Werner and I start a business

One weekend, Werner and I are having a beer in the old Hotel Cecil near the airport. It’s a run down pub that had seen better days, run by an elderly lady, whose family has owned the hotel for a long time. A couple of natives come to the door of the Saloon bar with some carved wooden statues. I don’t take much notice at first, but when I see another patron of the bar bring one of those statues to his table, I have a closer look. It’s a statue of a ‘meri’ (native girl), wearing a grass skirt. It looks quite good. It wears a short grass skirt and when you lift the skirt, the statue reveals it is anatomically correct. ‘How much did you pay for that’. I ask. ‘Ten bucks’, he replies. The statues are carved from pine wood and are painted with original pigments such as crushed charcoal for the black parts, crushed chalk for the whites and ochre for the facial pigmentation. All the colours rub off real easily, so we'll need to be careful.

My '' boystatue
I bought in Lae. 

I go outside just as the natives walk away. ‘Hey you’, I call out. ‘Yes, masta’?

‘You got any more of these’? I ask, pointing to the bar.

‘No, but we can make’, he says.

‘How long’, I ask,

‘Day after tomorrow’, he answers.

‘I’ll have one’, I say

‘Me too’, Werner says, beside me.

‘Ok, masta. Two days’. 

A couple of days later, Werner and I go back to the Cecil and wait. As promised, the native chap is back with two statuesques, a mary (girl) and a boy. They look great. We both give him ten dollars each and take the two new artefacts to the car, me with the boy and Werner with the mary, our two new artefacts.

I tell Werner about the Belgian fellow I had met in Wewak and how he comes to the Territory to buy artefacts twice a year. We should do that he says. ‘That’s what I reckon’ I reply. ‘Well we already have some stock’, he laughs.