Never forgot my first time to see Gogodala people making sago on the banks of the Aramia River near Kawito.

I had seen it made in my wife’s island and even tried my hand at ‘paitim’ with a type of adze. Quickly ol meri-wantok stopped me as I was not doing it properly.

Now I saw that the Gogo ladies were not ‘washing’ it by hand but were in fact using a foot inside a bag to squeeze it. The only problem was that they were standing in the Milo coloured water (the Aramia is never clear coloured). So their feet were always quite muddy.

Much of the sago I ate in the Gogodala had fine grit in it from the foot process.

Incidentally in the late 70s Balimo market was known as ‘Sacsac Market’ as there was hardly ever any other food apart from Drai coconuts and some drinking or Kulau ones.

Trapped one day on the Aramia by a shortlived ‘Gogo’ or mini cyclone that race in during the wet season but soon pass by; my wife started grabbing long lengths of ‘KanKong’ growing all along the edge of the river.

The driver of the dinghy was horrified and shouted at her, “No missus! That’s poisonous!” She explained how her people often cooked with the green leaves.

The news spread throughout our Mission and on the next Saturday teachers from the APCM Awaba High School informed us on the shortwave radio they would like to see how Mrs Williams prepared the greens.

Wonder if it is now eaten on the river as a supplement to the basic sago diet. Life expectancy in the area was very low mostly due to malaria from the millions of mosquito that lived all around us even in the dry they were a pest; but I wondered if a poor diet contributed to that sad statistic.

My missus made a good veggie patch on the slope from our home down to river. “There!” she said, “kaukau and aibica do grow well! So why don’t they change their diets?”
She soon found out when the wallabies ate the leaves and the bandicoot ate the tiny kaukau in the ground.

We relied on the amazing gardens of Dauli Teacher’s College outside Tari for augmenting our personal diets. Fortnightly MAF would do ‘the veggie run’ all around the swampy South Fly stations.

As well as basic veggies the student teachers even grew passable but mostly small strawberries, rhubarb and were trying to produce bulb onions.

The purest sago I ever saw in PNG was at the late Morgan Seeto's store in Kavieng. 'Aunti' his Lavongai wife had supervised one of the workers washing and sieving some basic sago. Morgan showed me the finished product that was as fine as commercial flour.