From Houston to Sydney 2013

The Dani of

West Papua 2015

When I woke this morning, the Baliem Valley was chilly and shrouded in a deep fog.  Water was dripping from roofs after the overnight rain, and the massive spider webs that entangle many of the trees were glistening with dew.

Yes, it was early.  My flight from Wamena to Jayapura was scheduled to leave this morning at 8:50 am.  Working backwards, that meant walking up at 5:30 am to shower, dress, pack, have breakfast, and leave the hotel by 7:00 am.  I managed all this quite comfortable, and arrived to check in at Wamena Airport just before 8:00am.

Since Wamena’s airport terminal burned down four years ago, airport activities have been conducted in a corrugated iron shed with no lights or heating, and with thin strips of open windows protected by wire netting  providing the only light and ventilation.  This might not matter so much if everyone didn’t smoke, but they do.  Smokers were sitting in every row of the shed that served as the waiting area, with a extra concentration of smokers near a small grill that could have provided ventilation if it was (a) not blocked by hoards of smokers, and (b) used as a source of smoke that blew back into the terminal.  The agony continued for about two hours as the plane was running an hour and a quarter late.  On the positive side, access was very quick as there were no security checks – no checking of ID, no x-rays or searches of hand luggage; nothing.

Eventually we were able to board the aircraft.  It was the same plane in which I flown into Wamena from Jayapura five days earlier, and I was quickly reminded what a dismal condition this old plane was in.  There was almost no padding left in the seats, there was so little leg room that my (and everyone’s) knees were squashed into the seat in the row ahead, the tray could not fit when lowered from the back of the seat in front, and the old perspex windows were heavily clouded, crazed and very difficult to see through.

Fortunately the flight was only 30 minutes duration, and we landed at 10:45am – quite a delay from the scheduled arrival time of 9:20am.  Disembarking from the plane on the tarmac, it was immediately obvious that the weather in Jayapura was far warmer than Wamena.  I landed wearing a pullover as the temperature in Wamena had been 18˚C when I boarded the flight.  By contrast, it was 34˚C when I landed in Jayapura.

When I passed through Jayapura 26 years ago, I had arranged a tour of the city, but it had to be cancelled because our flight from Wamena had been delayed by several hours.  Therefore, I arranged a compensatory tour today, and although the guide kept me waiting for about half an hour at the airport, I was not disappointed.

This is not to say that my tour of Jayapura went according to plan.  I was supposed to visit the war memorial, but it was closed because it is located in a military compound and the soldiers are currently practising their shooting for a few days.  I was supposed to visit the anthropological museum, but it was inexplicably closed.  So the first part of my tour was a boat trip on Lake Sentani.

Lake Sentani is a 20 kilometre long lake that formed in a caldera after a volcanic cone collapsed.  It is a truly beautiful place, and today the water was almost mirror-smooth.  We went on a half hour boat trip around a section of the lake to see the housing of the local Sentani people.  The houses have been built in quite a distinctive style, being built on stilts around the edge of the lake, often with fishing cages in lake outside or underneath.

After a delicious spicy lunch at a lakeside restaurant (coincidentally the same one where I had caught up with Delle Matthews in early July 1989), we drove eastwards towards Jayapura city.

There were two stops in Jayapura.  The first stop was at the markets where an impressive array of vegetables, fish and household products were being sold.  Across the road from the markets, several small souvenir shops were especially interesting to me as the owners (a mix of Javanese, Sumatrans and Sulawasis) were selling souvenirs from Wamena and the Baliem Valley.  It was fascinating to see the way in which Dani koteka and other objects had been transformed for the souvenir market by adding decorations in a way that would have been unthinkable in the Highlands.  I just can’t fathom why anyone would want to buy a koteka with pictures of palm trees and the words “Souvenir of Papua” painted on it.

My final stop was at the summit of the highest of Jayapura’s many hills, known as “Hollywood Hill”, which offered spectacular views across the beautiful city of Jayapura.  The city looked spectacular from this high vantage point, and the afternoon lighting on the blue water and the green hills showed the city at its best.

Having said that, Jayapura is a typical Indonesian city that lacks any essential Papuan (or Melanesian) character.  Noisy, smoky motor bikes fill the roads, traffic congestion is widespread, and only about one-third of the population are Papuan.  The only real difference between Jayapura and any other Indonesian city that happened to be situated in a spectacular location is the number of Christian churches, which are indeed unusually numerous in Jayapura.

I fear that Jayapura might be the future of Wamena in a few decades when the road joins the Highlands with the coast.  It is difficult to imagine the somewhat fragile Dani culture withstanding the onslaught of globalisation and fully open contact with the outside world.  I am thrilled that I have had the chance to see the Baliem Valley before it becomes completely Indonesianised, just as I am grateful that I had the opportunity to be one of the first outside visitors to the area back in 1989.

The changes have been prodigious, and not always for the better.

Day 6 - Wamena to Jayapura

Wednesday

15 April 2015