A small gathering of excited children and a couple of adults watched from under shade trees as we stepped out of the chopper and made our way to a temporary shelter that served as check-in and boarding lounge.

This simple setup represented the gateway to civilization. We gathered around and sat close by. Others ventured beyond and found themselves chatting with the children.

After a while the sun’s heat also forced me to seek shelter under the shade trees.

As I approached the children, I passed by a little old man covered in grey hair. He was puffing vigorously on a bamboo pipe. I noticed him struggling to get the fresh tobacco leaves to catch fire from his cigarette lighter. As he puffed harder, his cheeks bulged strenuously in and out– the inward suck revealing the absence of molars.

My colleagues and I watched the children play – some with shirts barely hanging by a thread on their little bodies. Most of the shorts had huge holes at the rear.

After a while, the old man, pipe in hand, walked past us. Closely following was a girl of around 15 or 16, perhaps 14, with a child inside a laplap hanging diagonally across her chest.

I heard someone speak after the couple had gone and I realised a young local man was amongst us. He had sneaked up to catch a conversation with us, maybe to obtain some information about the drilling project we’d just come from.

“Lapun man yah i wokabaut wantaim meri bilong em”, he said softly.

We all turned and stared at him with eyes wide open.

“Ah?” “Yu tok women?” “Aiyo!” “Turu ah?” came several enquiring voices.

We surrounded him and, after some disbelieving moments of head shakes and ‘tst tst tst’ expressing disapproval, we returned to the boarding lounge to await our flight.

The light plane climbed into the clouds and we were on our way to Port Moresby.

I haven’t told this story to an audience until now. While I was reading an article on types of leadership in PNG, I happened upon ‘gerontocracy’. And this story nudged from the dust of my memory.

It seems that only the old men of Wabo have been allowed to take local young girls as wives through pre-arranged marriage.

When a baby girl is born, she is marked for marriage to a much older man – who might be greying at the time of the ceremony. In exchange, the older man presents the parents with gifts of prized food and an animal.

In the course of the child’s rearing until she has her first menstruation, the older man continues his visits with food and other stuff. She is then handed over and becomes a wife.

An aspect of this tradition that disturbed me was the way the older men maintained a stranglehold or power over much younger and physically stronger lads.

As boys come of age, their hormones kick in and the urge to seek a girl becomes a burden in this society as every girl is attached.

We were told that many young men commit adultery with the wives of the old men. And sometimes these young men pay the ultimate price – death by sorcery.

Other young men, being scared of the powerful older men, who usually are sorcerers, wait until their time comes. And by then they will have learned sorcery, how to make gardens and hunt in the jungles and are perhaps ready for a young wife.

Older men’s power over younger men in this society is backed by their ability to use sorcery to threaten and maintain order in their favour.

Governance in such societies revolves around maintaining this tradition that older men continue to reign superior over younger men and therefore subject them to craving and waiting for many years.

We learned that as the outside world opened up to them and the younger men travelled out to other places, they are bringing back wives.

I sincerely hope that much has changed now as more and more outsiders migrate into Wabo to find work and other opportunities that the project might offer.