Photos from Wewak, Papua New Guinea February 2008 (scroll down for the detailed version, or click to see an abbreviated slideshow) Advertisement inside the national airport for cell phones: uniting the nation through technology and consumerism   Selling baskets in the market   Father and son (whom I call nyait, or "father," and nian, or "son"): Kara and Salapwaymbange   Typical house in town   My young brother (tshuambo, in the local kinship terminology) buying beer   Another typical house   Still another house   The bedroom...   Another bedroom...   Middle-class housing   Another middle class house   Women selling donuts, bananas, and greens in a market   Selling betel nuts and betel peppers in the market   Public health poster about AIDS written in the national language (tokpisin). I saw no such posters in the late 1980s...in 2008, there were everywhere...   Condom awareness campaign   AIDS awareness and infant feeding   Selling netbags, jewelry, wood carvings, and trinkets at the Wyndjamer hotel   Climbing into my rental truck after shopping at the supermarket   Another house   Plaiting and dying baskets for sale in the market   The view from the veranda of the newest hotel in Wewak   Two women who work at the newest hotel in Wewak, arranging flowers. They are paid the equivalent of only a few dollars a day.   Women selling smoked fish in the market   Tourist art   Four young men, all of whom were little kids when I last visited in 1994.  Three of them wish to pursue some form of higher education, but are unable to do so from lack of money (40% of the population lives on less than US$1/day)   Swimming in front of the new tuna loining factory, where women labor in wretched conditions, for long hours, earning a few dollars a day   Fishing trawlers.  A new sight in the town, directly tied to the new tuna loining plant   A woman paddling her canoe by a fishing trawler.  Women who work in the loining plant see wage-labor as an entree into modernity, but the wages are to low to support their families, so some woman also turn to prostitution, trading sex for fish   Small tradestore   School   AIDS awareness at the town market   Tradestore   The allure of electronic consumer goods...in a country where only 7% of the populartion has access to electricity (according to the World Bank).  The display cases contain cassette tapes of modern PNG (rock) music   Globalization   Selling fried sago (the staple starch) in the market.  Each cake sells for 50 toia, the equivalent of about US$1.50   My sister, Schola, in her kitchen  (underneath her house). She is employed as a clerk in the town courthouse--but is unable to sustain her extended family, or to pay for all her children's school fees   Schola's almost-middle-class house   The house where my friend and "father," Linus Apingari, slept in town   The typical vehicle for transportation from town to rural villages   Children drawing, at my request, under Schola's house   More drawings...   And still more drawing...   And yet more....   Among Iatmul, mothers' brothers give food, usually chicken and sago, as tokens of nurture to their sisters' children, who reciprocate with gifts.   Here are my sisters' children with the chickens I just gave them...   And here they are the next day, with gifts for me and my family in America   My elder-brother, Kara, and his son, Salapway, reading the book I wrote a few years ago about their community....   Looking at pictures of my children...   Group portrait