ABSTRACT
I::~mam is a lovely place in a lovely setting. It is a small island off the north-central coast of Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands, the main part of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. As Ponam is a small island, so Manus is a small province, the smallest in the country by far, with a resident population of 25,844 in 1980 (Papua New Guinea 1980). It is an island province, about 270 kilometres north-northeast of the coast of Madang Province, the nearest place on the New Guinea mainland, and about the same distance west of New Hanover, the closest large island in the Bismarck Archipelago. The core of the province is the large island of Manus and the smaller island of Los Negros, the two barely separated by a narrow, winding passage. This core, the Manus mainland, is surrounded by small islands, especially to the southeast and north (see map 1, at the end of this chapter).
