Savind a Mudman

Papua New Guinea has a culture which has a very strong art component. This art is evident all throughout the country as Papua New Guineans are fiercely proud of their culture and this National Pride shines through everywhere in their daily lives. It is impossible to come to this country and not see for yourself the exotic visuals you will see in their art.

Here are a few examples:



a life-sized Sepik carving



a miniature dukduk (tumbuan)

the facade of the Goroka library

buying kundu drums at the market

a Sepik mask with a crcodile coming out of the mouth, the shells are cowrie shells

One of my favourites is the Asaro Mudman. These mudmen are miniature versions of the real thing. Well, the real thing is an actual live man running around with a bow & arrow and covered with white mud. Legend has it that a long time ago, the Asaro people were waging war with another tribe in the Eastern Highlands. One of the Asaro people fell in a mud pool composed of white mud. He then attacked the other tribe with the white mud on which had by now dried up. The other tribe though he was a ghost and ran off. This inspired the warrior to fashion a helmet and he went back to his tribesmen and convinced them to do the same. From that time onwards, the Asaro people used the white mud for times of war. These days, it is more of a tourist attraction. There are several tours from Lae and from Goroka which you can avail of which will allow you to see these mudmen in action.  

an actual mudman mask, this weighs 10 kgs!

the mudman mask easily fits my head in

Now a few years back, I bought 20 little mudmen. They're not cheap mind you. They're small figurines you can put on a table. I thought it would be cool to make a little army of mudmen. However, I found out soon enough that these little things break fast. A slight gust of wind can knock one back and you'll see how fast these things break apart. As my table was besides a window with some curtains, I cam back one afternoon with more than half of my mudmen all broken. With the remainder, I put these aside as I didn't want to buy new ones. However, the mudmen still break once the mud dries out. Here are some samples of dried out mudmen.  

cracked mudman feet and neck

cracked mudman jaw

cracked mudman foot

I experimented with one. I imagined spritzing it with water might make it last longer by preventing the mud from drying out. I was correct. A monthly light spritz of water is effective in saving your mudman. The only drawback to this method is that the mudman develops a patina over time and in my sample, you can clearly see that the discolouration was not consistent and the helmet is now of a different colour from the body. Oh well, at least I still saved my last mudman.

a very old miniature mudman regularly spritzed with water