Tales of a Female Nomad (29 page)

On the far side of the airstrip is a wooden hut; and inside the hut, a man is sitting in front of a ham radio system. He looks happy to have something to do. He calls the dispatcher, Mr. Naftali, who tells us there is a plane scheduled for tomorrow, the thirteenth, for two villages over. It will be returning to Wamena with two empty seats. If the weather is good, they will come and get me.

I would rather not leave so soon. “Do you have anything the next day?”

He doesn’t. And the flight on the eighteenth has been cancelled.

I book for tomorrow, Friday the thirteenth. Now I have to hope the clouds will disappear.

“I will pray for you,” says Bapak Guru.

“So will I,” says the man operating the radio.

Can’t hurt.

That night I cook vegetables and rice again. Earlier I asked Bapak Guru to see if he could find some eggs that I could buy. I am desperate to put some protein into these kids. Just before the rice is ready, a man arrives with three eggs. I scramble them with a fork, make a hole in the middle of the stir-fried vegetables, and add the raw eggs, mixing them in when they’re cooked. After dinner, I give everyone a tangerine. Yesterday I saw an orange tree filled with oranges. Bapak Guru said they were sour and no one will eat them; there is no sugar in the village. When we are finished eating, the kids go outside to play. There is laughter and screeching and sounds of joy.

“Listen,” says the mother to me, “the children are laughing. Listen,” she calls to her husband. “They are laughing.”

“It is because they have full stomachs,” he says.

Later, as we sit on mats around the fire, the children cuddle in close. There is one child for each adult. As I hold the baby, I sing a lullaby. Ibu (mother) responds with a song of her own. Like an exotic stringed instrument, she “plays” her voice, vibrating it in a repetitive chant, a soft wail that sounds otherworldly, as if it is coming from another dimension. Like everyone else around the fire, I close my eyes and rock to hypnotic sounds that I have never heard before.

In the early morning our mountain is buried in a cloud. After a breakfast of yams, Ibu and I stand outside in the cold. Some neighbors are standing nearby, watching us. I am wearing my fleece jacket. The locals, every one of them, are standing with their arms wrapped around their naked chests, trying to conserve body heat.

I tell Ibu that I thought her song last night was very beautiful and that the sounds she made were amazing. She tells me that she likes to
main
mulut,
which means, literally, “play mouth.”

Then, as we stand in the cold morning air, Ibu begins to
main mulut
again. She makes gutteral sounds and vibrating sounds, sounds that seem to swish through her throat and out through her teeth, sounds that click somewhere deep inside, and sounds that flap unseen bits of her vocal passage and come out trilling. Our concert ends with a spectacular call that is similar to a Swiss yodel.

“I used to call to my father from one mountain to another with that,” she says. “And he would answer me.”

My plane is scheduled for late morning. At seven, the fog is dense. Visibility is about ten feet. Then, around ten, the clouds disappear. I pack my bag, which is much lighter without the food, and most of the village follows me down to the airstrip. The sun is shining; the day is clear. It looks good.

It is the job of the man on the ham radio to alert the dispatcher of changes in the weather. While we wait, I sit next to him, listening to conversations that our radio is picking up. There are conversations in English between missionaries, and others in Indonesian between missionaries and Mr. Naftali.

My conversation with Mr. Naftali yesterday was awkward. He made it very clear that it is not his job to arrange flights for tourists and that it makes no difference to him if I miss my tour. His job is to serve the missionaries.

One American woman named Esther seemed to have a relaxed relationship with Mr. Naftali. As I was sitting in the hut yesterday, I overheard two of her conversations with him. He agreed to arrange whatever she requested. Today, as I sit in the hut next to my packed bag, Esther is chatting with a fellow missionary. I am intent on eavesdropping when suddenly I look up and see an ominous white cloud moving toward us. In less than five minutes, the landing strip is totally fogged in. I feel helpless as our radio man tells MAF that we are fogged in.
Pintu tutup.
The door is closed. The flight is cancelled.

We go back on the radio with Mr. Naftali, who informs us that nothing is scheduled for the next week, not for anywhere nearby. Additionally, they are very short of planes and there’s no way they can schedule something just for me. When I tell him that I need to be back in Wamena by the eighteenth, he tells me I should have thought of that before I got on a plane to Holuwon.

I am trapped. There is nothing I can do. Then I hear Esther’s voice again. She is talking to Mr. Naftali and his tone is warm and chatty.

“Do you think I can talk to Esther?” I ask our radio operator.

A few minutes later, I am explaining my situation to Esther, though I’m sure she has heard my conversations with Mr. Naftali as I have heard hers.

“Are you willing to pay for a charter?” she asks.

I have no choice.

“Let’s talk this afternoon,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

That afternoon Esther explains her plan. There is a plane scheduled for somewhere else on Monday; its mission is to pick up two empty oil tanks. The tanks will be taken to Wamena, filled, and returned to the village.

“Tanks and passengers cannot fly on the same plane,” she tells me. “So you will not be able to ride with the tanks. But if you are willing to pay for two empty oil tanks, the plane will bring you to Wamena instead of the tanks. You will have to pay 115,000 rupiah for the charter and 65,000 rupiah for each tank.” My trip from Wamena to Holuwan cost 17,000. A dollar is worth 2,000 rupiah.

I agree to buy the tanks. It’s my only hope.

On Sunday, our three children are washed in water warmed by the fire. At nine-forty, the church bell rings and the whole village walks through heavy morning clouds to the church.

More than sixty people crowd into the room, women on one side, men on the other. Some children are wearing clothes, others are naked except for a string tied around their waists. There are women in dresses and others naked on top. Men in long and short pants, and men in
horim.

Hymns are sung, the Bible is read, questions about the meaning of the passages are asked and answered. Then the children are taken out for Sunday school. The only kids left are the babies who are tucked inside the women’s
noken,
comfortably resting on cushions of leaves.

When the children are gone, we sing and pray and sway some more, and when it is time for the sermon, up steps the ham radio operator, who at this point is my pal. He is apparently the spiritual leader of the church. He delivers his sermon, and when it is finished, he tells everyone about my predicament. He tells them that I will lose a lot of money if I can not get to Wamena tomorrow. And he asks them to pray for me. Then the whole congregation of the Filadelfia Church of Holuwon prays in silence, asking Jesus to clear the clouds so my plane can come in.

After the service I go with the minister and connect with Esther. I tell her, a devout Christian missionary, that all of Holuwon has prayed that my plane will come.

The next morning, around ten-thirty, the clouds lift, the sun warms the village and its people, and dozens of us walk to the airstrip. An hour after that, the plane lands to applause. Two handsome young missionary pilots hop out of the cockpit onto the grass. Dennis is the first to speak.

“I understand they prayed for this,” he says, looking around at a crowd whose prayers have been answered.

A month later I send Esther a copy of my book,
Why Can’t I Fly?
Her note to me reads:

Thank you so very much for the book you sent as your thank you
for helping
you
to fly! We were
so
excited to get it, especially since
that book has been one of Liselle’s and my favorites for a long
time! . . .

We’d love to meet you sometime—maybe in heaven! If you’re
not sure of heaven, ask God to reveal himself to you, and read the
Gospel of John. He wants you to love Him as He loves you! We love
you too!

I’m pleased that God and Esther love me, but I must admit that I am even more thrilled that somehow my book found its way to Irian Jaya without my help. Now there are two.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IRIAN JAYA: THE ASMAT LANDS

I show up in Wamena on time, thanks to prayer and Esther’s creative efforts. Michael is there with two middle-aged German men. Right from the beginning I dislike Hans. His facial lines twist down from a life of negativism, and he can’t look me straight in the eyes. The longer I know him, the less I like him. When there’s work to be done, Hans feigns helplessness while the rest of us do his share. And in the end, his irresponsibility nearly ruins our trip. Fortunately, he doesn’t speak much English, so I don’t have to make conversation.

Horst, the other man, doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t disappear when we have to unload the boat; and he reaches out a hand when he thinks it’s needed. I like his manner and smile. Too bad we don’t share a language. Over the next nineteen days, we spend most of our time in silence.

A few years ago, I would have felt uncomfortable sitting in silence among people; but the Balinese do it all the time. They rarely talk while they are eating, and often they sit with others without speaking. I have learned that silence is a way of hearing the voices within and of exploring unexpressed and nascent thoughts and feelings. I have come to enjoy sitting in a group where no one is speaking. It is an introspection enhanced by a silent group energy that works its way from the outside to the internal soul. Out of language necessity, and therefore without self-consciousness, my nineteen days with Hans, Horst, and Michael (who speaks English very well) are mostly silent and extremely fulfilling.

Our tour through the Asmat country of the south is in a twenty-foot-long dugout canoe with a forty-horsepower motor. Michael has hired a native, Joseph (in this part of the island the Catholic church is very strong and many natives have Christian names), to pilot the boat. Every morning we load up the canoe with our packs, and Joseph navigates the rivers. We are carrying rice and noodles, cabbage, beans, and carrots, and pots and pans and dishes and cups. And along the way, we buy fish from fishermen and meat from hunters. One day we buy a live ostrichlike cassowary bird that is nearly four feet tall, with vestigial wings, and feet that are bigger than mine. Michael buys it for our dinner and the hunters load it, live and tethered, into the back of our boat. But the poor cassowary can’t tolerate the sun. Even though the bird is alive, it begins to stink. I can’t even think about eating it; but everyone else says it tastes like steak.

At night we sleep in schools and community houses. To protect us from mosquitoes, Michael sets up individual tents inside the buildings, and the accommodations feel almost luxurious.

In each village, people gather around us, but there is little communication. Our visits are too short. I miss the singing that Ursula, Teresia, Elsa, and I shared with the people in the mountains. None of the three men even whistles for three weeks. I suspect my singing, humming, and whistling in the back of the boat drives them a little crazy, but no one says a word and I try to keep it soft.

We visit carving villages where we watch the men chipping away at exquisite and powerful sculptures, considered to be among the world’s finest primitive art. We buy drums and figures and shields and panels, and load and unload them every morning and night.

In many of the villages, the children have the huge stomachs and reddish hair of kwashiorkor, and dry, scaly skin. All because of the lack of proper nutrition. It is difficult to face, so vividly and so often, the inequalities of life.

In one village the chief offers us plump grubs from a sago tree. They are a delicacy, eaten raw and wriggling. I decline with a smile and big eyes. Michael is the only one to chomp them down. Go, Michael.

In that same village, just before we go to sleep, a young woman asks us for medicine for her listless baby. None of us has anything that would be safe for a baby. I make a mental note to bring baby aspirin on my next trip and perhaps some of the packaged oral rehydration powder (made of salt and sugar in specific proportions) that is used throughout the world for dehydration caused by diarrhea. But this baby could be suffering from malaria or cholera or any of the many diseases that make life here so tenuous. Statistics are not easy to collect, but it has been said that infant mortality is as high as 65 percent.

The baby she is holding is barely moving. I tell her that we are going to be passing Senggo, a village where there is a Canadian doctor who has been doing medicine and missionary work in Irian Jaya for more than twenty years. With Michael’s permission, I invite her to come with us. It is a day’s trip, but perhaps the doctor can save her baby’s life.

The next morning, one woman, four children, the village head, and the woman with the sick baby climb into our boat and sit way back. It is early in the morning and cold. I give the mother my purple fleece jacket to wrap around the baby.

The motor is loud, water splashes into the bow, noisy screechy cockatoos fly back and forth across the river. There are eagles and egrets and hornbills. Hundreds, maybe thousands of huge bats burst into the air from one island when our motor wakes them up. They are a scene from a horror film, their giant black wings diving and swooping against the bright blue sky.

I am lost in the glare of the sun, hypnotized by the sound of the motor, the splash of the water, the honking of the cockatoos.

And then comes the wailing of the women.

I turn around. The mother is holding the baby. Both women are rocking and wailing. It is too late for medical help. The baby is dead.

A few minutes later a “water taxi” approaches going in the opposite direction. The two women, the village head, the children, and the dead baby board the taxi to go home. As the mother leaves, she hands me my jacket.

When the taxi is gone, I hang over the side of our boat and wash the jacket in the river. I feel queasy holding the baby’s death wrap. It’s an old purple fleece jacket that I would have given to the woman if I’d had another.

All day I am dazed and haunted by the baby’s death and the sound of wailing women. I do not sleep at night either; visions of the baby, and children with distended stomachs and dull eyes and scaly skin pass in and out of my dreams, and I wake up sweaty and teary and shaking.

For more than a week we have been visiting riverside villages of wood-carvers and motoring along the coastline where in 1961, Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s son, disappeared one day, rumored to have been the victim of fierce tides or cannibals or possibly a shark or a crocodile. One theory is that he was killed by angry tribesmen avenging a murder several years earlier of five of their tribesmen by Dutch police. Joseph, our skipper, pointed out the spot from which Michael swam to shore after his boat overturned. He was never seen again.

But today, we are not in our boat. Instead, we are climbing massive trees. Not the vertical kind. These trees have all been cut down and they’re lying on their sides and on each other. Giants have been playing pick-up sticks on several acres of “cleared” space, and they haven’t picked up. Some of the trees have diameters of more than five feet.

From a distance, it doesn’t look all that difficult, but when I start crossing, I discover that it is almost impossible for me to get up to the top of the logs so I can cross to the next one. And there’s no way to go “under.” Most of the time, the only way I can get up is by lifting my leg, sometimes by grabbing it and placing it up where it has to go, then reaching out my hand and getting pulled.

We are here, climbing over trees and sloshing through swamps, because I requested it. Wherever I have gone, in both the tribal highlands and the swampy lowlands, missionaries have preceded me. To trek three days into the mountains and arrive at a village that is still living the life their ancestors lived hundreds of years ago, was a privilege. But to discover that beyond the round, thatched huts with cookfires, there is a big, wooden missionary house with a gas stove and a generator, is something of a let down.

“Michael,” I said as we passed a church one day, “isn’t there somewhere that the people haven’t been missionized?”

And that’s why we’re here in the middle of a swamp, the four of us and Joseph, on our way to Rumah Tinggi. High house. Home of the Korowai.

When we have passed through and over the horizontal trees, we move into the swamp, walking on massive roots, slippery and twisted, on a path that is leading us deeper into the dark forest. Birds are squawking and singing; cicadas are sounding like chainsaws; water is rushing through brooks that we have to cross. I am grateful for my finest-waterproof-leather-triple-bladdered-two-hundred-fifty-dollar-boots. It was for today that I bought them.

Then suddenly, Joseph stops and lets out a Tarzan-like cry. He waits. A cry comes out of the dark and distant forest. Joseph offers no explanation. Before I can ask, he moves on, leaving me to my sloshy steps.

About thirty minutes later, I step into a clearing and I’m face to face with four men with bows and arrows, six-inch white bones through their noses, and body paint on their chests. There are also two women in grass skirts, chests and breasts decorated with scars. And three children. They are lined up, facing our group.

My heart is pounding. We have come upon hunters and gatherers in the forest. Joseph talks to them in a tribal language. He gives them tobacco and candy, which we have brought as a gift. They stand, stiff and formal and beautiful. I can only stare in awe. They are a picture, a dream, a realization of my fantasies.

I smile. A young woman smiles back. For a brief moment we connect in that universal greeting of goodwill.

I feel an urge to go home with these people and share their lives, their songs, their families, their cookfires, until we are not strangers staring at each other across ten feet of space, but friends, learning simultaneously that being human and open is all it takes to connect. If I were not on a tour, I would ask if I could live amongst them, for a month, two months, however long it might take for us to learn to trust each other. I’m sure they would have me.

Then Joseph moves on. I do not want to leave. I want to move closer. To touch them and let them touch me. But that is not our agenda. We go on. But the slippery roots aren’t as slippery. I’m practically running. I have an energy that I haven’t felt in weeks. I am in the middle of swampland in Irian Jaya and I have just met a group of people who are hunting with bows and arrows.

Several hours later we arrive at our destination. There are two long and high houses sitting more than twenty feet up in the trees. And one longhouse on the ground.

We are invited to enter one of the high houses. Horst, Hans, Michael, and Joseph climb the thin tree trunk that is the only way in. I am sure there are things up there worth seeing. Perhaps skulls from when these people were cannibals. Probably decorated wooden shields that are a part of tribal ceremonies and wars. And certainly there are artifacts of everyday life. These are houses, not museums.

I look up. For a flash of a second, I consider it; I’ve come a long way not to go in. But the trunk I would have to climb is practically vertical; the foot notches are far apart; and there is nothing to hold onto except the trunk. I think about how my knees go wobbly when I look down from heights. Thank you, no.

I walk toward the longhouse that is on the ground. Huge tree trunks hold up the sides and the thatched roof. The house is about twenty feet wide and nearly two hundred feet long, closed on the sides and open at both ends.

I walk in. Along one side, on a higher level than the dirt floor, there is living space, separated into open family “rooms,” each with a place for a fire. I walk down the center aisle. The only person I see is an old man, apparently senile, sitting on the floor of a cage, singing. Joseph tells me later that he is the former chief of his tribe and he is singing the tribal history.

I want to stop, but I don’t want to stare, so I keep walking to the back, where there is a young woman probably about twenty years old, and a little boy around five. When the child sees me, he begins screaming hysterically and clutching his mother’s legs, putting her between us. The mother backs away as I approach.