NEW GUINEA UNMASKED
As the morning mist burns off the jungle canopy, I hear the bamboo flutes: a haunting sound believed to be the voices of ancestral spirits in this far-flung region of Papua New Guinea. Then a looping line of dancers appears. Waving palm fronds and crowned with sky-scraping headdresses made from black cassowary feathers, they move as though in a trance, mimicking the high-stepping gait of crocodiles.
Together with my husband and our two young sons, I’m waiting for eight local men to take their first steps outside after being confined in a thatch-roofed (spirit house) for the past six weeks. We’ve traveled by canoe far up the Sepik River—at more than 1,100 kilometers the longest in Papua New Guinea—to witness this age-old initiation ceremony in Kanganaman village. It’s one of many high points on a three-month journey during which we glimpse the nation’s sheer linguistic and cultural diversity. What interests me
