The Tin Can Crucible
The nation of Papua New Guinea remains one the last true frontiers on Earth. Most of the residents of its mountainous interior, known as the Highlands, live in bush material huts, without electricity or running water. They subsist on what they grow in their gardens, gather in the forest, or hunt with bows and arrows. When I arrived in a village in the Papua New Guinean Highlands as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1994, I experienced a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years. I settled with a host family, began learning the language, and became close with the people there.
When a venerated elder died, the distraught villagers accused a neighboring woman of killing him by sorcery. In the days and weeks that followed, I was confronted with the fact that the people to whom I had grown close were neither as simple nor as pure as I had wanted to believe. In their capacity for endless patience and remarkable kindness, as well as unspeakable brutality, I came to recognize the complexity, the frailty, and even the humanity, of the people with whom I was living.