Warning: This blog post is going to contain explicit images of the scarification rituals practiced by the Chambi tribes in Papua New Guinea. This means you can expect some blood, gore, minor nudity, and photos of the actual cutting to create the scars. If you’re squeamish, this is your sign to navigate away from this page.
As a writer, photo essays are not my forte. Rather, I labor over 2,000-word blog posts instead. But certain practices and rituals require photos to tell the whole story. The ritualized scarification of Papua New Guinea’s Chambi tribe is one of them. We were fortunate enough to witness the full coming-of-age ceremony, scarification and all, during our time on the Sepik River. I’m going to do my best to explain the practice through this series of photos (and some words) so that you, too, can learn about a really incredible traditional act that’s been carried on for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
AGAIN. This blog post contains graphic images that should be used for educational purposes only. Please only proceed if you are okay with witnessing some blood, cutting, and minor nudity.
I’ve made an effort to reduce nudity and unnecessarily gory elements within the selection of photos I’ve chosen. But this is a practice centered around cutting as a method of tattooing. There will be blood. There will be graphic imagery. It is in no way related to self-harm, but I suppose it is inherently harmful to oneself to take a razor blade to any part of the skin.
Please be respectful of the intentions behind tribal practices when reading.
The Crocodile Men of Sepik River, Papua New Guinea
The Chambri Lake region of the Sepik River is populated by many tribal communities, each with their own traditions, folklore, and practices. Most have a coming-of-age ceremony for the men in the village. Women concretely come of age when they begin menstruating, but a common thread throughout Papua New Guinean tribal communities is the bleeding of young men, in some form or another, to mirror what they consider to be the shedding of their mother’s blood.
The Nyarah clan is one of nine clans/villages that consider the crocodile to be the origin of man. Lore has it that a mighty prehistoric crocodile emerged from the waters of the Sepik and walked onto land as a man, beginning humanity itself. This belief is why the crocodile is a sacred animal for the tribe.
The scarification ceremony of the Chambri people requires deep knowledge of traditional chants, magic, and practices that have, over time, been at risk of disappearing. This can be directly attributed to the arrival of missionaries in Papua New Guinea. Spirit houses are required for any tribal ceremony among the Sepik tribes. These houses are only for the men of the villages. But building these massive structures requires energy, effort, and passed-on knowledge– just as with the ceremonies themselves.
Inside, you’ll usually find a lot of open space, stilted floors, and intricately carved towers depicting the spirits and animals each tribe holds dear.
Only two villages in the Chambi Lake area are still performing the coming-of-age scarification rituals for their tribe. This isn’t because the men don’t want the practice to continue. I didn’t meet a single tribe member who regretted or didn’t want scars of their own. It’s because, as a few generations of elders were converted to other religions and discouraged from practicing their traditional beliefs, the knowledge wasn’t always passed on. With no written info, it can be impossible for a tribe to restart the practice once it’s fallen by the wayside.
The Scarification Ceremony
The full ritual of scarification is longer than the single cutting ceremony. It lasts around 6 weeks in total. Sometimes longer.
The magic turns the young men into baby crocodiles, not figuratively, literally. The scarification process represents the birth. For the next three days, the baby crocodile will rest on the hull of an overturned canoe, spoon-fed by another tribe member. The next phase represents adolescence. For 6 weeks, occassionally more, the initiates will crawl only on their bellies, residing full time inside the spirit house together. Once the wounds are fully healed, the ritual is complete and they become men.
The evening before the scarification, the initiates gather, with familial permission, and begin a night full of chanting and ritual designed to awaken the magic in the village that will keep them protected throughout the transformation process. During this time, they will cover the spirit house in ceremonial decor and be fed a mixture of sago and ancestral bones. They will use a plant provided by the chief to give a kind of topical anesthetic for the trials to come.
Before a young man can undergo this ritual they must be of age, usually 18-30. They must also make sure they are on good terms with everyone in the tribe. This means making apologies and righting all wrongs so they enter with a clean conscience.
At this point, from an outside perspective, there is drumming, chanting, and a huge sago-leaf crocodile tail that smacks the side of the spirit house repeatedly. A pig is brought in for sacrifice to start the scarification portion once the tribe elders have finished eight rounds of marching and chanting.
The mothers and sisters dress in ceremonial-style outfits made haphazardly and mock the young men going off for scarification. They imitate them and call them names. They also seem to be quite drunk on local spirit.
The shrill roar of a crocodile echoes through the forest. According to the lore of the tribe, this is a real crocodile. It comes during important tribal events and is part of the magic that protects them from harm. From my perspective, it most certainly is not real, as the roar of the animal coincides with the change of each segment of the ceremony. Although I could not see where the sound was emanating from.
Wrapping up the chanting portion before they return to the spirit house to begin the cutting.
Arrival of the New Initiates
The ceremony that we witnessed initiated 10 members. Each young man chooses the elder they want to design their pattern. This is decided long before today and should be someone the initiate trusts immensely. Obviously, they also have to have undergone the scarification process before. The last time this village did a ceremony was in 2012, so the number of members with scars is fewer.
Young men have started to leave the villages for city life. This means fewer young men are coming of age in the rural villages here. Nearly every one of age we met bore the scars of the ceremony. So, the process is not dying out. But many people simply leave before they have a chance to undergo the initiation.
There are two different styles of patterns. One represents the saltwater crocodile, and the other represents the freshwater crocodile. Both of whom live in Papua New Guinea. Initiates can get either, and it’s more about appearance preference than any implied meaning.
The scarring begins.
Inside the “Men’s House”
Once inside the spirit house, the scarification can begin. All the men will be tattooed at once. Once, the cutting is finished this area will be known as the crocodile nest.
In the past, the scar patterns were made by a bamboo pole. Today, razor blades are used because they have found that the pattern is more intricate and they can create more elaborate designs.
The scars will cover their torsos from shoulders to buttocks, across both the chest and the back.
The entire cutting process took about 1-hour for most. The longest of the bunch took nearly 2 hours.
You can see how unique each design is.
Out here, the risk of infection is high. Even just small knicks and scrapes can become problematic for travelers requiring antibiotics and medical care. But these wounds will not receive medical treatment. Instead, the chief will watch over them, using his magic and the passed-down knowledge of plant medicine to keep them all infection-free for the duration they remain in the spirit house.
This is why it is so important that members trust the chief and that the tribe doesn’t lose the knowledge needed to successfully perform the rituals passed down through the generations.
Once the design is completed, a large bucket of river water will be poured over the top of them to clean off the gore, baby oil will be rubbed into the wounds, and then a paste of medicinal plants specifically designed to irritate the wounds and cause more intense scarring will be applied. This is perhaps even more painful than the cutting itself.
The Final Stages
At this point in the ceremony, the men will exit the spirit house, carried by the elder who scarred them to show their new bodies to the rest of the community. It could be seen as proof of life to all the worried relatives waiting outside. Or their first walk in the world as a baby crocodile. Although they themselves do not do the walking.
After the procession, they return to the spirit house, now officially known as the crocodile nest, to be laid on the canoes. At this point, the ceremony continues with the elders running coconuts and other implements across the fresh wounds.
For three days, the only food they will consume will be fed to them by the elders with a spoon. The chief explained to me that not only is this because they are baby crocodiles, but it also reduces the chance of infection.
After that, they will live here, in the spirit house, with their fellow initiates and the chief, crawling only on their stomachs as a crocodile would until the wounds have healed and they become a man.
Witnessing this ceremony was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Only about 20-50 foreigners in the history of mankind have been allowed to attend the ritual. The first recorded was Benedict Allen, a British modern explorer, who underwent the scarification process with the tribe back in the 1980s. I hope this brief look into the practices of the Chambri tribes can be both educational and inspiring. Educational because it’s incredible that these practices still exist and have been maintained through word of mouth and traditional teaching for centuries. I hope that sharing this information can help make sure the practice isn’t forgotten one day. Inspirational, because there is so much of this diverse world we haven’t yet seen.
If you’re hoping for some more practical tips on how to visit the Sepik River or if you can time your stay with one of these ceremonies, then you should head on over to my blog posts on the Sepik River (*coming soon*).