“Percis, percis, an . . ., bii,” were the only words I could grasp from what he said. As he waved his flashlight while talking to me, I understood what Dasih wanted. Percis was light bulb—since it is a technological term and not Indonesian word, it could be a Dutch word—and bii means ‘no’. The…
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Doing well with farming, I wanted to try with fishing. The Asmat used various methods to catch fish. The most common was spreading a net (stake net?) between two sticks across the river at the end of increasing tide and coming back at the end of decreasing tide. This net would catch medium and big…
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In order to survive in the interior of Papua, we have to have a special motivation. Money did not work for me; my salary was very little and I had come not for it. Helping people, honestly, was not an adequate drive when I had malaria and I was disappointed with the attitude of these…
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An Asmat woman who could read was extremely rare, probably 1 per 1000. We can trace the source of this problem to the maturity indicators of female across cultures. The ratio girl to boy in grade 1 in Bayun school 1:4; grade 2, 1:5; grade 3, 1:7; and grade 4, no girl. The Principal Simon—unlike…
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In addition to loneliness, malaria was the most difficult thing to live with. The plasmodia invaded my blood in the second month of my arrival in Pari. Having fever, chill, headache, muscle ache, nausea, vomiting, and general weakness for more than a week was tormenting. Not being able to eat, sleep, walk, and, especially, read…
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“What is the name of your first child?” “Yosef.” “Is he alive?” “Dead.” “Number two?” “Markus.” “Alive?” “He is outside.” “Who is next?” “No name yet.” “Where is it?” “Outside.” That is the typical process to get the answer to the question ‘how many children do you have?’ from a pregnant Asmat woman. If we…
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Anytime packages from Basiem or Agats arrived in Bayun, the mail bundle was always the first I checked. Most of the time, I was disappointed. Sometimes I called Basiem, Agats, or even Ewer—the Ursulin Sisters—by radio and asked the people to check their mail boxes for my letters and to make sure the letters for…
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Scientists show that pets, especially dogs, help control blood hypertension and stress. But that was not my reason to have pets whenever feasible. That feasibility covers two ends of my lifetime: the dawn and the dusk. I had two dogs when I was a young boy in Jakarta. They were my best friends at home….
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Breaking news or headline news is always attracting to us, although most of the news are not directly relevant to our life. We are just curious because they happen in our town, country, and world. What if we lived in an entirely different world—like in the hunter-gatherers’ one–for years? In the second month in Bayun,…
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That unforgettable, and nightmarish, case was started with a SOS radio message from Pirimapun. I had just arrived in Bayun a week before. Pater Bob, the caller, could not describe the condition of the patient beyond “she has a problem in delivering her baby.” I asked Ambo, the motorist, to prepare the slup; myself the…
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When I said I wanted to study at the Institute of Agriculture in Bogor, my father sarcastically said, “You want to become a farmer, huuh!” He forgot that 90% of the buyers in his shop were farmers; they might be poor individually, but together they had provided us good income, which enabled him to finance…
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Pantai Kasuari (abbreviated Pari, Casuarinen Coast) was a district of Merauke Regency. Bayun–located by Arafura Sea–is one of its villages. It is not found on the standard map, but you could try with Google Earth or Maps if you are curious—the key words are ‘Bayun, Asmat, Papua’. In Merauke, if a civil servant were assigned…
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To solve the problem of unequal distribution of doctors, the Government compelled all new doctors to register and to work for it. The new doctors could choose one province where they want to work. The 27 provinces were classified as non-remote, remote, and very remote. The doctors would receive a higher salary and a shorter…
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Compassionate people are not so many in the world, I mean the genuinely ones—no hidden self-interest expectation in return. The nuns, the Mothers—not the Fathers—is the group I find has many compassionate people among its members. Of course, it has many hypocrite members too, but relatively low comparing with the Fathers and Doctors. Two day…
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Nobody will argue that ‘doctors are the worst patients.’ They challenge the diagnosis and treatment from their doctor. But being a patient, especially a very sick one, is necessary to become a good doctor because doctors tend to be cold. They often look their patients as machines—hopefully not ATMs—need to be fixed; remember their diagnosis…
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“You don’t change” or “You’re still the same” is invariably said by the people I ran into after years—up to 30 years—of our parting. The sameness they mean includes both physical appearance and personality traits. I am glad—not because I look younger for my age—that I am able to escape from the power of my…
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SOS “How come?” the desperate voice came from the communication radio in the AMA (Associated Mission Aviation) office of Sentani, Papua. “They said there were no doctor available now. They promised to send a medical team next week. Over,” Bosco Fernandez, the AMA manager replied. “Next week! People are dying every day everywhere. . ….
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Returning to Kago was not as hard as coming from. Many children of Mayuberi accompanied us—they could walk round trip within a day. My backpack moved from one’s to another’s back. Still I was the second slowest person after David. At one stop, I shared the last pack of my cookies with them. All 7…
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I always went to convents or health centers in the places where there was no hotel or inn and I knew nobody. As no nuns lived in Ilaga, my choice was only Puskesmas, the government health center. As usual, there was no doctor in charge although officially, there should have been. The head paramedic Matias,…
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Although I had decided to choose Papua (Irian Jaya then) as my work place months before graduation, I needed to make sure I would like it. One week after graduation (June 1989), I was in the plane to Papua with David Stanley, a cinematography student from the University of California at San Diego. He was…
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