Abstract
In Western Motu oral tradition, Edai Siabo was a Motu man who lived at Davage, an ancestral Boera village about 25 km north-west of Port Moresby. One night while fishing, Edai fell asleep in his canoe and was dragged into an underwater cave by a giant eel who was a dirava, a spirit. While in the cave the dirava explained to Edai how to build a trading canoe or lagatoi, and taught him the rituals and requirements needed to undertake a hiri, a largescale trading expedition to the Gulf of Papua that continued in the Port Moresby area up until the middle of the 20th century.
The following day, people from Davage searched for Edai and recovered his body. Although they believed him drowned, back on shore Edai revived and explained how the dirava had taught him to make the lagatoi and undertake the hiri, carrying pots to trade for sago that would carry them through the food shortages of the lahara, the time of the monsoon wind and wet season. While some of the men ridiculed him, Edai merely ignored them and followed the rituals he had been taught and built his lagatoi. His wife Oiooio made pots to trade and Edai instructed her in the rituals she had to observe in his absence, to ensure the success of the venture. Some of his fellow villagers, persuaded by Edai’s example, built their own lagatoi. Eventually the first hiri fleet departed for the west.
As instructed, Oiooio counted 50 days then began to watch for the return of the fleet from a coastal hill near Boera called Iduata, together with the other wives. But as weeks passed and the hiri fleet did not return, the women gradually abandoned their vigil until Oiooio waited alone. When eventually the fleet returned the men on the lagatoi discovered that their wives had abandoned them and remarried. Only Oiooio had maintained her ritual duties, and in so doing demonstrated that a successful hiri depended on the whole village maintaining the discipline and responsibility of the hiri rituals. In this way Oiooio was seen to be as symbolically important as Edai in the successful establishment of this trading expedition.