In search of the traders of the Great Road
The morning of our breakthrough discovery was unexceptional. I awoke just after sunrise feeling groggy. It had rained throughout the night again, and when the tent began to leak, we elected to sleep in our waterproof bivvy bags. An entire night of breathing recycled air infused with the scent of my putrid socks, which were drying at the base of my bag, had given me a searing headache.
I pulled the bag off my face with a flourish, much as a television detective reveals a corpse from beneath a sheet, and took a deep breath of sharp, cold morning air. ‘Callum, why is it still raining?’ I asked the human-sized bivvy-bag sausage to my left. ‘Because divine forces are against us,’ a voice muttered darkly from the depths.
Trekking in this Papuan highland forest was getting monotonous. We were following a muddy path, less than a metre wide, at the base of a forest-filled V-shaped valley that apparently had its own microclimate: a relentless drizzle. The forest was so dense that it created a cocoon of silence around our lonely progress. Our most recent clutch of porters had left us days earlier, after refusing to cross tribal boundaries without express permission from their headman. In truth, we suspected that they knew the path ahead would be tough, and we had previously made them walk through a spider-infested flood, so their reluctance was understandable.
I surveyed my growing collection of injuries; insect bites on my joints, an unidentifiable rash on my back, cat-like scratches all over my shins and welts resembling squashed tomatoes on the backs of both ankles. It had been a tough two months. We were making little progress, geographically or intellectually, we were tired, and our time and money were running out.
‘Right, I’m off to the toilet,’ Callum said as he disappeared into the bushes. Almost immediately, I heard a call. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me: we hardly ever met people in the forest and had seen no-one for days. But then a family appeared on the path ahead, clucking animatedly to each other in their tribal language.
They hadn’t seen me yet and I was a bit nervous. Meeting people who had hardly any contact with outsiders was difficult at the best of times, but when you cross paths in the middle of an uninhabited forest, it can be particularly disconcerting for both parties. And to my horror, I realised that our introduction was about to involve them seeing Callum squatting behind a bush. I quickly called out, and his head popped up, just in time.
They were, indeed, shocked to see us, but we were soon exchanging greetings in Indonesian and shaking hands in the traditional manner for the region: gripping the hooked index finger of your acquaintance between your hooked index and middle fingers, then pulling back hard to produce an audible click. The louder the click, the greater the greeting.
They were a family: a heavily pregnant mother, father and their two sons, dressed in grubby, faded football kit with bright necklaces made from plastic beads and seeds. They were weighed down with bulging noken sacks made from dried strings of bark fibre, their foreheads taking the load via a single strap.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘We’re going to Enarotali,’ the father replied with a big, nervous grin, exposing the numerous gaps in his teeth.
I was getting excited. They had already been walking for several days and had more to go, meaning that they were travelling much farther than anyone else we had met. I was eager to find out what they were taking to trade and asked to see inside their nokens.
They unhitched them from their foreheads. I was really nervous. I knew that what happened next had the potential to justify this entire expedition. One bag contained a small boy, but in the others were long, tubular, leaf-wrapped parcels. ‘Garam asli,’ the father said. Natural salt. I could have kissed him.
Valley people
People have lived in New Guinea for more than 45,000 years, and yet Papua’s major highland population, the 80,000-strong Dani of the Baliem Valley, was only discovered in 1938. The island’s unique geography – a long, thick, rugged mountain backbone with steep-sided valleys between the ‘ribs’ – has sheltered indigenous Papuans from not just the world outside, but also from the tribes in neighbouring valleys.
More than 1,000 distinct languages have developed in New Guinea, accounting for a third of the world’s total and bolstering theories that tribes preferred to limit their contact with others. However, their history is filled with examples of inter-tribal co-operation of a complexity and sophistication far greater than they have ever been given credit for. Not least of these is the development of the Jalan Raya (‘Great Road’).
I first came across the Jalan Raya in Australian biologist Tim Flannery’s Throwim Way Leg, an epic account of his zoological surveys in New Guinea during the 1980s and ’90s. ‘This magnificent pathway, which traverses east–west along Irian Jaya’s [Papua’s] mountain spine… is one of the world’s great foot-only trade routes,’ he wrote. ‘Produce, such as the plumes of birds of paradise, has probably travelled along it for millennia on its journey to places as far afield as Sri Lanka and China.’
It was September 2007 when I first considered these words. I had been wondering how it was possible that a seashell, the cowrie, had become such an effective currency throughout the highlands, and how the sweet potato, a vegetable with South American origins, had become the staple of the locals’ diet. This long-distance trade route seemed a likely explanation.
Leopold Pospisil, a US anthropologist who worked in the western highlands during the 1950s and early ’60s, had also noted the existence of a complex system of loans and bartering centred on an on-foot inter-tribal chain of trade in pigs, shells, feathers, tools, salt and vegetables that stretched from the east coast, right across the highlands, for more than 400 kilometres. It seemed ironic that a culture accused of being ‘simple’ and ‘savage’ had apparently maintained one of the longest-running trade routes in human history to the ignorance of the rest of the world.
Highland route
I began my first pilot expeditions in Papua during the winter of 2007. My interactions with local people led me to believe that although the days of walking the complete length of the Jalan Raya were gone, the route still existed, and that in the more remote districts of Puncak Jaya and Paniai, people were still using it for trade.
So, in August last year, supported by a Neville Shulman Royal Geographical Society grant and my childhood friend and expedition partner Callum, I set off to walk the length of the Jalan Raya in the hope of finding evidence of its continued use.
For the first two months, we were hit with a relentless stream of setbacks. We were the victims of theft and suffered multiple porter revolts and abandonment, resulting in the loss of half of our kit. We were interrogated and arrested twice and thrown out of the state of Puncak Jaya. We were accused of being gold thieves and threatened by an angry mob, and seemed to consistently choose the toughest, most inhospitable routes possible, from precipitous cliff-side paths to waist-deep floodwaters and exposed mountain tops.
But, we did confirm the existence of the Jalan Raya, or at least what was left of it: broken bridges, slowly shrinking paths choked by vines, abandoned villages and shacks in the forest. After two months, we had barely seen a soul and were yet to find anyone walking farther than two days to trade.
We eventually noticed a pattern develop in our walking: we would emerge from a forest or mountain path into a cleared, well-populated valley with a number of villages that decreased in density towards the ends. In the centre, we would find a larger village or town with an airstrip, army post, sometimes a linking road, a large market and several basic Indonesian-run tokos (shops).
It usually took a day or two to walk the length of these valleys, before we re-entered the forest, rejoining the disappearing paths for up to a week and then coming upon the next population centre.
The Papuan highlanders seemed to have moved on, and our efforts were met with laughter. ‘If you were getting a plane, we would understand, but walking? You’re crazy!’ quipped a highland politician, much to his friends’ amusement.
The impact of these planes was staggering. Indonesians from across the archipelago had moved to many of the major highland villages along the Jalan Raya to start new lives and businesses, bringing with them Indonesian products such as rice, tinned mackerel, cigarettes and sweets. The past 30 years have seen these villages grow from clusters of huts into trading hubs for the whole valley. Instead of walking for weeks with a unique regional product to sell to neighbouring tribes, Papuan highlanders today simply walk for a day to their local hub town and sell it at the market. Prices have become uniform, and shells have long been replaced by paper currency. There is simply no benefit to walking your items for days on end to sell for the same price at the matching hub of your neighbouring tribe.
And it wasn’t just the nature of tribal trade that was becoming homogenised as a result of these changes. Culturally, the distinctions between tribal groups are less and less noticeable: all the Papuans we met had converted to Christianity and had burned or given up their unique traditional idols as a result of an effective missionary campaign. Indonesian had effectively become the second language of most, and penis gourds had been replaced by T-shirts and shorts.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; many of the changes have brought great benefits to local communities. Indeed, the majority of the Papuans we met wanted the advanced transport links and enjoyed the financial benefits of easier trade. Christianity brought an end to much of the inter-tribal warfare, and the Indonesian language has provided a common tongue to communicate between tribal groups.
However, low standards of education and a system of development that clearly favours outsiders is increasingly leaving Papuans adrift in their own land. Already, two months into my expedition, I was beginning to feel decidedly despondent. I knew that we were failing in our objective and I was struck by a sense that this once great tradition was disappearing, practically unnoticed. Then came our encounter with the family of salt traders.
Salt trade
‘Yes, natural salt!’ the father exclaimed, slightly taken aback by my ecstasy over his bag of salt. ‘We are taking it to sell in Paniai. We’ll get 50,000 rupees (about £3.70) for one of these,’ indicating a single tuber. ‘We can get 1,000,000 rupees for carrying 20.’ This would be enough to support his family for several weeks.
We chatted for a few minutes before cries from the small boy in the noken signalled the end of our exchange. After another round of handshakes, the family resumed their journey, melting back into the forest.
The father had explained that we weren’t far from the village of Homeyo, from where they had fetched the salt. I was astonished. I had assumed that the widely available plastic bags of Indonesian salt had obliterated the traditional salt trade, but not only was it surviving, it was actually managing to make a decent profit.
With renewed determination, we made it to Homeyo the next afternoon. There, at the base of an isolated valley, stood a wooden hut with a tin roof and acrid salty smoke billowing from a chimney. Nearby, a large pool full of briny water had been carved into the valley wall. It was dammed at one end, and a bamboo tap allowed a controlled trickle of brine into the buckets lined up below.
The salt was produced by boiling the brine in large half-barrels over a fire until the water had completely evaporated. The salt was then wrapped tightly in bamboo leaves and bound with reeds before being left to dry in rows that reminded me of the fat, string-bound salamis you often see hanging in delicatessens.
About 30 men and women were working together to prepare the salt for sale and distribution. My enquiry as to how long the site had existed caused a lively and protracted debate among the older workers. Eventually, a teenage boy translated in Indonesian. ‘No-one really knows how long we’ve been making natural salt here, maybe hundreds of years, maybe thousands. He is the child of the people who did it before,’ he said, indicating an older man dressed in a stripy polo shirt.
The boy spoke with the schoolmasterly confidence of someone who had been taking Westerners on tours his whole life, yet I was certainly the first white man to visit the village. ‘We produce this salt for all of Papua,’ he continued. ‘We can still walk it to Paniai [to the west] and Puncak Jaya [to the east] but it’s too far to Wamena in the Baliem valley, so it goes on the cars at Puncak Jaya or on the planes, too. This is the only place in Papua where you can get salt like this. It’s so much more natural than other salt. It’s an excellent medicine for malaria and for treating throat infections,’ he said, gripping his throat for effect.
It was all very impressive. If I’m honest, I had expected something fairly simple. Yet, here was an efficient, profitable salt factory that was using advances in local transportation to its advantage. The unique qualities of the salt and originality of the product were keeping the business alive, and demand seemed high.
As a result, the nearby village appeared to have a higher level of education and motivation. It was the first time we encountered men working with women, not just in the factory but also in the gardens. There was a full-time school, several local teachers and a couple of well-run churches. And among the villagers there was a clear sense of pride in keeping their traditions alive; they had even kept a form of the historic shell currency to purchase wives and pigs.
‘Unfortunately, it is rare to see something like this, a Papuan business for Papuan people,’ lamented a local teacher, before adding: ‘I don’t really understand why people don’t work like they used to, but if we want a better future, we can’t afford to forget our past.’
Lost links
Despite the commitments of these Papuans to their traditional industry, their salt well is far from safe. I was told that mining companies had been exploring the mountains nearby, and many locals felt that it would be better to abandon the trade and try to work for them. I fear that soon, the villagers who have lived in and around the Jalan Raya will lose both the path itself and their connection with the remarkable cultural history that surrounds it, leaving them in limbo, neither connected to their past nor part of the future.
Neville Shulman Challenge Award
Will Millard visited New Guinea after securing a Neville Shulman Challenge Award from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). An annual award of £8,000 established for the Society by Neville Shulman CBE and his associates, it aims to further the understanding and exploration of the planet – its cultures, peoples and environments – while promoting personal development through the intellectual or physical challenges involved in undertaking the research and/or expeditions.
To apply, simply visit www.rgs.org/nevilleshulmanchallengeaward and download the guidelines. You can also read about past recipients.
August 2010
I pulled the bag off my face with a flourish, much as a television detective reveals a corpse from beneath a sheet, and took a deep breath of sharp, cold morning air. ‘Callum, why is it still raining?’ I asked the human-sized bivvy-bag sausage to my left. ‘Because divine forces are against us,’ a voice muttered darkly from the depths.
Trekking in this Papuan highland forest was getting monotonous. We were following a muddy path, less than a metre wide, at the base of a forest-filled V-shaped valley that apparently had its own microclimate: a relentless drizzle. The forest was so dense that it created a cocoon of silence around our lonely progress. Our most recent clutch of porters had left us days earlier, after refusing to cross tribal boundaries without express permission from their headman. In truth, we suspected that they knew the path ahead would be tough, and we had previously made them walk through a spider-infested flood, so their reluctance was understandable.
I surveyed my growing collection of injuries; insect bites on my joints, an unidentifiable rash on my back, cat-like scratches all over my shins and welts resembling squashed tomatoes on the backs of both ankles. It had been a tough two months. We were making little progress, geographically or intellectually, we were tired, and our time and money were running out.
‘Right, I’m off to the toilet,’ Callum said as he disappeared into the bushes. Almost immediately, I heard a call. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me: we hardly ever met people in the forest and had seen no-one for days. But then a family appeared on the path ahead, clucking animatedly to each other in their tribal language.
They hadn’t seen me yet and I was a bit nervous. Meeting people who had hardly any contact with outsiders was difficult at the best of times, but when you cross paths in the middle of an uninhabited forest, it can be particularly disconcerting for both parties. And to my horror, I realised that our introduction was about to involve them seeing Callum squatting behind a bush. I quickly called out, and his head popped up, just in time.
They were, indeed, shocked to see us, but we were soon exchanging greetings in Indonesian and shaking hands in the traditional manner for the region: gripping the hooked index finger of your acquaintance between your hooked index and middle fingers, then pulling back hard to produce an audible click. The louder the click, the greater the greeting.
They were a family: a heavily pregnant mother, father and their two sons, dressed in grubby, faded football kit with bright necklaces made from plastic beads and seeds. They were weighed down with bulging noken sacks made from dried strings of bark fibre, their foreheads taking the load via a single strap.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘We’re going to Enarotali,’ the father replied with a big, nervous grin, exposing the numerous gaps in his teeth.
I was getting excited. They had already been walking for several days and had more to go, meaning that they were travelling much farther than anyone else we had met. I was eager to find out what they were taking to trade and asked to see inside their nokens.
They unhitched them from their foreheads. I was really nervous. I knew that what happened next had the potential to justify this entire expedition. One bag contained a small boy, but in the others were long, tubular, leaf-wrapped parcels. ‘Garam asli,’ the father said. Natural salt. I could have kissed him.
Valley people
People have lived in New Guinea for more than 45,000 years, and yet Papua’s major highland population, the 80,000-strong Dani of the Baliem Valley, was only discovered in 1938. The island’s unique geography – a long, thick, rugged mountain backbone with steep-sided valleys between the ‘ribs’ – has sheltered indigenous Papuans from not just the world outside, but also from the tribes in neighbouring valleys.
More than 1,000 distinct languages have developed in New Guinea, accounting for a third of the world’s total and bolstering theories that tribes preferred to limit their contact with others. However, their history is filled with examples of inter-tribal co-operation of a complexity and sophistication far greater than they have ever been given credit for. Not least of these is the development of the Jalan Raya (‘Great Road’).
I first came across the Jalan Raya in Australian biologist Tim Flannery’s Throwim Way Leg, an epic account of his zoological surveys in New Guinea during the 1980s and ’90s. ‘This magnificent pathway, which traverses east–west along Irian Jaya’s [Papua’s] mountain spine… is one of the world’s great foot-only trade routes,’ he wrote. ‘Produce, such as the plumes of birds of paradise, has probably travelled along it for millennia on its journey to places as far afield as Sri Lanka and China.’
It was September 2007 when I first considered these words. I had been wondering how it was possible that a seashell, the cowrie, had become such an effective currency throughout the highlands, and how the sweet potato, a vegetable with South American origins, had become the staple of the locals’ diet. This long-distance trade route seemed a likely explanation.
Leopold Pospisil, a US anthropologist who worked in the western highlands during the 1950s and early ’60s, had also noted the existence of a complex system of loans and bartering centred on an on-foot inter-tribal chain of trade in pigs, shells, feathers, tools, salt and vegetables that stretched from the east coast, right across the highlands, for more than 400 kilometres. It seemed ironic that a culture accused of being ‘simple’ and ‘savage’ had apparently maintained one of the longest-running trade routes in human history to the ignorance of the rest of the world.
Highland route
I began my first pilot expeditions in Papua during the winter of 2007. My interactions with local people led me to believe that although the days of walking the complete length of the Jalan Raya were gone, the route still existed, and that in the more remote districts of Puncak Jaya and Paniai, people were still using it for trade.
So, in August last year, supported by a Neville Shulman Royal Geographical Society grant and my childhood friend and expedition partner Callum, I set off to walk the length of the Jalan Raya in the hope of finding evidence of its continued use.
For the first two months, we were hit with a relentless stream of setbacks. We were the victims of theft and suffered multiple porter revolts and abandonment, resulting in the loss of half of our kit. We were interrogated and arrested twice and thrown out of the state of Puncak Jaya. We were accused of being gold thieves and threatened by an angry mob, and seemed to consistently choose the toughest, most inhospitable routes possible, from precipitous cliff-side paths to waist-deep floodwaters and exposed mountain tops.
But, we did confirm the existence of the Jalan Raya, or at least what was left of it: broken bridges, slowly shrinking paths choked by vines, abandoned villages and shacks in the forest. After two months, we had barely seen a soul and were yet to find anyone walking farther than two days to trade.
We eventually noticed a pattern develop in our walking: we would emerge from a forest or mountain path into a cleared, well-populated valley with a number of villages that decreased in density towards the ends. In the centre, we would find a larger village or town with an airstrip, army post, sometimes a linking road, a large market and several basic Indonesian-run tokos (shops).
It usually took a day or two to walk the length of these valleys, before we re-entered the forest, rejoining the disappearing paths for up to a week and then coming upon the next population centre.
The Papuan highlanders seemed to have moved on, and our efforts were met with laughter. ‘If you were getting a plane, we would understand, but walking? You’re crazy!’ quipped a highland politician, much to his friends’ amusement.
The impact of these planes was staggering. Indonesians from across the archipelago had moved to many of the major highland villages along the Jalan Raya to start new lives and businesses, bringing with them Indonesian products such as rice, tinned mackerel, cigarettes and sweets. The past 30 years have seen these villages grow from clusters of huts into trading hubs for the whole valley. Instead of walking for weeks with a unique regional product to sell to neighbouring tribes, Papuan highlanders today simply walk for a day to their local hub town and sell it at the market. Prices have become uniform, and shells have long been replaced by paper currency. There is simply no benefit to walking your items for days on end to sell for the same price at the matching hub of your neighbouring tribe.
And it wasn’t just the nature of tribal trade that was becoming homogenised as a result of these changes. Culturally, the distinctions between tribal groups are less and less noticeable: all the Papuans we met had converted to Christianity and had burned or given up their unique traditional idols as a result of an effective missionary campaign. Indonesian had effectively become the second language of most, and penis gourds had been replaced by T-shirts and shorts.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; many of the changes have brought great benefits to local communities. Indeed, the majority of the Papuans we met wanted the advanced transport links and enjoyed the financial benefits of easier trade. Christianity brought an end to much of the inter-tribal warfare, and the Indonesian language has provided a common tongue to communicate between tribal groups.
However, low standards of education and a system of development that clearly favours outsiders is increasingly leaving Papuans adrift in their own land. Already, two months into my expedition, I was beginning to feel decidedly despondent. I knew that we were failing in our objective and I was struck by a sense that this once great tradition was disappearing, practically unnoticed. Then came our encounter with the family of salt traders.
Salt trade
‘Yes, natural salt!’ the father exclaimed, slightly taken aback by my ecstasy over his bag of salt. ‘We are taking it to sell in Paniai. We’ll get 50,000 rupees (about £3.70) for one of these,’ indicating a single tuber. ‘We can get 1,000,000 rupees for carrying 20.’ This would be enough to support his family for several weeks.
We chatted for a few minutes before cries from the small boy in the noken signalled the end of our exchange. After another round of handshakes, the family resumed their journey, melting back into the forest.
The father had explained that we weren’t far from the village of Homeyo, from where they had fetched the salt. I was astonished. I had assumed that the widely available plastic bags of Indonesian salt had obliterated the traditional salt trade, but not only was it surviving, it was actually managing to make a decent profit.
With renewed determination, we made it to Homeyo the next afternoon. There, at the base of an isolated valley, stood a wooden hut with a tin roof and acrid salty smoke billowing from a chimney. Nearby, a large pool full of briny water had been carved into the valley wall. It was dammed at one end, and a bamboo tap allowed a controlled trickle of brine into the buckets lined up below.
The salt was produced by boiling the brine in large half-barrels over a fire until the water had completely evaporated. The salt was then wrapped tightly in bamboo leaves and bound with reeds before being left to dry in rows that reminded me of the fat, string-bound salamis you often see hanging in delicatessens.
About 30 men and women were working together to prepare the salt for sale and distribution. My enquiry as to how long the site had existed caused a lively and protracted debate among the older workers. Eventually, a teenage boy translated in Indonesian. ‘No-one really knows how long we’ve been making natural salt here, maybe hundreds of years, maybe thousands. He is the child of the people who did it before,’ he said, indicating an older man dressed in a stripy polo shirt.
The boy spoke with the schoolmasterly confidence of someone who had been taking Westerners on tours his whole life, yet I was certainly the first white man to visit the village. ‘We produce this salt for all of Papua,’ he continued. ‘We can still walk it to Paniai [to the west] and Puncak Jaya [to the east] but it’s too far to Wamena in the Baliem valley, so it goes on the cars at Puncak Jaya or on the planes, too. This is the only place in Papua where you can get salt like this. It’s so much more natural than other salt. It’s an excellent medicine for malaria and for treating throat infections,’ he said, gripping his throat for effect.
It was all very impressive. If I’m honest, I had expected something fairly simple. Yet, here was an efficient, profitable salt factory that was using advances in local transportation to its advantage. The unique qualities of the salt and originality of the product were keeping the business alive, and demand seemed high.
As a result, the nearby village appeared to have a higher level of education and motivation. It was the first time we encountered men working with women, not just in the factory but also in the gardens. There was a full-time school, several local teachers and a couple of well-run churches. And among the villagers there was a clear sense of pride in keeping their traditions alive; they had even kept a form of the historic shell currency to purchase wives and pigs.
‘Unfortunately, it is rare to see something like this, a Papuan business for Papuan people,’ lamented a local teacher, before adding: ‘I don’t really understand why people don’t work like they used to, but if we want a better future, we can’t afford to forget our past.’
Lost links
Despite the commitments of these Papuans to their traditional industry, their salt well is far from safe. I was told that mining companies had been exploring the mountains nearby, and many locals felt that it would be better to abandon the trade and try to work for them. I fear that soon, the villagers who have lived in and around the Jalan Raya will lose both the path itself and their connection with the remarkable cultural history that surrounds it, leaving them in limbo, neither connected to their past nor part of the future.
Neville Shulman Challenge Award
Will Millard visited New Guinea after securing a Neville Shulman Challenge Award from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). An annual award of £8,000 established for the Society by Neville Shulman CBE and his associates, it aims to further the understanding and exploration of the planet – its cultures, peoples and environments – while promoting personal development through the intellectual or physical challenges involved in undertaking the research and/or expeditions.
To apply, simply visit www.rgs.org/nevilleshulmanchallengeaward and download the guidelines. You can also read about past recipients.
August 2010
|
FIND OUT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ON TWITTER:
| |
 |
