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West Papua (New Guinea), exploring of Mamberamo River - 1994

West Papua (New Guinea), exploring of Mamberamo River - 1994

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-18 21:19:55

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causing victims became very rare, the psychological tension and uncertainty are clearly seen.

The tension lowers when one of the elder women comes close to me, touches my arm and then caresses my hand. After a while she goes away embarrassed but this gesture is sufficient for breaking the invisible barrier between us.

The leader of the tribe shows up and invites us with dignity inside a round hut with the hearth. We offer him some salt bags hoping that he will let us stay for a few days.

In this lost in the interiors village with no name, the social structure is based on the rigorous division of roles between men and women. The first ones are responsible for defence, wars, hunting, and the women for housekeeping, cultivation and breeding. Certainly women have more duties, but it does not entitle them to assist to ritual or religious ceremonies. Very often a married man spends the entire day in a selected men’s house and goes back to his family only in the night.

The head hunting is a very old tradition and to be true it has not disappeared yet. Some Bausi men confirm, that during their initiation ceremony they had to meditate for a few days with a skull of a killed enemy in their hands. Still not long time ago a husband would bring such a trophy as a wedding gift, and a warrior who had many of them would obtain the right to possess more than one wife.

We spend some days in this prehistoric enclave, breathing the atmosphere from a fantasy film, where the time stopped and where the concept of „tomorrow” is unknown. I ask myself what is going to happen to this tribe in a few years, when they meet on their way more people from so-called higher civilization, when the tourists come with their bad habits, ready to pay for staging the show.

Following the fate of many other communities overwhelmed by the progress in the recent times, one of the last sanctuaries of the primitive world on earth will be reached by the hand of a white man, who will change the ancient traditions of free and happy people into the poverty of the Third World.