March 14th, 2004
"
Many have asked why I've been in this part of the world so
long, and how much I plan, and how I choose where to go. In this update, I'll
try to answer those questions by describing the thought-processes accompanying
my wanderings, while breaking the voyage into four pieces. This is a long
update...
==========
The Voyage
==========
I left off on January 31 in Dili, East Timor, saying I was bound for the biggest
island I've ever been on. That island was
Coincidentally, Chris, who I met in
Long drive across Timor, back to Kupang,
Bought tickets to
Immediately back aboard, we decided to skip Manokwari (so in that town, we had
to hop ashore again and buy yet another ticket, our third) and head all the way
to Jayapura, last stop on the ship's schedule. This made our trip from Kupang a
5-day, 5-night, 'ekonomi'-class adventure. And a trip it was! If you look past
the filth and the food quality and living standards in general, it's quite
luxurious! You get three meals of slop a day, served cafeteria-style on a metal
tray. You get a dirty bedroll if you're lucky. Sometimes the bathrooms are
cleaned even. Most people seem to smoke and the ventilation's not so good. The
muezzin's call to prayer (Islam nation, after all) sounds on the loudspeakers
several times a day, beginning at the convenient hour of about 4am.
But I'm an optimist and don't care about all that. For five wonderful days, I
enjoyed free meals and took showers in the WCs and read on my bed (you know it's
a long trip when you can read 'Nicholas Nickleby' cover to cover on it). They
occasionally show movies (saw 'T3', but most were cheap tit-flicks). You can buy
anything in the stairwells of the huge ship's eight (!) decks, from food
processors to shoes. People you've never met say your name, having heard it
elsewhere. You go up on deck to watch the world the aquatic one anyway) go by.
If you're lucky, the people by you form kind of a family...met some wonderful
people. Never felt that our belongings are in danger, even unattended.
The boat had seven port stops in those five days. In many, we'd hop aboard for
an hour or so to explore the new cities, buy fruit and snacks, etc. Get a good
taste of the changing region. Kind of a sampler platter.
==========
West Papua
==========
But after five days, it had to end. Last stop: Jayapura, capital of Indonesian
West Papua (western half of
The flight was amazing, crossing virgin jungle and hills and rivers. Truly a lot
of untouched land, what I had hoped to see (but didn't) when flying over bits of
Koteka. Penis gourd. A hollowed-out gourd, placed over the unit in question.
Vary in length from 6" to 24" usually (for adult men, perhaps 3" to 8" when
younger boys wear them). Two strings. One goes around the scrotum to hold the
base on tight. One goes around the end and wraps around the waist to hold the
end of the gourd 'erect.' Trippy. So most people in Wamena wear clothes. But the
odd koteka-wearer really throws you for a loop at first, wearing nothing but the
stick. I immediately termed them "dick-sticks" and Chris called the wearers
"matey-boys." These were to be our koteka code-words the next week or two.
Next day, visited little kampungs (villages) of Aikima and Jiwika and saw mumi's
(mummies) there. These are bodies that are 200-300 years old. They sit them in
the upright position, knees-to-chin-and-arms-wrapped-around, nail them or strap
'em that way, and then smoke them in the top of the hut, for oh, say, 200 days.
The result is that granddad now looks like a permanently screaming charcoal
briquette in the fetal position.
No glass cases here. If you want to see it, junior just runs into the hut and
grabs old granddad and sets 'im out in the sun on a chair for you to look at.
Feel free to put your arm around him and get friendly. The occasional
dick-stick-toting-matey-boy looks on. Or perhaps his wife, who's old and topless
and quite saggy in that respect and missing a couple finger joints (they used to
hack off the joints of women when relatives died...there are lots of women with
stubby hands around here!) Where the fuck am I?
But I don't mean to be disrespectful. The people are quite friendly and the
customs and dress and old traditions and huts are all really fascinating.
Anyway...after staying in a village that night, we got really lucky as there was
a pig-roast in a nearby village the next day (and not one of the ones organized
for tourists!).
It was spectacular. Pigs were killed with a bow and arrow. A big hole in the
ground was lined with grass and leaves and hot rocks and ubi (sweet potatoes)
and veggies and more leaves and more rocks and pig and veggies and more and more
and more until there was a huge heaping cylinder, 2m diameter and a meter high
off the ground, steaming and tied shut with a flexible branch. One hour later
(took a couple hours to build), this was dismantled and we feasted. As the fat
is what the locals want, we bought a huge chunk of meat for quite cheap and ate
in in a straw-floor hut with potatoes and veggies. Wonderful!
Well, the
Guide #1 we named Gollum because he was a hobbit gone wrong. He had a short
statue and huge hobbit feet with inward big toes and a graying fuzzy head and he
was really quite a bastard. Maybe good once, but now evil, though likeable at
times.
Guide #2 we named Tweedledum because he really didn't have a clue. Had obviously
never portered before and his brother volunteered him for the job because he was
too lazy himself. I won't mention him anymore because he gave up after 1.5 days
which was fine by me cause I wanted to tout my own pack anyway.
Crossed into the Mugi river valley, climbing out of the Baliem river valley,
passing the occasional woman tending her sweet potatoes in a stone-fenced
garden/field, or topless toothless old women and matey-boys selling bits of
fruit or tobacco or veggies. Passed through swamp, in valleys, bits of jungle,
rock, mud, the works. Complementing this with the native culture, it was hard to
beat this trek!
After the fourth day of ups-and-downs but mainly a general ascent, we reached a
large plateau near
After crossing this haunting place, we began a long and treacherous descent down
the mountain, the stuff of boyish childhood dreams--pinnacles and crude wooden
ladders and fog, at times a bit treacherous. And when we reached inhabited lands
again...everyone was naked! We're not talking the random joe here, it was more
like 95% of people--men wearing only dicksticks, women only short reed skirts.
Cool. The huts had changed as well, with raised wooden floors and different wall
materials. We had left Dani country and entered Yali lands.
Chris and I both bought kotekas and tried them on to the amusement of the
locals. The backdrop was stunning, our village being perched on a little spur
above a steep valley, with
This whole hike, we stayed with families in "honay," round thatch-roof huts.
They are about 12' (4m) in diameter. Base floor is about 4' (1.3m) high....pigs
sometimes are in a little attached pen outside the hut, sometimes in the hut
itself on the other side of a partition. Usually sleep in the attic. Can be
smoky, no chimneys, smoke seeps out of the thatch. Women in another house (men
and women don't live together).
So our hike ended late on the fifth day, when we arrived in Angguruk, a
missionary outpost of sorts where more people wore clothing again, but still not
so many. For kicks we attended church on Sunday. Interesting to see. 80% of
people sit on the straw floor. Lots of naked people, most only barefoot.
Breastfeeding, a kid shits on the floor, no one pays attention to the minister.
Some other notes on the region before I move on...
Ubi (sweet potatoes) are the staple food. Every meal. Often plain without even
veggies. We brought our own supply of ketchup and chilis and margarine and sugar
to make things a bit more interesting. Polygamy still the norm, not the
exception. Five wives or so was the average among the people we talked to. The
koteka seems a bit ill-suited to this climate...it's cold up in those hills at
2000m + altitude, and wearing a gourd on your penis doesn't exactly make you
warmer. Many men still have huge pierces through the nose septum, this for
wearing pig tusks through the nostrils. But not many wear them.
But back to the story...
There was no way in hell we were walking back as the trek, though brilliant, was
kind of a pain in the ass. Problem is, no regular flights. We thought we had
one, but it was cancelled, then randomly, two days after we arrived, a Cessna
showed up on the small daredevil-dropoff grass airstrip, and we chartered it
with two Czech's we'd met and flew back to Wamena. Two hours later, we'd bought
another ticket and were on a flight back to Jayapura.
================
Papua New Guinea
================
Again, we planned a couple days in Jayapura, but ended up taking off the next
day for Papua New Guinea, the independent nation on the east side of New Guinea.
Our first destination was Vanimo, the first town across the border (there were
riots that day, so we were stuck at the border until things settled down). In my
journal, I noted "PNG will get a quick look"--I planned about two weeks there.
Not to be.
What a transition! For the umpteenth time, I was startled at how a simple line
drawn between two countries can make such a difference.
So in Vanimo, we sketched out a plan for PNG which we ended up not following at
all. We stayed in a police barracks cause the hotels were expensive. Our first
step was to go across the north coast, by boat. We went to the airport to
enquire about flying, just out of curiosity (as it looked like we'd have to wait
a few days for a boat), and ended up saying fuckit and buying a ticket for a
flight in 90 minutes' time.
That brought us to Wewak, where we planned to go inland to the
We then headed inland to the
From
The Tari region was beautiful. We visited a market, probably the most colorful
market I've seen on my trip! Colorful hats and scarves and bilums (string bags
for goods) and tattoed and painted faces and leaf skirts and leg bands and
everyone barefoot...and...the Huli Wigmen! These dudes are great...they grow
their hair in a semi-spherical afro, then shave it off in one piece. The result
is a big wig that they can plop on at anytime. Cool, but I don't know if it's
practical for me to try.
The goods were typical of PNG markets: fruits and veggies and bread and meat,
the vendors seated under colorful western umbrellas. Like elsewhere in PNG, most
people wear clothes, the missionaries having been at work for a few decades, but
traditional dress and culture still struggle to survive hand-in-hand. Here, too,
polygamy still very common. Marriage is more about business than love. Our host
matter-of-factly talked about his three wives. His first was the best: he bought
her for 24 pigs (wife #3 cost 36 pigs and she was a pain in the ass; he said she
was stupid). Plainly stated that men were higher up in the order of things,
women being somewhere between men and animals.
This region is apparently one of the birding hotspots of the world, many species
of "birds of paradise" being around. We bird-watched for a couple hours, but I'm
not so interested and just kindof read my book. I guess hard-core birdwatchers
are supposed to be patient, but I think they're just bored and maybe have
damaged brains. Our second afternoon, we were walking down the gravel road and a
truck came by. We hailed it down, and on a whim, hitched a ride with them,
leaving the Tari region.
The ride back up through the beautiful valley in an open-backed truck under
sunny skies was gorgeous and blissful. Until it started pissing out and got very
cold and dark. Five hour ride from hell; a wet, frozen hell, anyway. Ended up in
Mendi, staying at a Catholic Mission, where we warmed up by the fire, and dried
out our water-logged belongings. Retraced our route back to the PNG coastal city
of
There, we went to a
So to get out of PNG and into
====================
A Taste of Melanesia
====================
So I flew to the
I landed with no real plan, but within hours of landing in Kavieng,
My final destination was the
Seems that aside from two anthropologists who wrote books here, no one knew of
tourists having been to the island. I made many friends and ate lots of coconuts
and learned to climb coconut trees and went night spear-fishing on the reef and
attended a political event and played in a volleyball tournament and learned
about the local culture and swam and explored the small island and tried many
strange new fruits that I've seen nowhere else in my travels! Beautiful island
surrounded by turquoise water and reef, with a low highland in the middle.
Four days there followed by a long boat journey and a longer bus ride and I was
back where I started on mainland
Ran into Chris again who'd hopped from
Before I finish, some random notes...
There's a reason the Portuguese named
Developed an unhealthy hankering for Marmite. Favorites are avocado marmite
cheese sandwiches and tomato avocado salt pepper sandwiches. Or marmite on plain
bread. Or on biscuits. Or right out of the jar. Yum!
Nobody on this island knows their age unless in a big town.
So many new fruits and veggies here...nowhere else. It's rare now, having been
many places, to find new things. But I've had probably ten wonderful new foods
on the island. Buah merah, sayur lilin, kelapa hutan, pau, tona, and my
favorite: not, a green sweet fruit with exactly the same texture as a good firm
piece of cheesecake.
The Pidgin language in PNG is very funny, a conglomeration of English and many
other things. My favorite saying is "washim nek tasol", a drinking saying
(washing neck, that's all!).
PNG people are the friendliest I've ever met. I stayed with several families and
made some great friends that I won't forget. Amazing. Very nice, considering the
expense of hotels in the country and the complete absence of facilities for
lowly indepndent travellers.
Back to present...
Sunday, March 14. Flight from Kavieng back to
"That's how the trip came about, and it never deviated from the general
principle laid down then: improvisation." (-Che Guevara)
Away Awhile is hosted by Josh Trutwin.