From Houston to Sydney 2013

The Dani of

West Papua 2015

The Baliem Valley is a magic place to wake up in the morning.  Although the sky was cloudy with a few small patches of blue, there had been light rain falling during the night, so the plants and trees were dripping water in the morning sunlight.  The panorama from the hotel was fabulous, as I overlooked the town of Wamena and the river valley filled with thick fog below me.  It seemed a pity that there was no-one else with whom to share it; I am now the only guest in the hotel.

Unlike yesterday’s meals, breakfast contained some choices.  I could have my eggs either fried or made into an omelette, I could choose pineapple jam or chocolate spread for my toast, and I could have my pancake with honey or without.  I chose the ‘with homey’ option, and fortunately I had time on my side as the honey took several minutes to start soaking into the solid pancake.

The intention today was to explore the Baliem Valley south of Wamena.  Before setting off south, however, I explored Wamena for a while.  The growth of this town from the last time I visited has been staggering.  The population in 1989 was about 10,000 people, and it is now about 60,000.  It is far more ordered now, with a neat grid layout of streets aligned with the airstrip (which has been fenced – well, mostly – since my last visit), and the shops all feature a distinctive yellow colour with blue ornamental topping.  I asked about this standardised design, and was told that there is now a regulation that every shop must feature a representation of a Dani hut (a honai) by law.

The town now has a taxi system of sorts, with hundreds of trishaws plying the streets, almost all of which are driven by Dani men.  The Dani have also taken up buying motor bikes since my previous visit, making transport over long distances much easier, and giving the town of Wamena a much more Indonesian feeling.

I made two stops in Wamena.  The first stop was at the section of the airport where the old terminal had burnt down.  I was interested in visiting there for two reasons: to see the concrete slab (which is all that remains, so it didn’t take long to explore), and to see the freight handling.  Everything that comes into the Baliem Valley arrives by air, and there are many more freight flights each day than passenger flights.  The freight handling is done on the concrete slab that used to be the old terminal, and with the growth of the Baliem Valley’s population, it was not surprising that the forklift trucks were busily humming backwards and forwards when I visited.

My second stop in Wamena was at the southern end of the town in a district called Wouma (pronounced war-ma).  There was a large Catholic church there, with a school next door in session (yes, it’s Saturday, but schools here operate six mornings per week).  The main attraction, however, was the large market area, with Dani people selling their crops and their cut timber from stalls that were nothing more than a cloth on the pavement with their produce arrayed neatly – indeed artistically – on top.  Herriman (my guide) told me that at one time during the political turmoil of the late 1990s and early 2000s, about half the shops in Wouma had been ablaze.

The original intention was to head south to the end of the road at a village called Sogogmo, about three kilometres before the district centre of Kurima.  However, several bridge washouts and road collapses meant we could drive only as far as Hetigima.  A temporary wooden surface had been placed across the river where the bridge had been, allowing foot traffic to pass but nothing else.

Herriman and I crossed the temporary bridge and continued walking along the road for a kilometre or so, passing several Dani houses, government offices (one for microfinance and one promoting education for families) and a Seventh Day Adventist church with a service underway.  The singing from the church echoed beautifully and harmoniously across the valley, and it was (wait for it!) music to my ears.

At a point where a small truck carrying fuelwood and half a dozen Dani woodcutters emerged from the scrub, we took a narrow track downhill towards the Baliem River.  This was where the real trek began, as we walked through Dani gardens that were growing sweet potato (the traditional staple), carrots (introduced by the missionaries about 50 years ago) and onions (introduced by the Javanese and Sumatrans who came to Papua under the Transmigration Program during the 1980s and 1990s).  I was interested to see that the wooden digging sticks that were used universally by the Dani in 1989 have all but disappeared, at least in this area (I was told that they are still used in the fringe areas of the Valley).  Steel digging sticks with one pointy end and one end flattened to make a small blade have replaced most of the wooden digging sticks, although I did see one wooden stick with a tiny steel shovel blade strapped to one end.

When we reached the river, we found a large yellow steel suspension bridge.  The Dani have used suspension bridges for centuries, made by intricate weaving of vines into a truly elegant shape.  I survived crossing two such bridges when I was here in 1989, but so far I have seen only steel suspension bridges on this visit.  The yellow bridge replaced an earlier one (also made of steel) after a Japanese university student fell from the old bridge in 1994; his body was never found.  The Japanese Government donated the new bridge in response to that sad incident.

It was easy to understand how someone might be swept away by the river’s waters.  The torrent of water was fast, turbulent and thick opaque brown in colour.  It made a loud roaring noise as it raced under the bridge, and with many gaps in the timber slats on the bridge, the wise motto was ‘don’t look down’.

We continued our walk along the narrow, flat plan beside the river, past more Dani gardens.  Unlike the gardens to the north of Wamena, which are separated by sharply pointed wooden fences, the southern gardens tend to be separated by dry-stone rock walls.

When we reached a tiny grass clearing at the junction of a small tributary flowing into the Baliem River, we stopped for lunch.  Actually, it seemed more like the waters from Baliem were flowing backwards into the tributary for some distance, as the Baliem seemed to be flowing at a higher level than the tributary, causing successive waves to wash from the Baliem back into the tributary; it was quite an unusual phenomenon.  A group of children soon appeared in the grassy clearing, and as I learned back in 1989, Dani children always gather quickly to sit, watch and laugh at foreigners whenever they stop to eat or camp.

After lunch, we pressed on, crossing a shaky two-log bridge and continuing along the track.  We soon came to a very steep section of the track, but the climb was worth it as we were rewarded at the top by a fabulous panoramic view across the Baliem Valley, with the river seeming to flow right under our feet before turning sharply to the right.

What goes up must come down, so we trekked onwards down the other side of the hill until we came to a beautiful little mission station called Hulesi.  The white chapel was surrounded on two sides by Dani huts, several of which had electricity and one grass hut even had a solar panel on the roof.

If several bridges had not been washed away, we could have continued along the track to make a circular trek, but given the situation, we turned around at Hulesi and headed back to Hetigima along the same track we had taken.  It was much faster on the return trip as all the good photos had already been taken, and in any case, the light was quickly deteriorating as thick black clouds gathered overhead.

We made just one stop on the way back,

on the hill overlooking Wamena just south-west of Sinatma.  Coincidentally, Sinatma was the district I stayed in when I visited in 1989.  Apart from one church that I remembered, everything had changed.  Where there had been sweet potato gardens, now there are houses and markets.  Where there were winding dirt tracks, now there are sealed roads.  Where once there was only foot traffic, now there are trishaws, motor bikes and cars.

Actually, even the church had changed – it used to be located well back from the track but now it is right beside the street, and it is now white rather than green.

Day 2 - Southern Baliem Valley

Saturday

11 April 2015