If you protest, the customs guys can keep you sitting on a bench for hours. In the end, you’ll probably pay. You can’t appeal to his boss, because the boss is getting a cut. You don’t have any recourse, unless you speak the language. Then you just make a joke out of it and everybody laughs.
Maybe Pak Sutrisna will start his boot account this minute with the angry people behind me. They are carrying big bags filled with wetsuits, regulators, and expensive electronic depth-safety computers. There is no official charge for bringing these things in. But these tourists don’t know that. Besides, anger is never rewarded in Indonesia.
So, on second thought, I realize it is likely that Pak Sutrisna will have the money for my boots in less than a week. Perhaps by the end of the day.
He gives me his card. “Come see me when you get back.”
(I don’t. I wonder what he did with the money.)
I check into a motel near the airport. Tomorrow I will take another plane to Wamena. There are more than 250 tribes in Irian Jaya, many in the highlands around Wamena, each with its own customs and language. Many are still living the lives their ancestors lived, still using stone implements, hunting with bows and arrows, growing yams on the sloping hillsides. The western world didn’t even know there were people tucked into the mountains until a seaplane landed on a lake in 1938.
Today, with the ill-conceived blessing of the United Nations, the western half of New Guinea is a province of Indonesia, though the people share neither race nor history with the other Indonesians. The natives are black, of Melanesian descent, with curly hair and features similar to those of the aboriginal people of Australia. They share a race and history with the people of Papua New Guinea, the independent country that is the eastern half of the island.
The Indonesians, on the other hand, are light brown with straight hair, and they are thought to be of Polynesian descent. Wherever you go in the towns and cities of Irian Jaya, there are “straight-haired” people. They are the soldiers, sent by the government, many of whom consider the natives savages and animals. They are the police, who are said to beat up the indigenous people for fun. They are the transmigrants, whom the government is bringing over by the thousands from other islands. And the businesspeople, who are nearly all from somewhere else. Irian Jaya feels like an occupied land.
The indigenous people talk of massacres and land theft and destruction of holy places. They are angry. Some talk about amassing guns and infiltrating the police. But logic suggests that the Indonesian government will win. The government is the police and the army; the arsenals are theirs.
My next-door neighbors in the motel are three women. Ursula and Teresia are from Austria, both single and in their thirties. Their friend, Elsa, is a white woman from Namibia. The three of them met in Borneo a couple of years ago. We are all planning to trek in the highlands, and we’re booked on the same flight to Wamena.
We arrive at the departure terminal early. So do dozens of other travelers. The room is small and crowded, stuffed with mostly European backpackers. Indonesian is the only language coming over the screeching audio system that squashes the words until they come out an incoherent jumble of sounds. I can’t understand a word.
The time for our flight comes and goes. The flight doesn’t. No one knows what’s happening; all we know is that none of the scheduled flights is taking off.
I climb through the bodies and backpacks that are flopped and strewn all over the floor and find my way to a uniformed man in an office. I lean in, smiling. “Selamat siang, Pak. Apa kabar?” Good day, sir. How’s it going?
Teri—his name is pinned to his khaki shirt—smiles. “You speak Indonesian. Please sit down. Where are you from?”
“Originally from America,” I say. “But I have been living in Bali for a number of years. And you?”
“I’m from Sumatra,” Teri answers.
I ask him what his job is, and he tells me that he is the man in charge of flight scheduling. Bingo!
While the noise of chaos spills through the door, we talk about families, lives, and jobs. After about ten minutes of chatting (one never goes straight for the heart), I ask about the flights into Wamena.
“Pintu tutup,” he smiles. The door is shut, meaning clouds are covering the gap in the mountains that leads into the valley. There will be no flights today. There had been none the day before. The passengers are accumulating.
“Maybe tomorrow. We never know,” he says. “Sometimes the clouds lift for just an hour. We’re only half an hour away, but clouds are unpredictable. As soon as we get the call, we take off. Your ring is very beautiful,” he adds.
“Thank you,” I say and stretch my hand out so he can see it close up.
Two days’ worth of people, six flights’ worth of passengers will be carried over into a third day. The logistics of getting everyone out is mind boggling. As far as I know, there are no extra planes, and each new day brings three new full flights for possible cancellation. It is going to be chaotic when the “door” finally opens.
Teresia, Ursula, Elsa, and I find a Chinese restaurant for dinner and talk until midnight. The next day we are back in the airport with three days’ worth of waiting passengers. I stick my head back into the office. “Good morning, Teri, how are you?”
“Rita, selamat pagi. Silahkan, duduk.” Good morning. Please, sit down.
We talk some more . . . about Bali, about America, about my beautiful ring that I bought in Bali for two dollars.
The call comes in while I am sitting there. The clouds have lifted. The first plane in three days will take off immediately. “I have three friends with me,” I say as I hand him the ring.
“Go quickly to the desk over there and give them this paper.” He writes some numbers down. Please come see me when you get back. Maybe we can have dinner.”
“Sure,” I say. “We’re engaged now.”
I don’t think he gets it, but we laugh, shake hands, and nod heads. The plane, with the four of us among the passengers, takes off a few minutes later.
When we get to Wamena, we arrange the trek. Like Edmund Hillary before he climbed Mount Everest, we assemble our team: Merinus, the guide; a cook; five porters (one for each of us and one for the cook). Because I speak Indonesian we are able to hire a non-English-speaking guide at half the price of the bilingual guides.
I warn the other women that I am seriously out of shape. I dread the thought that I might hold everyone back, but they are not bothered. Two days after we arrive in Wamena, we begin our trek. Oh, God, I think, remembering that other mountain in Mexico, a mite compared to the monsters I was about to tackle. What am I doing here? Why didn’t I train?
I am helpless and irresponsible in the physical fitness department, but I am well prepared in the equipment department. My boots, the ones Pak Sutrisna covets, are the best. I bought them the morning of the day I left Connecticut, after I got a phone call from a friend of a friend. She had just returned from Irian Jaya, where she and her boyfriend had gone trekking. He’d had the kind of boots I had already bought, Gor-tex and suede, guaranteed waterproof. His feet had been wet, blistered, and sore. She, on the other hand, had bought the finest-waterproof-leather-triple-bladdered-two-hundred-fifty-dollar-boots. And her feet had been dry. Two hours before I left for the airport, I rushed out to the nearest Eastern Mountain Sports store, and I bought the best boots they had.
I had already been talked into the best backpack. “Surely you aren’t planning to cut expenses on something so important as your body?” said the salesman. It took us an hour to find the perfect pack for my size.
On the day we begin our trek, my personal porter comes to my hotel room. While I am lacing up my finest-waterproof-leather-triple-bladderedtwo-hundred-fifty-dollar boots, he slings my treasured backpack over one shoulder, and we take off for the mountains. He is barefoot.
Our first day’s trek is only slightly uphill, and most of it is along a dirt road through cleared areas. I am last in line, but pleased that I’m able to
stay more or less within sight of the others.
Along the way we meet giggly shy girls, and boys in bunches. Merinus teaches us a greeting and we call out whenever we see someone. The young people speak Indonesian, so I can communicate with the ones who are brave enough to talk to me.
Most of the women and girls we meet are bare breasted. All of them are carrying a noken, a bag that they weave from the bark of trees. Some noken are three feet long, and they stretch out more than that from side to side. Some women are carrying two or three. We meet women who are carrying yams in their noken. And baby pigs. And babies nested on a pile of leaves. The woven handle of the noken goes over the forehead, sort of like a headband with a big bag attached. The bag hangs down the back.
We meet men, some in shorts, others wearing only horim, penis gourds. The horim, hollow gourds that look like long carrots, some more than a foot long, slip over the penis and are attached at the top by one string that ties around the waist, and at the bottom by another string that loops around the scrotum. The men grow the gourds, shaping them as they grow. There are actually fashions in horim. Some men like them narrow and long; others prefer a crooked one. And most men have several for various occasions, or perhaps moods. The gourds point straight up in the air like a permanent erection.
We meet more pigs than people. They’re all over, snorting, untethered, and frequently trailed by piglets.
Every once in a while, we come upon someone selling cooked yams or, less often, pineapples. Then we sit and eat and talk and smile as the locals gather around to watch.
Before sundown, we arrive at the village where we are going to sleep. We spread our mats and sleeping bags in the wooden community house while our cook fixes a dinner of rice and vegetables. As we are eating, a group of men waits outside the door, peeking in. When we finish, they take us to a hut where there is a fire in the middle of the room. The men sit on one side of the fire and we sit on the other. They are all a deep chocolate brown color, with curly, dark hair and handsome, chiseled bone structure. They are wearing beads and bones and feathers around their necks. Some of the men are wearing shorts. Others, including the chief, are wearing horim.
Our two groups sit looking at each other: the men from the village, about ten of them, and the four of us women. Our guides are behind us. No one is speaking.
I am not sure if they all understand Indonesian, but I know that the chief and the school teacher do; they introduced themselves to us when we first entered the village. I decide to make a little speech telling them how honored we are to be here in their village. I tell them our names and where we are from. Then I turn to my Austrian and Namibian companions and ask them if they know any English songs. They do.
“We would like to sing some songs,” I say.
We begin with “You Are My Sunshine” and continue with “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and “Home, Home on the Range.” After the final “And the skies are not cloudy all day,” we stop. The hut is now packed with men and women and children. Our voices have drawn a crowd. Everyone is smiling.
I direct my smile at the village chief. “Now,” I say in Indonesian, “it is your turn.”
The men huddle. Then they spread out and begin to sing. First they sing a church song. (The missionaries have been here before us.) Then another hymn. Their voices are strong and beautiful. Then they sing a traditional tribal song with percussive sounds and hisses and huffs and humming. There are voices that echo and voices that sing out a beat behind the music. There is a glow in their faces as they sing.
The tribal song is long. It is coming from the depths of their heritage. I am moved to tears. Here I am in the mountains of Irian Jaya and the local tribesmen are singing to me. And I am singing to them. I ask them to teach us their song.
They laugh to hear us trying to hiss and hum and huff with our voices.
Then we sing “Old MacDonald,” and we all laugh as we make cow and pig and duck noises; and then we teach our silly song to them. For more than an hour, we sing and laugh and learn from each other.
The second day, we enter the jungle, with its massive trees, twisting vines, raging brooks, spectacular orchids, and butterflies in iridescent colors. Squawking cockatoos and strange-looking hornbills fly over us. The earth smell mixes with the smells of green bushes, lush moss, and flowering plants in every color. And the harsh song of the cicadas offers the background buzz to birds and insects competing for the airwaves.
The bad news is that I have to jump from stone to stone across brooks, and traverse log bridges that span rocky wet gullies. I do not jump well; and log bridges, without ropes to hold onto, terrify me. When everyone else has crossed, one of the porters steps onto the log, reaches his hand out for me to hold, and I inch my way across, my knees shaking wildly in direct proportion to the distance and danger level of the fall. If I really did lose my balance, there’s no way that hand could save me. We’d go down together.
The other part of mountain climbing that I do not like is the climbing. I am not trudging up this vertical monster because “it’s there.” I am doing it because this is the only way I can meet the people who live in these mountains. I am not a happy climber. I’m always miles behind everyone else, sweating, panting, and hurting. Ursula has volunteered to walk with me. She is a phys. ed. teacher in Austria and very patient. One of the things she does is teach high school students how to climb mountains.
There are near-vertical inclines made of pebbles and rocks, the kind that slide out from under my boots.
“Slowly, slowly,” Ursula repeats hundreds of times. “Go very slowly. Watch where you put your foot. Every step you must watch.”
“Oh, my God!” I groan, looking up at the incline.
“Don’t look up,” says Ursula.
I keep apologizing. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “If I climb slowly, it gives me more time to look around.”
“Don’t stop. Take short steps. Walk slowly, slowly.”
The slope goes straight up.
“There’s no hurry. That’s great. You’re doing great. Good. Good.”
“Very, very small steps. Like an escargot. Don’t stop. Don’t look up.”
After about two hours, I hate her.
When we reach the steepest slope of the day, she says, “Don’t look up. You’re doing wonderful. When we get to the top, I’m going to give you some Swiss chocolate.”
How could I hate her?
On the third day every muscle of my body is aching. I’m in agony just getting in and out of my sleeping bag. And this is the day of the stiles, things I thought existed only in nursery rhymes (the crooked man who found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile). Stiles separate property and make it easier for people to climb over fences. You have to climb up crooked posts, throw a leg over the top, and then climb or jump down. In the best of times I don’t climb or jump very well. And now, every move hurts. How I wish that I were not wearing my fabulous-two-hundred-fifty-dollar-very-heavy boots (Ursula and Teresia are in sneakers). Though I’m just as sure that if I weren’t wearing them, I’d have a twisted ankle.
For the entire six days of our trek, the evening entertainment is the same. We have no choice. Each time we arrive in a village for the night, advance notice of our singing has preceded us. There must be couriers running through the mountains calling out the news of our traveling minstrel show.
Our act gets better and funnier. As we discover other songs we have in common, like “Eentsy Weentsy Spider” and “I’m a Little Teapot,” we add to our repertoire. Each evening, soon after I drag myself into a new village, ready to collapse, wanting never to move again, a new crowd assembles, and once again, the four white women from the world beyond the clouds blend our voices, our laughter, our joy, with our gentle dark-skinned hosts of the highlands. And somewhere, wrapped in the music, we become one.
When we get back to Wamena, I still have two weeks before I have to meet Michael for our tour of the south. I ask Merinus to take me, alone, to a small, intere
sting village, by public transportation. I want to stay in one place for at least four days, long enough to learn some names and play with the kids.
Before we leave, Merinus and I load up on food: a dozen cans of sardines, five packages of crackers, rice, carrots, cabbage, green leaves, string beans, garlic, noodles, soy sauce, tangerines, coffee, condensed milk. And bottles of water. We buy enough food to feed a family for a week. Merinus carries it.
The ride from Wamena at six in the morning is spectacular. Whichever way I look, there are mountain peaks with white fluffy sashes around their middles. I must admit that viewing the landscape out of a van window where I can focus on the scenery instead of on my feet is spiritually and physically very satisfying.
The village consists of four wooden houses, seventeen round thatched huts called honai, and a church. The head of the church, whom I call Bapak, which means father and mister, is wearing khaki pants and a blue T-shirt. A local man, not a missionary, he welcomes us and offers us a choice: we can sleep in his wooden house or in a honai. I tell him that I would like to know what it is like to sleep in a honai.
He offers us a cup of coffee, and I open a package of crackers and a can of sardines to share. Pita, his eight-year-old daughter, comes in carrying her two-and-a-half-year-old sister. The girls are bright-eyed, with loving smiles and runny noses. Mom is sitting outside on a tree stump with her head down.
“Is your mother sick?” I ask Pita.
“Yes,” she answers. “Malaria.”
A few minutes later, Bapak invites me to go for a walk, just the two of us. The path is level, the giant roots and massive boulders, minimal. I am moving along well until I step into a muddy hole . . . and begin to sink. My weighted feet will not pull out. Soon I am up to my knees in mud. I have visions of sinking deeper and deeper until the tips of my waving fingers go under, but Bapak saves me. He hands me one end of a branch and pulls me out.
Tales of a Female Nomad Page 23