Today was our last country before we finish up with Zimbabwe for the closing ceremonies. Since it was our last Oceania country, we decided to pair it with the 'Best of Oceania' Day.
This week each continent is getting it's own ' Best of' Day. So what does a best of day include?
1. We're letting the boys pick their best postcards from each continent to make a special four country collection. Each of us will put a dollar in the jar of the person's collection we like the best.
2. Each continent has it's own Jeopardy. There's no categories, but each country has five clues. The less clues you need to identify the country, the more points it's worth. That'll also earn them some money from their jars.
3. In addition to our regular medal event, each continent has a medal up for grabs for whoever can name the flag, the capital and correctly identify the location of each country on that continent in the fastest time.
4. There will be dinners of all the best food from the continent (as voted on by us cherry picking 5 spoons up dishes)
But, before we can get to all of that, we need to tell you about our second to last country, Papua New Guinea!
Papua New Guinea shares half an island with New Guinea of Indonesia, and is separated from Australia by just over 2 miles at its closest point. But the countries all vary greatly.
Papua New Guinea is one of the least explored island countries in the world. Australia is dry, PNG is a steamy, foggy, rainforest. Australia tops the global rankings for quality of life, while PNG is at the bottom of the list of impoverished countries.
But there are some similarities, the tribes of PNG share a rich history with Australia's aboriginal people. More than 7,000 different tribes live here, and the people here are still very in touch with their roots. Because there are so many different tribes, there are over 820 languages spoken in PNG, with the average adult speaking at least 3 different languages (Officially the Languages are: English, Tok Pisin & Hiri Motu.)
The interior is where you can experience some of the most fascinating tribal culture.
The Korowai tribe had no knowledge of the outside world until the 1970s, as they live high up in the forest in tree houses. They are thought to be the last tribe in the world that still practice cannibalism.
The Asaro "mud men" from Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands are known for their ghoulish clay masks adorned with pigs' teeth and shells.
Then there's the yam worshiping. It was one of the 'trademarks' and the boys were like 'wait. what is that?' So we googled. Yams are apparently a pretty big deal is all kinds of tribes.
In every vilage in Trobriand island, you can find some Yam houses.The biggest Yam house belongs to the chief, of course, and is decorated with shells.Yams are very important as a symbol of wealth, power and prosperity. After the harvest, yam houses are filled, and there are big festivities at this time. A yam house filled to the brim reflects wealth and prestige for its owner.
Then, there's the Abelam people renowned for their yam cult. Yes, a yam cult. The Abelam cultivate two types of yams – the yams used as daily food and gigantic yams, up to 3-4 meters long, used for ceremonies.
The long yams are only grown by men in the ceremonial yam gardens, where no women are allowed. As a man’s status and prestige in the community are judged by his ability to grow ceremonial yams, the men compete between themselves for their yam.
I could link to Wikipedia here, but I'm just going to quote it, because the boys LOVED this:
" The growing of large yams determines the status of individuals as well as the whole village. At yam festivals an individual would give his largest yam to his worst enemy who would then be obligated to grow an even larger yam or have his status fall each year in which he was unable to do so. Separate villages would gather at yam festivals where the hosting villages status would be determined by the size of their yams as well as their ability to provide more food than could be eaten and carried away by the rival village.
During the yam growing season strong emotions were kept to a minimum as they were thought to impede the growth of the yams. Fighting was taboo. It was thought that the yams had a spirit and could sense any of these strong emotions."
The interior is also where you'd find our landmark, the Kokoda Track, a 60 mile trail that was once used by gold miners in the 1890s and then during WWII to help the Japanese reach Port Moresby (PNG's capital).
The region looks much like it did back then. There's no electrcity, shops, or park ranger stations. It's just a track with trenches, rusted weapons and simple log bridges to cross the rivers.
All the tribes make for an interesting mix of people, and PNG likes to celebrate as many as possible. They hold many festivals/celebrations/events they call 'sing sings' where hundreds of tribes come together to showcase their cultures with songs, dances, costumes, masks, head wear and rituals.
Obviously, as an island, the coast is also a draw for the people of PNG and any tourist who may show up (it's not all that many). The picture in our big book had boys leaping off a rusty shipwreck into the ocean below for fun.
OUr book highlighted some of the animals you'll find off those coasts including the dugongs, or PNG's verison of 'sea cows'. They aren't exactly manatees, but they belong to the same family.
And then we got a mention of the Mariana Trench, since it is so close to PNG. (It's closer to the Mariana Islands, but that isn't a country, rather a U.S. Territory.
In case you don't know (and you might not if you don't live with Peyton who has made it a lifelong goal to go to the Mariana Trench), it's the lowest point in the earth, the deepest part of the ocean. No light touches the water down there which makes for some interesting animals like the barreleye fish, the deep-sea dragon fish, the dumbo octopus and the goblin shark. (Peyton proceeded to tell us everything about all of these, plus more).
The sea is so important to the people of PNG, until 1933, seashells were used as currency!
If you haven't gotten how off the beaten path and a little quirky this country is, let me tell you about the trademarks:
Right off the bat the book lists 'Penis-gourds' which, I was a little afraid to google at first, but the boys talked me into it. It's basically like a sports cup made out of a gourd. So, the pictures were weird (it's not like a normal shaped cup, they use some weird gourds), but not something I'm too worried about being in my google search history.
Betel nuts are basically some nuts grown in a tree, nothing too exciting there.
And bilum bags are like cool woven satchels.
Then there was the yam worshiping.
And, finally, they listed 'raskols' which sounded more interesting than what it actually was. Apparently they are criminal gangs that create all kinds of issues in the grubby capital city of Port Moresby.
We needed to clear the collections for the best of Oceania, so we voted at lunch one more time for the last 10 or so countries. Calib won in a sweep, the first time anyone has gotten four first place votes for collections (You obviously are not allowed to vote for yourself).
And then they were off to make their second to last postcards.
The second to last postcards...
Calib's featured someone jumping off a rusty old barge with a seashell, some guys with yams, the Kokoda Track with rusty weapons, and the treehouse people.
Peyton's focused a lot on the Mariana Trench. He loves deep ocean stuff, and has long been a fan of the Mariana Trench, so he went off and drew all kinds of animals we didn't even know about--- and 'gooey sand' because apparently it's not normal sand down there- and then drew the various layers of the ocean and depicted in various shades of blue.
Hayden's featured a giant yam flying through the air, and some guys mining gold along the Kokoda Track, and the dugong in the water. He also included the Bulmer's fruit bat, which is the world's largest cave dwelling bat. (It was thought to be extinct until they found it hiding in caves in remote parts of PNG in 1975).
Later that afternoon we played Oceania jeopardy. Except in cases where the landmark is super obvious, our landmarks are the five point clue. Calib studied last night and it showed. He won, so he got the additional bonus money.
And then it was time for flags. BUT, I took them all off the ring and mixed them up for added difficulty. And look who won his very first gold medal! Calib pointed to the Solomon Islands instead of Fiji (and he knew it), and Hayden couldn't think of the capital of Papua New Guinea, which he had just learned, so I almost can't really blame him. He did try. But, I just couldn't count 'Port Morbid' as correct. He did beat Calib by 4 seconds though, so he was the winner.
And boy was he excited about it. (Look at Etta, she thinks the medals are treats for her every time we get them out).
Since we did Papua New Guinea with the Best of Oceania we picked out a dessert to have with our best of dinner. Enter the Banana Cake Papua New Guinea Style. It's banana bread with a chocolate topping! That's a common mix in Papua New Guinea since they grow them together. (The coconut trees provide the shade for the cocoa plant.)
This dessert earned four spoons up.
Peyton didn't hate it, but he doesn't like chocolate all that much.
That chocolate topping is awesome. It really makes it. It's like fondue, but it doesn't need to be kept warm, it just doesn't completely harden. For real future me, remember this next time we do fondue.
If you are looking for other Papua New Guinea recipes, I had pulled the recipe for Spicy Coconut Shrimp and Coconut KauKau (sweet potatoes) and we were going to have it for lunch. But there was a miscommunication with shrimp on the grocery list, and it all got used for the Paella last night. (Also, that meant no Palau shrimp fitters with dinner tonight, a total bummer!)
Our best of dinner as voted on by the five of us was mostly a repeat of Australia's dinner.
We had Burgers with the Lot (and even got the pickled beet once again), Roasted Vinegar Asparagus, 'chips' with chippy salt, and then the berries from Hobbit Day. Also Fun Fact: That Australia Blog was written exactly a year ago today.
We nixed the Cherry Cobbler for tonight, since we had the Papua New Guinea Banana Cake, but we'll make it tomorrow for our President's Day dinner! Since, it was what we had for Washington's Birthday.
This dinner earned a repeat 5 spoons up. Burgers with the lot and that asparagus are going to be around this house for awhile. Only time will tell if they have the Nancy Reagan Mac and Cheese type of longevity.
After we voted on postcards, we voted on the best Oceania collection.
Tonight, Hayden got my vote. His Australia postcards is one of my favorites.
Then it was time for another skiing event. I had to fix Hayden's skiis all up after he broke them the flip flop on them the first time around. But, since it was cross country skiing, I took this opportunity to cross school work with sporting events. It's cross-COUNTRY-skiing.
I brought out the rings of countries with our landmarks on them. There were four stations (we left out Oceania and South America) and boys had to identify a random landmark from each of the 4 remaining continents.
At the stations, they were given the landmark and they had to guess the country. They had three chances on each continent to get one right. If you got it right, you got to moved on to the next one. If not you had to take a penalty lap before moving on to the next one.
Fastest time to the finish line was the winner.
Once we were done with the boys, Asa said he wanted to go, but he didn't want to break anyone's skis, so he said he could use the potato sacks from moguls yesterday.
Since he had a different mode of transportation, he was in his own separate event. Peyton won the gold for Cross Country Skiing, but we gave one to Asa too.
Todays cross country skiing medal ceremony.
After medals, the boys got to work on their mail from the Home Office.
And I tallied up where we all were with medals. No change in our leader, but Peyton is right on Hayden's tail. Although, I'm not sure if Peyton will get to keep one of those Russian bronze medals he has in his tally, because apparently some curling guy tested positive for drugs.
We colored in our second to last country. I'd be lying if I didn't say I stood back and looked at the table for a minute with a real sense of accomplishment. It's just a project, I know. But, it's another one of those things that I know the boys will talk about to their families someday.
That is 195 down, only ONE ----- that's just ONE!!!!--- to go!
Next Up: Tomorrow we take a break from countries to celebrate our first big project love, PRESIDENTS!
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