Yalipuni

Down there in the land of Tilya, there lived a man. His name was Pombata, which in the Enga language refers to Mendi speakers. He grew up to be a man under the care of an apake lya hawk. The bird found the lost infant and carried it to a rock shelter at Pailya Lapaka. There in the rockshelter, the hawk laid the infant. As the days went by, the hawk fed the child with meat and any other food it could find. It also brought kina shells into the rock shelter. As time went on, Pombata grew up.

 

When it came time to find a wife for Pombata, the bird flew over a new garden site of the Aimbatepa tribe. There he saw some people working in the garden. He soared down and landed on a branch near a spring that was used for drinking water. The sun was high in the sky, and it was hot, and the hawk knew that the people would get thirsty. When a young woman came to fill her water container, the bird flew to the ground and ran dragging a wing and flapping as if he were injured. The young woman saw him and, leaving her container by the spring, she went over to the hawk. When the girl came closer, the hawk flapped away and, in this way, lured her away from the spring. He kept doing this and the young woman followed him, hoping to catch him. In this way he lured the young woman to the rock shelter. Pombata met her there and fell in love with her. A day was set for their marriage and on that day, pigs were slaughtered for the wedding feast. Pombata had a wife to live with him.

 

It is said that at the marriage ceremony, the hawk began to remove the intestines from the pigs with his claws. However, Pombata took a bamboo knife, brushed the hawk aside, and then butchered the pig. The hawk flew away and landed on the trunk of a tree that had been cut down to make a new garden not far from the cave. From there, the hawk watched Pombata roasting the pigs. From time to time, Pombata took some small pieces of meat and cooked them over the fire. He ate these without giving any to the hawk. The hawk felt rejected, spread its wings and flew into the air and disappeared into a cloud of smoke from the fire to be seen no more.

 

Pombata had two sons, Yalipuni and Tilya. Tilya now lives in Porgera, and I am a descendant of Yalipuni. It is said that the girl was from the Aimbatepa tribe from the land of Akulya. The bird was a hawk and the rocks that form the shelter are called the kaiti lapaka. This rock formation can be seen today near Maru.

(Yalipa Kipaka of the Yalipuni Wake clan, Maru, Kandepe)

Tilya and Yalipuni as young men spent most of their time in the land of Tilya. Tilya built a Kepele ritual house, while Yalipuni went about setting cassowary traps. When Tilya came home with the dead cassowaries, he never brought the intestines. One day both Yalipuni and Tilya went hunting together, trapped a cassowary and brought it home. At their house, they put the cassowary meat in an earth oven to cook and roasted some of the intestines over the fire. Tilya ate intestines for the first time and found that they were very tasty. He wondered why his brother had not brought them back from previous hunts. Tilya kept this thought in mind but did not say anything to his brother.

 

When the food was cooked, they took it out of the oven and ate. They kept the leftovers in the house. Tilya wrapped up some of the intestines in leaves and put them aside from the rest of the food in a small net bag. He set them aside because he had discovered that they were the best tasting part of the cassowary.

 

“Let’s go to the forest to hunt possums,” Tilya then said to his brother, and Yalipuni agreed, and they went to the forest together to hunt.

 

When they were in the forest, Tilya decided to go back to the house without telling his brother. After some time, Yalipuni looked for Tilya but could not find him. He returned to the house, but Tilya was not there. He waited and waited for him, thinking that he was still in the forest. Still, Tilya did not return. Yalipuni slept alone in the house. Tilya had gone to Lakuni and slept there. From there he went to Yumbisa and his travels along the Lokaienge route finally took him as far as Porgera.

 

In the morning, Yalipuni kept on searching for his brother. Yalipuni found out where his brother had gone and followed him. After a long journey, he came across his brother at Porgera. Tilya remained at Porgera and Yalipuni returned to Kandepe.

 

Little did Tilya know when he left that day, disgruntled with his treasured bag of cassowary intestines, that he was to settle on a gold mine. When he arrived at Porgera where he probably had relatives, he married a woman and was given land by her father at Alipisa, the site of the Porgera mine. He was later called Tiane, the Ipili pronunciation of Tilya.

 

At Maru, Tilya was the brother who oversaw the Kepele ritual to placate the ancestors and bring fertility and prosperity. With him came the Molopai python who rescued his grandson, his sole surviving male descendant, and thereby the Molopai became the totemic protector of the Tiane clan for whom a version of the Kepele ritual was held. It is probably no coincidence that the Molopai was also the totemic animal of Tiane’s mother’s tribe, Aimbatepa. Yalipuni continued to hold their Kepele ritual at Tilya which was called Pia Pombata in memory of their tribal founder and the hawk.

(Yalipu Kipaka of the Yalipuni Wake clan, Maru, Kandepe)