In addition to articulating Kikang’s written entries with his oral accounts and ordering these chronologically, I have found dialogue indispensable in constructing Kikang’s life story. Although I foreground Kikang’s self-representations as continuous text, I have inserted selected excerpts from our conversations. These dialogues serve to remind readers that they are dealing with a co-construction—one that has emerged from the interaction of two variously aged men of different cultural backgrounds.[16]
By including passages of dialogue, I can better analyse two core aspects of our cooperation. First, Kikang would often appeal to me explicitly, include me in the flow of his narrative, ask me questions or refer back to previous interviews and statements. To illustrate, let me take Kikang’s account of how he came to learn his date of birth. I was most surprised when he raised this matter at our very first interview:
Kikang: By the way, I know too when my mother gave birth to me. That I can tell you right now. See for yourself. I have written it down [showing me his small notebook]. That’s when I was born [pointing to the note ‘Mar 3/31/1902’]. Wrote it down myself, I did. Just like that.
Wolfgang: Good. And how did you come across this date?
Kikang: Well, we’re able to dream. You know what I mean, dream?
Wolfgang: Yes. And so you found that out in a dream?
Kikang: Yes. I fell asleep. I used to think a lot about my [deceased] mother. And one day she appeared to me [in a dream]. By then I was already a young man. Mother came and said to me: ‘The day on which I gave birth to you is this one’ [Kikang pointed to the date in his notebook]. So what do you think? Do you think I’m right about this?
Wolfgang: Well, it’s your story. If you look at it like that, it could well be true.
Kikang: So I immediately got up and wrote it down. Later on I thought: ‘That’s my day now.’ Ever since then I take that day off and rest up a little.
Wolfgang: Yes, that’s what we do too—on a birthday.
Kikang: At first I wasn’t sure if my mother wasn’t playing tricks with me. But later, on another occasion, she came to me again in the night. That was during the war.
Kikang then described how he first journeyed to the Beyond in a dream and talked of his experiences during World War II. But the exchange above shows, in my view, just how much having a date of birth to call his own mattered to Kikang. He saw this as a prerequisite for having a modern life story. What he hoped to get from me was more than just recognition of his chosen path, along which he had found his birthday. He was also signalling his equal status with whites generally and with their European notions of personhood. He wanted my confirmation, too, that by possessing his own birthday he qualified as having a modern life story.
My second reason for retaining various dialogues within Kikang’s otherwise continuous narrative is because long sequences of it are only there, at least in that form, because of questions I had put. These were due, first, to my interest in local history, prompting me to seek insights into events that had shaped the region. But I also questioned Kikang about entries that I could make no sense of. To illustrate, I reproduce below a page from the second journal. Its entries date from between May and July 1984. The topmost (and the first for May) tells of a fight between Christians and non-Christians in a neighbouring village. The next refers to the Pope’s visit to Papua New Guinea in May 1984. Then follows a note on holy men in the same neighbouring village, whom Kikang had seen while he was dreaming. Next, he notes a (dream-)encounter with dead persons from the Chimbu region of Papua New Guinea. The last entry names the places where the souls of the dead may abide; Kikang has also included a small explanatory sketch.
May 4/84 Message from the catechist at Sisagel. The heathen are fighting, says the Church. The people. The villages of Umboldi, Guyarak, Namga, Amun, Sor, Sibog and Silaling met up. Then there was a fight with the Catholics. And the heathens struck one of the Christians and one remained unharmed, but another was hurt. He later got better though.
May 8/5/84 The Holy Father Pope John Paul is coming to Papua New Guinea.
May 17/5/84 Holy Church message. In Sisagel, there are two groups of holy men, one wearing blue clothing and the other black. These two groups are the holy men in Sisagel.
Jun 13/6/84 J. Kikang saw men from Chimbu, dead men who greeted him.
Jul 2.7.84 John K. saw (1) klinpaia and (2) limbo and (3) pullkatori and (4) heaven. Four places where the souls go to. It is the story of the dead and where their souls abide.
The commandments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
T N S P K S S G M KO 4
O 3
O 2
O 1The four places of God the Father
Church meeting on the 1st of May 84
10 commandments, taught to the people as the 10 Commandments of Moses.
I asked Kikang about the last of these entries, dated 2 July 1984:
Wolfgang: You have already spoken a couple of times now about journeying to Paradise or Heaven or Purgatory. Now in these notes of yours you write at one point: ‘John K. saw (1) klinpaia and (2) limbo and (3) pullkatori and (4) heaven. Four places where the souls go to. It is the story of the dead and where their souls abide.’ And you’ve made a little sketch as well. And underneath you’ve written: ‘The four places of God the Father.’ Can you say a little bit more about what these places are like?’
Kikang: … Look at it this way, hell is where we are now—here on our land … So you have someone here on the land. Then he dies. And he has saddled himself down with guilt. So then he can’t just get up and go. First he has to stay here a while. He can’t just leave. First he’s going to have to stay here on this land. And then the peoplethat’s us [the living]we have to pray. Yes, pray! It goes something like this: ‘O God our Father, help, help, help.’ And you just keep doing that, let’s say, for 10 years or even more than that. Good, so the exact number of years is laid down in advance. Now, when he’s got the last year behind him, now he’ll be able to leave the place. So now he leaves the place and on he goes to the next one. Now if he’s not a good person—[that means for him] first of all [a stint in] Klinpaia [i.e. station 1] … That’s a bit like Madang. A small town. So [he] stays in Klinpaia for, let’s say, 12 to 20 years. And once again it’s pray, pray, pray. Well then, so eventually he’s done with Klinpaia. He gets the day behind him that was laid down for him. It’s time now for him to go on to limbo [i.e. station 2]. So limbo is a good place. It’s a good place. It is beautiful. Everything is laid on … So there he stays. Then [what happens is that] he sets off from limbo. From there he now goes on to Pullkatori [i.e. station 3]. This is a perfectly holy place. As for paradise [i.e. station 4], that is the place of the tiny children. We adults never go there. That is for the tiny children—[who are] without sin. They do not know guilt. They were still too little when they died … So I was in contact with the dead people, and I asked them: ‘Where are you now?’ And they said: ‘We are in Klinpaia.’ Well, I knew that is just a place like Madang. Nothing special about it … Later—it was in another year—I prayed and then I asked them: ‘And where are you now?’ I was told: ‘I am in Moresby [i.e. Limbo].’ So I said to myself: ‘Ah, I see, so it’s Moresby now you’ve got to.’ Still later I repeated my question—and all the while the praying was going on and on—‘When are you going to leave Moresby?’ And then I was told: ‘I’ve already left Moresby. Now I’m in Australia.’ Then I said: ‘So he’s finally arrived in the city. Now he’s in Australia. That is Pullkatori. That is where Pullkatori is. Very close to heaven. There it’s just like being in Australia. The places are like cities.’ … Madang is a small town and that’s how you have to imagine Klinpaia. Lovely houses. People filled with joy. Now if you leave Madang behind you and go on to Port Moresby, then it’s like you’re in a big town. Lots of wonderful houses. Good roads. And after that comes Australia. Well you know how it is there, a real city. All of the time you just see machines working. Houses with lots of levels. Well, that’s how you’ve got to imagine this place Pullkatori. All the people living there are happy. They are well-off. No hard work anymore … Those are the messages the dead pass on to me. Well, that’s what I ask all of them. All those who have died, I ask them [the same question], and they give me the answer … But if one of them tells me ‘I’ve gone to Australia’, then I don’t pray for him anymore. Then I’m through [with praying]. He has already arrived. He’s come home … Well, that’s how things stand with us humans after we die.
Kikang’s cosmological imaginations of the Beyond depicted a moral trajectory from country to city, blackness to whiteness, sinfulness to redemption. The route to be travelled by the dead was clearly prefigured, leading out of the world of rural villages on the Rai Coast, passing through Papua New Guinea’s urban centers, and ending in a land inhabited by white people. Thus the first station on the route was the so-called Klinpaia, a place marked by minor tribulations, which for Kikang was very like the provincial capital of Madang. Limbo, the next station, was something of an improvement, being a major town with many tall buildings; Kikang likened it to Port Moresby—Papua New Guinea’s capital and largest city. The third station, which Kikang described as Pullkatori, was a ‘holy place’ (ples santu)—a city located in Australia.[17] The fourth and last place—‘Heaven’ in this hierarchy of levels—Kikang referred to, finally, as ‘Paradise’. To this Garden of Eden, a landscape where all was pure and pristine, only small children, who had died young and so were free from all sin, could have access, according to Kikang. His primary focus, however, was on the sequence of urban landscapes in the Beyond that finally leads into the land of the whites and the heavenly city. This he conceived as a European-style city, at once holy place and epitome of modernity.[18]
Kikang once showed me a revealing photograph from his personal documents. Probably taken by a Catholic missionary at the beginning of the 1950s, it pictures one of the earliest Catholic churches in Kikang’s home village. In front stands the man who designed and built it, John Kikang himself. The building, resembling a pagoda, is in a style not usual for this region of Papua New Guinea. But to eyes informed by Kikang’s imaginings of the respective abodes of the dead, its stack of four storeys is clearly an architectonic parallel of his four-tiered model of the Beyond.