Nestled in the forested river country of Morobe Province, the Sirak — also known as the Nafi — occupy one of the most quietly precarious positions of any ethnic community in Papua New Guinea. Their home is the village of Nambom, sometimes called Banzain, in the Wain-Erap Rural LLG near the Busu River. They are small in number, and their territory is small in geography, yet they carry a distinct identity, a unique language, and a history rooted in the mountain forests of Morobe Province's interior.
The Sirak speak Nafi, an Austronesian language — unusual for an inland Morobe community, as most of the surrounding languages in the Wain-Erap area belong to the Papuan Trans-New Guinea family. Nafi's Austronesian character hints at older patterns of migration and settlement along the coast and rivers of northern New Guinea, before ancestors of today's Sirak found refuge and made their home in the upper Busu valley. Historical research on neighboring peoples notes that refugee groups, fleeing earlier periods of intergroup conflict, settled in these mountains and merged with local Wain-speaking communities; the Sirak appear to be one product of those long-ago migrations and consolidations. A close neighboring group of ethnic Nafi people living in Popof village has already shifted entirely to speaking Nakama, a different Papuan language — a sign of how much pressure the language faces from surrounding communities. Intermarriage between the two villages is common.
A Bible translation into Nafi has been initiated but is not yet complete — leaving the Sirak without Scripture in their own tongue.
Life in Nambom follows the rhythms of rural Morobe Province, shaped by the forest, the river, and the garden. Subsistence farming provides the foundation of daily sustenance, with taro, sweet potato, bananas, and vegetables grown in household gardens on the forested hillsides. The Busu River and surrounding forest supplement the diet through fishing and hunting. As with many Morobe communities, small-scale cash cropping — cocoa and coffee being the most common — connects villagers to the wider market economy, though the primary orientation remains subsistence.
Extended family and clan networks structure village life, defining land rights, labor obligations, and the social expectations surrounding marriage and communal celebrations. Intermarriage with Nafi speakers from Popof village, who now speak a different language, means that household life often bridges two linguistic and cultural worlds. Village festivities, including those tied to harvest, births, marriages, and deaths, preserve a sense of communal identity even as the pressures of modernity — migration toward Lae and other urban centers, changing economic pressures, and the dominance of Tok Pisin — gradually reshape what it means to be Sirak.
Morobe Province has a vibrant broader cultural life, with the annual Morobe Show in Lae drawing communities from across the province to celebrate through dance, song, traditional food, and agricultural display. For the Sirak, participation in this broader provincial culture offers both connection and the risk of further absorption into wider Morobean or national identity at the expense of their own.
The Sirak are almost entirely Christian. The gospel reached the upper Busu River country through mission activity, and the community has identified as Christian for several generations. Evangelical Christianity has a meaningful presence alongside broader Christian identity, and the church is a genuine anchor of community life.
That said, the absence of a completed Bible translation in the Nafi language means that much of the Sirak's engagement with Christian faith is mediated through Tok Pisin, English, or the languages of neighboring groups rather than through their own mother tongue. Where the mother tongue is not the vehicle of Scripture and deep discipleship, older spiritual assumptions and practices — traditional beliefs about the spirit world, the spiritual significance of the land and forest, and explanations of illness or misfortune — can persist quietly beneath the surface of Christian profession. A small portion of the community is still classified as holding ethnic religious beliefs, a reminder that the full transformation of the heart is not accomplished by church membership alone.
The completion of a Bible translation in the Nafi language stands as the most pressing spiritual need of the Sirak. A people this small, with a language this isolated, cannot afford to wait indefinitely for Scripture in their mother tongue — without it, the depth and durability of their faith is constrained. The community's very small size and the shift of neighboring Nafi speakers to a different language means the Nafi language is at real risk of disappearing within a generation or two, taking with it a unique piece of human and cultural heritage. Access to quality education, healthcare, and economic opportunity remains limited in the remote Wain-Erap area. Clean water and basic sanitation infrastructure are consistent needs in rural Morobe communities. And given the community's smallness, the loss of even a few elders carries an outsized weight — both for cultural continuity and for the preservation of whatever oral tradition carries the Sirak's history and identity.
Pray that the Bible translation already underway in the Nafi language would be completed with urgency, and that God's Word in their own tongue would take deep root in Sirak hearts and reshape their faith from the inside out.
Pray for the Lord to raise up faithful Sirak believers with the courage and vision to preserve both their cultural identity and their gospel witness — people who hold fast to Christ even as pressure from surrounding languages and cultures pushes toward assimilation.
Pray for improved access to healthcare, clean water, and education for the community of Nambom, and that the church would be an active presence in meeting and advocating for these needs.
Pray that the Sirak church, though small and geographically isolated, would see itself as part of God's global mission — interceding for and, where possible, sending witness to peoples throughout Morobe Province and PNG who remain without a clear gospel witness.
Scripture Prayers for the Sirak in Papua New Guinea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafi_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morobe_Province
https://archivescollection.anu.edu.au/index.php/banzain-language-nafi-papua-new-guinea-includes-lexis-syntactic-list-grammar-outline-notes-text-transcription-of-interview-g-smith-and-sira-word-list-morobe-province
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/5431273d-61d8-4aa4-8298-688f8f39614d/content
https://papuanewguinea.travel/events/morobe-show/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wain-Erap_Rural_LLG
| Profile Source: Joshua Project |
