Before visiting several of the islands on our tour we were given warnings about how to behave. No personal displays of affection, no shorts except on the beach, no sleeveless dresses, dress modestly because this is a strongly Christian area. So, this is the last place I thought I would have to apply FCC standards of indecency to my blog.
That’s because there was a lot of dancing in Aloatu. And when I took up pictures and videos, they revealed probably too much for a family blog. I think these revelations were more than the wardrobe malfunctions that cost some stations dearly during one Super Bowl halftime. Fortunately, before we got off there was a dance performance that I could shoot from the balcony and the shadows make nice play on the pavement. No worries about the FCC.
Aloatu is the administrative center of the Milne Bay district of Papua New Guinea. It was the site of the first defeat of the Japanese army on the ground in the Pacific in World War II when the Australians and some Americans held off an attempted Japanese landing. We visited the site were the Aussies repelled the Japanese. It is one of the most trashed out beaches I have ever seen.
Aloatu did not exist then, it was founded in 1969 as a provincial capital for Milne Bay province. We took a tour that included the market, …
an overlook …
…and visit to a village.
It was billed as a trip to a hinterland village but the hinterland proved to be about 500 yards from the ocean. The village was really something like a Papua New Guinea theme park. But despite my disappointment at not getting into “the hinterland” which is why we booked the tour, we did learn a lot of interesting stuff, like how to cook traditionally using banana leaves and clay pots. The pots were so perfectly rounded and blackened that initially I thought they were cast iron.
We also learned how to prepare casava (tapioca) so it doesn’t kill you. Apparently, it contains lethal amounts of cyanide so it needs to be soaked, scraped and cooked to make it safe. The skin is the most dangerous part. I wonder how people discovered you could safely eat it and how many people died in the experiment. Fortunately, people (first in South America) discovered they could eat it because it is nutrient rich, contains lots of vitamin C and is good for the gut.
And of course there was the dancing. It was difficult for me to get shots without bare breasts, which may or may not get me banned from some Facebook groups. One young woman danced with two branches and I wondered if she was imitating the famous Sally Rand fan dance from the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. The headlines read “The Rand is quicker than the eye.” Or perhaps Ms. Rand got the idea reading old National Geographics describing a native dance from Papua.
I wish I could post the full video of this woman because she was teaching some little girls the dance and it was charming as the kids looked for approval from mom. I grabbed some screen shots.
I commented to Suzi that I wasn’t fast enough to get a “decent” picture for the blog. She told me not to worry I could take a picture of the dancers back at the ship. It turns out that was also difficult because they had a similar wardrobe. But between us and with some cropping we got some pics.
