screaming of chain-saws in villages up and down the main road.
Now a new way of making noise at New Year has been developed in the village, that produces stunning explosions followed by excited cheering of those that created the noise. Not satisfied with the high-pitched bang of powdered match-heads being struck with a stone, young men have learned how to use small pieces of cast aluminium, usually cut from the covers of disused chain-saws, to make the explosions.
Pieces of this metal, as small as a finger-nail, are heated in an open fire until they are white-hot, before being removed from the fire, covered in green leaves and then struck hard with a heavy object such as a long piece of timber.
The resulting explosion is literally deafening, according to a village medical orderly who has issued a general warning about the risk of broken ear-drums of those closest to the explosions. Since disused chain-saws are relatively uncommon in my mother's village, the capacity to produce loud explosions at New Year is, thankfully, limited. However, once this method is no longer available to the village youths, no doubt they will invent another way of noisily celebrating New Year.
Photo: Chain-saw