Liza Power – It's seven in the morning at Wamena's Trendy Hotel. The mosquitoes have retired after a night of feasting on my toes and ears, which means it's time to stumble from room 3, check my collection of flea bites and watch the old Dani man by the door, who wears a penis gourd that reaches to his chin, floss his teeth with a two-metre arrow.
One false move and I'm convinced he'll sever his tongue. For the past two mornings the suspense has had me pinned to my mouldy brown chair. This morning there's a lot to watch in what could be called the Trendy lobby, a stretch of beige linoleum that rolls from a front door pressed with the faces of a dozen tribesmen wearing feathered headdresses to a back table crowded with tall glasses of sweet, murky tea.
Most interest is in the arrival of 40 porters and the counting and inspection of 20 hessian sacks filled with a variety of goods including tea bags, biscuits, two-minute noodles, cutlery and tinned peas. Preparations for our 10-day hike into West Papua's Baliem Valley are almost complete, save for lengthy last-minute negotiations over how much each of the porters should be paid, confirmation of our route and expressions of concern at the arrival of our Papuan guide Moses, who is clearly paralytic.
By 10.30am the number of porters on our doorstep has swelled to about 60. I am learning quickly that Papuans have flexible notions of what constitutes 9am, 40 porters and a deal over which hands have already been shaken. By 11am we are sardined into the back of a battered mini-van on the road to Sugokmo, lurching between potholes, idling past sweet-potato fields and whizzing past trucks piled high with Dani and Lani villagers heading to Wamena in festive fashion for the every-so-often Baliem Festival. Bows, arrows, pig tusks and bird-of-paradise headdresses sail through the cool valley air.
West Papua borders Papua New Guinea and forms the western half of the world's second-largest island after Greenland. In 1969 West Papua became the 26th province of Indonesia after an "act of free choice" sponsored by the United Nations resulted in the transfer of administration from the Netherlands, the colonial power, to Indonesia. In 1973, the province was renamed Irian Jaya (Victorious Irian) by the Indonesian president, General Suharto. The handing over of West Papua to Indonesian hands was anything but a victory for indigenous Papuans.
For the 33 years since, the Melanesian population (whom Indonesia refused to recognise until 2000) has endured an exceptionally repressive military occupation. Indonesian "development" has involved the forced resettlement of entire populations to make way for mineral exploitation (principally PT Freeport, the most profitable copper and gold mine in the world, near where 14 people were shot last month, and another shooting occurred last weekend), logging, new settlements and in Timika, just a short drive from indigenous shanty towns, a lavish Sheraton Hotel.
Such projects have resulted in significant casualties, with many highland tribespeople shifted to coastal areas where they succumbed en masse to cerebral malaria and other diseases to which they had never before been exposed. The Amungme tribe of Akimuka, the Freeport mine site, was almost wiped out during their relocation.
Heavy-handed attempts have also been made to force Papuans to abandon their culture and traditional lifestyles. The most infamous, the "koteka operation", was implemented by the Indonesian military in the 1970s. Koteka means "tail" in Indonesian, an offensive reference to the horim, the traditional penis gourds worn by Papuan tribespeople. The operation involved soldiers binding Papuans by the wrists, removing their gourds, forcing them to wash away the pig fat they apply to their skin to insulate from the brisk mountain winds and dressing them in trousers. This act of public humiliation was a disaster, and most highland Papuans, in an act of proud defiance, still dress in their traditional finery. Western cast-offs, however, have largely replaced traditional grass skirts and the intricately braided marriage skirts given to women to mark their wedding days.
The next battle facing West Papuans is the prospect of becoming a minority in their homeland as Indonesia pursues a program that has led to an annual influx of 10,000 sponsored migrant families from Java, Sulawesi and further afield. Yet another threat to Papuan life is the proposed Mamberamo mega-dam project, which threatens to flood a quarter of the country for hydroelectricity.
On our first morning, as we walk through the Baliem Valley from Sugokmo to Kurima to hand in our walking permits, it's hard to imagine a threat to the solitude of these mountains. Their rocky crowns crowd the skyline and the Baliem River snakes wildly around their feet after a long night of storms. Our porters, half Lani and half Dani tribespeople, quickly settle into a routine of chain-smoking and dawdling and I am already sporting my first two blisters.
But the steep mountain trail is laced with wildflowers, such pretty distractions, and somewhere high up in the mountaintops a pair of nimble fingers draws curtains of mist across the valley as dusk arrives. Our first night is spent in a schoolhouse, with a handful of naked men adorned with horims seated quietly on a wooden bench in the corner and a gaggle of curious schoolchildren by the door. On the hill beside the schoolhouse a small field of coffee beans slowly turns red in the thin mountain sunlight. All night as I snuggle in my sleeping bag I hear the singing and rhythmic chanting of our porters in a nearby Dani hut.
Day two, which is later awarded the self-explanatory title of Hell Day, begins gently with a moderately steep stretch up Tanan Longsor mountain. The trail curls around the girth of several small hills and through a grass meadow embroidered with sweet-potato fields, then in and out of several villages before tumbling down a mountainside towards the Baliem River. As we descend we pass through a hamlet where children pluck mandarins off the schoolhouse tree and sell them for 10 cents a fistful.
Back on the trail we face a near-vertical descent to the water's edge, a river crossing aboard a swaying suspension bridge and a near-vertical ascent up the adjacent mountainside. Halfway up the mountain we break for a lunch of cabbage soup, the first of many identical meals. The day grows steadily worse after lunch. A fine rain sets in and we begin what turns out to be nearly a four-hour vertical climb, broken only by ankle-deep mud and small rivers that must be crossed on slippery bridges of thin tree trunks. The climb becomes so steep that I resort to crawling and so slippery that I grab fistfuls of grass, tree, bush, vine or even thorn to stop myself slithering down the mountainside. At inconvenient intervals, insects land on my forehead and, in an effort to deter them, I smear my face with thick, brown mud. Just when I imagine matters can't get worse I sneeze and the violent convulsion throws me off balance. I slip back down the trail, landing with a thud at the feet of a small child with huge brown eyes and dressed in a skirt of torn rags. As she laughs, she slowly extends her small brown hand and I notice that she's surrounded by the bright blue faces of a cluster of orchids. "Laouk [hello]," she says quietly. "Laouk," I reply.
As my new friend leads me up the next stretch of mountainside, I hear the chanting of the porters behind me, echoing off the valley, and I begin to fall in love with Papua. West Papua is home to 240 different tribal peoples, each with their own language and culture.
Our 10-day hike takes in a tiny pocket of the Baliem Valley, one of the most fertile and densely populated regions of West Papua. We are in Dani country, land of mogat (ghosts) and edai-egen (the Dani idea of soul), where the sun is a woman and the moon is a man. A rich Dani man is a man of many pigs, and a man who wishes to marry must earn himself enough pigs to buy a wife (usually four). The most serious crime a Dani might commit is the theft of a pig. If the theft occurs across tribal boundaries, warfare may ensue.
The Dani live, eat, sleep and play with their pigs, and often on the trail we see Dani women walking with happy piglets trotting at their heels. At river crossings, Dani women lift their piglets across their shoulders before gently putting them down on the other bank to continue the journey.
In larger Dani settlements (which traditionally comprise a round men's house, a smaller women's house, a cook-house and a pigsty) women and pigs live separately; in smaller, more remote hamlets women and pigs reside in the same hut. When I stick my head into a Dani hut to say hello to a village woman, my eyes turn into beetroot-coloured beads within seconds.
The Dani stoke their fires constantly but their huts don't have chimneys. The smoke simply seeps up through the thatch roof and funnels out the doorway. When our porters offer to dry our clothes after day two, our shirts return half-burnt and caked in ash.
Day two also becomes the day of the number four after, halfway up the sixth mountain, Laura, a German member of the group, asks her porter how much further we have to walk that day. The porter promptly answers four, but when the trail continues for another three hours we entertain ourselves with imagining the possibilities of what four might represent: four hours, four kilometres, four mountains, four near-death experiences or four pigs for dinner. We soon learn that questions regarding distance are pointless.
The most useful terms we acquire are "nike" (steep) and "jalan jalan" (keep going). As we wind along the mountainside I catch glimpses of Moses, who has sobered up after falling in the rain-bloated Jetni River on day one. As Moses appears and disappears through the trees, he is like a jungle spider daintily crossing its web, moving with such ease and grace that I forget I'm ankle-deep in mud and lumbering about in the manner of a fatigued rhinoceros.
We arrive at Wesgalep about seven o'clock to find a village in a cloud. The mist is so thick I can barely see 10 metres in front of my nose, and when I head to the river to wash, I nearly lose my way back to the schoolhouse. The next morning I wake to find 50 faces pressed to the wire wall of the schoolhouse, each intrigued by the white people wearing bright-coloured clothes and sleeping in sacks. When I crawl out of my sleeping bag I feel eyes following my every move. I'm astonished by the amount of interest in simply donning a pair of socks and a polar fleece. When I do up three sets of zips there's widespread laughter. Then comes one of the trip's greater challenges: making one's way to the bathroom (i.e. a tree – quite a challenge in a region that's suffered widespread deforestation) without being followed by 20 curious onlookers.
By day three I have a blister on my left foot that consumes my heel, with a smaller version that sits on a third of my right heel. Rune, my Norwegian walking companion, has appointed himself the blister doctor and each morning begins with a ritual of disinfection and the application of plasters. Our porters have developed a passion for Tiger Balm, along with an appetite for more than three packets of cigarettes a day. Each night they line up pointing to various limbs, requesting balm that mostly ends up on their faces. When I try to explain that Tiger Balm is best worn away from the face I receive a baffling array of responses, most often a gesture that suggests I have no idea of what I'm talking about. Papuan gestures and expressions are hard to read.
Day three is spent walking to Pilo Pilo, climbing along ridges, scaling waterfalls and skating across slimy rocks and bridges made from rotting tree trunks. Having spent the entire morning trying to avoid landing ankle-deep in mud, I spend the afternoon delighting in the stuff, and by sunset I am just about covered in various shades of dried earth. Rune's porter, clearly alarmed by my inability to maintain any sense of balance, has taken to walking one step behind me. It has become quite a comedy act for him to catch me mid-catastrophic tumble or part-way through a spectacular ankle-twist. When I'm not falling over myself he simply plods behind me, making a peculiarly soothing purr with his tongue, much like a fat Cheshire cat.
The trail to Werima proves intriguing, simply for the array of muds we encounter, wade through and eventually end up wearing. On occasion we pass Dani women carrying nets of sweet potatoes on their backs and bundles of firewood on their heads. From time to time enormous pigs emerge from stands of grass, dressed in the same colour mud as our boots and legs. About 11am I fall into a river, performing such an entertaining trick that half-a-dozen porters spend the rest of the day giggling whenever they see me. This provides me with the added delight of wet, sloshy feet and plasters that refuse to stay on my now-bloody heels. Clearly not content with my earlier feat, about 2pm I decide to impersonate Sylvester Stallone by dangling off a cliff face after the track collapses. Fortunately there are no porters around to keep me informed about how funny I look, and the job of hauling me back over the rock face falls to Rune. Zacharia the porter keeps me entertained later in the afternoon with his singular manner of wearing gumboots. He puts his left boot, which has its heel cut out, on his foot but wears the right boot on his head under the string of the canvas sack he's carrying. As he walks, he plays a bamboo mouth organ with this tongue, which lends his face a slightly crazed Mr Bean expression.
My second fascination becomes the amount of dirt gathering under my nails and the quantity of mud on my boots, which by late afternoon – no doubt partly due to my tumble in to the river – seem to have doubled in weight. We reach Werima as night falls amid a chorus of oinks from the village pigs and excited shouts from the children. We conveniently find that, despite being covered in mud, the best place to wash is in a river that can be reached only by following a near-vertical trail down the mountainside. This trail is so muddy that it's clear we'll be just as dirty by the time we climb back up as we are before we head down. I opt to wash in a trickle of water obtained by lodging a length of bamboo into a stream on the other side of the mountain. Rinsing the mud from my legs in the dark takes more than half an hour and invites about 20 mosquito bites. When I climb into my sleeping bag later in the evening I realise that, despite violent scrubbing with a rock, I've shifted hardly any mud from my legs at all. I am becoming a Dani pig.
The following day is a pig feast, which for the Dani is one of the most important events of the year. The day begins with the collection of ubi (sweet potato) and their leaves, along with the rounding up of a pig, firewood and a large number of fist-sized stones. Having lit the fire, the men paint their faces and torsos with various patterns and colours, filling their woven armbands with flowers and assembling spears and arrows. An entertaining mock battle follows, complete with dancing, singing, stolen women, death and spear-throwing. When the battle is finished we are led back to the angry pig, which is by now tethered and apparently well aware of its fate. The sacrifice is over relatively quickly, with the pig mounted on a wooden frame and speared through the heart. The still-breathing body is then placed on a small fire, where the hair is singed and the ears and tail cut away. The whole pig is sliced open from the mouth and every organ carefully removed and placed aside. The carcase is laid in the oven, a hole in the ground filled with hot stones, ubi and ubi leaves. Several hours pass before we're handed slabs of steaming meat. The villagers crouch in circles around the fire and await the division of the ubi, leaves and meat, which are delivered by hand from the fire to each cluster of onlookers. Before long the pig and ubi are finished and the remains of the carcase dragged into a house for safekeeping from the village dogs and chooks.
The next day, bellies full, blisters treated and boots almost dry (a sensation close to bliss), we head for Wuserem, a nine-hour hike up a mountainside and into the rainforest. At various points the porters stop to chant away the mogat (ghosts) who are believed to wander the rainforests by day and roam clearings by night. The Dani build small forest dwellings for the mogat to live in, the idea being that if the mogat have happy houses in the forest they won't have any cause to stray from their huts and meddle in village affairs. The Dani also believe that spirits inhabit certain hills, ponds, rocks and streams. On several occasions I see our porters tugging pig tusks through their noses, chanting and perching on rock faces, on the lookout for something I don't know is there.
The following night is spent in a hut at Hugema, by which point the group has taken to comparing flea bites, bad knees, blisters and fantasies about any food aside from nasi goreng. The day's walk is spectacular, hugging the mountains of the Baliem Valley, which wear headdresses of cloud and coats of ubi, carrot and corn fields while the Baliem River slithers and writhes around their toes.
By Maima it's clear many of the group are on their last legs. Boris the German has exhausted all supplies of Tiger Balm and knee bandages. Magosha, from Poland, now has a knee brace that stretches over the better part of her leg, making her look like an Egyptian mummy, while Rune's collection of flea bites extends from his waist to his knees. Katherine, the Russian, and I have taken to dreaming of clean underwear.
We spend the next day wandering back to Wamena, across rivers, over elaborate pig fences and along the airport runway to the Trendy Hotel. Next morning I'm back on my brown mouldy chair watching the old Dani man by the door wearing the penis gourd that reaches to his chin floss his teeth with the same two-metre arrow. He doesn't sever his tongue, despite being fantastically distracted by me scratching my flea bites.
As I leave we shake hands and I point to his tongue and tell him to be careful with the spear. He laughs for a bit, but by the look on his face I'm convinced he sees my flea bites as a much more pressing concern.