The land that time almost forgot

Baliem valley, Papua, Indonesia,
8th January 2010

The Baliem valley is hundreds of kilometres from the coast and has no roads to the outside world. It is surrounded by mountains, and jungles and huge river systems. It is exceedingly hard to reach even when you know about it (unless you have an aircraft, of course). All of which explains why the place wasn't discovered by the outside world until 1938 and why its original inhabitants, the Dani people, were living a stone-age existence.

Even now some locals still use stone tools and walk around naked, apart from the infamous penis gourds for the men and simple grass skirts for the women. Of course, many, especially the younger generation, now mostly sport T-shirts and jeans, and the stone blades are kept only for ritual severing of women's finger joints at the loss of a dear one, but life is still fairly traditional for most Dani.













We flew in on a Trigiana flight from Jayapura, passing over those impenetrable jungles on the way, before climbing over a set of steep mountains and descending steeply into the 60km-long valley to land at Wamena airport.

The place has the air of Africa. The people are dark skinned and more like Australian aboriginals than typical Indonesians, and the flat-topped acacias and grass-thatched huts are like something you might see on a Kenyan safari.













There is also a little bit of an edge here. People, in town at least, aren't universally friendly and a local guide we spoke to said he was involved in a scheme to help homeless children. Homeless kids in a town of several thousand people and a very traditional society? It was clear that there are problems in the valley.

This is emphasised by the fact that all the non-menial jobs seemed to be occupied by Indonesians who have immigrated from outside, an over-large police station in the town, and the armoured riot-control vehicle parked out back. Not to mention poorly funded infrastructure, like rough roads that are washing away and truly terrifying hanging bridges with rotten planks on the walkways.



















This is Indonesia, but not. It seems to me it is a place to be controlled for its valuable gold reserves, but not included and developed. It smacked of racism really; that the dark-skinned locals are not considered equal to 'regular' Indonesians. [Maja points out here that the Indonesian government did put a stop to the horrendous tribal wars that used to plague the valley.]

It is also expensive here, as everything that can't be produced locally has to be flown in, even down to building materials and lorries. This means heavy items like drinking water cost much more than down in Jayapura. Like 25000 rupiah (£1.30) for a 1.5-litre bottle of drinking water which can cost as little as 5000 Rp in other parts of the archipelago. And the money that would rent you a nice bungalow with a pool for a night in Bali, gets you a dingy hotel room here.











The only cheap aspect of life here is the means of getting around town. The cycle rickshaws are 5 to 10,000 Rp a trip, however, I'm so heavy they struggled on longer journeys. Some of the drivers were just teenagers, so I had to find the bigger guys, but even they weren't used to carting around such a lump as I, and got pretty red in the face as they struggled along.

But the Baliem valley is a truly fascinating place to visit and the Dani people are mostly really lovely and welcoming when you get out of town into the villages. It's a smoking culture here, so the done thing is to stock up on cigarettes and hand them out when you visit places - especially if you take pictures, as the locals expect payment in return for their image. Sometimes you'll need to pay cash for a snapshot and it may be best to come to a deal with the village that you pay X amount to the village as a whole for unlimited pictures. Take sweets for the kids too.













The Dani have a really endearing habit that they have become famous for. When you give them something, or shake their hand, they'll intone, "wah, wah, wah!" I don't know what it means, but it's nice. You feel appreciated when they say it. In handshakes, they will often hang onto your hand for a while, gaze into your eyes, and may mutter something that sounds like a blessing or ritual greeting. It's clear shaking hands is important here, and they do it well.




















The traditional Dani compounds are now, near the main road at least, giving way to more modern wooden bungalows, but there are still lots of thatched dwellings to be seen. The typical set-up is a wooden fence with spiked ends to deter intruders around a collection of grass-covered huts, mostly domed shaped, but sometimes in longhouse form. The huts have a low door for access, but no windows, and a compacted mud floor. The thatch steams atmospherically after a rainstorm, of which there are many in the cool, upland climate.

Pigs wander around the village like part of the family. In fact they almost are, as the Dani value them highly for their meat and if you want to get married you'll need to give a small herd as a dowry for your bride.













We had been resisting attempts from guides to force their services upon us, as we like to find our own way around and we are on a budget. A guided trek would have cost hundreds of pounds. But we were lucky in bumping into Bulwa, a local minibus driver from Java. He spoke good English and let us hire him, his assistant, and his vehicle for 350,000 Rp a day (about £20). He took us north and south along the valley's one main road, visiting places of interest to us and translating when we hadn't a clue what was going on (which was quite often).



















Our biggest highlight was a village called Jiwika - pronounced Yivika, which suited Maja's Slavic tongue. The place was still very traditional, with the old folk going naked, and a pretty set of huts around a cobbled yard. Their main claim to fame was the shrivelled black mummy of an ancestor that was said to be 250 years old. It had a set of tied threads around its neck, though, which are added every five years. By roughly totting these up we reckoned it to be about 150 years old. Still pretty ancient. It had been preserved by smoking it over a fire, the guardian told us.













It was Maja's birthday while we were in the valley, so I asked her what she wanted. "A ceremonial war," she replied. Well, of course. We had heard that, for a fee, some villages will put on a show of how to repel invaders and traditional war dances etc, so via Bulwa's tribal assistant, we asked the village chief at Jiwika if they would do us the honour of putting on a show. They agreed that, for 400,000 Rp, they'd provide the ceremony with 10 people for an hour, at 10 am the next day.











The next morning - and slightly late after a minor spat with Bulwa over a misunderstanding about his fee - we arrived to find the village empty except for one man naked and dressed in his 'Sunday best' shells and feathers, including a large quill through his nose. He was brandishing a bow and sharp, many-barbed arrows, and as another man tried to enter the village from the other end, he released a (thankfully blunt) arrow, which skittered down the cobbles past us. Then the rest of the village burst out of hiding and, with much tongue waggling and thrusting of sharp weaponry, drove the intruder away.

Having 'saved' the village, the gang started singing a song that reminded me of pygmy music from the Congo, and dancing in circles. The women, naked from the waist up, had painted themselves all over with white spots and sported headdresses of chicken feathers; the men wore penis gourds and headdresses, along with necklaces of white shells.



They danced for a while and then the chief demonstrated how to start fire the Dani way - using friction provided by drawing a strip of rattan around a split piece of hardwood, all held in place over a bundle of dry grass tinder by his gnarled foot. Within 40 or so seconds, he had the bundle in flames and a friend trying to light his cigarette from it. Ray Mears, eat your heart out.




At the end of the show, I gave the chief some tobacco he'd requested and the fee for the village. As he took it, the whole group started up the "wah, wah, wah" chant to recognise that something promised had been received. Then they set up an improvised shop of Dani goodies, such as cassowary feather headdresses, shell necklaces, traditional bags and, of course, penis gourds. And we spent some of our meagre savings on a few special pieces 'for our collection'. Not that we have one.



















That afternoon, we headed south from Wamena to find that most villages near the road were not traditional thatched affairs, however we headed up towards some salt springs where the locals apparently extract salt by soaking bamboo tubes in the water, burning them them, and then separating the ash from the salt. The springs turned out to be too far up the hill for the kids to reach, but Maja spotted a village down a small valley which was preparing for a funeral feast, with a big fire roaring.



















We headed down and - after getting permission to hang around and take pictures if we paid the deceased man's family some money - we spent an hour or so handing out cigarettes and sweets and watching them happily prepare the feast.



















The village used a clever system for baking the pig that was lying around being gutted by everyone including the bloody-fingered toddlers (and disturbingly had about five foetuses inside her). They heated up rocks in the fire until they were starting to crack and spit dangerously (sending the men scurrying for safety), then they used split sticks like giant tweezers to carry the stones into a pit they had dug in the ground (and lined with leaves to keep the food free of mud). By building up layers of leaves, edible vegetables and meat, then more leaves and hot stones, the village created a pit oven that would slowly steam the meal to yummy tenderness. Two men tended huge pots of rice over a fire nearby.



















It was fascinating being in the middle of all the action and seeing village life on this special day, but while we were there some local thief had managed to extract our new bag of Dani goodies through the window of the minibus down on the track (I stupidly left it on the seat, thinking Dani goods wouldn't be desirable in Daniland). When we returned and realised we'd lost it, we were so devastated. I just wanted to leave the valley and felt very betrayed. Of course, being surrounded by quite extreme poverty, it shouldn't come as a shock for a relatively rich tourist to lose a few possessions, but it is horrible when it happens to you.

Things were to get worse, and that evening, when we tried to download all my images and video of the war ceremony at Jiwika, the memory card corrupted and it was all lost. I went to bed that night at 8.30 pm in a severe bout of depression.

As it turned out, all was not lost. We more or less replaced our lost items from the tribal art shops in Wamena, and added a small Dani bow and arrow set for the boys. And eventually, when I returned to the land of the world wide web, I bought some software that was able to retrieve the pictures from the SD card (thanks, CardRescue), and hence there is video for you to watch on this page. A couple of months later, I can now laugh about it. Sort of...

All that now remained was to book a flight out of the valley. But can you believe that, in Wamena, the airline offices do not take credit cards and you are expected to turn up with however many millions of rupiahs you need to pay for your flights (£100 is roughly 1.3 million). This was a problem, as my mother was waiting to see us in Bali, her visa was running out and we hadn't enough money to buy the fairly expensive flights back up the long island chain. There are ATMs in the town, but we couldn't extract enough cash in time.



















So mum came to the rescue finding a great travel agent in the Ubud post office in Bali who could buy the tickets using her credit card and send me the e-vouchers to print via email. It worked like a dream and a couple of days later we were stuffing our faces on pizza, swimming in the pool, and shopping for trendy yoga clothing (well, Maja was) in the genteel surroundings of Bali's cultural capital.

[NOTE: All images posted on this blog are copyright Maja Kardum 2010. Please do not use for any purpose without permission]