New Guinea is one of the least explored places in the world. Tribes previously unknown to the West are still being discovered. Until the introduction of Christianity the various tribes practiced cannibalism and some still do to this day in the swampy lowlands.

I flew to the port of Jayapura on the Indonesian side of New Guinea which is known today as West Papua. From there I took a small and shaky plane to the remote village of Wamena in the Baliem Valley. The flight from Wamena covers expanses of jungle and mountains that seem to go forever. I wondered what or who was looking up at the plane as we passed above. I got off the plane at a dilapidated airport, the faces of Papuans staring over a fence greeted me. They herded us into a dingy room while they inspected the bags of all of the passengers but me. The door to the outside was padlocked and soon the dark room was packed with a couple of dozen Papuans carrying huge sacks of this and that, the room thick with the smell of clove cigarettes that they constantly smoke. The security guard couldn't find the key to the padlock and we were finally led through a series of office rooms to the outside.

The local people stared at me with looks that seemed like a mixture of concern and fear. They are small people for the most part and I was later to find out that they thought I might be a 'smack down' wrestler like they see on TV. A large fire was being put out as I pulled into town. A large drugstore had burned to the ground and the locals were foraging through the rubble to salvage whatever was left.

Wamena is a friendly but somewhat chaotic community. Indonesians, mostly from Java, own all of the businesses and are predominantly Muslim. The Papuans, however, maintain an existence from selling fish and sweet potatoes on the street. Others taxi people around in rickety bicycle rickshaws that squeak along the streets. Most of the people wear Western clothes in the village but many men still only wear a penis sheath made out of gourd they cultivate for this accessory. Bob Marley T-shirts are popular but strangely, so are heavy metal T-shirts of bands like Black Sabbath, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse and other dark metal bands. Missionaries have had a huge impact on New Guinea. In Jayapura, half of the airport is owned by various evangelical organizations, who fly their cessnas to remote parts of the jungle to spread their message.

Walking down the street in Wamena, surrounded by the chaos of fish and vegetable hawkers, the squeaking rickshaws, the melancholy sounds of the Islamic call to prayer blaring over loudspeakers, creates a unique atmosphere. It is part Asia, part Africa and part Middle East, but with the mix of influences emerges something totally different - it is as if someone went back in time and somehow shifted the course of history allowing for this curious result.

Strange graffiti covers many of the walls of the buildings, the expressionistic drawings look as if Basquiat came through and decorated the town. They are acts of rebellion against the ruling Indonesian presence. In 1969 West Papua was given over to Indonesia by the Dutch for its abundant gold and copper resources and the Papuans would prefer independence like the eastern side of the island, Papua New Guinea. Occasional violence breaks out and because of that there is a strong police presence in the town.

The Papuans proved to be very friendly and when I walked around town; many of them would come up to gently shake my hand. The more tribal and naked ones would take my hand and say 'hwha, hwha, hwha' over and over again, smiling. If you offer a Papuan an unexpected gift of a clove cigarette or candy, the men will either brush the bottom part of your chin or lightly grab your scrotum in appreciation.

Two tribes live in the vicinity of the Baliem valley, the Dani and the Yali. My guide Rufus and I set off in a jeep into the hinterlands to trek in the lands of the Dani. Rufus was taken from his family in the lowlands at the age of 12 by Catholic missionaries. His family practiced cannibalism. As with many Papuans I met, he is only a generation separated from cannibalism.

The Dani live in mountainous terrain with jungle areas and hills that have been cultivated for centuries. The hiking was cool and breezy for the most part. A cool mist cooled us down but promised the occasional rain storm that would make the trail very slippery. At one point Rufus and I had to go down a basically non-existent trail of mud and grasses that basically went straight down. Holding on to grasses and ferns we struggled down the muddy trail, all the while wondering if I would disturb some poisonous snake or insect. At the bottom we found to our dismay that the bridge we intended to cross over the raging Baliem river had washed away. We were forced to hike back up and over to another bridge that was mercifully intact.

We stayed in a few different villages and each had its own character. Often the people of the village called me over to sit with them and they would all stare at me and laugh, speaking to me in Bahasa Indonesian or the Dani language. It was a bit overwhelming at one point, looking over the laughing posse of naked men and women in their tribal regalia, feathers sprouting from their headresses.

The Dani had created some primitive guitar-like instruments ingeniously using parts of a cell phone and computer innards to create frets. The songs they sang reminded me of the music of the Fulani tribe of Mali and the Gambia. The naked men sat around smiling in the evenings and asked me for the clove cigarettes I brought for them. The children politely asked me for candy and notably always made sure that everyone got a piece and never tried to trick me into giving them more. Most of the children had open sores on their skin from some kind of skin disease and I applied Neosporin to their wounds as they lined up to meet the hairy white man. Older people came to me pointing at their eyes or joints thinking I might have some magic cure from the West. Small children mostly cried at the sight of me.

While I never felt threatened at any time with the Dani, apparently they still kill each other from time to time over women and territory. While cannibalism in these parts is a thing of the past many aspects of their animistic traditions still linger. When mourning, the practice of cutting off one's fingers or a piece of an ear is still practiced after the passing of a loved one. Entrails are still used to divine the future and such. The men sleep in one hut while the women and children live in another. Each village provided me with my own little hut. Flies would cover me as I sat outside my hut but would leave me alone if I entered my dwelling - but there these tiny fleas would assault me. The fleas hang around the villages because of the pigs who are the most important animal to the Papuans. Often, the pigs will sleep in the same hut as the men and are treated better than the women until they are eventually killed to feed the village. Everyone smokes and they smoke a lot. The Dani mostly smoked these large spliffs of tobacco wrapped in a tobacco leaf but would gladly bum a clove or cigarette when one was offered.

At night when everyone would retire to their respective huts, I would sit with Rufus and the other porters and we would talk over a fire and eat chicken. Sometimes, I would just listen to the musical sounds of their conversation which seemed to never stop. Every now and then and without warning, one of the porters named Wir would let out this tribal scream 'Woo Woop Woop' that was so hilarious that you could hear the Dani laughing in their huts throughout the village. You had to be there to truly experience it, but every time he did it the whole village charged with this crazy energy. I sat with my camera trying to record it but never captured Wir in action.

I promised Rufus that I would return one day to Wamena and possibly visit the lowlands with him where he was raised - the lands of the Korowai and the Kombai where cannibalism is still practiced and birds of paradise grace the jungle.



Brian McQuade is a freelance writer, avid and intrepid traveler, and owner of Space Cowboy in Breckenridge.