Aibom is a small village on the southern edge of the Chambri Lakes whose clay banks have supplied cooking pots to the Sepik for centuries. The pots — fire-pots and large storage jars decorated with stylised faces and pointed ear-like handles — are made by the women, fired in open pits at the water's edge, and traded up and down the river in exchange for fish, sago, and tobacco.
Visiting Aibom usually means watching a potter at work in the shade of her stilt-house, where the slow coiling of a metre-high cooking pot from local clay is in itself an hour's entertainment. Finished pots can be bought directly; smaller pieces are easy to take home, and the larger ones are still functional kitchen tools across half of Papua New Guinea. The village is reached by canoe from the main Chambri channel.