Irian Jaya (Indonesian New Guinea: part I)
Editors note: this is unedited
excerpt from Glenn's diary
Click on the photos to see the full size picture
Jayapura, Irian Jaya Indonesia. June 14, 1986.
Well, we are off pagi pagi (early morning) tomorrow to Wamena. We are quite excited. We have had some time and did some reading about the Dani people.
They are not right out of the Stone Age; they are in the Stone Age. The people are “primitive” in most senses. We are anxious to see how they have been affected by the twentieth century. What I have read was true 20 years ago. The Baliem valley was discovered in 1938 by westerners. The first missionaries arrived in the earl 1950’s. At that time, ritual warfare was quite common. If a man stole another wife or someone was killed for any reason, it was reason for wars between tribes and their allies. The wars would continue until both sides had received the same losses, more or less. Battle was fought mainly with bow and arrows and to a lesser extent spears. Reading some of the accounts of wars, I found it hard to believe that this actually happened. But it did.
The traditional people wear no clothes but smear themselves in mud to keep warm in the often-cool climate. They never wash. The main diet is potatoes, supplemented by some vegetables and pork (only for the men). No pots are used; cooking is done by baking foodstuffs in the fire.
It is a man’s world. Men acquire status based on the number of pigs and wives they own. Women are an economic asset. They are purchased with pigs and cowry shells. The women bear the children; mind the potatoes fields and pigs. The more wives one has, the more potatoes and pigs one has. Women are not treated very well and receive poor diets (no meat) and consequently they can only bear children every 3-4 years. During the 3 years of breast-feeding, the man cannot sleep with his wife (how’s that for birth control!).
We heard some interesting stories today at lunch with the women at the missionary administrative centre in Jayapura. 2 Years ago, a woman missionary barely escaped with her life, she overheard her own death plot and arranged to fly out.
Single women puzzle the Dani people. The believe they are wives in reserve for the missionary whose wife often bear children at a faster rate than the Dani’s 3-4 year pace. Once one group understood that the single women were truly unmarried, the dowry offers flowed in. One fat woman was the main attraction. The Dani suitors continued to offer more and more pigs for her hand. I can imagine her sitting out in a potato field digging the evening’s dinner for her Dani husband.
Missionaries. A different yet very ordinary lot of people the pastors we have met are a very gregarious, American lot. Many have been living here for twenty years, yet seem they have just stepped off the plane from America. The administrators and missionaries in Jayapura seemed to be a very ordinary lot; they were actually homebodies! They are sweet, gabbing women you might find in any office. One of them said that she doesn’t like to travel; “after 2 weeks, I prefer to be home”. Yet, here she is in Irian Jaya. A pastor’s wife asked us how we managed traveling and how die we find hotels wherever we went. Ordinary people living in an extra-ordinary place.
June 16, Wamena, Irian Jaya
Well, here we are in the Beliem Valley. We came from the sky and landed on the ground. I can imagine the wonder and amazement the people of this valley had when the first planes landed. There was still wonder and amazement when we arrived yesterday. A large crowd of people was assembled to watch our arrival. There are many supply planes each day and a great (free) source of entertainment can be found at the airport. A cargo cult in the making?
The flight from Jayapura took us over jungle and slow rivers, the hills and finally through an air corridor (the ground seemed so close) and into the Baliem valley. It’s a huge valley and villages with neatly arranged gardens were below us. Wonder and amazement was upon us as we walked through the airport. I thought I was ready for it, but many of the men were walking around without any clothes, save their holim (penis sheaths). They are usually a foot long and stand straight up in the air. I gagged, to contain the laughter, and then quickly composed myself. Every so often, as I walk down the path, that same grin comes over me. They do look unusual.
Even more wonderful, has been Yulius. It was as if he was waiting for us to arrive. He met us as we left the arrival area and spoke English to us. He is the schoolteacher in Oksibil, an area close to the PNG border and he is on holiday. After reporting to the police (with Yulius) we set over to the MAF (Missionary aviation) hoping to stay in their hostel. We were met with a rather courteous but curt response “we are not a hotel”, understandably, they have had problems with local hotel people because they had taken in tourists. From there it was off to the Nayak Hotel, a shanty house of galvanized siding. A nice enough lace (basic), but the going rate of 26,000 rupiah a night startled us. As it turned out, Yulius invited us to stay at his home and we haven’t looked back. The family has made us feel quite comfortable. They are hospitable but their nature does not allow them to go overboard which is a perfect situation. We now have a comprehensive rudimentary Dani or Baliem vocabulary and feel a little more at ease. There is something about heaps of naked men running about that takes a little getting used to.
However, one has to take it all in stride. Yulius’ English is not as good as originally thought. His sentences are well rehearsed and now sound like a broken record. We will do this and do this. We well this and do that. Then we will take a nap (rest whether it be toilet, a tea). He is sticking like glue. It’s difficult to go to the toilet without him. Hospitality is a give and take affair and certainly we must give but how are we going to lose him for a while? How can I write my journal without Yulius hanging over my shoulder?
Having said all that, Beliem Valley is an incredible place. The town of Wamena is the main trading post, where the 20th Century and the valley meet. Some people wear clothes, other, simply gourds. No one seems self-conscious except us. We look different!
The villages are as described in the books. Sure, there houses with tin roofs, but the villages are magnificent. The villages are U-shaped and made largely of wood with grass roofs. The surrounding hillsides bear the scars of deforestation.
The climate is temperate. The evenings are cool and the afternoons can be warm. The evenings are thick with mosquitoes. The staple food is the sweet potato and they are quite good. Temperate vegetables grow in abundance.
Seen walking along the road.....men walking (save the gourds) carrying pastic bags from the market. A naked father walking his son who wears clothes. An Indonesian on a motorcycle.
Amongst all the naked bodies and the mud-covered women at the market, the storekeepers are Chinese. Where there is a buck to me made, a Chinese person will be there in Asia. Three are three groups of outsiders living here. The missionaries and supporting entourage with bank accounts are here for a cause. The small Chinese population works in earnest. The largest group of outsiders is the Indonesians; the police, the administrators and so forth Indonesianizing the Highlands. It has to be a strange life for most of them, probably on two-year assignments all longing to return to Java.
June 16, Wamena, Irian Jaya
Yesterday we went for a short walk south of here. The main trail runs over the airstrip. Unusual to see black naked bodies walking and running on a paved runway, with mountains in the background. They often run in the afternoons to keep warm and many are seen with their arms wrapped around their necks for warmth. As I stopped to take a photograph, two men ran towards me. He offered a Baliem bow and arrow set for sale. I inspected them and asked how much in Baliem. He held out his hand with the thumb and first finger our. Three (thousand) I surmised, as it is the number of fingers held in that count! A deal was struck on the runway (actually 3,000 rupiah).
In the evening, we met the Catholic deacon who has been living here for 27 years. He was here in 1957. Two thirds of the valley is Catholic now. The young people appreciate their freedom of movement but the older generation still longs to fight. When he first arrived, they were still fighting. An infant brings as much honour to a brave as another man. Although the police enjoy a fairly good relationship with the Dani, there is often friction between coastal people who work as administrators. They consider the Dani to be naked savages who need to be civilized like themselves. In 1977, the whole thing came crashing down and the Dani attacked police posts with spears and pounded stakes into the airfields to prevent reinforcements from landing. It has been peaceful for the last eight years, but occasionally war breaks out in remote areas.
The government and missions are pumping huge amounts of money into the highlands, mostly for transportation and communication infrastructures. The airstrip at Wamena is paved and is 1.75 km long (can handle Hercules transport) and the surveying work has begun on a road from jayapura. Air transport adds 600 rupiah (50 cents per kilo) to the cost of goods from the already expensive Jayapura. The planes leave here by and large empty, except for a few vegetables that cannot be grown in the hills surrounding Jayapura.
Traditionally, a death is a time for great mourning (it still is). Often the grieving brothers of a man would search for a witch and kill her. Female relatives of the dead had their fingers partly amputated. When shaking the hands of many of the women, it’s often difficult to find their hand as there is not much left. The Dani have a real gentle handshake; they are fearless.
The food has been good. It has been sometime since we last sat down to a bowl of potatoes and chili sauce (since Namche Bazaar) but it makes for god breakfast. The sauce of cooked tomatoes and chilies is almost Mexican in taste. The other meals have included rice (imported by air) and some fine, fresh vegetables (cabbage, carrots, lettuce, corn, etc) and always accompanied by potatoes. The hipere (spuds) are primarily sweet and fibrous but good. No one eats junk food as a snack, when you can grab a potato.
There are not many tourists here. When I asked Yulius if many tourists come her, he said yes. When I asked him how many, he responded “five”. I think something was lost in his understanding of the question, but there are not many. I do know there are two British people somewhere in the valley because their passports are at the police station. The Deacon told us there are fewer tourists than before the trouble in 1977-1978. The hotels charge exorbitant rates because there are simply not enough guests, whether they are tourists or businessmen to go around.
Onto Irian Jaya part II (the hike)