Lost Among the Baining: Adventure, Marriage, and Other Fieldwork

In the late sixties, Gail Pool and her husband set off to live with the Baining, an isolated people in Papua New Guinea. He was a graduate student in anthropology; she was an aspiring writer. Many people warned them against this trip, pointing to the stresses of the rugged mountain terrain, their own isolation, and the mystery of the Baining, about whom little was known. But just two years out of college, they were too young to take anyone's advice. They felt thrilled by the challenge.

The couple stayed for sixteen months--slogging through mud, battling huge insects, arguing with each other. But they never felt they understood the very different culture of their enigmatic hosts. Back home, Pool put away her journals; her husband left the field of anthropology. They viewed the trip as a fiasco. Yet this powerful experience stayed with them; it had never come to a close. Decades later, they knew they had to return to the people who had changed their lives.

Pool's memoir looks back with wry humor on this journey to the bush. Writing at a distance, she can laugh at the innocent youngsters, appreciate the Baining who took care of them--and welcomed them back, and comprehend the limits of knowing another culture.