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Friday, November 11, 2011

24. The Primeval Mother of Procreation

A folktale from Ormu, west of Jayapura

Retold by CELLY AKWAN

In the beginning, there were no human-beings, no plants, and no animals. Then, came Ajechoi, a high-ranking woman in her community from the East. She became the primeval mother of all people, grass, and animals. She was the mother of procreation, the Papuan Eve from Ormu, a coastal village west of Jayapura which  lies at the northern foot of Cyclop Mountains.

She drifted off to the sea and ocean while floating on some driftwood. She drifted off that way for months, driven westwards by the currents of the ocean. But it was not known why she was carried along by the currents farther and farther from her village, family members, relatives, and other fellow-villagers.

Still clinging to the driftwood, she was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and afraid of dying. But she gained strength and hope as soon as she caught sight of a coast and drifted nearer to it. There was surf pounding on the beach. As she drifted near the surf, her driftwood was caught by the surf and she and the driftwood were washed ashore. Still clinging to the driftwood, Ajechoi was carried along by the current and foamy waves toward some burned rocks near Ormu. Luckily, the current and waves drifted her closer to the beach, away from the dangerous, battering surf, where she saw a slope of rocks.

Air Terjun di Ormu A cascade near Ormu

Though worn out, she managed to reach the safer part of the beach and scramble up the slope of the rocks. Then, she moved on while searching for a place she hoped she could stay in for some time. After some time, she found a cave where she could stay for the time being.

Alone in there, she sat at the entrance of the cave and thought about her land, family members, and relatives. She surmised that her village was far beyond the place where she stayed. For the first time in her life, Ajechoi was alone and her loneliness filled her heart with sorrow and yearning for home. She expressed her grief in a mourning song, a song that articulated her bitter complaint.

“Oh, I have nothing: no food, no water to drink, no adornments that show my rank, and nobody else to stay with me.”

But the sorrow she uttered was reverberated by the cave and disappeared in the silence of her surroundings. There was no one else who listened to her grief. She did not know she was the only human being there. These made her feel sadder and lonelier.

No one? No, someone high up in the sky she did not know heard her song. He was Maiwa, a snake; in fact, he was known as the snake from heaven. He responded to the song by descending from heaven and keeping Ajechoi company.

Ajechoi who had never met such a being before was filled with awe.

“Do not be afraid,” said the supernatural snake in a human voice. “I have heard your sorrow and have pity on you. I came down from heaven to console and be with you.”

Then, she was surprised by the wonders the snake did only through the power of his voice.

“Let there be every kind of food for the lady here,” he said. “Let there be water for her.”

Out of nowhere, lots of sago flour, sago cakes, sago porridge, cooked and roasted fish and pork, various vegetables and fruits, sweet potatoes, yams, other edible food, and plain water he called forth appeared in abundance in front of Ajechoi in the cave! She was amazed at the display of such wonders.

Still overwhelmed by the awe she had witnessed, she ate and drank to restore her strength. Before she finished her meal, the snake from heaven said, “Let there be every kind of adornments for the lady here.”

Unexpectedly, her hair was done by some invisible hands and ornamented with fresh, fragrant, and colorful flowers; the rest of her body was mysteriously bathed and cleaned from the remains of sea water and enhanced with heavenly fragrance; her ragged clothes were also invisibly replaced with the most expensive clothes she had never worn before; a beautiful necklace suddenly appeared around her neck; armbands of the best make and models appeared around her upper arms; and bracelets of the loveliest type were worn around her wrists! She was dumbfounded by the display of this awesome magic.

Turning to Ajechoi, the snake said, “You will not feel sad and lonely anymore. I will stay with you here as long as you want me to keep you company.”

The woman nodded. Such magical fulfillment of her desire for peace and companionship took away her sorrow and bitter complaint. She began to get used to the presence of an alien, supernatural being whose love for her surpassed that of any man, even the best magician, in her village. So, she finally accepted him as her companion in the cave.

Despite their friendship, Ajechoi still yearned for her home, family members, relatives, and fellow-villagers. She wished anyone of her family members or anyone else from her village could discover her in the cave and brought her back to her village. But her wish remained a wish: nobody showed up there.

She finally gave up her hope and chose the companionship of the snake from heaven. Then, they married and lived together in the cave.

After some time, Ajechoi was pregnant. At this time, her snake-husband left her behind and went back to his abode in the sky. The time for bearing drew nearer and nearer, but her husband had not descended yet.

She thought her snake-husband would not come back to assist her when she delivered her offspring. This would be her first labor pains and she had no experience at all in giving birth to her offspring. What would happen if nobody else helped her during her labor pains and she failed in giving birth to her descendants? Sensing the danger of possible failure, she became afraid. So, she made a decision not to deliver her offspring unless there was help from elderly women. She remembered that elderly women in her village always assisted wives during their labor pains. Had they been here, they would have assisted her.

Pantai Ormu Ormu Beach

Just as Ajechoi was going to deliver her offspring, her snake-husband came back. He helped her in her labor pains.

Then, what she gave birth to were amazing. Those born were not human babies; the first born offspring included a lot of grass, a snake named Mugu, and every kind of small and big animals!

After delivering her progenies, her snake-husband waved his hand down and said, “Stop childbirth.” The childbirth event stopped.

Then, the snake-father gave some advice to the animals just born.

“All of you go and hide yourselves in the forest,” he ordered them. “The dust of soil will be your food. Take cover under the trees.”

The animals ordered disappeared in the forest. Since then, they have eaten the dust of soil.

He then turned to the snakes and said, “Do not bite human beings who call you brothers because, if you do, you have nothing to fear. But you are allowed to bite them and cause them to die if they do not consider you as their brothers.”

After having established the rules of life for his snake offspring, he went back to his wife. By lifting his hand, he enabled his wife to continue her labor pains. This time she gave birth to four human beings, two pairs of twins: two girls and two boys. Each of the girls had a secret name, but each was called Baal. Each boy was called Awi and Nafri. Together with their mother, the girls and boys were the only human beings in their surroundings.

When Ajechoi’s children were young adults, they were ready for marriage. Because there were no other boys and girls in their surroundings they could marry, they had to marry among themselves. So, Awi and Nafri married their sisters.

Their descendants multiplied and intermarried. Their former surroundings became land. After living in their land for quite a long time, they grew into multitudes of people and their land had not enough space for them to live in. So, they dispersed to the East, West, North, and South.

© 2011

Friday, November 04, 2011

23. The Lost Secret of Eternal Life

A folktale from Sentani, Jayapura, retold by Celly Akwan

Who created the first human beings? Nobody knows. People only remember from their oral tradition that the first human beings were a father and his two children, a brother and a sister. Nothing was mentioned about their names and who the mother of the children was and also what her name was. The three human beings emerged from Dafonsoro or Dabonsolo, a small mountain range as high as 2.160 meters   north of Sentani Lake and west of Jayapura.

sentanimap

The red arrow shows a map of Sentani Lake, with Cyclop Mountains in the north. This name used during the Dutch period in Dutch New Guinea  was given by Louis de Bouganville (1729-1811),  a French admiral and explorer who, while saaling along the north coast of New Guinea,  saw for the first time the massive, rugged mountains that reminded him of  the Cyclops, the one-eyed giant from ancient Greek mythology. The Sentani natives call the mountain ranges Dafonsoro or Dabonsolo.

sentaniairport and cyclop mountains Present-day Sentani Airport with Dafonsoro Mountains in the north

The children lived together with their father. When they got old enough, the brother married his sister!

Marriage between siblings is not customary among the Sentani people. The rule held for generations is marriage outside the family. So, why did the siblings marry? There must have been no other clans to choose their spouses from for their marriages. Or both siblings loved one another so much that they preferred to marry inside their family. Nobody knows for sure why they married.

lakesentani An aerial view of a part of Sentani Lake

Then, their father suddenly died. The couple missed their father very much and so gave him a proper burial. Without their father, the young couple had to continue their life. They were not sure what their future would hold for them and were not prepared for it. Had their father still been alive, he would have guided them with his experience and wisdom before they were able to manage their own life.

louis de bouganville Louis de Bouganville, who saw the Dafonsoro Mountains for the first time and named them the Cyclop Mountains.

“How I wish him to be with us now!” said the daughter with a sigh.

“I also do,” added the brother.

The next day, they were surprised to witness their wishes coming true. They could not believe their eyes, but they really  saw their father walk towards them. Just in front of their eyes, what they had thought was impossible became real: their father was alive and well.  He had risen from the dead!

So happy were they that they cried out: “Father.” Their father smiled and embraced them.

Despite this fact, the children still did not grasp the mystery of the resurrection of their father. The time he was still with them before he died, he told them about life without death that had existed in the past. That eternal life created by their ancestral god had disappeared because of human folly. Nevertheless, he had known and mastered the secret of eternal life, including its language; as a result, he could rise from the dead.

It was supernatural power given to him on one condition. He would lose it if he did not pass it on to other people.

lakesentani stilted houses Stilted houses in Sentani Lake

His children did not know and possess the secret of eternal life and also master its language. This mystery was beyond their grasp and so was not of great interest to them. It was beyond their imaginations.

Their father who failed to inherit that secret to his children was very sad. That secret would disappear forever if he died again. He did not want it to disappear forever; he wanted to inherit in to other human beings so that they could learn its secret and master it for their future life.

But the only people living there included him and his two children. He had tried to find other people farther away, but he had not met anyone yet.

sentanibarkpainting Sentani bark painting of a lizard-like image

In his deep concern of his inability to share the secret of eternal life with other people, he got an idea. What if that secret was revealed to other living creatures?  That secret would be learned by people living after him and his two children and applied to themselves. In such a way, they would inherit the secret.

So, the father tried to share the secret of eternal life with animals. He then revealed it to snakes and spiders and other animals.

The secret is now seen in the ability of these animals to cast off their old skin, like snakes, and get new skin. It can also be seen in the ability to metamorphose from caterpillars into colorful butterflies.

sentaniwoman  A woman from Sentani

But his sharing of the secret led to an unforeseen curse. During his transfer of the secret to the animals, he unwittingly forgot the supernatural instruction that the secret could also be shared among people and, as a result,  lost it. He had to die again.

After some time, he died and the secret of eternal life went with him into his grave.

lakesentanifestival Brightly colorful adornment of Sentani youths during Sentani Lake Festival

Today, this secret remains as a symbol in animals and other living beings that are able to shed off their old skin and become new-born again. These living beings are also the symbols for the state of bliss, the Utopia in the future.

© 2011

Thursday, April 21, 2011

22. A Short Visit to the “Shangri-La”

To: Agus H. and Tetty (BuTet)

From: Celly Akwan

Subject: Dani in Baliem Valley

Date: April 20, 2005

Dear Agus H. Yahya and Tetty:

…. The larger part of this e-mail will be spent to let you have some glimpses of the Dani highlanders in the Baliem Valley. Other kinds of information related to your short visit will also be given so that you can have a fairly balanced picture of the Baliem Valley and its natives.

Expeditions into the Highlands

American Richard Archbold was the first white man who viewed and discovered the Baliem Valley on June 23, 1938. On that day, he was flying in a huge Catalina-like aircraft dubbed the Guba that eventually landed on Lake Habbema. The craft was a Consolidated PBY 2, the standard U.S. long-range patrol bomber, later specially modified by Howard Hughes for salmon fishing expeditions to Alaska and then sold. Archbold was on his third 14-month long expedition to the highlands of New Guinea; he first sighted the Baliem Valley during one of the exploratory flights of the Guba. The expedition was under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History.

A map of Papua and West Papua, with the Baliem Valley in the highlands, Wamena as its impportant town

baliem map

Actually the Dani had been contacted six times by various Dutch teams before Archbold discovered them. The contacts began with 1909-1910 Lorentz expedition and J.H. Kremer who crossed the Baliem River’s headwaters in 1921 on his way to Mt. Wilhelmina (later called Mt. Trikora that soars to 4,750 meters). But they missed the valley by several kilometers.

Discovery of the “Shangri-La”

During WW II, the valley would make international headlines as a sort of lost paradise rediscovered. The rediscovery was a coincidental but news-making event.

To fight against the Japanese in Hollandia (later called Jayapura) and secure a military base, the Allied Forces under the supreme command of General MacArthur landed in this small town of Netherlands New Guinea. It was defended by 11,000 Japanese troops, with about one-fifth combat soldiers. (A total of 55,000 Japanese troops defended the northern coast of Irian with considerable air power and substantial naval forces.) The Allies, however, defeated the Japanese stronghold in Hollandia, the largest Japanese logistics supply in the South Pacific. Using 1,200 airplanes of the U.S. Air Force, the Allies destroyed over 300 Japanese craft at Sentani, leaving only 25 serviceable planes. More than 4,000 Japanese were killed and 650 prisoners were taken. About 7,000 Japanese tried to escape to Sarmi, a stronghold over 200 kilometers west of Hollandia, but disease, starvation and wounds killed all but 1,000 men. The Allies lost only 159 lives.

The airfield compex at Sentani Lake was huge. It eventually housed 1,000 planes. Around 300 planes took off and landed at the airfield, first constructed by the Japanese then enlarged and improved by the Allies, every day mid 1944! It has been a record that has not been broken yet in both Netherlands New Guinea and Irian Jaya/Papua.

The Hollandia landing in April 1944 was considered the largest Allied operation in the Pacific. MacArthur employed 217 ships and 80,000 men, led by 50,000 combat troops. The Humboldt Bay (now Yos Sudarso Bay) was filled with hundreds of ships, linked with catwalks and lit up at night. The view at these ships in the bay from Hollandia at night was so fantastic that war correspondents described it as “a city at the sea.”

Within a short period of time, Hollandia and its tiny community of Dutch and Papuan civil servants mushroomed into a city of 250,000 – with 140,000 Australian and American troops and support personnel. It has been a population record not surpassed within the last 74 years since Hollandia was established in 1910. The present-day population of Jayapura of below some 200,000 has even not reached that record yet.

It was during World War II that Allied planes flew over the Baliem, looking for possible airfield sites. An American pilot described the valley as “laid out in checkerboard squares as perfectly formed as farmlands of the Snake Valley in Idaho.” He dubbed it the “Hidden Vallley.”

majesticbaliem A majestic view of the Baliem Valley

A few months later, American pilots from Hollandia flew joy-rides over the Baliem. One of the planes crashed against the valley’s mountain wall, killing seven members of the Women’s Army Corps and 14 servicemen. Three people survived the crash, two men and a 20-year-old female corporal, Margaret Hastings. The survivors had to wait for 47 days before they were rescued by a Filippino team landing by parachutes and whisking them out in gliders. War correspondents George Lait and Harry Patterson, who covered the rescue, dubbed the valley “Shangri-La” for its beauty and idyllic setting.

shangrila A book about the lost Shangri-La , the Baliem Valley, rediscovered

The crash and evacuation of the survivors as well as the nickname made international headlines. They were also published in a Reader’s Digest issue some time later. Combined with Archbold expedition a few years earlier that had been published in a National Geographic article, the Baliem Valley would pique further scientific and missionary interest in the region.

Land Cultivation

The Baliem Valley has been populated by around 120,000 Papuans just stepping out the Stone Age. It is 1,600 meters high, 60 kilometers long, and 15 kilometers wide. The valley has the highlands’ largest and most fertile pocket of flat, arable land. Archbold who flew over the fertile land in the valley noticed neat geometric gardens and irrigation ditches. He described them as being “like the farming country of central Europe.” To grow sweet potatoes, the Dani’s staple food, the natives have for generations developed “a technically brilliant system of parallel or gridiron irrigation ditches allowing for fallow times equal to that of the cropping cycle.” They have gently shaped the landscape of the mild valley into what one author describes as “the only place on earth where man has improved on nature . . . as close to Paradise as one can get.”

Where the Dani Came From

No one knows for sure where the Dani came from. There have been various conjectures concerning their origin. They might have come from Southeast Asia or West Africa, have had their ancestors in the Indo-Malayan archipelago, or have been the result of an independent evolution in situ.

dani honai Some male and female Dani natives in front of a honai or grass hut

The Southeast Asia hypothesis indicates that the highland Papuans reached New Guinea as early as 35,000 to 60,000 years ago and as late as 16,000 to 18,000 years ago. For many milennia after reaching the island (that now includes the western and eastern halves of New Guinea), the Papuans expanded within New Guinea to the coasts and neighboring islands. Today, the Dani are a part of the Papuan highlanders who live in the Central Mountains – Jayawijaya, Mt. Jaya, Paniai, Nabire, Tolikara, Yahokimo, and Wisnumurti Range.

Intermarriage with the Seafaring Austronesians

Ancestors of the present-day Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Polynesians have been traced back to Formosa (later called Taiwan). Collectively known today as Austronesians (formerly called “Malayo-Polynesians”), a handful of hardy seafarers left the coasts of southern China some 6,000-7,000 years ago, reached Taiwan as their jumping-off point, and voyaged through the Philippines to Indonesia and out across the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

This breed of Mongoloid stock brought with them a social organization of bilateral or non-unilineal descent. Within this organization, both biological parents are recognized for purposes of affiliation. This differs with the unilineal societies of New Guinea and Melanesia which are mostly patrilineal. In such a unilineal society, descent is recognized through the father – or sometimes the mother, but rarely both.

Austronesian speakers appeared in the islands of Indonesia by about 3,000 BC. Over the next two millenia, they developed superior technology in sea transportation and land cultivation and increased their populations significantly. They gradually displaced the Papuan populations who then lived there. But this displacement process never took place in the interior of New Guinea because of a combination of ecological factors and the existence of agriculturally sophisticated Papuans. In short, the Austronesians never penetrated to the interior of New Guinea.

jiwikamummy A mummy in the Baliem Valley

The seafaring Austronesians then settled and intermixed with Papuans along the coasts as well as on nearby islands. They mingled their genes, but imposed their languages. Around the year 2,000 B.C., a major expansion of the Trans-New Guinea phylum (family) of Papuan language speakers also occurred. It spread west from Irian to the islands of Timor, Alor and Pantar, and replaced earlier West Papuan language speakers. These islands had already been settled by Papuan speakers long before the Austronesian arrival. Nevertheless, the Trans-New Guinea phylum was also strongly influenced by Austronesian loan words, and expanded into the island’s central highlands by about 1,500 B.C. This expansion also wiped out traces of earlier diversity there.

“Linguistic Babel”

A result of the intermarriage of Austronesians and Papuans can be noticed from the Austronesian languages, also called the non-Papuan languages spoken today in the northern and western coasts of Irian. They include Irianese languages spoken by natives living in the present-day Jayapura and its vicinity, Sarmi to the west, a large number of natives in Yapen, Biak-Numfor, most coastal natives from Manokwari to Wondama-Windesi-Roon, Nabire and the nearby islands, some parts of Waropen, and in the Raja Ampat archipelago, west of Sorong.

Linguistically, New Guinea has been described as a “linguistic Babel” by an author. The phrase that alludes to the religious story of the language chaos caused by the collapse of the Tower of Babel in ancient times is meant to indicate the rich diversity of local languages spoken in the western and eastern halves of the island. It has been estimated that the indigenous peoples of New Guinea totalling 2,7 million (in 1991) form just 0.01 percent of the total world population, with Irian Jaya/Papua having around 250  tribes (in 2004).Yet they contribute 15 percent of their known languages to the world’s language heritage. The total number of languages spoken here is approximately 800.

The major language families in Irian Jaya/Papua can be divided into two main phyla: the Papuan and non-Papuan phyla. The first phyla include the Trans-New Guinea Phylum spoken by highlanders such as the Dani, Cenderwasih Bay phylum used by some groups of people in Yapen-Waropen, East Bird’s Head Phylum spoken by tribes living in the Tamrau Mountains and near Sorong, and West Papuan Phylum used by tribes living near Mt. Umsini, southeast of Manokwari. The Austronesian phyla include the languages used by the coastal people already mentioned.

The Trans-New Guinea phylum is the most widespread on the island. It comprises 84 percent of Papuan speakers and 67 percent of the languages.

Plans for a Lingua Franca

Due to this language diversity in the western half of New Guinea, the different tribes cannot understand one another except if their languages come from the same mother tongue, such as the linguistically related languages spoken in Biak, Numfor, Doreh Bay in Manokwari, Roon in the southern part of the Cenderawasih Bay, and in the Raja Ampat archipelago of the north-western coast. Naturally, a lingua franca must be used and so Malay, the Dutch word for what is now Indonesian, has been taught at elementary schools and used by these tribes since the Dutch colonial period. After the Second World War, the Dutch who had separated West Irian from the newly formed Republic of Indonesia and retained their power there planned to introduce a local language, dominant enough, to replace Malay. The Biak-Numfor language used by one of the largest and most proggresive tribes in Netherlands New Guinea was proposed but later turned down because it was not dominant enough. Then, Dutch was proposed, accepted, and taught for some years before that last Dutch colony in Southeast Asia/South Pacific was officially handed over to Indonesia on May 1, 1963.

The Koteka and Honai

The koteka is not a word from one of the three language sub-groups in the Baliem Valley: the Greater Dani, Southern Dani, or Central Dani. It comes from a tribe living in the Paniai highland, west of Wamena, and simply means “clothes.” The Dani in Wamena call it holim. The holim and koteka are the formal clothes of the male highlanders living in the Baliem Valley and Paniai region. They are typical to the highlanders there; coastal Irianese whose traditional clothes are different and disappeared gradually before WW II have never worn either one of both.

The holim is also a sign of authority and dignity of the male Dani. A Dani “Big Man” wears a larger and longer holim, a sign of his power.

A comical scene has been reported in which a holim-wearing Dani playing soccer suddenly raced into the forest as if chased by the Devil and did not show up for the rest of the game. Another player had kicked the ball that had accidentally hit and broken his dear holim; afraid of being naked and laughed at by other players and the spectators, the unlucky man tried to hold his broken holim from falling apart while running as fast as he could into the forest.

pandanus conoideus lam The buah merah (red fruit) technically known as pandanus conoideus lam

The government started some largely unsuccessful campaigns from 1964 to 1998 to change the habits of wearing traditional clothes into modern ones of the highlanders. Frans Kaisiepo, an Irianese islander from Biak and a renowned pro-Indonesian nationalist since the Dutch period as well as the second Governor of West Irian, began these campaigns in 1964 to “civilize” these highlanders. His government wanted them to wear western or modern clothes, like those worn by the generally modern coastal Irianese since the Dutch colonial period. It virtually failed. The last anti-koteka campaigns (1993-1998) carried out by the provincial government under Yacob Pattipi, another coastal Irianese who became Governor of Irian Jaya, also failed considerably. The highlanders were given no extra clothes, soap for washing the only clothes they finally wore out, and understanding of their importance. Obviously, these campaigns were not thoroughly planned and carried out.

buahmerahtree The pandanus tree and its red fruit

In spite of these failures, not all Dani, in particular, refuse modernization. Particularly, the younger and educated Dani have shown successful adaptation to the modern life by wearing modern clothes and experiencing other things, such as the lures of the city, that the modern life lays at their feet. This generation includes children of converted Dani and educated by Protestant and Catholic missionaries.

Like the holim or koteka, the honai is a traditional house typical of the Dani. The honai have never been constructed and used as houses by coastal Irianese whose tradtional houses disappeared as early as the 19th century.

The Buah Merah “Fever”

Recently, the Dani in the Baliem Valley have been put again in the national-news spotlight for a local fruit, the buah merah (red fruit, pandanus conideus lam). It has been claimed to have potent cures for AIDS/HIV and cancer patients and, therefore, has been feverishly sought-after. This oval-shaped and large fruit with its thorny and hard skin comes from the pandanus tree,  a palm-like tree. Perhaps, a variety of this grows in some coastal areas in the north; its fruit forms an irregular source of protein to the menus of the coastal people in the rural areas, such as in Roon and the Wondama Peninsula.

Bye for now,

Celly

Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved.