4 Communal sago collection - Scraping.m4v

Communal sago collection Scraping (4.00) The women first removed the bark of the tree in sections, to expose the fibrous core of the trunk. The planks they produce in this way are used to provide a platform on which they can sit later, just above the level of water in the swamp. Some women had their scrapers ready but others chose to tie fresh strikers to their handles. (The woman whose face was covered in white clay was in mourning: and the mans voice was that of a friend who tried to stage-manage the exercise for my benefit.) They scraped, off and on, for half the day, though it was both hot and humid. The blunt ends of the strikers were used to break up the interior of the trunk, and machetes were used to reduce this fibrous material to smaller fragments. This mixture of woody fibres and sago powder was then carried to the river (about 100 metres away) for washing.
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Category:

Education

Tags:

• Papua New Guinea
• Sepik
• Sawos
• Torembi
• sago collection
• hunter-gatheterts