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The Haus Tambaran of Bongiora: A View from Within of the Tambaran and Yam Cults of the Abelam in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, by Godfried Johan Marie Gerrits. Lugano: Museo delle Culture di Lugano, 2012. isbn 978-88-7795- 215-8, 486 pages, preface, maps, tables, photographs, appendixes, notes, glossary/index, bibliography. us$169.99.
The origins of The Haus Tambaran of Bongiora are arresting. Between 1972 and 1977, Godfried Gerrits was a doctor and the provincial officer for leprosy and tuberculosis control at the hospital at Maprik Town in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In early 1973, people from Bongiora village, a few miles to the northwest of Maprik, offered to sell him some carvings associated with a korombo (haus tambaran in Tok Pisin) that had been built in Bongiora in 1965. In 1972, these carvings had been used in the Utmandji and Kimbi male initiation sequences, and in offer- ing the remnants to Gerrits, Bongiora people appear to have been hoping for a novel recycling of their art produc - tion. Instead, Gerrits negotiated a deal through which they would reconstruct and restore the two initiation cham- bers involved in the 1972 initiations. Subsequently, he had these reconstruc- tions removed to European museums: the Putilaga chamber, in which the Kimbi sequence was staged, went to the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, and the Lungwallndu chamber, used for the Utmandji stage, to the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. Anyone who has been fortunate to see either of these truly breathtaking displays will know how indebted we are to Gerrits for his efforts in documenting Abelam culture.
Following an introduction, the book's second chapter provides an extremely detailed description of the Bongiora korombo, which was still standing and in relatively good condi- tion in 1973. As many readers will know, the Abelam became famous for these...