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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
[My] first patrol was with Carleton [Gajdusek]. We ... spent three nights in the bush. Our food supply ran out in the three days that we walked. We picked breadfruit and a banana that grows slow ... we steamed them in bamboo and ate that for food. We took pandanus ... and one of our patrol men got a different type ... not for eating ... and he boiled it and ate. [He] was sick by morning (Inamba).
Whenever there was war and we ... patrolled in those regions ... if I saw a man who would chew betel nut ... then I would take salt and put it in his mouth and tell him to taste it with his betel nut [to show] that we have these things that we want to share and to make friends so that there would be no more threats for the patrol group. It made peace for Carleton [Gajdusek] to do his job (Tiu).
Carleton [Gajdusek] would come and pick up Michael [Alpers] and go on [patrol]. I went on patrol with them to Menyamya [for] four weeks! I carried a patrol box. We would have ... one pole on each hand carrying one patrol box. We would carry them on the shoulders while going up, and going down the front man would carry on the shoulders and the one at the back would carry on the hands. All the skin would peel off [the shoulders] ... we would get kuni grass the softer kind--and make a bundle and place it on the shoulder and then rest the pole on it ... they were very heavy (Avusa). (1)
THE KURU INVESTIGATION
The above recollections of Inamba, Tiu and Avusa describe experiences as members of the kuru epidemiological patrols undertaken by European scientists within and beyond the Fore territory during the late 1950s and early 1960s. At that time, much of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea was being opened up to Europeans as Australian colonial administrators took control of the region. In order to establish and consolidate authority, regular administrative patrols were conducted throughout the districts of the Eastern Highlands and adjoining areas. Generally of between three and six weeks duration, these patrols were conducted on foot through a regular circuit of villages. Accompanying the patrol officer were a contingent of police, several interpreters and numerous carriers. (2) In addition to establishing and maintaining a population census, the patrols addressed and documented issues of law and order, cultural practices, land use, health, the maintenance of public amenities such as airstrips and roads, and so on (see Nelson 1996). They provided a model that paved the way for the later epidemiological patrols undertaken by European scientists during the late 1950s and 1960s to study the disease, kuru, which affected the Fore people.
Kuru first came to European attention through occasional descriptions in the government patrol reports of the early 1950s of a woman or child affected by what the Fore viewed as a sorcery-induced, fatal condition. Initially not classified as an illness because of the association with sorcery (Mathews 1976; Nelson 1996), (3) by the mid 1950s kuru was recognised as a notable cause of Fore mortality and social disruption as kin members sought to avenge the death of relatives. In 1955, concern over kuru-related violence prompted patrol officer John Coleman to send a 'typical case' to government doctor Vincent Zigas for examination. Zigas made a provisional diagnosis of 'acute hysteria in an otherwise perfectly healthy woman' (McArthur 1955 cited in Mathews 1976:84). When in the Kainantu area the following year, the number of kuru-afflicted patients observed convinced Zigas he was dealing with a serious epidemic. (4)
Temporarily released from normal duties by the Director General of Health in Port Moresby to remain in the area and study the condition, Zigas was joined in February 1957 by American paediatrician and virologist, Carleton Gajdusek (Farquhar and Gajdusek 1981; Zigas 1975). (5) Together they established a jungle hospital in the Okapa area. In a landmark paper published later that year, they described kuru as 'closely related to the ill defined group of heredofamilial neurological degenerative disorders of the central nervous system' (Gajdusek and Zigas 1957:746). This publication attracted worldwide scientific and media interest in the disease.
Among the early kuru scientists to take up residence in the South Fore region were anthropologists Robert and Shirley Glasse who arrived in July 1961, closely, followed by medical researcher Michael Alpers (Alpers 2004; Lindenbaum 1979:vii). (6) In 1963, the Papua and New Guinea Medical Advisory Research Council formalised kuru research with the appointment of Richard (Dick) Hornabrook, a New Zealand neurologist, as clinical director (see Schofield 1963:2). Five years later, the Papua and New Guinea Institute of Human Biology (IHB) (7) was founded with Hornabrook appointed inaugural director. (8)
By the end of the 1960s, the scientists had identified kuru as a 'slow virus' of the central nervous system, transmitted through the Fore practice of cannibalistic mortuary rites (see Gajdusek, Gibbs and Alpers 1966; Mathews, Glasse and Lindenbaum 1968). A Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1976 to Gajdusek for the identification of kuru as a 'slow virus' disease. Currently, kuru is recognised as belonging to a family of fatal neurodegenerative disorders acquired through exposure to an infectious agent termed a 'prion.' (9) Similar diseases include scrapie in sheep, spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, and the associated variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and spontaneous and inherited CJD in humans. A characteristic of prion diseases is that as the illness progresses brain tissue acquires a sponge-like appearance (Collinge 2001; Lindenbaum 2001).
COLLECTING THE FORE NARRATIVES
Although the scientific outcomes of the kuru investigation are well documented, little has been written about Fore involvement in this inquiry* In this paper, aspects of the experiences of a group of Fore youngsters who accompanied the kuru scientists on patrol during the early years of the investigation are explored. The purpose is to gain insight into their experiences as patrol members, interactions with the scientists, and their contribution to the scientific investigation.
In June 2003, I travelled to the South Fore region of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea to record the stories of locals who had assisted or been associated with the kuru scientists. The intention was to obtain a Fore perspective on the scientific investigation through recording oral narratives. Among the stories documented were those of a group of men who worked for a succession of scientists over many years, hereafter referred to as 'the narrators'. With the exception of two brothers from a distant village across the Lamari River, all were from South Fore villages. Many travelled some distance on foot to tell their stories. The desire to have their experiences recorded in 'a book' so their children and grandchildren would know of their involvement in the investigation was an important motivation. In keeping with this wish, the narrators' first names and their self-identified villages are as follows: Kemo (Agakamatasa), Tiu (Awarosa), Dagayo and Yaurao (Dungwe), Inamba and Naggiri (Ivingoi), Tarubi and Tovagava (Purosa) Agame and Igana (Yagareba), Anuma and Kewi (Wanitabe), Avusa, Ove and Pako (Waisa). (10)
The process of recording the narratives was challenging. Reflecting the tradition and enjoyment of oral story-telling (see Berndt, 1965; Lindenbaum, 1979; 2002), the recording sessions were regarded as a communal event and attended by the narrators' peers and other interested locals or kin. (11) Recording was characterised by disruptions and distractions, as well as group negotiations and challenges over what was said. These complications were compounded by communication and translation difficulties. Unfamiliar with the local languages, my reliance on a skilled and supportive local translator was nevertheless fraught with doubts and misgivings over the inevitable loss of essence associated with the process of translation, and the cultural accuracy of my translated questions and/or probes, and the narrators' responses (Beasley 2006).
A feature of the recording process was attempts by a small group of dominant individuals to reconcile the dramatic sociopolitical changes experienced since the late 1950s (see Lindenbaum 2003:S71). Friedman (1992:837) identifies this process as 'an imprinting of the present on the past' through constructing 'a meaningful universe of events and narratives for an individual or collectively defined subject'. In this case, the resultant narratives were flavoured with outbursts of bitterness, resentment and grievance, and a tendency to distort and/or exaggerate events in the hope of obtaining monetary compensation--a widespread phenomenon in post colonial Melanesia (see Akin, 1999; Kirsch, 2001). Generally such claims addressed perceived disparities between past rates of pay and current monetary values as well as inadequate recognition by the scientists of ongoing social obligations. An early narrative by two of this group was particularly forceful and appeared to be a futile attempt to influence the rhetoric of others. Generally such outbursts were tempered, challenged or refuted by those present, resulting in a negotiated version of events (see Beasley 2006). On other occasions the presence of a particular individual appeared to stifle or inhibit recollections producing sketchy, disjointed accounts that proved difficult to draw out and appeared incomplete.
While many fascinating memories were documented, at best they reflect the context of their collection, offering partial stories of events overlaid with approximately fifty years of telling and retelling. In order to provide fuller more reliable triangulated accounts of the challenges, difficulties and attractions of accompanying the Europeans on patrol, this paper also draws on other records such as diaries, letters and interviews with kuru scientists.
FRONTIER SCIENCE
The kuru investigation focused on an unknown, progressive and fatal neurological disease which afflicted a people from a geographically remote and rugged area, characterised by large tracts of 'unexploited virgin land' (Sorenson 1976:14). Against this backdrop the kuru inquiry can be recognised as an inimitable episode of 'frontier science'. That is, an inquiry located at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, conducted on the cusp of dynamic geographical and cultural boundaries.
The 'major task' of the early scientific patrols was to determine the prevalence of the disease and 'the delineation of the area within which it occurred' (Farquhar 1981:xvi). At that time, parts of the South Fore territory and the region to the east remained officially designated 'uncontrolled'. (12) This designation restricted outsider entry on the grounds that the prevalence of inter-village warfare (and other social practices considered abhorrent by the colonial administration) compromised guarantees of individual safety (Gajdusek 1981:xix). (13) On those rare occasions when access was granted, a police escort was mandatory. Gajdusek (1974:56), for example, records an escort of ten police on the patrol of September to November, 1957. (14) While most of the South Fore region was 'derestricted' by late 1958, much of the vast area to the east remained 'uncontrolled' well into the 1960s.
In contrast with Gajdusek's long patrols into neighbouring and distant territories, local patrols usually involved one to three days' journey around a circuit of villages within Fore territory. The prime purpose of these...
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