Would the duvahe be open to the concept for a bisnis that is taking shape between Jericho and Hector?

‘We try Obi first,’ Hector says. ‘Brother-man.’

‘Obi?’ Jericho says when they are standing alone at the edge of the village. It is dusk, they are watching birds of paradise display in the trees along the lip of the ridge. Obi is telling him their mountain names. ‘If we want to start a business, how would you feel about making bark-cloth to sell?’

‘We use the cloth.’

‘I know. Could you make more? Would the women want to?’

‘Who would buy? No tourists come. The chiefs like eco-tourism. Last year Young Albert visited and speaks to the chiefs. Tourists walk here, we dance for them, build a guesthouse, they like our birds, the river, we tell them kastom stories. They pay big money.’

‘How big?’

‘One hundred kina one night.’ Forty Australian dollars. Fifty, at most. Twenty pounds.

‘And how many can you have here at once?’

‘Young Albert said a guesthouse for six. Eight maybe.’

‘Do you want the place crawling with white people? Making trouble with the girls?’

‘The girls can stay in the houses. They come for one week, Albert has the bisnis plan. Then they go, and another come later, maybe after a month.’

‘You’re not going to get white people walking up here. It’s too far. Too hard.’

‘Our villages are clean,’ Obi says. ‘Not like the Kokoda Track. I have been and looked. Plenty of tauba, they wear boots the same as yours, they have sticks to help them. They walk. The villages sell them kastom goods. There’s rubbish on the track. Mud. Here,’ he gestures around him, ‘look, it is clean. No rubbish. No raskols. Young Albert says tourists like clean houses. If you like, maybe we can sell them some cloth.’

‘And if the people at the old airstrip get jealous? When they know you have money, and there’s trouble on the road?’

‘We take security guards.’

‘Obi. I’m sorry. I wish I could persuade you. It’s not going to work. It’s dangerous. It’s too difficult. And the money is not a lot. Just a little and you must do it again and again, and what if bad people come up here and make trouble? Bad white people. There are plenty. Or men from the airstrip come up here and burn down the guesthouse? What then, if the tourists are coming?’ Obi shrugs.

Jericho goes on. ‘And if you sell them bark-cloth, how much would you charge?’

‘Fifty kina maybe. Sixty?’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Albert says they sell cloth, other cloth, in Moresby. If it is a hat, then maybe forty kina. On its own, cloth that’s all, maybe less. He says it is not big money. Tourists like shields from the Highlands. Or armbands from the Trobriands.’

‘It’s too little. Much too little. Your cloth is art. You say so, the chiefs say so. Our mountain, our art. Its your wealth. And no one else can do it. Plenty of people can do guesthouses, all the people along the coast, on the islands.’