Once a year in the highlands of New Guinea 20,000 warriors gather together in one place for the Sing-Sing, a huge government-organised display of tribal dancing, singing, and general high-jinks - kind of glorified agricultural show with natives in the ring instead of fat stock.
The warriors, probably the most primitive and certainly the most colourful on earth, spend two riotous days showing off their splendid feathers, wigs, and nose-bones to planeloads of tourists. The whole fantastic jamboree provides an instant microcosm of the colonial process - the breaking down of a traditional culture and the substitution of our own. It's at once riotously entertaining and sharply distressing.
(Cultures in collision: pages 6 and 7)