The Tari Valley in the Papua New Guinea Highlands is the home of the Huli Wigmen, some of the best dressed tribesmen in PNG and consistent winners at the Coca Cola-sponsored Mt Hagen Show. Part 2 of a two-part article. For Part 1, click here.
When the wigmen dance at Mt. Hagen, they not only take home prizes, but often wives.
As with the nation’s icon, the bird of paradise, much of traditional Huli courtship revolves around preening, prancing and display.
So, what’s the secret? Ask a Huli Wigman and he’ll tell you, it’s the hair.
The Huli are tough jungle tribesmen. The kind that would fiercely defend their own if you so much as glanced at any one of the three things Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlanders hold most dear — land, pigs and women.
But here was the wigmaster, an elderly sage of the Huli Wigmen, talking about hair care.
“There is a lot of magic involved in growing a good wig,” he confided via Steven, the interpreter.
The wizened wigmaster was standing beneath a colourful umbrella in the midst of yet another jungle downpour, protecting his hair from the rain.
Huli Wigmen, New Guinea
As he explained in pidgin, a couple of lean, young men stood, grooming their wigs, removing twigs and seeds with a toothed comb made from bone.
Combs are an essential item of any well-dressed Huli — along with a dagger made from the sharpened leg bone of a cassowary bird.
It’s best not to tell a Huli he’s having a bad hair day.
As part of the daily ritual, they reverently dipped bamboo tubes into the jungle stream and drank water from them, spraying it from their mouths into the air. They dipped sprays of mountain fern into the water and sprinkled their cultivated locks.
Huli Wigman, Hair Apparent, New Guinea
For up to 18 months, the novices sleep in a jungle hut, protecting their growing wigs by sleeping with their necks raised on wooden ra
ils mounted on posts driven into the packed-earth floor. When the wig is grown, it is shorn from their scalp and stitched together to hold its shape.
One bowl-shaped wig is inverted and stitched to the top of another, then shaped and died black to form the Huli’s highly-decorated formal head-dress, which is a riot of vividly coloured feathers from parrots, lorikeet, cassowary and bird of paradise.
With their beards and faces painted in yellow, red, black and blue and a fine cassowary quill carefully balanced in the septum of their nose, the Huli strut their stuff with leafy branches strapped to their waists to cover their behinds.
Painted like a bright, exotic bird: Huli Wigman in PNG-New Guinea
In dance, they imitate the bouncing tail feathers of a courting bird of paradise.
The wigmaster assured me the Huli have courtship down to a fine art.
Steven explained why traditional tribespeople live the way they do, with men and women in different houses.
“Men talk about secret things; if there is a problem, the men can freely talk about it,” he said.
Author Vincent Ross being "wiged out" by a Huli Wigman
“Huli men have magic words and magic things to keep their wives and children safe — secrets like wig making, the making of bows and arrows, the significance of certain feathers. They also guard powerful leaf medicines and special stones.”
Men cannot go into the women’s living quarters, he said.
“When Huli boys turn eight, they are sent to live with their father. At the age of 12 they are sent to the wigmaster to learn the lore and grow their first wig.
Author Vincent Ross with the Huli Wigmaster, talking "product"
“Wigmen can have more than one wife, if they can afford the bride price of pigs or kina — some have five wives.
“Traditionally, Huli men only have sex to have children. Then, after the woman becomes pregnant, there is no sex for three years, until the woman has finished breast feeding,” he said.
With no attempt to placate Western political correctness, Steven’s honesty was refreshing and endearing.
As the six-seat Otter aircraft banked between the clouds in a fluid motion and skimmed low over the ridge to land at Tari airstrip, Huli children watched from behind the high wire fence as the small clutch of tourists prepared to head back to the outside world.
Climbing aboard the light plane for the 45-minute flight to Mt Hagen over mountain peaks, deep green valleys and jungle-clad gorges cut through by muddy rivers, the pilot greeted them with a wide smile, assuring: “It’s a good day for flying, there are holes in the clouds.”
With the light plane battling gravity to rise above the highlands, the loud, reassuring drone of the engines blocked conversation.
As the pilot picked his way through patches of blue sky, above billowing tropical clouds and around lumpy grey thunderheads, there was time to ponder.
In full-feathered regalia are the Huli Wigmen beautiful?
Well… speaking purely in a blokey kind of way… Yes. They are.
Photo Credits
All photos © Vincent Ross. All Rights Reserved.
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