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Building a Bush House in Highland Niugini 1 

by Sanang Zazoring

No Contractors
No Lumber Yards
No Written Plans

Smoke creeps through the grass roof of the bush house. I see no chimney. I enter the house and see nothing except the fireplace in the middle. No  window, only a door. The family sits around the fire and I think about home. The place where the mother cooks the food radiates coziness and life. I participate in this atmosphere. I sit silently and speechless, watching what is going on, and I look around to admire the construction of the house.

I live in a town and I love to visit people who live in bush houses – places where families hold conversations, make their decisions, eat and live. In some areas, pigs and other animals live with people in the same house, separated by a curtain made of banana leaves.

The land with its people is a part of myself. The way they live shows men that whatever they need for life they can find in nature. The people are gifted. Their pig feasts, their method of cooking in the ground, growing their gardens and the way they build their bush house prove it.

Many Paradise readers will not have a chance to see a bush house or experience the building of one. Let me describe the procedure.

Community participation is needed when a house is to be built in the Highlands. Everyone in the area knows how to build one, using methods passed down by their ancestors, employing traditional technology and materials.

People depended and relied wholly on themselves before foreign technologies were introduced. It was the father’s responsibility to decide what kind of house to build and how big it should be. The family has to pay for the help received from the community by providing food and drinks.

Different regions of the Highlands2 have different styles of houses.

No modern technology or architectural planning is involved in building a bush house. All a person knows is what sort of materials he needs, how big the house is to be and where it should be built. He plans everything in his mind. He then starts collecting and gathering posts and other materials. The post are fashioned from a certain type of tree that can last for at least 20 years. The roofing timbers are usually young timber. The builder does not have a machine to cut and saw them into standard sizes for roofing. Instead, he and his helpers shape them with axes.

Women and their daughters collect kunai grass for the roof, helped by other women in the community.

It takes some months for the man to collect the type of ropes needed to build a bush house. The ropes are kept in cool places. Some types of ropes are buried in the mud so that they do not get dried in the sun. The mud also protects and makes the ropes firm and strong. Mostly cane ropes are used.

People often used tree bark for walls, but nowadays bamboo and pitpit (wild sugar cane) are commonly woven around the house.

No foundation is laid. To show the position of the wall posts, sticks are planted. Pitpit and ropes are used to fasten across and around the roof where the kunai can be laid and firmly fastened. The kunai is then laid from the bottom end of the roof  to the top to prevent rain leaking through.

It looks as if there is no window. It is hard to see because it is no bigger than a fist. Holes are left between the walls and the roof where the smoke passes through and light is let in. Smoke also escapes by seeping through the kunai roof.

The fireplace is in the center of the house where the family gathers to cook and eat. There are no bedrooms where the children are separated from the parents. Boys sleep with fathers while girls sleep with mothers and spend most of their time with them.

The kunai grass on the roof is often replaced. The burning fire keeps the house from rotting and prevents termites from eating up the timbers. It also keeps ropes from being rotted away.

The type of material collected to make the fire does not create too much smoke in the house. The fire burns all through the night providing warmth. In the evening, a big fire is banked to provide embers and keep the house warm.

The spirit of cooperation ensures that every family has a chance to have other people help them build their house. In the same way, people rely on one another for food, work, defense and other aspects of their livelihood.

There are some things that do not look and feel inviting to those who are here for the first time: the tears from the smoke, the smell, the dust of the floor and the flea bites. But that is the way people live and have lived for ages. When we start knowing them better, then we can see that this also is a good way of living.

Reprinted with permission from "Adventures in Paradise," the in-flight magazine of New Guinea’s Air Niugini Copyright Air Niugini 1994.