The Long Walk To The Market: How Distance Shapes PNG Food

Scott
Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG
correspondent

First Person – In Papua New Guinea,
food does not simply appear.

Before it reaches the
pot, food walks. It waits. It sweats. It rides on the back
of a PMV (Public Motor Vehicle), balances in a dinghy, or
sits patiently in a bilum while someone decides whether this
trip was worth it.

By the time it reaches your plate,
it has already lived a small life worthy of a written
tale.

This is why food in PNG is treated with a
certain seriousness. You don’t rush it. You don’t waste it.
You don’t jump over it. You don’t complain too loudly unless
you’ve forgotten how far it came.

For many households,
the journey starts early. Very early. Before the sun has
fully made up its mind, someone is already walking toward a
market. Sometimes that walk begins in places like Asaro in
the Eastern Highlands, long before Port Moresby has woken
up. Gardens are harvested, kumu (green leafy vegetable)
bundles are tied, and food begins its long movement toward
Gordons Market, passing through hands, vehicles, and hours
before it ever meets a cooking pot.

There is no “just”
about it.

Food
travels from gardens to roadsides, from boats to wharves,
from PMVs to market stalls. It moves in stages. Kaukau
packed in large 50 kilogram bags. Greens bundled tight. Fish
packed with care because one wrong move means tonight’s
protein disappears.

Distance does something important
to food. It gives it value.

When you’ve carried kaukau
for kilometres, you don’t throw it away because you’re
bored. When rice has passed through three hands and two
PMVs, you don’t cook it carelessly. When fish has survived
sun, salt, and time, you don’t rush it onto the fire like
it’s disposable.

Distance teaches respect.

Food
in PNG is also never just food. It is tied to stories, to
places, to people you may never meet but somehow still know.
Every kaukau (sweet potato) has a gardener behind it. Every
bundle of greens carries the hands that pulled, washed,
tied, and lifted it. Food arrives with characters attached –
the market mama who woke before dawn, the aunty who walked
further than she admits, the old man who knows exactly when
to harvest because his father taught him the same way. When
you eat in PNG, you are not just consuming ingredients. You
are meeting the people who made it possible.

When Aku
Kulo from Asaro, Eastern Highlands, began planting kaukau,
he got this whole family involved.

“I was a misfit. I
didn’t finish school. My father told me, if I ever got my
act together and worked the land, my life would become
better.”

Aku has built a business around the food he
produces. His produce ends up in Port Moresby every week
paying him K$20,000 (Approx US$4,600) every 7
days.

This is why wasting food in PNG still feels
wrong in a way that’s hard to explain to outsiders. Spoiled
rice, defrosted chicken during a power blackout, greens
forgotten at the bottom of a bilum – these aren’t small
mistakes. They feel personal.

Because someone carried
that.

Even
in town, food still travels. Urban life doesn’t erase the
journey – it just disguises it. The trip to Gordons Market
in the big city might be shorter than the walk from Asaro,
but it still involves early starts, crowded PMVs, plastic
bags cutting into fingers, and calculations about what can
be carried versus what must be left behind.

Town food
is planned around pay cycles, transport, and power cuts. You
buy what you can manage. You store what you must. You cook
with the quiet awareness that replacing food is not always
simple.

Often, the labour behind meals is invisible.
But it’s always there – in the shoulders of market mamas, in
the patience of mothers and aunties, in older siblings who
don’t complain but feel it later. Food arrives quietly,
placed on the table as if it was always meant to be
there.

But if you’ve ever followed the path food takes
– from Asaro to Gordons Market, from wharf to roadside stall
– you know better.

This
is also why PNG food tastes different. It tastes patient. It
tastes earned. There’s a reason kaukau boiled simply still
feels complete. A reason rice with just salt and tinned fish
can satisfy a hunger that’s deeper than
appetite.

Distance seasons food.

It slows things
down. It reminds you that meals are not instant rewards but
outcomes. You wait because someone else already waited. You
eat carefully because effort lives inside the food whether
you acknowledge it or not.

By the time food reaches
the fire, it has already gathered stories. Of early
mornings. Of long walks. Of hands that carried, balanced,
and refused to give up.

So when you sit down to eat in
Papua New Guinea, you’re not just eating
ingredients.

You’re eating distance.

And maybe
that’s why PNG food still tastes like something
real.

© Scoop Media