ABSTRACT
In the initiation ceremonies of the Chambri of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea one participant, the tsambunwuro, by virtue of his special relationship with the initiate, can have the boy's blood spill on him without suffering ill effects. The fact that during scarification the Chambri substitutes the tsambunwuro for the Iatmul wau suggests that the tsambunwuro relationship is particularly significant to them. The Chambri translate the tsambunwuro from their own language into the neo-Melanesian word poroman, meaning friend, or "a partner or pair to any object, of a pair of pig's tusks, one is poroman to the other". Tsambunwuro, Chambri say, assist one another by exchanging all kinds of goods and services. The tsambunwuro relationship is enduring, and in one sense it recapitulates affinal inequality, with younger men perpetually in debt to the older men who lay beneath them during their initiation.
