The Hagen Show is an annual event where tribes from all over Papua New Guinea come to demonstrate their cultural practises through song, dance and traditional costumes. This year, it was mostly groups from the Hagen area - some locals I spoke to at the event said that groups from further afield hadn't come because election-related tensions were still high. So maybe next year there'll be a bit more variety. In any case it was still interesting to see.
We arrived while the event was still being set up. As a group of white people we were initially treated like tourists and were told it would cost us K200 to get in. When we started talking in Tok Pisin and saying, 'Fesbuk peg bilong yupela i tok em faiv kina' (your Facebook page says it's five kina) they realised that we weren't tourists and were told to go to another gate. This happened to be where the various groups were getting ready. There was nothing to stop us from mingling with them, so we mingled. It was fun to talk to people in Tok Pisin and see them open up as they realised we weren't like some of the other white people who just wanted to take pictures of them wearing feathers and leaves and not much else. They took the time to explain which birds the different feathers belonged to and what some of the symbols mean.
