Papua New Guinea mask festival: A hypnotic ritual

Baining fire dancers, Rabaul.

There's a rhythmic thump rising from the darkness, a deep cadence that echoes among the trees.  It's been going for some time now – thump, thump, thump; low and powerful, shaking the ground – as we huddle in the clearing and wait for the action to begin. 

Soon the thump is joined by men's voices, chants that blend with those deep vibrations, songs that haunt the night air and signal to the tribe, to the dancers, to the onlookers, to the gods: it's time to begin.

A murky shape moves in the darkness, approaching the pyre in the centre of the clearing. There's a small spark as the sticks and leaves are set alight, and then flames lick the humid air as the fire quickly becomes an inferno that lights the trees around us with dancing shadows. 

It's incredible.  People travel to far-flung parts of Africa to see this sort of thing.  They go deep into the Amazon.  And it's happening just across Torres Strait.  Amazing.  

Somewhere off in the distance, the hum of a generator starts up.  One of the village chiefs raises his eyebrows.  "Someone," he says, "is charging his phone, I think."

Warwagira Mask Festival.

 Things aren't always as they seem around here.  We might be completely isolated in a tiny island village, the sort of place where grass grows high on the footy pitch and chickens roam free among the vege gardens and wooden huts, but there are still surprising intrusions of the modern world.  Most people on Mioko Island seem to have mobile phones.  They live on a largely subsistence basis, but there's room for modern distractions.

Today, we're one of those distractions.  We've come to spend the night at Maira, a village on Mioko Island, about a two-hour trip in a fibreglass banana boat from Kokopo.  Kokopo is what counts as the "big smoke" around here – it's the capital of the province, East New Britain, and the base from which I've come to experience the Baining fire dancers, as well as the surrounding islands.

Just getting to Mioko from Kokopo was an experience I will never forget.  A day after arriving in PNG, my group of fellow travellers and I piled into a banana boat and headed out to sea.  We'd been told there were sometimes spinner dolphins in the area, and to keep a lookout for fins.  Maybe we'd see three or four, we thought.  Or a large pod of five or six. 

Warwagira Mask Festival.

We were about an hour off the coast, getting in towards the Duke of York islands, when we spotted them: a sea of dorsal fins, a seething mass of mammalian life. There must have been 100 dolphins out there, some surfing the swell at the front of our boat, others leaping high into the air and crashing back into the ocean with a splash. 

Pretty soon we'd donned masks and snorkels and jumped into the clear ocean with them, hanging on to a rope as the boat cruised through this huge pod and the dolphins darted in and out, checking out these weird creatures flapping around in the water, playing in the wake, ducking and diving all around us. 

It was one of those experiences you never think you'll actually have: swimming in warm tropical waters, the feeling of isolation from the real world, as hundreds of wild dolphins jump and play nearby.

It had to end, of course.  There came a time when we had to climb back into the boat and continue motoring towards Mioko, to the village of Maira, to our home for the night. 

The idea is that this will be a window into another life.  There are no hotels in Maira.  No commercial entities at all.  There's little to do but stroll around and observe the place, to sit with a group of women as they weave mats, to throw a footy around with some of the kids, to rest under a tree, and drink from fresh coconuts.  Locals say hello as they walk past, smiling bright red smiles, their teeth stained by betel nut.  Kids sit and stare and poke each other and laugh. 
There's an almost mystical quality to the whole island, a feeling that only deepens when you find out that black magic is still practised sometimes in these parts.  Shells are used here as currency.  It's so different, and yet so close.    

There's something of a rivalry between the towns of Rabaul and Kokopo.  After Mount Tavurvur erupted in 1994, covering Rabaul in a thick blanket of ash, the capital of East New Britain was shifted to Kokopo, and much of the local population went with it.  Those residents who have tenaciously clung on to their businesses and their lives in Rabaul, still resent the shift, but you get the feeling they're fighting a losing battle.

One of those fighters is Susie McGrade, the owner and manager of Rabaul Hotel.  Susie's family has lived here since her grandfather came over as a prospector.  These days she still has to regularly sweep ash off the roof of her hotel, but somehow it remains open, even in the shadow of Mount Tavurvur; and somehow the guests keep trickling in.

They arrive here for the same reason we do, because Rabaul has already seen its fair share of battles.  In World War II the town had more bombs dropped on it than Pearl Harbour.  It was a battleground between the Allied Forces and Japan, a point of strategic importance.

There are still more than 2000 kilometres of tunnels snaking through the earth beneath our feet.  The war bunker once used by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbour, remains open to tourists. 

The rest of Rabaul has a ghostly, apocalyptic feel – much of it is still covered in ash; many buildings are skeletal ruins.  Though the town functions as a working port and marketplace, there aren't many true residents left.

Soon, even our group of travellers has departed.  We're back in the minivan, heading up into the highlands behind Kokopo as the sun begins to set, bound for a Baining village deep in the jungle.  There, the tribesmen are preparing to perform their ritual fire dance.

Right now they're putting the finishing touches on huge masks made of bamboo and soft bark. They're painting their skin.  They're tying on skirts of pandanus leaves.  They're waiting to feel the thud of wood on wood, to hear the chants of their fellow men, to see the flames rising high in the clearing. 

Then, the ceremony will begin.