Saksak rule #1 watch your step!
The Sago Palm grows in abundance here in the Sepik. In this flat, lowland terrain there is a lot of swamp and that is where the Sago Palm thrives. The Papua New Guineans call the Sago Palm Saksak. If there was no Saksak in the Sepik there would be no men living in the Sepik. That is the testimony of Sangi, the man who we accompanied on our Saksak expedition.
That seems to be the consensus of everyone else in the Sepik. After all, they eat Saksak three times a day. They make the roofs of their houses from the leaves of the Saksak. They make the walls of their houses from the palm frond of the Saksak, and they even use the bark of the Saksak for their floors. But they don’t seem to have any use for the thorns! They just try to avoid them, which is not easy to do given the fact that every square inch of this plant is covered in thorns. From an 1/8th to 3 inches long they are literally everywhere. It was amazing to see how a lifetime of harvesting Saksak has made the PNG people experts at avoiding being pierced.
Sangi and his wife took us to ‘work Saksak’ that is, to demonstrate what has become the Sepik people’s ritual of existence. Working Saksak is as normal, and mind numbing to the Sepik people as going to the grocery store for us. But there is zero comparison as far as the work that is required. We push a cart and carry a wallet. Sangi carries an axe and a machete and has his shirt off after ten minutes with sweat dripping off his nose. Benjamin was soaked through after five minutes and he was just watching Sangi work.
The Saksak is cut down and the bark is peeled off either side of the trunk exposing the white inside. This pith is scraped out using a centuries old tool that has only been slightly modified in the last few decades which they call a Seven. (I guess the anthropological term would be an adz) The process of scraping the pith out of the Saksak is called “throwing down your seven”. The mulch that is produced from this process is carried to the nearest source of water to be rinsed.
While Sangi felled, skinned and scraped the Saksak, his wife was using the palm frond of the plant to build a rinsing trough. The mulch from the Saksak plant is rinsed in the trough. In the process a silt like substance begins to collect in the bottom. After rinsing all the mulch in this fashion the water is drained off and the silt at the bottom gets bagged up and carried home. When the Saksak dries out it looks like flour or meal. It is put on a hot plate over an open fire to make what looks like a thick tortilla shell. This is the staple food of every man, woman and child in the Sepik. It accompanies every meal they eat. It is heavy and dry and starchy and has very little flavor, but as the Sepik people say, “it is our bones.”
In His grace Jesus provided Saksak for the Sepik people. That is how they see it. Adam is to blame for all the thorns, they are quick to point out. And now these people also know that God provided, not just Saksak, but a way back into His family – redemption in the Lord Jesus. One of the highlights of our time in the tribe was the sweet opportunity to share Communion with our brothers and sisters there. Guess what they broke, as a symbol of the broken body of their dear Savior who gave Himself as their substitute on the cross?
Click here to see some pictures and video of this incredible process.