We were escorted from the car by an entourage of village children who heard two white people would be spending the night in their community.

Understand that this is like learning that your neighbours would receive a visit from Madonna for a live performance in their living room.

It was already dark and we were led into a two-story hut that was pitch black inside. The kids were swatted away with a stick. Only the faint glow form a kerosene torch in the floor above served as a beacon.

Upstairs we were greeted by four people sitting around a fire pit in the centre of a smoky room. A large, dented aluminum pot was sitting on a metal box placed over the fire.

They received us with warm smile, saying little besides a few niceties in Pidgin. Like most PNG villagers, they are at once intimidated and marvelled by white tourists who make the conscious decision to visit their villages instead of remaining caged in high-end hotels.

We would later learn we were the first visitors they knew of to spend the night in a village home.

The dinner

Our host was Pundu, brother of Wako Napasu, owner of the young tour company Country Tours, which organized this trip. Pundu’s wife was busy stoking the fire by blowing into a long metal tube. The room filled with smoke that slowly seeped out through the straw roof.

Little by little, neighbours would drop in to cop a glance at the tourists and ask them a few questions if they spoke English. Where are you from? What’s the staple food in your country? How long will you stay in PNG? They understood us, but would often need their questions translated for us.

When the food was ready, we were each given a bowl with a half chicken each, a whole boiled cauliflower, and boiled ferns. When we protested that it was too much food, they insisted, telling us to leave what we couldn’t eat.

Everyone ate with their hands. Bones and other inedibles were tossed onto the fire pit, which served as a temporary rubbish bin.

We had spent the day climbing down the thick jungle track of Mt. Giliwe, and our shoes were soaked from rain and mud. While we ate, Pundu’s wife dutifully dried our shoes by the fire, rotating them with proud dedication. She even handled my filthy, soggy socks, which even I didn’t want to touch.

As we expected, we left a lot of food on our plates. This was happily devoured by others present, who had no problem gnawing at my half-eaten chicken thigh.

Pundu’s wife roasts sweet potatoes at breakfast

The shower

“Samson, Roberto laikim go was, yu go autsait wantaim em,” Joyce, Wako’s wife, barked in Pidgin to one of our bush guides who was also spending the night. Roberto wants to shower, go with him outside.

Samson carried a kettle of boiling water to the black of night and poured it into a bucket half-filled with cold water. It was sitting on a blue tarp just outside the house. There was a bowl inside the bucket. He sat and waited.

I undressed and poured bowlfuls over my head. The warm water felt lovely in the chilly night and I forgot I was bare-ass naked outside while a native watched. I could see the dirt from my body pooling in the water on the tarp.

Bed time

Our room was behind a ramshackle partition on the same floor where everyone ate. A flimsy door made from old wooden boards left enough space between floor and ceiling for someone to crawl through. Our bed was a few thin mattresses topped with a thick, sumptuous faux-fur blanket and a duvet as our cover.

Everyone else would sleep on a single mattress no thicker than a grilled cheese sandwich or on a straw mat. Our bed was by no means luxurious but it was the most comfortable in the house.

We fell asleep to the chatter in kagul, the local language, and to the smoke that billowed from the dying fire. When we woke up the next morning, roasted sweet potatoes were waiting for us.

The gift

In Melanesian culture, receiving guests in an honour. But “hospitality” is a poor word for the intense care and attention we received that night. Our ride was arriving and we were about to tell out hosts how memorable the experience had been.

But Korol, Pundu’s sister-in-law, spoke first. She extended a hand-made purse to Bianca. It was densely woven in tow shades of green, a month’s work even in experienced hands.

“I wish I had more than this bilum to offer you,” she said. “Take this as proof of the joy and privilege we felt for having you as guests in our home.”

We left the house with a purse and a few sweet potatoes, but it was more than we could ever carry. Our logic was turned on its head. The world where it is the host who is honoured with a wine bottle was far behind us. We, Westerners slumming in a primitive land, mere freeloaders in a barren rural home, were the ones who received the honour.

I can’t imagine, from now on, asking my guests to bring their own beer.