Discovery Channel has Shark Week. National Geographic (who now call themselves Nat Geo, for that hip and trendy vibe…) has Expedition Week, which is clearly out to kick Shark Week’s ass. So they started it with a show about sharks. But there are also shows on the “real” Jack the Ripper and ancient Egyptian artifacts and cave jumping. So which show did I decide to watch? Eating With Cannibals. Yes.
Quick side note: there was a warning title card at the beginning of the show. The odd thing is that it said nothing of the images of dead bodies to come, of which there were a few. No, this card was warning us in case the sight of a few swinging breasts would put us off our dinner. Boobs, not bodies. I found this hilarious.
Piers Gibbon, a handsome British journalist, not to be confused with Piers Morgan, the pompous and saggy British “journalist”/fame hound, wants to know about cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, because apparently it was not uncommon rather recently. So off we go to PNG, a place, he says, that is sometimes called 9090, in reference to the temperature and humidity level. There is dangerous terrain to be crossed, crocodiles not to be eaten by, and several tribes who swear up and down that cannibalism is over. Gibbon focuses mainly on the Biami tribe, who are said to be great warriors, and to have been one of the most cannibalistic tribes in the area. Using a translator, Gibbon asks Tikikawa, the last living “song leader,” who would find and accuse people of witchcraft, about the tribe’s past, whether cannibalism exists today, and what the reasons for it were. The answers he receives, from the Biami tribe as well as others, are the same. Cannibalism no longer takes place in that area, but when it did, it was never about being in need of food. There was always revenge behind it; if a neighboring village had stolen one of their people, one would be stolen and eaten in return. If a woman spoke badly of her husband, she would be killed and eaten upon his death. And finally, if the song leader was told by the spirits that someone was practicing sorcery, the sorcerer had to be killed and eaten. FYI, I learned that human meat, both male and female, tastes like pig meat. Gibbon learns this little factoid while eating a pig that he has just helped to carve. Incidentally, a human gets carved the same as a pig. And it’s easier to carry half a dead man than a whole one, so bring a buddy. Sorry.
Watching this show, I initially felt a little disgusted and freaked out. But over the course of the hour, a change came over me. Not that I have the urge to run out and purchase a nice juicy human haunch for dinner, but that cannibalism is so freakish and taboo to us because of the society we live in. We have laws and cops and prisons. The Biami tribe does not. They do, however, have Christianity, which the pastor of the village credited with bringing an end to cannibalism. He himself, before the missionaries came to town, had killed, cooked and eaten human beings.
It’s important, I believe, for Americans to have access to this kind of information. We are, even if we don’t like to admit it, largely a xenophobic society, and learning about cultures so far from our own can be helpful in broadening our horizons. I am not suggesting that cannibalism become the norm in this country, only that one man’s grisly murder is another man’s casting off of evil spirits.
I feel a yen for strawberries.
