Mali was forbidden to come out of the salangha during the daylight hours when boys or men were around.

Sago is the staple food in these parts but Mali was not allowed to sago until a month had passed when she was given what is called ripmanghu (coconut juice mixed with juice extracted from a tree bark called mighomo). The mixture is red in colour and very sweet.

The one month Mali spent in the salangha went by slowly for her, an energetic lass, and she complained. But her mother told her she had to be patient as this is a traditional custom that was practiced from generation to generation by her father’s ancestors and she had to respect that.

Her mother, from the island of Goodenough in Milne Bay Province, told her that traditional practices give Papua New Guineans our unique identity. So Mali stayed in the salangha for the whole month.

The next stage of transition was for Mali to be bathed with a special kind of banana stump. This is believed to make a girl grow into a strong woman. The elder women woke her up when the moon rose at three o’clock in the morning and bathed her.

The result was non-stop itchiness for hours. The bathing ritual continued for three consecutive days.  Mali complained and cursed but there was nothing she could do about it.

After the third day of being bathed with the banana stump she was allowed to leave the salangha and go to her family home but she was not permitted to enter the house.

Towards the end of the month, her cousin brother, Holonia, and his father, Manai, came to Mali’s home very early in the morning and gave her the ripmangu. The coconut used in the mixture had to be hand-picked and carried without touching the ground.

Holonia did the honours of picking the coconut. Mali was given the ripmangu and allowed to eat sago again. However, she was not yet permitted to cook or hold a knife.

The other part of the ritual was for her to run between two lines of men whilst being lashed with a special plant used for chighi-fia (broom whipping). Mali was terrified and her mother didn’t allow this to happen as it was seen to be inappropriate.

After the bathing procedure, Mali was allowed to cook and the first food she had to cook was a taro sandwich, which was to be prepared solely by her and given to the elderly women who had bathed her.

Mali woke up very early one Saturday morning and prepared the food. She had never cooked taro sandwich by herself and it was challenging for her but she managed to cook over 25 of them, much to her mother’s delight.

Once the food was ready, she placed it into a big dish and carried it on her head to the elderly women’s homes where she gave it to them and their families.

When she started walking up the road to another hamlet called Membaulo with the dish on her head, everyone seeing her knew this was the final step in her transition from being a girl to a woman.

Mali is now seen by the whole village as a woman and no longer a girl. Her daily tasks have changed from a girl’s to a woman’s.

In many other PNG societies, men are not to know when a woman is having her menstrual period as it is regarded as taboo. In villages in Kubalia, when a woman has her period, that is the only time she gets to rest from gardening, chores and other female obligations.

This is seen as a good thing because women get to regain their strength whilst relaxing at the salangha.