When yams speak of marriage: Ceremonies of exchange on the Managalas Plateau

“No one gets rich out of this: it is essentially a wealth redistribution process.”

“Do you want to come and see the yams?” asks Reckson Kajiaki, a community leader on Papua New Guinea (PNG)’s Managalas Plateau.

My first reaction is kind of ambivalent. It’s my last day onsite with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)’s PNG team, which is working with local communities to develop a management plan for the 214,696-hectare Managalas Conservation Area (MCA).

We’ve seen plenty of amazing things—giant butterflies, noisy hornbills, a theatre show—and I can’t quite imagine they’ll be equalled by some kind of display of root vegetables. But I follow him anyway down the grassy track from Joivi Village, where we’re staying, to another settlement about twenty minutes’ walk from the main road.

As soon as we arrive, I see the shortcomings of my preconceptions. Yams to me are the yellow-pink South American vegetables [Oxalis tuberosa] that look like pudgy fingers and sometimes show up in the supermarket back home. What I see here is extremely different—and definitely worth the walk.

Collected yams set aside for the cerenomy. Photo by Monica Evans / CIFOR-ICRAF

In a dirt clearing stands a tight circle of bamboo poles, which are anchored in the ground about a metre apart and tied together at the top, a full two storeys (6-8 metres, 20-26 feet) high. Inside the circle, tightly bound with pandanus twine, are the yams: giant, warty, dust-brown tubers, about 1-2 metres (3-6 feet) in length. The collection of muscular curves resembles a swarm of eels, slithering to the sky.

Halfway up the tower, a man clings to the poles and packs yet more yams inside. Massive bunches of bananas, coconut, taro and betelnut are tied around the base. In a nearby low-rooved, dimly-lit hut called a ‘yam haus’, yet more gnarled, white and purple yams have been stacked. It’s a vision of abundance—with a very important socio-economic function, too.

As we watch, people arrive on the foot tracks from other villages. Some are dressed in shorts and T-shirts, while others wear traditional necklaces and headpieces of colourful seeds, iridescent feathers and curved hornbill casques (the bony protrusion on the top of the bird’s head). An entire bird-of-paradise bounces from the back of one man’s headpiece alongside a length of red-and-silver Christmas tinsel. 

Many of the visitors are carrying giant yams of their own, which have been trussed between wood poles, ornately carved and painted, and decorated with beads and feathers. They’re contributing, each as per their particular familial obligations, to what’s happening here: a ‘bride price’ ceremony, where the family of the husband gives a prescribed amount of resources—cash, livestock (especially pigs), produce, household goods, etc—to that of the bride, who then share them out them according to their own suite of obligations.

“Many people will leave the celebration with a backpack full of yams and distribute them to their elders who could not travel—or pay their own debts with the yams they received here,” says CIFOR-ICRAF scientist and PNG program manager Will Unsworth. “No one gets rich out of this: it is essentially a wealth redistribution process.”  

What’s more, events like these bring extended families (plus curious visitors) together from across the Plateau and help to create and strengthen the social cohesion that allows communities to live in peace, says Unsworth. “Some people will meet their future brides at these events, agreements for land sharing and business ventures will be discussed, and long-standing grievances will be settled while people are together.” 

The practice occurs throughout PNG, though the types of resources—and amounts demanded—vary considerably, as does the timing: on this occasion, the bride and groom have already been married for 17 years, but the groom’s family has only now accumulated the resources to make the payment. Here, as in many other parts of the country, yams—the main form of currency for many clans in times past—play an important role.

 “It’s kind of like a credit,” says Kajiaki. “If you are trying to make a feast or pay a bride price, I need to come and help, so in return you will come and help when it’s time for me to pay my bride price. If someone was to try to pay back the bride price by themself, that’s a lot of yams, and you cannot dig or harvest that by yourself. So you have to distribute the task among your family.”

> How (and why) do people in Managalas get their yams to grow so big? Read Part 2 to find out.

For more information on this project, please contact William Unsworth (CIFOR-ICRAF): w.unsworth@cifor-icraf.org