Last weekend at POC was our first haus kauk weekend. The first of three for me. You may be asking yourself what’s a haus kauk? A haus kauk is pretty much an outside kitchen made out of wood and bamboo. In PNG traditionally people prepare and eat their food in their haus kauks. The only time they spend in their houses/huts is to sleep at night.
So last weekend, we had to fend for ourselves and prepare and eat all our meals at our haus kauks. I share one with the two other singles, Daniel and Esther. We could only use fresh food or anything that could keep, so very bush style. We spent half a day earlier in the week travelling into town to buy food supplies. The biggest challenge for me, besides the extra time in preparation, was cooking on the open fire while controlling the fire. Which I really enjoyed, but meant that I couldnt simply set the fire to 200C and walk away. On Saturday night we had a pot luck with all the other families, we cooked beef skillet lentils and rice, plus a chocolate cake for dessert. I cooked the cake in a drum oven, which took about an hour, having to constantly be watching and controlling the fire. It turned out really good and because we had marshmellows over a fire for dessert, the cake was protected and there was several pieces left over for me to polish off.
We built the haus kauk the previous weekend, on the Saturday. It took the three of us, around nine hours all up to build it in the heat. The only non-traditional items on it, is obviously the tarpolen roof. Normally the morota (woven roof) is made out of a leave from a tree called ‘pur-pur’ which is a very timely job. Plus we used synthenic string (normal string) to tie it all together, but traditionally they use a string made from an interior bark from a tree. We watched a few national workmen build a haus kauk a few days prior, leaving us to build our own. The minimum requirement was to build the structure and a table with chairs. But of course we added more items, a preparation bench, washing up area with two basin’s, a drying rack and a hanging rack. I was thinking of a guttering system to catch rain water, saving us having to boil the water. But good thing the wet season is over. I will have a video of us building the haus kauk to upload once I return to Mt Hagen. So that’s a brief summary of a haus kauk and a haus kauk weekend.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Dude.. That sounds awesome, I want to build a “haus kauk”