CAUTION: It is important to travel slowly when using a motorized canoe to pass through villages or anywhere someone is likely to be washing sago. If you create a wave, it could fill the canoe with dirt or dump out the precious sago. If this happens, you are responsible for paying for the damaged food.

The people of each culture have a staple food that reminds them of home. Papua New Guinea has several: sago along the rivers and coastline, taro in the mountains and banana in the regions between. Most people are quite familiar with the other foods but always prefer their own.

Our people are sago people, carefully planting the trees each year, tending them to ensure they grow strong. Each sago tree takes 10-40 years before it can be harvested and prepared as food, often by the son or daughter of the one who planted it.

Once the sago trees reach maturity, they are cut down, cut into sections and tied together, making a raft that can be towed to the village for easier processing. These sections of pithy palm wood are kept floating in the river, tied to a tree near the family home, where they can stay fresh and usable for over a month. This makes it easier for a family to plan when they will spend a day washing, as they call it, the sago.

I have helped wash sago plenty of times. I have been invited before, and I have also just shown up when I knew families were washing. (It is difficult to turn down willing helpers when there is a lot of work to be done.) But for some time, no one had been comfortable inviting me for fear that my ankle would start hurting after the long hike into the jungle to reach their sago garden. They were afraid that I would not be able to walk again. Praise God that He has been helping my ankle to finally mend. I am so thankful!

Fortunately, my friend, Katherina, invited me to wash sago with her. When I arrived, it was a whole family affair, with lots of women, young and old, there to help.
To wash the sago, first, you must chop. A log is placed on the ground, often on top of a tarp or piece of canvas—they had set up two logs that day—and the bark is split and peeled back, revealing the pithy wood center, which is basically starch and fiber. Then while sitting on a tiny stool—or a chunk of wood to use as a chair, as I had been given—you chop and chop, using a traditional tool to turn the pithy insides of the sago tree into finely shredded sawdust.

I set to work. It was my first time participating from the beginning, with the first bit of chopping. Usually, I am involved somewhere in the middle of this process. I must admit, the chopping was much trickier by far. But as I worked, people began giving me good advice. “Swing your arms at the shoulder.” “Move from the shoulders.” “If you do this by bending your back, your spine will hurt a lot tonight.” I tried, somewhat successfully, to follow their advice.

I then heard my chopping companion burst into song. I listened to the lovely, haunting melody and words sung in her heart language. I could recognize that the words were not in Tok Pisin, the language they use to include me in conversations so I can understand. No, she was singing in her mother tongue, which our people generally use, especially for traditional family activities.

“Please teach me to sing!” I implored Katherina, initiating a delightful exchange. The young woman beside me would sing a phrase, keeping time to her chopping. I would respond, trying to repeat the phrase and stay in sync with her movements, making the work much more pleasant.
Typically there was laughter from everyone at the end of each of my attempts. Mispronounced common words can sound pretty funny! Sometimes, the offending word was repeated to me; other times, she just repeated the same phrase in her song again and again, letting me repeat it until I could say every word before she moved to the next phrase. The gentle and patient coaching was delightful.

An extremely loose translation of the song would be: “We are sitting by the river, using a tool, chopping sago.” I am sure that for a more advanced singer, there would be other verses about family life along the river, but this was enough for my novice attempt.

When I spotted blisters forming on my hands, I gave up my place at chopping sago and began working in the washing process—when the sawdust-like sago is rinsed in a trough made from a large sago frond, often from the same tree you are chopping, and the starch dissolves in the water.

And so I stood, nearly knee-deep on a submerged piece of bark, arranging several large handfuls of chopped sago in the trough. Spreading the sago out a bit, I dumped a scoop of water over it and began rinsing, sloshing and squeezing the fibers. This removed the precious starch, which quickly ran down the trough. It passed through a piece of mesh netting which provided straining before dropping through yet another mesh piece and running into a carefully washed canoe almost submerged in the river, where the starchy sago layered as it settled on the bottom. This was fun to watch!

Each time I added water and rinsed the chopped sago, less starch ran out. When the water ran clear, it was time for me to throw the pulp away and add more chopped sago. I lasted several rounds before needing to take my leave and paddle back to my side of the river.

As I traveled with Katherina and her young son, I was thankful for his arms. As he stood in the front of the canoe, paddling, his arms were strong and fresh, not sore from chopping sago. Katherina, too, was so strong that she still had strength even after hours of work. My arms, however, felt a little like jelly, and my paddling consisted more of going through the motions rather than actually propelling us through the water.

Many neighbors greeted us from their porches and gardens as we passed. “You were making sago. We heard you singing.”

“What are you doing?” another asked.

“I made sago with Katherina,” I responded haltingly, using the same words we had been singing at the tops of our lungs earlier.

As I spend time engaged in common activities with these women, I love getting to know them and their lives. I pray that God will show me how to demonstrate the way that He fits into their existence and daily activities.

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