Boazi - Settlements

Villages range in population from about 50 to 600 persons. Families alternate between living in a village and living in small camps near their sago swamps and hunting grounds. Both villages and camps are usually built on low islands or peninsulas in the swamps and marshes of the Fly River floodplain. All villages have a separate house for unmarried men. This house is physically removed from the rest of the village and serves as the married men's clubhouse and the repository of the central objects of the men's secret cult. Traditionally, houses were simple, open-sided structures with dirt floors, sleeping platforms of split Areca palm, and roofs of sago leaves or Melaleuca bark. Today, however, houses have raised floors of split palm and walls of sago palm frond stems in addition to their sago-thatch roofs.