Pogonophobia

Mendi, Papua New Guinea

You will, of course have heard of Pogonophobia. Now don’t jump to conclusions and argue that Pogonophobia is a fear of pogo sticks. It is in fact a fear of beards. I discovered about this phobia (and how to cure it: shaving) when I was searching for a word to describe the fear of lifts. The best I could find was claustrophobia, but we all know that is really an aversion to Father Christmas.

I was disappointed. All I could find was ‘lift phobia or elevator phobia’. How mundane. I was amazed at how many other phobias people have. How about triskadekaphobia? It is the fear of the number thirteen. Ephebiphobia is a useful one: the fear of teenagers.

Hippopottomonstroussesquipedalianism-phobia is a beauty. Give up? According to the Urban Dictionary, it is the fear of long words. But back to lifts! Maybe I should coin a new word? Otisphobia?

Why do I need such a word? Let me explain.

I joined a linguistics and anthropology team from the University of Papua New Guinea on an expedition to the Southern Highlands to survey a newly discovered tribe. Well, relatively speaking anyway. This particular tribe knew about planes and helicopters and white men, but not much!

The plan was that we were to bring a captive savage back to Port Moresby for some linguistic research: in other words, help save one more of Papua New Guinea’s over seven hundred languages before they all died out!

We flew to Mendi and drove towards a place called Magura. We walked from the main road: for road read muddy track. On the second day we reached a missionary station where American anti make-up evangelists wearing fierce buns scrunched into place with tortoise-shell combs ruled the roost. And that was the men! Mind you it was hard to tell who were men and who were women. The women were the ones who did not seem to have breasts, whereas the men did. It was all very confusing.

They guarded themselves against the possibility of onslaughts or terrorist attacks by the surrounding savages they were there to proselytize by keeping a shrunken head in a bottle of formaldehyde on top of a piano in the main mission house in their fort, sorry, compound. That was in addition to the two-meter high fence surrounding the compound, crowned with broken glass and spikes.

‘Welcome to the open arms of Jesus: just go through security checks first’.

As we drank warm water (tea and coffee were neither halal nor kosher) and nibbled on freshly flown in American biscuits (one each, please. We ration them out),

I eyed the piano. Thinking of the two days of trekking (read: slipping, sliding, falling, clambering, exhaustion of the past two days) I turned to my hosts and smiled sweetly.

‘How did you get this here?’

‘Some boys carried it!’ was the reply.

Carry a piano across a walking track that challenged even us with our small backpacks? A piano was obviously essential to assist in the tribal conversion program.

‘May I play it?’ I asked.

‘No!’ snapped one of the heavily breasted patriarchs. ‘We only play it on the Sabbath’.

Silly me. Why did I not appreciate that?

‘And the head in the bottle?’

‘You can never be too careful!’ came the reply. ‘These savages know nothing except fear! That head keeps them out of the house’.

We had planned to stay overnight there but the spirit moved us on to a village a few kilometers further on where there were no heads, no security fences and no piano. It was a ‘missionary free’ zone.

We spent a pleasant evening in a smoky hut and moved on at dawn. We eventually arrived at our destination in the evening to be greeted by some heads that had not yet been collected for pickling: at least not by missionaries.

Mind you, we knew that headhunters were known to have been/were still operating in the area. I checked my throat. It was still in place. People came up to us and touched us all over. Some rubbed the insides of our legs. It was all very welcoming and I thought that maybe… but no…

Communication was—how shall I put this?—difficult; but our linguistic experts did well and we enjoyed our few days living in a newly constructed hut and eating the most god-awful food I have ever eaten in my life. Though the bananas were nice.

After a few days of acting like researchers and completing our allotted tasks, we had established some rapport. In fact, we loved it.

Stay in a village or stay in a missionary compound? No contest.

We packed up and prepared to leave, taking with us to the big city of Port Moresby one of the leaders of the village.

The headman himself could not go. He was too important to leave. But his deputy, Ganny, was deputized and, collecting his wardrobe—a freshly collected bunch of arse grass and a black hair belt—he toddled along with us back to the road. When I say with us, he actually raced ahead. We would clamber up a ridge to find him witting waiting for us. When we arrived, he would grin, jump up and race off. No dilly-dallying for Ganny.

We did not stop at the mission on our return journey. The missionaries stood in the doorway of their pitiful fort and looked at us vacantly as we walked by as if we were on the way to the trade store and would pop in for a head or two later. They did not even lift a hand to wave. If ever a person needs a reason to question the Christian (or any) faith, visit a few right wing mission stations.

I felt a twinge of pettiness, but dismissed it. If such twisted souls can preach the love of a messiah at the same time as they scare off their flock with pickled heads, they deserve to be shunned.

As we approached the road where our vehicles waited, Ganny was all eyes and ears. I have never seen a person so aware of what was happening. How did he cope with his first sight of a truck?  We knew that he had seen a plane. He turned to us and frowned.

We worked out what he was asking: ‘Why does this not fly?’

When we got to the airport at Mendi and he saw his first plane on the ground he did a double take and pointed.

‘Plane,’ explained our linguists.

‘Per-lane,’ nodded Ganny.

He made flying motions with his arms and ran around in circles. We nodded.

He asked where its nest was. We pointed.

‘Han-gar!’ we explained.

Ganny nodded. He kept repeating his two new words over and over. ‘Han-gar, perlane. Han—gar, perlane!’

When we got into the per-lane, Ganny showed no fear. He modestly arranged his arse grass so it would not crush and declined our invitation to wear a seat belt.

On the flight to Moresby he stared out of the window open eyed as we skimmed over the forests. When we circled over the (to Ganny) massive city of Port Moresby, his face showed shock and disbelief. That only increased as we traveled into the centre of the town. He had never seen so many people before, or cars, or houses, or anything.

We got out of the car in front of ANG house: in those days, the only high rise building in Port Moresby. The linguists’ office was on the eleventh floor.

We waited in the lobby for the second car to arrive from the airport. While we waited, Ganny stood open mouthed watching everything that happened in the foyer.

He watched as a man walked in, walked to the lift and pushed the button. Ganny saw lights flash and the lift door opened. The man walked in. The doors closed. The lights flashed. The doors opened. A woman walked out.

‘Come, let’s get in the lift, Ganny!’

He refused, violently. Ganny was not prepared to have a sex change just yet.

We had to climb the stairs to the eleventh floor.

Ganny ran up.