Phallocryptics

The Sepik, Papua New Guinea

I recently read articles about problems in Africa where lynch mobs roamed the streets of Senegal hunting down foreigners believed to be sorcerers with the power to steal (i.e. shrink) men's penises. Allegedly, they did it with a handshake.

The reports talked about sightings of the shriveled genitalia of the victims. The whole thing would be totally laughable had not some of the perpetrators with petite penis preferences been attacked and killed by size queen terrorists. This type of story belongs to those categories that newspaper editors file for recycling every six months or so or whenever nothing else exciting happens.

‘Hey, Joe, nothing much happened yesterday. Let’s run that penis story again’.

‘Oh Gourd! Not again!’

Which of course brings me to my topic: penis gourds. Penis gourds are found worldwide. The only reason ballet dancers don’t use them is that they don’t fit into their tutus all that well, otherwise you would have the hairy La Trocaderos troupe dancing Swan Lake with even more erectile enhancement than socks provide.

Folded.

Arguably, Papua New Guinea is one of the world’s most gourd fearing countries.  These male fashion accoutrements are called koteka.

Serious scholars of phallocrypts (good name that! Wow! Look at the size of the crypt on the phallo over there!) have written books and taken a million photos of the conical devices worn by Papua New Guinea men on their penises.

They make their gourds out of a vegetable: the lagenaria siceraria. The Chinese use the vegetable in stir-fries and soup. In Vietnam they fashion pipes out of it for smoking. Sometimes called a calabash, Africans make musical instruments out of them. But a tribesmen of Papua New Guinea use one to protect (hide? enhance? embellish?) his penis. A side benefit is that they can also store supplies in them. How much you store depends on how much room you leave when your member is constrained in the koteka.

 I have seen men whip them off (usually quite gently and carefully) and bring out betel nuts, cigarettes, snacks and even money.

They come in all shapes and sizes (the gourds! I am talking about the gourds!) Tribal variations occur of course so depending on whether your designer is Yves St Bubbalubba or Lokoloko Dior, you grow your own gourd accordingly.

To shape your gourd to the desired shape, add stone weights to the bottom to stretch it as it grows. You can add a few curves using string to restrain or encourage its growth in whatever direction you wish. Some shapes end up quite elaborate.

When you harvest your gourd, hollow it out and leave it to dry. If you wish, you could polish it with beeswax or resins. Embellish the end result as you wish. Many have decorations such as paintings, shells and feathers.

Then of course, you put it on and adjust it according to size and preference.

Most are so long that they need to be held upright with twine or vine tied round your neck keeping the penis in the upright position.

Sorry, that is a typo. It should read: keeping the penis gourd in an upright position. It is much cheaper and more effective than Viagra. The only question I ever had was: how do men run through the jungle and not suffer major mishaps? 

Some wear the Viagra model: pointed straight up! Some prefer the gay model: straight out. Others use the retiree’s model, drooping down.

A man may have a whole wardrobe of kotekas in his collection. Kotekas of different sizes and shapes serve different purposes: put your short ones on when working or running through jungles and save the lengthier models for festive occasions.

I suppose if western ladies can walk on stilettos through concrete jungles for which they were not designed, brushing aside a few leaves, twigs and pythons is no great ask.

In 1972 I was south of Wewak, somewhere near Ambunti trying to find the Sepik River. I was on the second leg of a trip down river with a colleague from the University in Port Moresby. We had hired a canoe. Its captain was a jovial man of occasional hygiene who wore the greasiest, most intricate koteka I had ever seen. It twisted back in on itself till the tip almost touched his left nipple. The tip was like a pig’s tail, complete with three twirls. What was the purpose of the twirls? Captain Koteka hung a few traveling essentials from the twirls: a piece of twine, a small piece of cloth and a key! I asked about the key, but he laughed and told me it was secret.

Captain Koteka had mentioned to us that there was a waterfall up a small tributary we were soon to pass which he assured us was beautiful.

As long as I do not have to ride a gumi over one, I am a sucker for waterfalls so I asked if we could take a look. He assured us that we could but that he could not take the canoe up too far as the creek was too shallow. We agreed to go up as far as he could and walk the rest.

The waterfall was not Victoria Falls. Barely a hand span or two high it was more reminiscent of a sewage outflow over a brick wall! I should have known. The Sepik does not wind through many chasms and ravines once it hits the coastal plains.

So we walked back, but dopey (my colleague, not me!) lost the path—such as it was. Our instructions had been quite clear: follow the bank of the creek. Dopey (my colleague—not me!) suggested we take a short cut through the forest covering the large bend in the creek between the waterfall and the main river. We got totally lost.

Getting lost in jungles is not a good idea, particularly when you don’t have any supplies with you or useful items such as compasses, raincoats (for when it rains, which only happens once a day), a sleeping tent, matches, machetes and the like. Oh—and food.

We decided the best thing we could do was to find our way back to the creek, any creek. The theory?  All creeks lead to the Sepik. Or so we thought. The only problem was that we were a little disorientated. Most bush survival-training people tell you to find a creek or a river and follow it down.

Our problem was that we knew there was a creek nearby. We had just been there. But, which direction was it in?

We were in a tiny clearing, so we decided to rest and use our brains. After all, we worked at a University. We must have been clever.

Of course, if we were so clever, you may well ask why we were lost! But please don’t!

Our bush bashing through the jungle looking for the short cut had left us a little bruised and battered. We were sweating profusely, a sure sign that out metabolic rate was spiking. We estimated that we had been walking for a couple of hours.

Dopey (my acquaintance, not me!) had forgotten to wear his watch. I wasn’t wearing one either. I had not forgotten! I am just not a watch-wearing type.

We were both rather hungry. After a failed attempt to find the creek, being careful to mark our path by breaking a twig or strangling a python, we found ourselves back at our tiny alcove in the green coffin like jungle.

It was getting dark and it seemed that we were there for the night.

‘At least we can tell which way is west when the sun goes down,’ said I brightly.

My colleague (the dopey one!) looked at me sadly’. Can you see the sun?’ he asked and his face suggested that all of this was my fault.

We could see that the sun was shining. It was relatively light. But there was no way we could see whether it was east, west, north, south—in short, we had no way of telling directions from the sun.

‘Perhaps shadows?’

Try finding a shadow in a rain forest.

I was wondering whether Captain Koteka was worried about us: after all, we had only paid a twenty percent deposit on our agreed hire fee so there was a chance he might be concerned.

We fashioned a few leaves into a prickly mattress and laid them on the damp floor of the forest. It was not going to be a good night.

Light? I have already mentioned the absence of matches. I mean, who brings them when we ‘are just going to pop up there and have a squizz at the lovely waterfall!’

‘I have read that insects are high in protein!’ said my intelligent university colleague helpfully.

I looked at him. ‘How do you hunt an insect?’

He shrugged. We could have eaten a few mosquitoes as they successfully found us, but even though we squashed them gently they hardly seemed appetizing.

‘We can last one night without food!’ said my colleague (the dopey one!)

We ate nothing while Professor Dopey regaled me with fascinating stories about the nutritional value of insects. He was, after all, a biologist and knew something about them.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘in the tropics, there is no lack of food. This jungle has many plants we could eat. But for protein, look no farther than the creepy-crawlies. Insects are an amazing source of food. They're mostly protein, with a little fat’.

‘How helpful,’ said I. ‘So chocolate coated ants are high in protein?’

‘I am trying to be serious,’ he said.

‘And I am trying not to feel hungry,’ I replied.

‘Of course some insects can be poisonous,’ added dopey.

‘Which ones?’ I asked.

He frowned. ‘Forgot!’ he mumbled. Then he brightened up. ‘Ah yes! Rule of thumb. The more colorful, the more poisonous!’

‘Fine,’ said I. ‘So let’s start foraging for dull looking insects’.

‘How do we find dull insects in the darkness of this jungle?’ he asked.

‘You are the biologist and the one with the bright ideas!’ I replied.

He harrumphed.

‘Anyway, how do we cook this feast if and when we catch some?’ I asked.

‘We don’t,' he said, as the heavens opened and the rain poured down.

It was an unpleasant night. We found no insects, bright or dull. But we did not get thirsty.

Next morning, miserable, wet, hungry and not a little worried, we woke at first light.

‘It is a pity we didn’t have a compass,’ I said.

‘I read once that you can make one by removing the metal pin from a souvenir button and rubbing it in one direction with a silk scarf. The friction between the scarf and the pin sparks an electric charge, turning the pin into a magnet. Then all you need to do is to float it on a blade of grass in your water bottle and bingo! A compass!’

From Doctor Dopey that was so helpful.

‘Do you have a souvenir button?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Do you have a silk scarf?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Do you have a water bottle?’

‘What’s with all the questions,’ he said and yet again seemed a little miffed.

We noticed that the water was running to our right and we assumed that might be west, as we had definitely kept to the east of our little creek when looking for the waterfall.

The rain still poured down and both of us were totally drenched.

‘Let’s take the down slope, such as it is!’ I said and Dopey (MA, PhD, Calcutta, {Failed}) agreed.

Carefully bending leaves and twigs behind us, we shoved our way through the clinging jungle. We said nothing as we fought our way downhill. That was fine till we found ourselves going up hill. We took stock.

‘I think we should go back and try and find out where we went wrong,’ I said.

Dopey looked at me as if we had changed roles.

‘We went wrong when we left the canoe,’ he said.

I could not argue with that.

‘I think we should keep going’.

We did. After a half an hour we came to a spot where someone had laid out some leaves and twigs on the ground as if to make a mattress of some rudimentary kind.

Neither of us said anything. Once again, we were back where we started. We sat down, dejected and beginning to get very worried indeed.

I was about to ask whether my colleague had ever considered cannibalism, when we heard a strange birdcall. It sounded like a football referee’s whistle. One short shrill blast was followed after a few seconds by an answering call. Was it perhaps some kind of endangered Sepik whistle-bird mating ritual?

The whistling got louder and louder, closer and closer.

Suddenly the bird burst into our small clearing. We looked in amazement. We had never seen a bird like it before. It was Captain Koteka!

I momentarily considered telling him about our decision to undertake natural studies research overnight and make light of the fact that Dopey had got us lost.

Captain Koteka took his whistle, removed his koteka (the smaller, bush going one) placed it inside and rearranged the family jewels. There was plenty of room for the whistle and the betel nut and the tobacco and everything else in that sordid interior.

Rather than show Captain Koteka the way to safety, we let him lead us back to the creek. It took us at the most fifteen minutes! We had spent the night in total discomfort whilst our whistling captain had rested in a cozy little hut he had found, sleeping round a fire he had built with wood he had cut with his machete and lit with his matches and so on and so on.

And we were the ones charged with the future education of the young people of Papua New Guinea? It made me think.

As for the koteka, once back on the canoe, the short, stubby model was immediately replaced by the ornately curved clothes line version and we set off down river.

We did not bother with any more waterfalls.