Shush! If you keep talking I won’t be able to hear the TV
18 January 2018
PHIL FITZPATRICK
TUMBY BAY - In the late 1960s while attending a course at the Administrative College in Waigani, I was invited to the home of a young American woman who was working at the University of Papua New Guinea.
I’d become fascinated by the burgeoning literary scene at the university and had met the woman through a mutual friend who taught there.
She must have had independent means because she had bought a house in Boroko and was busily renovating it. Among the modifications she commissioned was something called a ‘conversation pit’.
I first observed it while it was being built. A couple of bemused Papuan carpenters worked on it. They didn’t understand its function but nevertheless lent their considerable skills to the task.
The finished pit was essentially a sunken floor within which there was a circle of comfortable seats. In the middle was a low table and there were cushions scattered around.
The pits were apparently popular in America during the 1960-70s and are attributed to Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, who built one for the industrialist J Irwin Miller.
As is the way of these things, when Miller had one everyone had to have one. Thus was the conversation commoditised.
In Ireland the art of conversation had been an age old tradition that existed without the aid of a pit but the art was not really defined until the 1960s when the word ‘craic’ became popular.
‘Craic’ was probably borrowed from the English word ‘crack’, which had a similar meaning, but was modified into Gaelic. The Irish tourism industry popularised it when all things Celtic came into vogue. Like many things Celtic, something claimed as an ancient tradition was often invented yesterday.
The word essentially refers to what happens when a group of people get together to talk and gossip, usually in a pub. “What’s the craic?” is now a commonplace greeting in Ireland.
The idea of gatherings to talk, either idly or with intent, is a custom enjoyed since human time began.
Before conversation pits, or even pubs, people would gather at night around campfires or hearths to talk and review the day’s events. The Chinese and Spanish had raised platforms for the purpose and many Muslim homes still use rugs and cushions in a room for the same thing. The function of men’s houses in Papua New Guinea included many forms of communication, including banter, discussion and instruction.
The conversation pit, in its original form, has now gone the way of the dinosaur. By the mid-1970s people were reclaiming and re-flooring them. That they had ever existed became a thing of embarrassment.
You can still occasionally stumble across a form of these pits but they are not designed for conversation any more. At one end there is now a huge television screen. People sit in the pit staring at the screen and ignoring each other. Those not staring at the screen are usually busy with hand-held digital devices.
It would seem that the art of the conversation is dying and all the wisdom contained therein is being lost. Only in the remote valleys of ‘undeveloped’ countries does the practice still enliven life around the campfire.
Even in the pubs you now have to carry on a conversation with a ubiquitous big screen pouring sporting banalities or drowning your senses in a cacophony of loud music.
We humans are a very smart species but sometimes we outsmart ourselves. Killing off the art of conversation is one of our dumber initiatives.
Growing up during World War II, I lived in an extended family. This was pre-TV and radio was mostly used for news and programs like ‘Forces Favourites’ midday Sunday and ‘Dick Barton Special Agent’ 18.45 Mon-Fri - steam-radio’s James Bond. Far more talking with one another was the norm.
After we moved to a new Council house in the late 1940s, it became the custom for my mum, dad, sister and I to visit the grandparents almost every Friday evening and after chapel on Sunday evening. Thus our rich conversations continued for a few more years.
Then came the era of rediffusion cable TV and eventually wireless beamed from tall transmitters for the masses. One of my earliest memories is of watching the Queen's coronation.
As we moved into the 1960s, our patriarch went blind and I can recall him asking my nanna, “Who is that loudmouth women with a horrible voice?” He couldn’t see Violet Carson acting as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street.
So our routine conversations began to be dominated or slotted into times when the famous soap was not aired or some of the other game shows; even the Welsh language but very popular ‘Land of Song’, starring Ivor Emmanuel.
Poor old Granddad gave up the will to live as ‘the box’ took over family lounges and with it the demise of conversation.
Thus I felt lucky then when I eventually married a Lavongai young woman and we set up home in her family’s little camp on a hillside overlooking Meterankang Harbour.
Once again the outside world only intruded via radio. We had ‘Maus bilong sol wara antap’ from Radio New Ireland and the national service which may have been beamed from Rabaul.
I could also get BBC London Overseas news which was always introduced then and apparently still is by the stirring march, 'Lillibullero'.
Batteries are expensive and far better employed for fishing at night, so often we didn’t even have radio and were left to the age old habit of sitting in the open area near our hut – talking!
Those are evenings to be cherished as I began to learn a little about the real lives of the people for whom I had once been ‘Advaisa’ and when I had been the new boy finding my way on their island.
As a city boy I don’t think I knew that in the empty phase of the moon you could still see quite a bit in the beautiful silvery starlight. I then could understand how all our tambuna must have sat and gazed at the same heavenly displays and pondered similar questions of their raison d’etre.
My new extended family would talk of their more exotic ancestors; family news both good or bad and general gossiping of all the things people everywhere do.
Many evenings we would be roaring at tales of the habits of Pupu Kongkong Masung or the village longlong’s latest public misadventure.
Pupu Inis could easily be persuaded to tell tales from the ‘Jap War’ when he had been beaten for taking food from the Jap’s garden which he had planted and tended.
“So why shouldn’t I get some benefit from my hat-wok? Eh tambu?” He seemed to relish telling of the time when he had been very young lad and had eaten bits of the neighbouring Tigak islanders his tribe had tricked into a so-called ‘reconciliation feast’.
I believe I was so lucky to arrive in PNG just at such a moment in time when traditional life was still all around the island prior to the advent of modern western things for the ordinary citizen such as outboard motors, small generators which soon were used to raise cash with a movie night, tape recorders etc.
But it wouldn’t be until 2007 that the mobile phone reached Kavieng and soon were available to most citizens.
To calm the little ones we would get them to lie down on a mat in the open asking them to try to be the first to spot a shooting star or a satellite and sometimes the more steady slower light from a jet miles above their heads.
All these things led to questioning ‘natposok’ (white boy) who had entered their social setting. I loved their amazement in knowing that when we were getting up at six in the morning my father would be going to bed in Wales. Surely that was whiteman’s myth.
Yes, Phil, the art of conversation is diminishing. A recent UK National Health report claimed a million over 75 year olds never get the chance to talk with anyone for over a month or more. A sad reflection of modern living.
Posted by: Arthur Williams | 18 January 2018 at 11:04 PM
Nowadays it is not unusual to see several people who obviously form a group but each individual in the group is immersed in their own smart phone, and there is little or no group interaction.
I think a fascinating part of PNG experience in the past is that people were so direct person-to-person in day to day life. People were interested in who you were and your were interested in who they were.
Posted by: Garry Roche | 18 January 2018 at 09:47 PM
Phil, we've reached a time where conversation really is the pits!
Posted by: Murray Bladwell | 18 January 2018 at 08:43 PM
Along with Twitter it is destroying language and creating a culture of individualism.
Andrew Keen has written extensively on the subject and his books The Cult of the Amateur and The Internet is not the Answer are quite thought provoking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keen
Posted by: Bernard Corden | 18 January 2018 at 10:55 AM