Menyamya/Aseki Smoked Men

Papua New Guinea is an archipelagic state located south of Indonesia and North of Australia. It has a population of roughly 7 million people of whom 95% are rural subsistence farmers whilst the remaining 5% are urban dwellers.The latter percentage of the population reside in 19 of the major towns in PNG’s purposely for employment while the former in villages.
Papua New Guinea is renowned as the land of the unexpected because of the fact that it is unique in many ways. For instance natural resources experts  referred to PNG as the island of gold floating on a sea of oil.This is because of the immense petroleum and mineral resources that PNG has custodian over.
Apart from the natural resources and biodiversity,cultural diversity is another significant aspect that clearly separates and distinguishes Papua New Guinea apart from the rest of the world.There are 19 provinces in Papua New Guinea and within each province there are hundreds of different native  languages spoken in each province.All this languages accumulate to a massive 800 plus languages. Each province also has different ethnicity with different cultures. For example if you are in  Madang Province a coastal province, there are about 50 languages spoken by the different areas in that province and the different areas also have varying cultures. The same applies for provinces in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea also.

This leads us to a very unique culture that is practiced by the people of Aseki/Menyamya in the Morobe Province. The Aseki/Menyamya people are quite unique as they do not bury their dead however smoke them and live them sitted on chairs set up in a sacred cave. Below is an image of two dead man who where smoked and sitted in the sacred cave.

The process for such burial usually takes place by way of an initiation which last for about six months. When a person dies in the community, the initiation is started, first the elders in the village operate on the body, removing all internal organs and cleaning the body in preparation for the period of smoking the body. During that time, mourning takes place whereby all the deceased family rub itself in mud and do not do any work but are in the mourning place for a duration of a period of time.

Immediately after this period, the cave is then prepared and a large fire is started, the body is then taken to this cave by the few selected elders in the village. It is then placed in a selected position within the confines of the cave.

It is the Aseki/Menyamya people's belief that in carrying out such rites for the dead, the spirits of the dead will protect and watch over their village and keep them from harm from warring tribes. Because of this, the dead are smoked on a mountain top cave and nowhere else because of the good vantage point to watch out for enemies. The smoked man is harmed with weapons on both hands when it is placed in its resting position whilst for the women digging sticks for ploughing gardens  are put in both hands. This signifies that men are warriors who will protect the village whilst the women take care of the gardens.
This practice is now not practiced as regularly as it was in the past however only on rare occasions this occurs.