The Sera people of the inland areas are semi-nomadic, by choice and by outside force. Many have both a garden home and a village home, traveling as hunting and gathering requires. Villages are more like hamlets, with six or seven homes and a “sacrifice house.” Second homes are common at gardens, sago-processing sites, or hunting and fishing locations. The inlanders primarily hunt wild pig, wallabies, and tree kangaroos. Birds are also hunted for food. Men carry a machete and a spear, or bow and arrows made of black palm. Arrows are a little longer than the hunter’s height. The shafts are bamboo with neither notch nor feathers. The head may be of iron, hardwood, bamboo, bone, or stingray tail. The bowstring is of split rattan. The bow is made of hard bamboo or palm. Small hunting dogs are used. Hunters also use traps: sapling snares or pointed sticks placed at the gap in a garden fence. They cook their meat in a bamboo tube, or smoke it on a rack or stew it in a pot. Smoked meat may last more than a week. Daily steaming of meat in a bamboo tube keeps it for three days at the most.

Fishing is essential to the survival of the coastal Sera people. The winds in the Sera region make perfect conditions for the sailing habits of a fisherman - their outriggered dugout canoes are blown out to sea in the morning and back to shore in the evening. Common fish include: mullet, tuna, wahoo, marlin, sailfish and barracuda, and there are also sharks like hammerheads and sawtooth.

Minnows are caught in nets like the one above, and then frequently dried (and eaten) whole (a hard taste for some Westerners to acquire … believe me). Gill nets are strung across the water in a spot where the fisherman thinks the fish will pass (like near the shore or a river’s mouth, or where there might be currents from the tides). Then he might scare the fish into his net by wading in the water and splashing. Gill nets are more effective than some nets because they catch the fish by their gills, and they get tangled up right at their neck (gills) as opposed to just their tail. In fact, gill nets are so effective that they are illegal in most parts of the US. But in Sera land, where there is not so dense a human population, it is a very helpful way of surviving and does not overwhelm the fish population. Throw (or cast) nets like the one above are less common among the Sera. The fisherman bunches the net up in a particular arrangement, so that with one throw of the hand, it spreads in midair to its full breadth, and lands on the water all spread out and not folded at all. He aims his throw for a spot in the water where he sees the fish; then, the sinkers attached to its border cause it to fall around the fish, enclosing them. The net is set up so that when the fisherman pulls the strings that are attached to the net, it closes the bottom of the net up and he can bring in his fish.

Spear fishing is a common way of catching larger fish. It’s often done at night, in a boat, using a lantern to attract the fish. The fishermen stand in the boat to get a better view of the fish, while the light from the lantern draws them closer to the surface where they can be more easily reached by the men’s spears.

The mentality of the Sera in large part has to be “feast/famine,” because they have no way of storing most meat well (other than drying the smaller fish). So when men bring in a load of fish, if there is more than their own families can eat, they share it with others in the village. Then there will be a big feast, along with tubers (sweet potatoes and other similar starches, that vary from white to purple to yellow to orange). Although rice is considered common in Asia, it has not traditionally been common for the Sera. Their diet was based on tubers and sago palm starch. But rice is growing in availability and acceptance. The government has plans of producing rice locally. One Sera man came back with a college degree in agriculture and has begun growing rice.

Check out these other photos from our last trip to Sera land to get a picture of the people we will be with on the distribution trip, and the places we will be. We hope to talk more about what is in the photos in days to come.