Comparing the life of the locals with your own, realizing how much more difficult it is and how much it lacks, a normal and racially unprejudiced person from our European civilization must at least want to help the locals in some way. Of course, I mean material aid here. It is like feeding a hungry child or helping a disabled old man. These are the realities of our worlds, of our and their living conditions. Without blaming the authorities, God or just universal injustice, think simply: if I can share something, I will. But in order not to train the locals to beg and cajole money for allowing you to take a picture, in order to avoid in Irian Jaya what happened in Australia where ‘kind’ Europeans turned aborigines into beggars and drunkards and made begging a full-time job of the locals, we always asked them to do some work for us. Everything is simple – you do work, you get money. And many times we noticed that Indonesians appreciate such earned money much more than donations. I am deviating from the topic though but in this book it is Michael and Alexey’s responsibility.
It’s not difficult to get a ticket to Wamena either. Theoretically, planes fly to this small town regularly, but in fact the flight schedule depends on how full the planes are. If the quota of 25 seats has been filled, the flight will take place. If it hasn’t, you will have to wait. And while we are waiting for a plane, I will tell you a short story about Wamena and the Baliem Valley – the last outpost of civilization in Irian Jaya – as it is often called in various tourist guidebooks. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine exactly when the local tribes started full-scale exploration of Valley Baliem. Here, I don’t mean settlement in the valley, but specifically exploration, cultivation and turning it into a certain center of the inter-tribal community. Anyway, when American explorers discovered Wamena in 1938, it was already a rather big settlement with developed farming, which was mostly inhabited by the Dani tribes. Members of the Yali and Lani tribes lived and worked nearby, but higher in the mountains, sometimes coming down to Wamena to exchange handicraft products for food. That is how National Geographic magazine described Wamena in 1941. The word “Wamena” itself is translated from the local language as “a pig for you”. Hunters probably used to catch wild pigs and bring them to the settlement in exchange for cultivated vegetables.
The Baliem river valley is located 1600 meters above sea level. It is 72 km long, and from 15 to 75 km wide. Visually, it is a huge ravine impossible to cover with your eye, hidden from the rest of the world by almost totally vertical rocks. Stunning views, a rather moderate climate and some rudiments of civilization attracted the first missionaries to Wamena about 10 years after its first publication in the magazine. It was a Danish mission. Obviously, having brought here metal tools, primitive utensils, clothes and books, the missionaries first of all started building churches and schools. They were successful. There are about twenty parishes and four schools in Wamena today. Not all the churches look well attended. Some of their yards are overgrown with weeds and almost all of them are empty. To be more accurate, locals go to church, but they do it probably because their ancestors did it as well. We weren’t able to find out if they perform the same ceremonies – christenings, weddings, or prayers. Although most missionaries left Wamena in 1962, some volunteer pastors still live there, though they are not in a rush to talk about their successes. It isn’t the most important thing though. Pastors are doing a great thing. They educate local children (as well as they can), treat people and animals, and try to teach some moral principles of peaceful co-existence of different tribes. By the way, Wamena’s inhabitants’ attitude towards school is rather neutral and even cool. Children don’t have to go to class regularly. One of the neighbours’ children’s example is usually the one to follow if they have become important people and make more money than their fellow tribesmen. Neither clothes nor school lunches have the same magical influence. Children are mostly busy pasturing animals, playing football or begging for money in the town streets, seeing off tourist cars screaming “gulya-gulya-gulya– ka-a”, which means “give me a candy!” However, many times we have also seen children dressed in uniform skirts and trousers, wearing white shirts and carrying books, walking somewhere along the roads, most probably, to school.
In spite of the fact that the government has built enough simple but rather civilized housing in Wamena (it is one-storey houses made of plasterboard with slate roofing), the Vamenians still prefer to live in kampungs – traditional round wattle and daub houses. Wamena, like any other regional town, has a strictly defined center where you can find some shops, a market, a hairdresser’s, a hospital, town administration buildings, the police and even an office of an Indonesian bank. Wamena also has suburbs, where residents rarely wear clothes, live off subsistence farming and almost never come to “the center” with the exception of the hospital or school. The Indonesian government has made colossal efforts to turn Irian in general and Wamena in particular into a civilized area. Once in a while, planes deliver clothes, footwear and medication, and bring rice, sugar, tea, coffee and other simple food supplies. The government also makes sure that there are no alcohol deliveries to Wamena. This is why it is even a problem for tourists and those Europeans who work in the Baliem Valley under governmental contracts to buy beer.
From the year that has passed since we visited Wamena for the first time, the town has changed a lot. In the airport we weren’t met by a big Papuan crowd staring with curiosity at any white people who ended up in their lands at some point in their travels. As for those whose habits remained strong and who came to the airport anyway, they were wearing more clothes. Old and rag-like, but clothes nonetheless. Only one grandpa who we remembered from the previous trip was still happily waving at the tourists while standing in the center of the square in his bushy broom made of bird feathers and a customary koteka. He was holding a small plastic bag with some paper bills, which the old warrior earned by posing for pictures with travelers. We were happy to see him as if he were a member of our own family and the Dani tribesman earned some more bills from us – not for posing in our pictures but for his persistence and army-like faithfulness to his duty – to greet guests at the entrance to his town. God bless him with many more years of life.
Like the first time, it took us two hours to get to the Baliem Valley Hotel where we decided to stay. But this time we hardly noticed the time pass by. First of all, it was very interesting to remark on all the changes which had taken place in Wamena in just 12 months’ time, to compare our last year’s impressions with what we felt today. Secondly, we couldn’t wait to meet our good friends – Isaya (our co-traveler in the first trip into the local jungle) and Ika – the manager of the hotel and the whole Papuan hotel team, where everybody is unnoticeable but at the same time irreplaceable and a personality.
Isaya, peacefully carving some wood stick on the steps of the hotel, reacted to the arrival of a minibus as a professional: he assumed a dignified air, raised one eyebrow and then after thinking for a short while made a scary facial expression (a true caveman). But when Alexey came out of the car screaming, “Hey, brother, you weren’t expecting us, were you?”, our Papuan friend immediately changed, shed a tear or two and then started jumping and laughing like a child. He gave us all hugs in turn, even shook us a bit, looked into our eyes and then taking our backpacks, pulled them inside the veranda. He dropped something on the way, yelled at some worker for his own clumsiness, arranged some coffee for us, made sure we were ok, personally brought our keys, and resolutely gave our backpacks to the Papuans after having unmistakably determining whose was whose and where they had to be taken.
