The Dani of Papua

From Houston to Sydney 2013

The Dani of

West Papua 2015

 

The Dani were the last large group of people to be ‘discovered’  by the outside world.  Their existence was unknown until 1938 when a flying boat strayed off course and had to make an emergency landing on Lake Habema, an alpine lake on the edge of the Baliem Valley.

World War II intervened to prevent any further outside contact with the Dani until the early 1950s when Christian missionaries began to arrive with the aim of evangelising the Dani people.  Their efforts were very successful, and today the Papuan Highlands are the most Christianised part of Indonesia, with almost every Dani professing to be a Christian.

Consequently, I decided to do what every Dani person does on a Sunday morning – attend a church service.  Herriman was happy to oblige my request.  Coming from the northern part of Sumatra, he is also a Christian, and my request meant I could I accompany him to church rather than wait for him to finish before starting the day’s travels.

However, because of time constraints, it wasn’t possible for me to attend his church in Wamena.  We met at 8:30 am and drove down into the valley with the intention of finding a church service to attend.  Apparently every church’s service in the Baliem Valley, regardless of denomination or location, is scheduled to begin at 9:00 am and last for two hours.

We arrived at a small church just off the road at a few minutes to 9, but we were told that hardly anyone had arrived, including the preacher, and no-one knew what time the service would begin.  The problem is that Dani people don’t have watches, so they rely on the ringing of the church bell to start walking to church.  Unfortunately, there is a flaw in that system as most live too far away to hear the bell.

We decided to drive onwards and find a church where the service had started.  We stopped at two more churches to be told the same story “not many people are here yet, so we don’t know when we will start”.

Eventually we found a small church beside the road at Kurulu.  The preacher, a Dani man (the first I have seen wearing a coat and tie) interrupted his sermon to invite us in, so we removed our shoes and joined the other seven people who made up the congregation sitting on threadbare red mats on the concrete floor.

I’ll be honest here – I didn’t understand much of the service, but it was obvious that the preacher was basing his sermon heavily on Biblical texts and that he was quite excited about it all.  I learned later that he had been preaching from I John on the theme of ‘love one another’, highlighting the importance of forgiving others.  For a congregation of nine people (seven excluding Herriman and me, six excluding the minister’s assistant), the singing was wonderful, with the music reverberating magnificently off the thin three-ply timber walls that really should have had a second coat of cream paint, and perhaps several more nails to hold them in place.

Then, to my surprise, I was invited to stand up say a few words.  It was a privilege to do so, and Herriman helpfully translated for me.  Not knowing my past career as a school principal, they were probably wise to give me no time to prepare given the constraints a service that lasts ‘only’ two hours.

After the service, I had my photo taken with the entire congregation at the front of the church, after which I was shown the church’s school next door.  Apparently, the pastor is also the school’s principal.  The school has two tiny, extremely basic classrooms, one for children and one to provide basic literacy and numeracy to adults.  In this context, ‘basic’ means no seats or tables for the children, a straw floor partly covered by a pink Tweety-bird plastic sheet, walls of three-ply timber or thatching, and glassless windows.   I suspect that the parents in every school where I served as Head would describe it as ‘inadequate’, and yet they have about 30 students and seem to be doing a great job, so much so that two additional classrooms are under construction.

The drive from the church to the Dani compound that comprised our first ‘official’ visit for the day took just a few minutes.  As soon as we arrived at the compound, it was obvious that more traditional dress is worn here, away from Wamena, than in the areas we had seen on the previous two days.  The aim of visiting this compound was to see the mummified remains of one of the village’s famous chiefs.  Its age was described as ‘seven generations’, which would make it about 200 years old.

There are mummies in several Dani hamlets, although only a few are allowed to be seen by visitors.  When an especially esteemed chief dies, the villagers sometimes choose to mummify the body rather than cremate it (which is the usual practice).  The mummified body is kept upstairs in the men’s hut where the smoke from the fires that burn inside each night (to provide warmth) help to preserve the body (as well as choke the lungs of the living with carbon soot, hence the short life spans of Dani people).

The present chief of the village, Yali, is a direct descendent of the mummy, and the mummy’s presence in the village is still seen to provide a form of spiritual protection.  After we had seen the mummy, Yali invited us to the nearby compound where he lived.  It was a classic Dani compound.  The large two-storey hut for the men was placed the head of the rectangular shaped courtyard, with the small women’s huts lined up on one long side of the compound facing the long hut used for the kitchen on the other.  Within the open courtyard there was a place for an open fire and some tobacco plants were growing – the Dani still grow and roll their own cigarettes, although they do supplement these with store-bought filter cigarettes.

Yali proudly showed us how to make fire by rubbing a reed against some timber before showing us around his compound.  He mentioned that no women may come within a metre of so of the front of the men’s hut.  As I am not a woman, I somewhat presumptuously asked whether I might be allowed to have a look within, and I was immediately and enthusiastically invited inside.

I sat on the straw floor and listened to Yali describe the layout of the hut in which he grew up and still lives.  In the centre of the lower level, there is a place for the fire that provides warmth and smoke for the men sleeping on the upper level.  On the wall were ornaments used in ceremonies, and in front of the fire were a couple of small charms.  Although they are Christian, these Dani still follow some of the traditional beliefs in spirits. It highlighted to me how the age-old beliefs continue even though the traditional clothing is being abandoned, walking is being replaced by motor bikes, sweet potatoes are being supplemented by fast food, some cultivation of sweet potatoes is being abandoned as the government hands out free rice, and many Dani huts now have television sets.

Yali described how he bemoans the abandonment of many Dani traditions, especially by the young, and he fears the traditions may be lost for ever as few of them are documented.  As if to emphasise the point, Yali has constructed a traditional watchtower outside his compound, which he climbed to demonstrate for us.  Watchtowers used to be an integral part of the Dani landscape, and were used to watch for approaching men from another village coming to attack.  The Dani engaged in ritualistic warfare for centuries before the missionaries convinced them to stop.  Now, the only watchtowers are reconstructions, rebuilt as reminders of that period.

We said our farewells to Yali and began a one and a half hour trek up the nearby hills.  The climb took us up about 600 metres in altitude (from 1600 metres in the floor of the valley to 2200 metres), through thick rainforest.  It was one of the more difficult climbs I have endured because of the wet, slippery mud and rocks.  Indeed, for some of the climb, we were following the bed of a creek rather than a track; this was not a climb I would recommend to others who (like me) have a bad hip or two.

Our destination was a saline spring that is used by Dani people as a source of salt.  A man and a woman were there with us so we were able to see the process in action – this seems to be one of the rare tasks that men share, as all the gardening and heavy haulage of cargo is seen as women’s work.

The man and the woman had each carried the small trunk of a banana tree, which they proceeded to shred.  They then left the shredded strands to soak in the brine pool of the spring for about half an hour before taking it out for transport back to their village.  Back in the village, the saturated strands of banana leaf would be dried in the kitchens before being burnt to a black ash.  This black salt ash is then used to flavour the food.

While we were at the spring, light rain started falling, and so the walk down was more treacherous than the climb up, even though it took only an hour.  I was grateful for the use of a walking pole and the helping hand of a traditionally dressed Dani man, but even with these aids I had two minor falls (or maybe slips).  I enjoyed the trek, but I was very relieved when it was over and I could sit in the truck for our transport back to the hotel.

Dinner was once again a somewhat lonely experience as I was still the hotel’s only guest.  Nonetheless, it gave me an opportunity to admire again the wonderful carvings that decorate the dining area of the hotel.  It is reminiscent of a gallery of Asmat art (the Asmat are located in the south of Papua), and several of the pieces are truly remarkable, such as the carved pillars that support the tall ceiling; they must each be about 10 metres in height.

The rain was falling in earnest by dinner time.  However, once you are a veteran of a trek through muddy streams and mountain climbing in the rain, then walking half a kilometre to a dining hall in the rain along a steep concrete pathway in the dark seems relatively mundane.

And unlike the climb to the salt spring, this time I got a good meal.


Day 3 - Central Baliem Valley

Sunday

12 April 2015