Over the past 20 years I have been doing fieldwork in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. The people there have become the dearest people in my life, and have completely transformed me. We often worry about the impact of the West on other cultures. Sometimes it works the other way around. As I learned their culture it was as if the whole ethos of their culture started to course through my veins. I could feel my whole body re-arrange itself into their postures and habits. My back loosened, my arms swung a little more freely, and my feet came alive, feeling the terrain like an extra set of hands. I learned to walk with a springy step over mountains I once had to crawl up and down. I tuned my senses to see and understand the world as they did. I learned to see the stories a plant could tell and to hear birds as clocks and harbingers of what was to come. I learned the joy of growing your own food, and of hunting, trapping, skinning, and feasting. I learned the values of humility, calm and patience required to live in a small community with people you have always known and will always know. I learned to feel the cool wind coming down over the mountain as a signal of the coming rain.
Most importantly, I have had the opportunity to share the deepest experiences of life with them - the highest highs and the lowest lows.
I am tremendously and eternally grateful to all of my friends and family in New Guinea. You not only gave me these great memories, but you also inspired me to have a family and to be the kind of dad that I am today.
Featuring quotes and excerpts from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, available through PBS.
The Art of Being Human amzn.to/2vDOPUo
Free Anthropology Course: anth101.com
Social Media: @mwesch