Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a raucous teenager of a country, boiling with the vitality and conflict that come with its kaleidoscope of cultures. The stresses between traditional ways and the demands of modern commerce bedevil the island north of Australia with near anarchy in the cities, persistent tribal wars in the highlands and intermittent insurrection in the province of Bougainville. While many of New Guinea's people have become alienated from traditional ways during these growing pains, Saem Majnep, a simple man from the highlands, has responded by making it his cause to preserve tribal learning and restore respect for the accumulated wisdom of 800 peoples.

A diminutive man from the Kalam people of the Kaironk valley, Majnep is a living bridge between the subsistence life of a remote part of New Guinea's highlands and the world of science. In recent years, he has served as a collaborator on several scientific monographs published by Oxford University Press. Hired as an adolescent in 1959 to translate for New Zealand ornithologist Ralph Bulmer, Majnep soon found himself being interviewed for his familiarity with the feeding and breeding habits of birds that Bulmer was studying in the region.

Bulmer's respect for the knowledge of the Kalam people had a profound effect on Majnep. After assisting Bulmer, Majnep went on to work as a technician at the University of Papua New Guinea. Bulmer is now dead, and Majnep has returned to his village, where he continues to record his people's observations of animals and plants. "If you stay in your village, it is easy to pick up this learning because it is still all around you," he says. "But when people go to Madang ((the nearest city)), they lose it very quickly." Throughout the country, though, Majnep notes that the younger generation feels shame rather than pride in what their ancestors knew.

Alarmed at how easily this wisdom slips from its fragile perch in oral traditions, he also spends a good deal of time speaking to other tribes in New Guinea, either in person or on the radio, exhorting them to take pride in their culture. "I am an uneducated man," he tells them, "but white people value what I know."

With bountiful soils that make subsistence living an attractive alternative to workaday jobs, New Guinea's tribal life is still vibrant. Majnep says his biggest concern is the misuse of the land, as people abandon traditional crop rotation and forget about taboos that used to protect the forest. Still, people like Majnep raise hopes that the island nation may find an accord between tradition and modernity.