Koteka by Billga, CC BY-SA 3.0
My diary entry for 11 December 1974 includes the phrase:
Disappearing World. Ongka’s Big Moka. Rather amusing.
In October 2016, while pondering the idea of Ogblog but before I had started the project in earnest, I uncovered this diary entry and vaguely remembered the television programme to which it referred.
I Googled the programme name and read the Wikipedia entry, which, at that time, reported that the programme was first broadcast in 1976 – probably when it received its first US airing. A bit more Googling enabled me to confirm 11 December 1974 as the first airing date so I (in the form of Ged Ladd who is an occasional but keen Wikipedia editor) corrected the Wikipedia entry.
At the time of writing this (November 2018), I am delighted to note that the Wikipedia entry for Ongka’s Big Moka retains my fine detective and editing work. I was reminded of this whole matter by a visit to see the Oceania exhibition at the RA:
Klimt/Schiele and Oceania, Royal Academy, 16 November 2018
Anyway, since my October 2016 detective work, someone has, helpfully, uploaded the Ongka’s Big Moka film to YouTube:
It might have been this television documentary that sparked my lifelong interest in the tribes and cultures of Oceania.
I do also remember being inspired by the exhibits from the Pacific South Seas in the Horniman Museum, on an Alleyn’s School visit, probably around that time, but I do not recall which of those inspiring introductions, television or museum, came first.
Perhaps I’ll find a reference to the Alleyn’s visit somewhere in my diaries, but it might be pre-diaries or during one of my irritating diary-writing-intervals in those early years.
One of my old school pals might just help me to date that school visit, although I suspect there were plenty of such visits on field days “back then”, as the Horniman was such an easy place to visit from the school. So unless I did something memorable on that trip…
…I dread to think what memorable thing I might done, but my lifelong interest in that part of the world does include a fascination with koteka.
Still, I suspect that the date of my visit to the Horniman is either in my diaries or lost in the mists of time.
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