Wewak

The coast and islands around Wewak were long settled by fishing and trading communities, while the hills behind held the gardens and hamlets of inland groups. Germany claimed the north-east of New Guinea in 1884 and set up posts along this coast, and Catholic missionaries of the Divine Word order arrived from the 1890s and built stations along this coast, Wewak later becoming the seat of a Catholic diocese. Australia took over the colony in 1914 and Wewak grew slowly as an administrative and mission centre among coconut plantations.

The Second World War made the town's name. Japanese forces occupied Wewak in 1942 and turned it into their principal base in New Guinea, with a ring of airfields along the coast; between 1943 and 1945 it held the largest Japanese airbase on mainland New Guinea. Repeated Australian and American bombing, most heavily on 17 August 1943, destroyed much of the aircraft and shipping based here, and the town itself was largely reduced to rubble. Australian troops landed near Wewak in 1945, and on 13 September that year the commander of the Japanese 18th Army surrendered at Cape Wom, west of the town, where a memorial park now marks the ground.

Post-war Wewak was rebuilt from very little as the administrative centre of the Sepik district, and became the capital of East Sepik Province after independence in 1975. Michael Somare, the country's first prime minister and later governor of East Sepik, grew up in the village of Karau in the Murik Lakes of this province. The town has since lived on government, the church, schooling, coastal shipping and the produce trade, with a small flow of visitors heading for the river.

Wewak is a meeting point for peoples with very different ways of life: coastal and island villages whose livelihoods come from the sea, and the river and grassland communities of the Sepik basin inland, among them the Iatmul, Abelam and their neighbours. East Sepik takes in many language groups — the Iatmul are the largest along the river — in a country of many hundreds of languages, and Tok Pisin carries most everyday conversation between them.

The province's reputation abroad rests on its art. Sepik carving — masks, figures, hooks, story boards and the posts and gables of the haus tambaran, the men's spirit house — is among the best known in the Pacific, and carvings from inland villages are sold in the town. River villages also make clay pottery and garamut drums, hollowed from tree trunks and carved into the shapes of totem animals for use in ritual. Among the Abelam around Maprik, the growing of giant yams is the centre of ceremonial life: a man's standing, and his village's, rests on the size of the yams he can bring to a festival, and strong feelings are kept in check during the growing season for fear of stunting them.

Christianity is woven through all of this: Catholic and other churches run schools, health posts and choirs, Sunday empties the streets, and church groups organise much of the town's social life. Sing-sings with kundu drums, shell ornament and feather headdresses mark provincial occasions and Independence Day. Manners are quiet and indirect, greetings matter, and visitors are expected to ask permission before entering a village or photographing people, carvings or ceremonial houses.

Wewak is the largest town on the coast between Madang and Jayapura, though still a small one, spread from the headland through the residential areas inland and along the coast road east. The provincial administration, the hospital, schools, the churches and their missions, the wharf and a handful of stores and workshops provide most of the formal jobs, while a great deal of the town's money moves through the markets, where sellers from the islands and the villages trade fish, garden produce and betel nut.

Mornings start early, with canoes coming in to the shore, market stalls set up before the heat and trucks filling with passengers. Business winds down in the afternoon, and the town is quiet after dark. Many households depend on remittances, on a garden plot, or on selling produce and cooked food, and electricity and water supplies are intermittent, so water tanks and generators are common. East Sepik remains one of the country's poorer provinces, and Wewak shows it in crowded housing and worn infrastructure.

Beyond the town, most of the province lives in villages, growing taro, yams, bananas and sago, fishing the sea or the river, and selling cocoa, vanilla, copra and betel nut for cash. Poor roads, the cost of fuel, unemployment among young people and the state of health and education services dominate local debate, as does the rise and fall of the Sepik itself, which can change level by several metres in the course of a year.

Wewak sits where sea food and river food meet. Tuna, reef fish, crayfish and shellfish come in from the coast and the islands and are grilled or cooked in coconut cream with aibika, the soft lowland green, and served with taro, yam, sweet potato, cooking banana or rice. From inland come river fish, prawns and smoked meat, along with sago, the starch washed from the pith of the sago palm — saksak in Tok Pisin — and cooked as flat pancakes or a stiff, glue-like jelly, the staple of the Sepik floodplain.

Feasts are cooked in a mumu, the earth oven of hot stones, with meat, root vegetables and greens wrapped in leaves and often soaked in coconut cream. Galip, the roasted canarium nut, is sold in bundles at the market, and the seasons bring mangoes, pawpaw, pineapple, breadfruit and many kinds of banana. Coconuts are drunk young and grated into almost everything when mature.

Town food is cheaper and plainer: rice with tinned mackerel, fried chicken or fish, lamb flaps, instant noodles and scones from the kai bars, with sweet tea or soft drinks. Guesthouse kitchens serve the day's catch with rice or chips, and SP, the national lager, is the usual beer. Buai, betel nut chewed with lime and mustard stick, is a constant of daily life and is sold at every market and roadside table.