If you want a good sweetpotato in Papua New Guinea you don’t need to go to a supermarket. Just pull over on the road … on almost any road (but there are not too many roads in this super rugged country).
My hosts from the National Agricultural Research Institute and I drove past a market near Goroka in the Central Highlands and pulled over in front of a huge display of different varieties of sweetpotato. I didn’t want to buy sweetpotatoes any but wanted to document the diversity. As I jumped out of the truck I pointed to my camera and asked if it was OK to shoot some photos. I wasn’t expecting the reaction I received.
Immediately the vendors went into posing mode and beckoned me to photograph them. Every vendor soon became a model and if I neglected to shoot someone I was quickly reprimanded. Pointing my camera at someone automatically seemed to turn on the ‘huge smile’ button.
It was a wild 10-minute stop but the photos I took in that short time will always remind me of the charm of the people of Papua New Guinea.
All images used on this page were photographed by Michael Major for the Crop Trust and used here under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.