Aesthetic Realism, Founded by Eli Siegel,
Provides a New Perspective for Anthropology & Sociology

Chapter 8. Alan Comes to New Guinea 

Note: It is now more than a decade later. Gwe is a now young man and his friend Fovot is too. Together they have walked to the Australian Patrol Post in neighboring Myana Valley, high in the central mountains, two or three hours walk from their home. Alan is headed to the same patrol post but isn't there yet.  

Alan was going to research a doctoral thesis on human ecology: people and their use of land. In the quietude of the untouched wilderness, among men and women of Nature, he felt, he would experience the primitive at last. He would become like an Indian, perhaps, and learn the wisdom of an ancient people. 
     During the days when Gwe planned to leave for Myana, Alan Hull learned the following: (1) He’d passed the oral exam for his doctorate, which nine months earlier he’d failed, and (2) the fellowship from the U.S. Public Health Service and grant from the National Science Foundation to go to New Guinea were activated. Practically weeping with relief, he began arranging to leave. 
     It was in September of the 27th year of his life that Alan Hull arrived at last, early in the morning, in Kiriwinoo, New Guinea. He booked into Kiriwinoo Hotel.  
     This city on the northern coast of New Guinea sits at the mouth of the River which is entry to the interior: to the faraway Mountain Ok region, where Gwe lived. That River, the mighty Sepik, winds its way through hundreds of miles of forest and is home to the most spectacular, variegated art of the Territory. But this was not to be the subject of his study, as much as he loved to draw. He felt art was not included in his scientific objectives: to study the relation of people and land. 
     And now, Alan was about to have his first breakfast in New Guinea. In the dining room, walking languidly in the heat, waiters in red laplaps¹ served the guests.  
     A waiter approached Alan to ask a question. “What did he say?” Alan asked the blond official in short pants and long socks sitting at the next table.  
     “He asked, What do you want?” 
     “Don’t they speak English?” 
     The man looked at him in surprise. “No.” 
     With electric fans suspended from the ceiling, slowly revolving, the guests eating breakfast, and black waiters in red silently moving from table to table, it seemed to Alan a scene from an old movie of French West Africa: black servitude and white supremacy.  
     Meanwhile, the Australian business people ate heartily as if nothing was wrong. 
     The waiter left, hurt that Alan didn’t order. 
     The waiter came back, thinking better of his decision. Alan asked the blond man, “Can he get a pad and pencil from the hotel desk, and I’ll write my order on it?” 
     The man said, “No. The cook can’t read.” 
     “Can anybody read?” 
     “No.” 
     Alan reflected on the quiet acceptance of vast social difference between the white businesspeople and government workers, and the dark New Guinean staff.  
     Here, thought Alan looking at the men serving food, are the rightful owners of New Guinea: the first inhabitants of this large island—an island girdled with dark ocean and three thousand miles of circumference—and these men are serving in red laplaps.