Sunday Morning Stares
Print this Page- By Daniel Laboe
- Country: Papua New Guinea
- Related Publication: Looking at Ourselves and Others
The Sunday morning walk to St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church of Sogeri is two kilometers from my little red house on the Iarowari High School grounds. Today is Palm Sunday. I'm walking the Sogeri road. The weight of the sun is like an invisible heat blanket bleaching my hair, trying to set it ablaze.
Tall kunai grass towers on both sides. Wild bushes sprouting magnificent colored flowers climb the hills on the right side. Strange, crooked, randomly spiraling palm trees eerily look down on the tar like the background of a Salvador Dali painting. An unseen stream rolls over its rocky bed, then reminds me of its presence down below the grassy hill on the left.
As I turn the corner coming up near the school rugby oval, I get a feeling. Unavoidable. It will stay with me until I'm back in my little red house. Some people are sitting on a fallen tree on the hill overlooking the rugby field and some more are walking my way. A woman and three children. I'm on stage. I'm a showpiece, a curiosity, a foreigner. Painfully aware, I'm a white man in Papua New Guinea. I don't mean to say that the Papua New Guineans never see whites. But one who lives among them? A man who walks the same road as they do, eats the same food, teaches their children? A white man who doesn't live in some expensive palace in Moresby going about his day beyond the barbed wire, acting as if he were back in his own country?
The stares come. They come from all directions. I pass the people on the fallen tree, but I still feel their looks on my back. The women and children pass me. A greeting of "Moning nau" is exchanged, but the children gawk. I give a smile and happily receive one back.
Where I came from (a small Midwestern town) did not prepare me to be at center stage, every moment of each day. I am the middle of nine children. At college I was a study in average. Comfortably packed in with the rest, a perfectly capable student, but one who never racked his brains with school. I sailed on the wave of the fat section of the bell curve. Last year, I remember thinking, "I don't want to get a job, in a few years a wife. I want to see the world! I want to be different!" Good Lord, I'm different now.
The stares keep coming, and for some unknown reason a lonely feeling creeps in. The "I wish I could talk to my family" feeling. The "far away in the middle of nowhere" feeling. I fight it back down my throat. I want to sit. I want to close my eyes and imagine. Imagine that I can lose myself in a crowd, that I can look like everyone else. I want my hair to curl up into tight little dark balls and my skin to turn brown. I want to sit somewhere and have people walk by without staring, without even noticing. This spotlight is as bright and constant as the sun that has now reached every part of my body. Sweat drips down off my nose and makes a dark wet spot on my shirt.
I'm passing the community school now and two of my students have caught up with me. They give me a happy look and prepare to absorb some of the stares. Mostly they get stares of their own which say, "You two are with him, huh?" To which they smile and nod, "That's right, he's a Taubada, but he's OK, he's with us." I nod as if to affirm the silent conversation. I feel as accepted as I'll ever be. An appreciated stranger.
We pass an old man who has found a nice piece of shade. I recognize him. Local guy. A Papuan with a small belly and a baseball cap on. His hair has big Afro curls and his Melanesian eyes are spread apart. His teeth are stained a blackish red from a life's worth of betel nut chewing. Even though my Motu is limited to a few words, I mix some in with a Pidgin greeting, "Ah Tura, namo. Yo Orait, eh? Gutpela, lukim."
My effort shows a lack of ignorance more than any great knowledge. He smiles and gives a quick wave of his hand. The lonely feeling makes a quick exit; I breathe in the beautiful morning and exotic surroundings. My students turn off to the Lutheran Church after the wooden bridge that looks as if it was built during World War II. The stares appear more like curious looks that make me smile as I walk on. I can see St. Gregory the Great Church. It is a little bigger than my father's garage back in Michigan, but today it has the feel of a cathedral. All kinds of palms decorate inside and out. The colorful flowers have made their way into the church. They cover the altar and crucifix. I'm early. I sit down and place my elbows on my tanned knees to brace my head. More stares come my way, accompanied by the muffled giggles of some young girls in the back of the church. A thought enters my mind. All these stares, every look shot my way by the dark eyes of the PNG, they are 100 percent curiosity, zero percent animosity. They just want to know something about me. They want to feel my hair, pull my beard, touch my arm. They want to hear stories from the land of Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They want to see pictures of New York and find out if people actually kiss in public in my hometown. They want to hear about a football stadium filled with 100,000 screaming fans or ask how many times I've seen Muhammad Ali. Pure curiosity. Racial hatred hasn't come alive here yet. They just want to know something about me and my place.
Mass is starting and we all move outside to form a procession into the church, traditional Palm Sunday style. I've made a decision just now. Occasionally a loneliness that lessens over time and being on stage most of the day are small prices to pay for knowing this country and its people. I suddenly feel good about today, St. Gregory's Church, the Sogeri Plateau, Papua New Guinea, and, yes, even the look the man sitting beside me gives me right before he shakes my hand and says, "Peace be with you."
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