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Spirits awake
after 35 years
By Dr JACOB SIMET
In 1971, the elders of Korugu village
in the Middle Sepik area of the Sepik River held a revival
festival of mwai masks or tumbuan, to show the young people this
important part of their culture.
The elders felt the young people were forgetting this part of
their culture.
A total of 12 mwai masks, representing the six different clans of
Korogu village participated at this event.
After the 1971 revival, the 12 masks were placed in the haus
tambaran, where they were carefully maintained.
None of these masks were used for any reason until September 2006,
when they were revived to participate at the 5th National Garamut
Na Mambu Festival in Wewak, East Sepik province.
Prior to this event there were no ceremonies and festivals for the
masks to be used. There was also no invitation for them to
participate in any event.
Thus the invitation to the 5th National Garamut Na Mambu Festival
was the first one in thirty-five years that the masks were used.
The elders of Korogu decided to send two mwai masks out of the
twelve to represent them at the festival.
For the Wewak festival, a group of men and women traveled from
Korogu village by river boat to Pagwi, then three hours by road to
Wewak.
In the contingent were the last three remaining elders of Korugu
village, who had been part of the 1971 revival; the oldest was in
his late eighties, the other two in their seventies.
At the festival ground in Wewak they constructed an enclosure away
from the main arena, closer to the bush.
At the front of the enclosure there was a ramp which was used by
the masks when they emerged from the enclosure.
At the end of the ramp they met up with the Prime Minister, Grand
Chief Sir Michael Somare, who walked before the masks to the main
performance arena.
Mwai masks represent spirits. According to legend from this part
of the Sepik, mwai spirits have existed since the first land
appeared.
Like every society, the people in these parts have their own
stories about how the land and everything on it was created.
In this respect the mwai came together with the land and were here
before people appeared on the land.
While these spirits are said to belong to specific clans, they are
divided to take custody of the territory of the Sepik River, the
neighboring Yangoru area including Mt. Turu, the rest of the Sepik
province down to the coastline, and neighboring Madang province.
However the main divide is between the inland and the coastal
areas. This being so, the mwai from the inland are not allowed to
come to the coastal areas, and vice-versa.
So the two mwai that came to the Garamut Na Mambu Festival were
the ones which had custody over the coastal areas. These two masks
belonged to two local clans. These spirits are the guardians of
the people in those areas where they had jurisdiction.
The elders of Korogu accepted the invitation to participate at the
5th National Garamut Na Mambu Festival because they felt that the
spirits had been asleep for too long and the younger generation
had little knowledge about them.
This occasion gave them the chance to revive their tumbuan for the
young people to see and learn.
Apart from their concern with the long period of inactivity of
their masks, the people are concerned about the deteriorating
state of their haus tambaran in which the masks and other
important cultural items are stored.
This spirit house was restored in 1986 with the help of the
National Museum in Port Moresby with funding from UNESCO.
Two major problems face the spirit house. The first being its bad
state of disrepair and secondly it is in danger of being washed
into the Sepik River as erosion by the river encroaches on it
everyday.
These problems are faced by spirit houses along the river,
particularly in the Middle and Lower areas of the River.
The spirit house and the mwai mask are important cultural
representations of the Sepik River people. Their continued
presence along the river is an indication of the persistence of
the culture of these areas.
Every year spirit houses collapse because of termites and their
king posts being destroyed by river water.
Each time this happens their contents which include spirit masks,
the great garamuts and spirit flutes are moved to new locations.
Villager's are always apologetic for the lack of spirit house in
their village, but they show visitors what they salvaged from the
last house and tell of their plans to build a new spirit house.
However in most cases when the visitor returns some years later,
the salvaged material is still in the same place because no new
spirit house has being built.
The continued presence of the spirit house and the willingness to
restore them and their contents shows the people's interest to
maintain their cultural traditions.
 
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