hotter than fak-fak

i've been hotter, and closer to the equator, but this place is keeping me at a constant simmer. when my brains get steamed like this, i can't help but get sort of aggravated and put out by very dumb things - but they are dumb things that happen continuously (the hissing as if i were a dog, the 'hey! mister!'* and unresponsive gape-mouthed staring i get despite smiling and saying 'good afternoon', the slowing down and honking, etc). but fak-fak, this tiny, coastal, dutch-colonial town precariously perched on the steep, lush hills rising over a small bay, bustles away at that equatorial pace that relaxes me while making logistics a challenge.

a lot of towns in papua, and indonesia in general, take a siesta from around 1 to 5pm because to walk ten feet in this heat is inviting heatstroke to smite you down. no one can get anything done, so they have lunch and then a nice lie-down for a couple of hours. at 5pm, the little red and yellow mikrolet (public taxi minivans) are zooming along again, blasting shaggy or UB40 (papuans loves them some overproduced reggae music). while i'm all for community-wide naptime, this makes sticking to a schedule of any kind a little difficult. i'm pressed for time now, as i need to be back in bali to catch my flight out on saturday, and i might not get the flight i need out of fak-fak tomorrow. problem is, you can't really book anything until you're in the town you want to leave. so apparently my flight tomorrow to sorong, in westernmost papua, is full - but there will be a ticket for me when i come back to the booking office tomorrow. i don't get it, but then again, i am just a confused foreigner who can't understand why it's necessary to show up four hours early to check in for a flight from a podunk little airport where flights regularly leave LATE and not EARLY.

but this town is charming, and the two little towns my flights briefly stopped in on the way here were stunningly gorgeous from the air, as were the scenes in between: tiny, green, uninhabited islands whose edges were fringed with shallow coral reefs and crescents of yellow beach brightening them; reef shapes like abstract art, dropping abruptly into deep blue ocean; brown rivers and tributaries ribboning crazily through miles of jungle. i've been flying for the last few days on dehavilland twin otters, propeller planes that hold about fifteen passengers, and the pilots leave the cockpit door open so you can see them flicking switches and pulling levers and cranking the engines and then lifting the plane off the ground. also, you can see the pilot lighting up a cigarette five minutes before each landing, something i've never seen before and which didn't inspire a lot of confidence.

so these last couple of weeks have been all about islands and traditional folklore and no diving for me, nor even snorkelling nor beach time. (but that's OK, because now i've lost my sunglasses, too.) before that, i was able to do a short trek in the baliem valley, the highlands region where some of papua's 250 distinct ethnic groups (and their 250+ distinct languages) reside. my guide was terrific, recommended to me by two different locals in my former base camp of sentani; he had in-depth knowledge of people in the valley, the botany, medicinal uses of plants, the traditions and culture. we only did a two-day trek but it was good to get a taste. i only snapped one photo of an obliging old man wearing only a penis gourd and carrying a net bag; it seemed intrusive to take photos of the local people, even though they don't mind as long as you give them a little money or a kretek (tobacco-and-clove) cigarette. you walk out of wamena airport, in the main town in the highlands, and there are guys walking around carrying spears and clad only in penis gourds and feather head wreaths.

also in wamena was a wild-haired japanese guy running an internet cafe, who someone told me is bent on finding a supposedly-extinct tasmanian tiger/wolf/something in the jungle, because the japanese government will give him millions of dollars if he finds one. (unfortunately i only heard this after it was too late to meet him again to corroborate.) here in fak-fak, someone told me that a few years ago, the bones of GIANTS were found four hours from town, in two different locations, and that the local representative has invited the international archaeological community to come here to view them. (so far, no takers.)

OK, now it is time for me to meet someone so he can practice his english. then a roasted fish dinner along the waterfront with a kind woman from the local tourist office. hope i get to fly out tomorrow or i might melt down... but at least there will be no scary, aggro guy serenading me with off-key karaoke like last night while i was trying to shovel nasi goreng down as fast i could.


* if i'm lucky it's 'hey! missus!'

papuan snapshots

these last two weeks feel like much longer, so rich have the experiences been. not all good, like getting ill with chills, fever and GI troubles - have you ever had those strange fever-aches that aren't really headaches but more like shooting pains at the base of your skull? but nothing some horse-pill antibiotics couldn't fix. despite not feeling 100%, i had things to do and went ahead with my planned expedition to a national park in the very southeast of papua, and my guide and i ventured as far as the border of papua new guinea (where we took a walk through tall grass, and tea trees and fragrant eucalyptus). we'd spent the night in wasur national park, staying in a small village called yanggandur, where a military post has been installed. i'll listen to my dad and not badmouth the country that is hosting me, but i really felt for the villagers who have to live daily with an occupying military presence. the national park has four resident tribes, the main one being the marind people (who live in yanggandur). they live in wooden houses raised above the semi-swampy ground, growing sweet potatoes, cassava and vegetables, and hunting deer and kangaroo in the park. since the island of papua was once connected to the australian landmass, there are critters that live in the park that are otherwise unique to australia: wallabies, kangaroos, and some egg-laying mammal whose name i can't recall (not the platypus)... i saw a couple of roos, but unfortunately they'd been hunted that morning and were for sale on the side of the road for someone's supper.

we'd gotten rained on on the way out, and swerved the last 8km along an extremely muddy red road that even the big dirt bike had trouble sliding around on. on the way back, i got a nasty sunburn after a mere 15-20 minutes because of the antibiotics. but it was GREAT. my guide took me to a village home where he knew the family, and he translated as i interviewed the man of the house about customs, and family, and he brought out some of the handicrafts everyone learns to make for use in rituals and hunting. everyone in the village wears western clothing and have all been converted to catholicism, but they all live very traditionally otherwise. sort of a weird combo.

i've also met an indonesian rock band touring papua with one of the candidates for governor - the election is on the 10th and there are truckloads of party supporters barreling up and down the highways of papuan towns in enormous dump trucks festooned with their candidates' banners. the lead singer of this band (called 'black sweet' and whose members are mostly papuan) struck up a conversation with me in english at our hotel, and he invited me to a rehearsal - which i missed due to a jealous teenage motorbike driver, a story for another day. but the best part of this story is that they were on tour with a candidate named (i'm not making this up): constant karma. yes. despite sounding like a born-again hippie, he looks rather staid and serious in his campaign photos. i won't say whether or not the band actually prefers Dr Constant Karma to the other candidates, but i'm glad i don't have a right to a ballot because i'd pick him on the basis of his name alone.

a lovely papuan woman i met at an NGO in the steamy south, near the national park, befriended me and took me for a ride to some of the nearby sights around merauke town. she took me to a 100-year-old church established by the dutch, a big bridge over the muddy river winding down out of the jungle, and to her mother's house just to say hi. her mother speaks dutch but is taking english classes so she can teach it to her kindergarten students. a few days later, after i'd returned to merauke after spending a night in the national park, we were supposed to get together but i'd arrived back late and couldn't get her on the phone, and she'd forgotten about a meeting she had anyway. those days before, she'd offered to take me to the airport even though i said i'd be fine taking the local bus, but when i couldn't reach her i just assumed she'd let it go. but no! she showed up at my hotel about 10 minutes after i'd left, and when the staff told her i'd already gone, she came to the airport to say goodbye. it was so sweet - and a good thing, too, because i was put on standby since the woman who'd booked my ticket had forgotten to enter my reservation into the system write my name on the passenger list. one of the guys at the airport desk (which was utterly chaotic in the southeast asian way - no lines, just shoving your way to the front and slapping your ticket down on the counter on the top of the crazy pile) happened to be her friend, so she kept assuring me, 'we just wait and be patient. don't cry.' not that i was going to cry, but she made everything into a fun little joke. and we hardly knew each other, could hardly communicate in our balance of basic english and indonesian. and i got on the flight at the last minute (as i watched them toss my pack outside after all the other luggage for the flight had been carted off already, i bid it silently goodbye, thinking i probably wouldn't see it for awhile). i snapped a quick photo of us and we hugged goodbye, and off i went.

and once, while riding a taksi (little rattletrap van carrying 12-15 passengers) between jayapura and sentani, where i'm staying, there was a big bang like a gunshot, and then on a dark, unlit curve in the road, the van started fishtailing all over the road - luckily no one coming from the other direction - and we were stranded. for about 5 minutes, when three more taksis pulled over and we all piled into those, leaving the poor driver banging on the windshield in the universal expression of displeasure at one's vehicular woes.

oh, and i lost my ATM card. and my credit card company thinks someone stole my credit card, since i couldn't remember my PIN and punched in a likely number (oops) and received cash the first time. the second and third and fourth times i received ominous messages on my transaction reports (for which no cash was forthcoming, only the card back again). and hey, papua being the sort of undeveloped place it is, i am not allowed to make international collect calls from anywhere because no one makes money off of those! luckily, i have travellers cheques and a brother who can wire me money later. and i'd be in bigger trouble without the internet... such as it is, unavailable on sundays or before 2pm unless i travel 35km away on two taksis.

and so many more stories to tell, nothing truly exciting just yet, but tomorrow i'm flying into the baliem valley for a short trekking trip and a taste of well-trodden wilderness. back later with better tales. hope you are keeping well and finding adventures in your corner of the world.

...malam (evening)!