Food, Family, Fellowship Part I

In the PNG lifestyle, there are three f’s of high importance: family, fellowship, and food. You don’t walk past someone without saying hello, and most people live in the same village with all of their family members, although that is starting to change. Because life in the village is in many ways simpler and less hectic than life in the west, the church we attended was able to have fellowship group four nights a week, in addition to Sunday morning service!

The first Sunday we attended, we were invited back for fellowship group that evening. We arrived “late,” though that concept is hazy in PNG culture, and they were already singing. We joined in, and after a while, the worship leader told everyone to sit down because someone was going to bless us with a song. Eric and I sat silently with everyone else, looking around to see who was going up front. After a few seconds of awkwardness for us, a young man we knew came over to us and whispered that I was the person who was going to bless everyone with a song! He and I had played and sung together before—he happened to know “How Great is our God” in English—so we borrowed some guitars from the worship leaders, and thankfully he told me what to do to follow social convention as we sang for everyone!

For many occasions, gathering with family to fellowship over food is the way of life. We attended one family bung (gathering) to decide whether the wife of a man who had passed away should go back to her family or stay with her late husband’s family. Both sides of the family came, bearing food. Everyone from the husband’s side brought a plate of food to give to the wife’s side, and the wife’s side brought a pig and hundreds of bananas. We all sat in a circle while the important members from each side of the family shared their opinions. Apparently the decision was not made that day; the bung was to allay any animosity on either side, and the decision was to be made afterward, per traditional PNG culture.

Since Eric and I were guests, we got to eat food from both sides of the family! All of the food for the wife’s side was distributed that evening, so we didn’t have to cook that night. The husband’s family gets to decide when they want to kill and roast the pig, so they waited until the next day. One of the family members brought us a slab of roasted pig—skin and fat still attached!