PAPUA at a Glance

PAPUA or Irian Jaya or of the last really wild places in the world. Although a few road have been laid that lead a bit inland from some of the population centers on the coast, parts of the interior of the western half of new Guinea, an almost continent-sized island, are still shrounded in mystery. Even today, the flight maps used by pilot working the highlands for protestant missions and mineral exploration contain large areas marked : Relif Data Incomplate.

            Fewer than 2 million people live in Papua’s 410,660 square kilometers. The largest city and capital of the province in Jayapura, a buzzing town of 170,000 on the north coast near the border with Papua New Guina, which neatly cuts the island in half. Modern Jayapura boomed after structure laid by U.S General Douglas MacArthur, who bgan his famous island-hopping strategy from here.

            Papua was not relinquished by Holland at the same time as the rest of the former Dutch East Indies, and did not formally become part of Indonesia until 1969. The territory was dubbed Papua-“Victrorious Irian”-in the early 1970s.

The tradition was far from smooth, and local rebellions by spar-wielding warriors and an independence movement, the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM)- “Free Papua Movement”-haunted the changover. There is little OPM activity today, but the goverment keeps a large military presence in the province, and many areas are still of-limits to tourism.

            Linguists do not agree on how many unique languages are spoken in Papua, although most estimates hover around 250. The island’s indigenous people, called Papuans, are dark-skinned and have kinky hair, and trace their ancestry back to before the expansion of the Malays through Indonesia.

An Impentrable Island

The interior of Papua is craggy and mountainous-Puncak Jaya Wijaya at 4884 meters, is the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes_and to reach it from the coast one must cross thick swamps and forest. The rivers of the north are so full of oxbows that running them doubles or triples the overland distanc to interior. In the south, treacherous inland-conspired against explorers.

Until America explorer Richard Archold flew over the Baliem Valley I 1938, ad saw the eat little compounds ad sweet potato fields of the Dani these people had lived I their valley isolated from cotact with ay outsiders from cotact with any outsiders for some 10,000 years. Today, the Dai are Irian’s most famous ethic group. Their numbers have grown to about 70,000, and Wamena, a small town in the Baliem Valley and the facto capital of Dani county, has been attracting several hundred visitors a month.

Farmers and Artist

Famous warriors I the past, today the Dani are simply farmers, living in thatch and wood hurts ad raising their staple sweet potatoes and pigs in the salutary climate of the 1.500 meter-high Baliem Valley. Despite 40 years of Protestant missionaries, many dani are unregenerate in wearing their kotekas, or penis gourds.

            If the Dani are th most famous of Papua’s people, the Asmat are the most notorious. Livig in the hostile tidal swamps of th south coast, ritual headhunting had the past been the centerpiece of Asmat culture.

            This fact made international headlines in 1961, when Michael Rockfller, the young son then-governor of New York belson Rockefeller, disappeared after trying to swim ashore when his boat capsized. Whether or not Rockefeller was actually eaten by the people of otsjanep has fueled many speculations, but has never beenn determined.

            Rockefeller as visiting the Asmat to collect their art, among the most poweerfull and respected canoe prows and several-meters-lonng bisj poles, decorated with abstract and heavily expressionistics figures, display the kind of raw energy that modernist European painters treasured in their collctions of “primitive” art.

Rich, Unexplored Waters

            Cendrawasih-“Bird of Paradise”-Bay and the island off new Guinnea’s western tip hold some stunning, unexplored reefs. Currently, only Irian Diving in Sorong operates in the region. The outfit takes divers to World War II-era wrecks and other fine sites in Sorong area, in the Raja Ampat island, and in Dore Bay.

            South of Papua is the shallow Arafura sea, which until perhaps just 10,000 years ago connected New Guinea to Australia. The coast here is silty, and fringed with brackish rivers and stands of mangrove and casuarina.

            Bintuni bay, cut deep into the bird’s head Peninsula, offers one of th largest and most unmolested mangrove swamps in the world. Although such habitats are not a paradise for divers, they play an important ecological role in developing the larval stages of fish and crustaceans.