Masks, Mud and a Royal Welcome

In a remote coastal village in Papua New Guinea, giant masks, pounding drums and spirited dancers bring the traditions of Gulf Province to life. Between a royal welcome, a spear pointed at my camera, sago pancakes and a losing battle with mosquitoes, the Gulf Mask Festival becomes far more than a performance – it is an unforgettable invitation into village life.

By the time we reach Toare, our 4×4 has already been stuck in the mud twice. Papua New Guinea has a talent for making an arrival feel earned.

Every kid and dog in the village seems to be aware of us coming. Then we step out of the car and find garlands of fragrant frangipani waiting for us, villagers clapping and speeches being delivered in our honour. “Welkam tru,” everyone says in Tok Pisin. With flower garlands around our necks, an entire village watching and clapping and speeches being delivered in our honour, my husband and I feel like William and Catherine on an official royal visit – only dustier and considerably less prepared. Or twelve of us feel like a royal delegation that has taken a spectacularly wrong turn.

Toare lies on the coast of Gulf Province, around 300 kilometres from Port Moresby but much farther away in every other sense.

Roads are scarce, and rivers and the sea remain the principal routes through the region. For roughly half the year, southeast trade winds drive heavy rain into the Gulf and make the water too rough for small boats. Geography has kept communities apart, but it has also helped preserve a culture strikingly different from those of Papua New Guinea’s better-known Highlands.

Papua New Guinea’s great festivals – the Mount Hagen Show, the Goroka Show and the Rabaul Mask Festival – bring together performers from across the country. Yet the Elema people of Gulf Province are rarely among them. The Gulf Mask Festival was created by a small group of local enthusiasts, among them our friend Vincent, determined to celebrate their traditions at home, on their own stretch of white sand beside the blue sea.

The beach looks ideal for swimming. Then the kundu drums begin, and the idea is abandoned without debate.

The dancers enter the improvised showground in grass skirts, bark loincloths, shells, leaves, body paint and masks that appear to have walked out of another world. In Papua New Guinea, ceremonial dress – bilas – can reveal where a person comes from before a word is spoken. The Huli are famous for wigs made from their own hair. Enga dancers wear great rounded headdresses of moss, plants and hair. Highland groups arrive beneath towers of feathers and vivid body paint. The bird-of-paradise headdresses alone would give an ornithologist palpitations.

The Elema have their own unmistakable signature: masks.

Some are tall and narrow; others are broad, ornate or magnificently peculiar. Stylised faces stare from bark cloth, or tapa, stretched over split-cane frames, sewn with plant fibre and painted with natural pigments. Their size suggests considerable suffering for the wearer, but the materials are surprisingly light. This is fortunate, because the men dance in them for hours under a midday sun that has clearly decided to participate at full strength.

The dancers can see through only tiny openings, yet they whirl, stamp and surge across the sand with alarming confidence. At first the performance feels solemn and ancient. Then figures from local legends begin to blunder, tease and exaggerate their movements, and the crowd dissolves into laughter. Tradition, it turns out, has an excellent sense of humour.

I am photographing a scene when a particularly enthusiastic dancer notices me. He fixes me with the only part of his face I can see – two very determined eyes – and charges forward with a long spear. One second, I am composing a photograph. The next, my entire viewfinder contains a pair of crazy eyes and a weapon. There are moments when a longer lens feels less like photographic equipment and more like self-defence.

The women follow, bare-breasted and wearing bright grass skirts decorated with small shells. Large kina shells swing on their chests as their hips move to the kundu rhythm. The skirts are made from fibres of sago palm, pandanus, banana and other plants, then soaked and dyed. Natural colour traditionally came from roots and seeds; today, vivid commercial dyes have also found their way into the palette. Culture adapts – even when it is dancing barefoot on a beach.

Children painted a brilliant orange sing until the rhythm becomes almost hypnotic. Around them, relatives make minute adjustments to costumes and body paint. Others cheer, gossip and chew buai, or betel nut. The festival is a performance, but it is also a reunion, a competition, a family occasion and an excellent reason not to do anything else that afternoon.

Hours pass without anyone noticing, despite the heat. Eventually the drumming slows, though nobody seems in a hurry to remove a mask or go home. We wander through the village barefoot, our toes sinking into warm sand, when a man gestures for us to follow him into a house.

Inside, the daylight disappears.

As my eyes adjust, shapes emerge from the darkness: old Gulf masks, fishtail drums and gope boards. Traditionally carved in an elliptical shape, gope boards are decorated with abstract patterns and stylised figures painted in white and red ochre. Representing ancestral spirits believed to protect the community from evil, sickness and death, they once played an important role in warfare and headhunting. The boards were consulted before raids, presented to successful warriors and sometimes used to display the skulls of defeated enemies. They are beautiful objects with a biography that does not lend itself to casual interior decoration.

Our host shows them with a mixture of pride and hesitation. Christianity has transformed village life, and objects once central to ritual and warfare now belong to a past that is neither entirely rejected nor easily explained. A mobile phone has replaced the bullroarer for long-distance communication, which is probably more convenient, though considerably less dramatic.

By evening, the village has found beds for twelve Westerners. We are welcomed into a thatched house raised on stilts near the beach. Our friends, a couple with three children, have an enormous tent that they erect beside the traditional houses. In Toare, it looks like a small extraterrestrial embassy.

Children gather at a cautious distance. Then they edge closer. Soon one head appears at the entrance, followed by another, then several more. Before long, they are peering inside and giggling, apparently trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep inside.  Within minutes, the tent has become the village’s main cultural attraction. After an entire day devoted to extraordinary masks, it is our camping equipment that draws the most serious inspection.

At first, the village children observe it from a cautious distance. Then they edge closer. Soon one head appears at the entrance, followed by another, then several more. Before long, they are peering inside and giggling, apparently trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep in such a strange contraption. A few adults eventually join the inspection. After an entire day devoted to extraordinary masks, it is our camping equipment that becomes the village’s main attraction.

Inside the house, my husband and I hang a mosquito net above thin mattresses on a creaking sago-palm floor. The net, provided by the villagers, contains enough holes to suggest that the mosquitoes were consulted during manufacture. In Tok Pisin they are called natant, a name far too charming for creatures conducting an organised assault on our ankles.

Night settles over Toare. Beneath the nets, we listen to geckos, screeching piglets, the sea and the whispered voices of our hosts. Our improvised Airbnb has no bathroom, no rating and no discernible checkout time. It also offers something no hotel could: the feeling of being trusted inside another family’s world.

Morning arrives with blue sky, smoke from the fire and sago pancakes. Sago palms provide both food and building material throughout the Gulf. During the historic Hiri trade, sago was exchanged with Motu communities for clay pots and shells. It is nourishing and practical. As the sago pancakes cook over the smouldering fire, I wonder whether Nutella would be a serious breach of local etiquette. This remains an academic question because, with unusual lack of foresight, I have brought none.

We exchange rice and tinned fish for sago. Imported food is easy to store in the tropical climate, but it also carries a certain status. The tins are received with enthusiasm; the sago is handed over with equally large smiles. Everyone appears satisfied. The sago will feed us today; the tinned fish may survive until the next generation.

We have barely finished eating when the women return carrying colourful grass skirts. They are smiling in a way that suggests a plan. Soon we are dressed and pushed gently – but firmly – into a dance. After watching the performers move with effortless grace the day before, we now provide the educational counterexample.

When it is finally time to leave, the women give us grass skirts as gifts. We climb back into the 4×4, flowers wilted, feet sandy and dignity only partly restored.

Papua New Guinea is changing quickly. Missionaries, oil and gas development, roads and mobile phones have altered daily life even in remote communities. Some customs have disappeared; others have shifted meaning. But the Gulf Mask Festival is not a museum display or a performance assembled for outsiders. It belongs to the people dancing, laughing, correcting one another’s paint, and carefully placing old objects back into the darkness.

We had joked about receiving a royal welcome. By the end, the comparison felt inadequate. Royal visits usually involve schedules, security and polished shoes. Ours came with mud, sago, a spear, ferocious mosquitoes and borrowed grass skirts. It was considerably better.