One of the hardest parts of traveling to the Papua New Guinea highlands is knowing what to do when surrounded by forty people who behold you in utter rapture.

Stroll into any market in the Mt. Hagen region and you’ll soon have a captive audience that sees a white person every two or so years.

It’s a helluva performance pressure. With so many eyes on me, I felt an obligation to perform a ditty or show them some pictures of snow.

But our guide assured me that just being there was a big enough show for them. If I smile, shake their hand, and say “Nice to see you” in broken Pidgin, it will give them something to talk about for days.

One can only theorize – wildly – what an equivalent experience would be for us. A pink unicorn strolling through the frozen foods section of a supermarket? An alien visitor expounding on the early works of Pablo Neruda?

The children on the villages are the most curious but also the most bewildered. They stare in unrestrained fascination, but if you look right at one, he’ll take a few cautious steps back, as if you were reaching for something dangerous in your pocket.

It’s hard for me to imagine a situation – beside the irresponsibly hypothetical ones above – where I would feel this completely spellbound. If there are moments when I’m amazed, I instantly suspect it of fraud. It’s a thin veneer, I think. There’s a deus ex machina about to drop his guard.

Style over substance, to us Westerners, has become the rule, not the exception. Marketing machines over-promise and under-deliver, idols come out as schmucks, mediocrity hogs the limelight and we’re left with crumbs of disappointment.

I really hope I didn’t disappoint those kids at the market.