The long walk to the market: How distance shapes PNG food

First Person - In Papua New Guinea, food does not simply appear.

Before it reaches the pot, food walks. It waits. It sweats. It rides on the back of a PMV (Public Motor Vehicle), balances in a dinghy, or sits patiently in a bilum while someone decides whether this trip was worth it.

By the time it reaches your plate, it has already lived a small life worthy of a written tale.

This is why food in PNG is treated with a certain seriousness. You don't rush it. You don't waste it. You don't jump over it. You don't complain too loudly unless you've forgotten how far it came.

For many households, the journey starts early. Very early. Before the sun has fully made up its mind, someone is already walking toward a market. Sometimes that walk begins in places like Asaro in the Eastern Highlands, long before Port Moresby has woken up. Gardens are harvested, kumu (green leafy vegetable) bundles are tied, and food begins its long movement toward Gordons Market, passing through hands, vehicles, and hours before it ever meets a cooking pot.

There is no "just" about it.

Food travels from gardens to roadsides, from boats to wharves, from PMVs to market stalls. It moves in stages. Kaukau packed in large 50 kilogram bags. Greens bundled tight. Fish packed with care because one wrong move means tonight's protein disappears.

Distance does something important to food. It gives it value.

When you've carried kaukau for kilometres, you don't throw it away because you're bored. When rice has passed through three hands and two PMVs, you don't cook it carelessly. When fish has survived sun, salt, and time, you don't rush it onto the fire like it's disposable.

Distance teaches respect.

Food in PNG is also never just food. It is tied to stories, to places, to people you may never meet but somehow still know. Every kaukau (sweet potato) has a gardener behind it. Every bundle of greens carries the hands that pulled, washed, tied, and lifted it. Food arrives with characters attached - the market mama who woke before dawn, the aunty who walked further than she admits, the old man who knows exactly when to harvest because his father taught him the same way. When you eat in PNG, you are not just consuming ingredients. You are meeting the people who made it possible.

When Aku Kulo from Asaro, Eastern Highlands, began planting kaukau, he got this whole family involved.

"I was a misfit. I didn't finish school. My father told me, if I ever got my act together and worked the land, my life would become better."

Aku has built a business around the food he produces. His produce ends up in Port Moresby every week paying him K$20,000 (Approx US$4,600) every 7 days.

This is why wasting food in PNG still feels wrong in a way that's hard to explain to outsiders. Spoiled rice, defrosted chicken during a power blackout, greens forgotten at the bottom of a bilum - these aren't small mistakes. They feel personal.

Because someone carried that.

Even in town, food still travels. Urban life doesn't erase the journey - it just disguises it. The trip to Gordons Market in the big city might be shorter than the walk from Asaro, but it still involves early starts, crowded PMVs, plastic bags cutting into fingers, and calculations about what can be carried versus what must be left behind.

Town food is planned around pay cycles, transport, and power cuts. You buy what you can manage. You store what you must. You cook with the quiet awareness that replacing food is not always simple.

Often, the labour behind meals is invisible. But it's always there - in the shoulders of market mamas, in the patience of mothers and aunties, in older siblings who don't complain but feel it later. Food arrives quietly, placed on the table as if it was always meant to be there.

But if you've ever followed the path food takes - from Asaro to Gordons Market, from wharf to roadside stall - you know better.

This is also why PNG food tastes different. It tastes patient. It tastes earned. There's a reason kaukau boiled simply still feels complete. A reason rice with just salt and tinned fish can satisfy a hunger that's deeper than appetite.

Distance seasons food.

It slows things down. It reminds you that meals are not instant rewards but outcomes. You wait because someone else already waited. You eat carefully because effort lives inside the food whether you acknowledge it or not.

By the time food reaches the fire, it has already gathered stories. Of early mornings. Of long walks. Of hands that carried, balanced, and refused to give up.

So when you sit down to eat in Papua New Guinea, you're not just eating ingredients.

You're eating distance.

And maybe that's why PNG food still tastes like something real.