A GOOD WAY TO START THE YEAR
They came from out of nowhere. Ten canoes surrounded our boat. We are in West Papua, a long way from home, a long way from anywhere, and someone whispered: this must have been how Cook felt —my mind flicked to Hawaii.
We recognised Abraham amongst the colour. We had met him the day before and given him a pair of reading glasses. He knew almost no English, yet he knew how to ask for beer. We gave him a bag of milk powder instead. He had rallied his entire village to come to meet his new friends.
The interaction was brief. For fifteen minutes we exchanged stares and smiles as they circumnavigated our boat quietly and respectfully. Their faces read awe, ours read delight. One young man asked for cigarettes. One young man pointed at the boat: bagus…good, he declared. There were sleeping babies, near-toddlers with right-sized paddles, wide-eyed teenagers, young adults, amused parents and curious grandparents. All the congregation dressed brightly. A wife gestured: ok, we’ve seen them, can we go home now? And just as they had arrived, they left, paddling off in unison.
We are pegging our way to Papua New Guinea, the familiarity of heartland Indonesia fading. The faces are changing, and the behaviour is different. We are treading carefully into new lands. The loud and jubilant greetings shift now to quiet acknowledgments, gentle nods, shy encounters. We adjust, moving slowly, and talking gently.
One village visit is startlingly quiet; they don’t know what to make of us, we all talk in whispers. They have a nativity scene in a makeshift church, and long-drop toilets over the water on the shoreline. No coverage but rusty old solar for lights. We gift all the children coloured pencils and only wonder later whether they actually have something to draw on.
Their canoes are grand ocean-going vessels each magnificently crafted with intricate, purposeful, not decorative, carving. Sophisticated wooden pegs make for nail-like fixings. The lines are clean and symmetrical, elegant curvature and the functional architecture is beautiful. Of clever construction, the waka are half dug out, half planked.
Extensive outriggers provide balance and the village is strewn with an assortment of various sizes of this exact model. We aim to convey that we are impressed. Bagus….good, we say. Hans returns a shy smile. Two teens delivered coconuts to Strannik in the canoe they had built. We gave them 100,000 Rupiah even though clearly they had nowhere to spend it.
We are anchored in a wide, deep bay, flanked by shallow reefs, in the shadow of thick, thick, thick jungle of every shade of green imaginable. This is Num Island. The heat is a blanket. We don’t swim because of crocodiles. The forest seems too thick even for the birds. A tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it but us, it makes a sound.
We explore up the long, narrow, deep rivers in the zodiac. Fingers of mangrove trees reach. We travel deep into the jungle using these natural winding channels. They have been formed by nature and coerced by humans. We see ring-barked trees and sawn-off logs, evidence that humans pass this way. We nudge in and out of these rivers, exploring. We reverse out when it gets too tight. I stand tall on the bow of the zodiac, thumbs tucked into my backpack straps like Dora the Explorer.
We are just south of the equator; the weather would tell us so. Stark-bright hot days, lightening-displays like fireworks, heavy warm rain that comes down in buckets, then stops. It’s all extreme. We watch the weather like it’s a demonstration. The swirling jungle-fog is entertaining, the rainbows move about and the moon makes the water dance. A downpour closes in around us, like heavy curtains, drawing a close to our time here. It’s been a privilege to spy this corner of the world.
I thought there were gang wars in Manokwari, the second largest town in West Papua behind Sorong. We anchored to the sound of gunshots all around. My imagination stepped to LA in the 1980’s. The gunfire was consistent, explosions rang out across the city. Buildings alternated: mosque, church, mosque, church. Perhaps they were having a shoot-out? We slept in the New Year and went ashore to explore.
The city was simple. Dirty, condensed, haphazard. No one spoke English. No one paid us any mind, except Jeffrey, who took it upon himself to guide us through the ramshackle. He told us of the 1996 tsunami when 7 metre waves destroyed the city. We asked him about the gunfire and he rolled his eyes, smiled and said: all December-long….. fireworks. The kids later showed us the homemade bazookas crafted with key ingredients: plastic bottles heavily taped together, something flammable and lots of mischief.
We went to find Jesus and ice cream. Neither disappointed. We got caught in an almighty downpour. Rain, heavy like applause. We are warm, soaked through, but it doesn’t matter. We zoom along fast in the zodiac, looking for Strannik through the veil of falling water. I laugh as raindrops hit my face hard and sting. I think about how lucky I am to be here. This is a good way to start the year.
Happy New Year.
