LETTER HOME:
Hot, humid. A tropical port town with dozens of islands offshore, palm-fringed. Kinda like Nigeria meets Samoa maybe, in its appearance and ambience. Very friendly, with a million “Hello misters”. Absolutely no tourists.
Sunset from “our” beach in Sarong
Basic town stretched along coast with few ‘real’ shops buts lots of shacks kiosks, rustic housing, taxi vans and taxi motorbikes as the public transport, wild and colourful markets, tropical trees: bananas, coconut and sago palms, salaks (fruit: brown snakeskin-peel sheltering pear/apple tasting segments), papaya, pineapples, sirsak (soft green spiky skin, fruit big as a loaf of bread, tasting mushie, lemony, melting in your mouth incredible taste and texture).
First stayed some days with Erica’s sister’s family. Small shabby house of five rooms. Polished concrete floor. Jesus pics on wall. Few wooden tribal souvenirs, Chinese vases and flowers. Few things beyond beds, sofas, kitchen table, kitchenware, TV and radio. Cooking by gas or fire in the yard out the back. Washing by bucket – mandi – in a bathroom, as is the traditional Indonesian way. Hens and dogs and cats roaming. Crabs and frogs in the pond. Neighbours young children wandering in and out.
Then we stayed at the beach at Grandparents. Amazingly quiet beach and the view. Wicked sunset island sky. Horizon of palm islands – the nearest 500 metres away, which we reach by paddling to in an outrigger canoe. Basic shack right on sand. (Reminds me of Goa, India). Coconut palms and banana trees. Fishermen in canoes. Swimming warm waters but watch for deadly sea snakes. Coral reefs. Crabs that carry shells on their backs as their mobile homes and other crabs that burrow holes everywhere around the yard, with is the beach and sea.
It’s only 5 metres from our mattress to the water at high tide. Pack of family dogs yelping at nightfall. Family piglet in stilted pen, fattening up above the water, next to the outhouse mandi and toilet, washing water from nearby well. Cooking in a nearby kitchen shack of fire places and gas burner, kitchen bench and pots and utensils hanging in rack outside, beside a small fruit and vege garden.
Had a big beer sess of 52 large bottles one day, with relatives and onlookers; I paid for everything.
Been eating fruit and various BBQ fish, some exotic vege dishes, tempe – slabs of fermented soybeans fried, chilli, and rice. Coffee, fried egg and bread for breakfast. Food luxuries included processed cheese, chocolate chip cookies, beer, tinned sausages.
The beach days were stoned, restful, idyllic; paradise.
Anyway, it was a 12 hour boat trip from Sorong to Fakfak (pronounced fuck fuck!) on our way south to here in Marauke.
Travelled on a large passenger liner that carries thousands: five passenger decks – packed, all cabins booked, all economy benches crammed, and floors, corridors, stairwells – we slept on the covered wooden deck at the rear of the boat, behind the mosque, with scores of others around us.
Spent 4 days in Fakfak, awaiting another ship to Merauke, which took 4 days. Quite a journey. Every class cabin booked. Packed boat beyond belief. Thousands camped out on mats with food containers, washing hanging, babies, sleeping women, guitar playing youths, across floors and decks and corridors and on the stairs and even in the lifeboats! Like a ship of refugees.
Luckily, we found a space on the 7th deck cafe, outdoor, but roofed. Sat a table or on the bench for 48 hours, sleeping, eating, chatting, cramped, with nearly 60 others in a space the size of the lounge and your bedroom. When it rained it rained and everybody was flooded out by the rain-river sweeping along the length of the boat’s deck. Huge waterfalls and surges. Monsoonal. Luckily our luggage was on a bench at our table, otherwise my computer would be history. Families on mats on the steel deck had to evacuate their things off the floor before everything was wet, then stand for hours, or crouch, huddled with others until the deck dried off and they could get back to sleep again. Three times the nights were sodden.
Second night was amazing storm, rocked the liner – people wet, tired, and seasick (not us) – women hopelessly ill, as was her child. Floor awash with plastic papers, cig butts, rubbish, gob, baby piss and puke, to be swept away with the next storm. Sea and sky illuminated by lightning. Lightning. Rain blown into us. Distant red moving of up-and-down lights warning of land in the big black void.
Fortunately when the ship pulled into Timika, we moved to a better space on the second deck of economy benches – like a dormitory open with hundreds camped out, the most wretched toilets that failed to work, often lacking water, abrasive smell of pure ammonia that burnt your nostrils. Timika – because the boat was 6 hours late and we’d missed the tide – was never in view, as we arrived at 3 am, cruising up a river lined by thin, 10 metre trees, white bark glowing under moonlight. Maniacally driven, motorised dug-out canoes sped alongside us, and worn-out colonial riverboats and police launches all hovered around the ship, awaiting passengers down the steps to a barge-boat, others lumbering with luggage across boat decks – scene illuminated by ship floodlights – to the speedy canoes, that when full, zoomed off into the night, river churning, men with flashlights crouched at the front, acting as headlights on this dark river highway.
Meantime porters were chucking luggage and cargo from decks to boats below, others lowering stuff by rope. Then it rained again and the chaos of 25 boats and canoes amplified and passengers exposed, sought umbrellas, mats, plastic over their heads. It was like a jungle scene from a movie set on the Congo River, at night.
Now here in Marauke in southern Irian Jaya / Papua, for the past 4 days, staying with more relatives in a basic but comfortable house.
Cooler weather here, windy, often rainy. Met up again with Erica’s bro, Lukey, 27, who we’d met with in Sorong and who’d left earlier headed for Marauke (- for boats only come here every fortnight). They have met their father for the first time – he’d separated from their mother when Erica was three, 27 years ago. Their mother died 5 years ago.
Her father was an Captain in the army, Indonesian intelligence. He has an incense – wood – business he wants Erica to help him with, and also a crocodile farm – I held a baby, 24-inch croc yesterday – with skins for export. Erica wants to work here for a few months with business visits to Bali, to make cash and then go to Holland to scatter her mother’s ashes, for she is half-Dutch half-Ambonese (from the Malaku: Spice Islands). And her dad is Irian (west Papua).
Who is Erica: I call her “Jungle girl.” She’s brown, slim, shapely, sexy, crazy, fun, caring, and a mother of three – met her 11-year-old son Felix in Sorong, presently living with her sister, other two kids living with her older German, ex-husband in Bali. I met Erica in Jakarta at a club. She was a high-class pro and has recently given up her speed – amphetamine – addiction (both activities a consequence of broken marriage and hard times). She is also an asthma sufferer and has had two very close calls – to hospital; one the other day here, and the other on the ship from Jakarta.
Now, amazing big bright green frogs sit on the porch at night, under the lights, awaiting insects. The frogs are cute, wide-eyed but their poisonous spit will blind you …
And the large brown ants with green backs, they build houses for their many thousands by climbing trees and twisting and weaving with their silk, living leaves together, to make elaborate nests in the branches of a tree next to the outhouse and shower, a small enclosure open to the sky, shaded by the fingers of trees, sun warming us as we wash … in the morning.
Have been made very welcome by all – family, friends, strangers, even police …
> photos of Papua & Indonesia
