Walking the Trail

At first glance, many people would write off the people of the Memberamo River area as possessing low intellects. They live generation after generation in the same type of house, many times without walls and huge gaps between the floorboards. They trudge for hours everyday in bare feet, without ever an effort to fashion any sort of shoes - even despite seeing Westerners possessing them. Until the last generation, many (if not most) of the people went nude - at least from the waist up.

Theirs, however, is a pragmatic knowledge. Houses without walls provide for better cooling. The government, in some villages, produced huts with tight floors and walls, made with fairly straight boards, and also zinc roofs. These often proved too hot for the people and these are now often used to provide stables to hold their pigs in, while they have often returned to open walls (like that above). Shoes, though they would be nice, are not as helpful as one would think. Shoes will make one clumsy when traversing logs and will not provide the grip which bare feet would enable - neither will shoes last in this environment…not even weeks. T-shirts literally rot on the people - for they are not washed on a regular basis (most men only possessing one or two shirts at the most, the better one being saved for church).# Bare skin dries easier and quicker in this climate of on-again-off-again rain.

Expecting a wide range of flora and fauna knowledge from these people, I was (mostly) not disappointed. I was directed to trees and roots which stained the skin for decoration, rarely used now. I was shown a sap which burns brightly - good for late night meetings around the fire. I was shown a tree (LEFT) which, if you kick the trunk, will reverberate loudly like a bell (useful in the old days to warn of enemies, now it is used to alert friends at one‘s near approach).
# As a Westerner unaccustomed to recognizing Papuan faces, I simply memorized who was wearing what shirt. A week later and they would still be wearing the same shirt. As well, they wear whatever T-shirts they can find, without associating them with any endorsements or messages. I’ve seen church elders wearing “2-Pac” shirts, Che Guevara shirts, WWF wrestling “Smack Down” shirts, and one pastor even went to church with a shirt reading, “Hey Home Boy” with two “gangsta rappers” on its front (you always wear your best shirt to church).

When I asked, however, what this or that root was, however, I often met with the same word. Finally, in exasperation at getting the same response for 5 or 6 different roots and plants, I asked Dan the other missionary, who has lived among these people for 13 years. “Pig Food,” was the response. The name for everything I had pointed to was lumped under the general category of food for pigs.

Knowledge of the times tables, knowing that 1066 was the Battle of Hastings, and solving of binomial equations in algebra is of little use when surrounded by extreme jungle environment. The same goes for kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species. The only taxonomy known is the classification according to usefulness. The name “pig food,” makes perfect sense for describing widely varied roots and plants - if pig food is all that they are used for!

Their wisdom is focused differently than ours, and their mental acumen is exerted towards different efforts. Case in point: Setting off on a 4 day trek from Biri to Taruda to Taiyai, I barely covered 1 mile when, at a bend in the trail, I was halted by laughter behind me. Several men were gathered on the trail, poking an object with a stick. I had, unknowingly stepped right over the top of a python, which these men were now bringing to my attention. It was partially covered in leaves, naked to the Western eye and motionless - but quite visible and plain to these folks. Good thing that they stated that, “This snake is lazy, it will not bite you,” indicating that it lay in a torpor - probably from a fresh meal, and was not aggressive when disturbed.

Case in point: Having fallen off logs, slipped into creeks, tumbled down mud banks and, in every way, having been generally humbled and humiliated by my own clumsiness and awkwardness, I was looking for similar mishaps by the village men with whom I was trekking. I was actually happy for an instant when I saw one of the village men lose his footing on a log covered in mud - but he soon recovered his quick pace. Aside from this momentarily lapse (and quick recovery) I saw no other flagrant displays of wild clumsiness as I had displayed countless times.

ME AND BERNARD, ELDER OF THE CHURCH IN BIRI (RIGHT)

Trekking through the jungle was very humbling, indeed. The other men, barefoot, would grip the trunks of logs we would cross with the soles of their arch-less feet. Their big toes were turned out and almost resembled thumbs it seemed. I discovered that it was hard to find my loose shoe laces to re-tie them because my legs were black from foot to thigh with thick jungle mud (“like walking 9 hours through a septic tank,” I described it later to my wife).

At one point, after falling off two logs in quick succession, then sinking past my knees in greenish-black rancid water, one of the men called to missionary Dan Dority, who translated the message back to me, “Tell him not to fall down anymore…”

Man adapts the environment to himself often. When the environment is harsh and unyielding, man adapts himself to the environment - and his mental efforts follow. Though lacking the leisure and tools for thoughtful reflection on many subjects, there is, nonetheless, a “scholarship” of the jungle - a harsh tutor indeed. When Western Man encounters Tribal Man, due to the above factors described, Western Man is in a quandary. Are these people incredibly skilled and smart? Are these men incredibly stupid and unrefined? The answer is probably both…in many ways. I hope that their assessment of me is a gentle one!

Preaching in Tarure and Taiyai:

To have a Western missionary preach the majority of messages on Sunday mornings is not desirable in Papua. Unless the sweat of the people is expended in the process, then the people will not own the process. To have a Westerner preach and run the village churches is counter-productive to growth and maturity also. It is a sure recipe for a “spiritual welfare system” and missionary paternalism (the “Great White Father” Syndrome). Many villages, churches and buildings have rotted in a year or two’s time, both externally (the building) and internally (the people). This occurs sometimes even when built for the people and given to the people, because it was the missionary’s project and because the peoples’ sweat was not involved. When native sweat was involved it was often done for rupiahs or done out of deference for the missionary’s status and not truly out of a heart of charity or a desire for improvement on the part of the people.

Most of the time, the Western missionary’s role is to advise as a brother, to mentor the local elders, to teach when asked, but by no means steal the initiative away from the people. Initiative and self-produced endeavor is a fragile seed which grows slowly at best.

Having said all of that, when a Western missionary visits the villages on the interior, he can be assured that the village leader and the church elder (if there is one) will give the preaching services to him. On my trek to some of the more remote interior villages, that honor fell upon me.

The following are some curiosities about preaching in the villages:

Though I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything except for a suit and tie in most U.S. churches, on both occasions on the interior there was not a single shoed foot in the congregation. The preacher (me) preached in bare feet and the cleanest T-shirt and shorts I could find. The morning of the service Bernard, the elder at Biri, unwrapped a plastic bag he had been carrying for days. The sole item it contained was a special pair of shorts which were of a denim material and came down to the knees, which he donned for the service - afterwards changing back to his usual attire and re-wrapping his “church shorts” in the bag.

Bernard saw fit, however, to wear the same orange and dirty shirt for the service, as he had done the entire previous week (he wore the same shirt the following week as well). This shirt was possibly his only shirt in possession. If he had possessed another, it may have found its way into the plastic bag as well to be donned with his “church shorts”).#

# Bernard impressed me much as a loyal and caring warrior for the Lord Jesus Christ. He took particular care to help me across logs, holding my hand as I crossed oftentimes. Also, before morning light, I awoke in Taiyai (we slept communally on the floor) to hear him reading the New Testament to a small group of assembled men and praying with them afterwards at length. He also led in prayer before meals.
Church is signaled by the beating of some metal object - the closest thing to a church bell. People begin milling towards church and the service begins whenever everyone gets there. If sunny, it will begin early. If rainy, the “bell” will wait for the rain to cease, or mid-day.
Every prayer begins with, “One, Two, Three…” or “Satu, Dua, Tiga…” and ends with “Halleluah…Amen..” perhaps a carry-over of some of the first missionaries. The prayers are very long, even minutes.
Breastfeeding may sometimes be tolerated in churches in the U.S. but certainly not of the Papuan kind. Bare breasts are not an uncommon sight during the service and many times, after feeding, the women will simply just leave their chests uncovered (for easy access later?).
As well, there is no such thing as a cry room in Papua. The service is often a cacophony of babies screaming, roosters crowing, pigs snorting, and deafening cicadas whirring (often about six inches in length).
In most churches the men enter into one “door” (opening), and the women enter into another. Men sit in front, women and small children sit in back.
Lizards traverse the walls freely during the service. Pigs root underneath the church (all houses are on poles to keep them elevated and off the wet ground) - when bowing your head to pray you can see them through the gaps in the boards.
Christians in Papua may wrap thread through the holes in their ears, but not wood. Christians do not chew Betel-nut.


One must check the cultural practices before preaching any messages.
Sometimes one will find interesting points of commonality. Preaching on Matthew 22, the marriage feast of the King’s Son, where the uninvited guest was cast out into Outer Darkness, coincided closely with the common practices of eating. The men would have their food brought to them indoors, then the door would be closed and the men would eat in private. It is extremely taboo for anyone on the outside to interrupt or try to come in once the meal has begun.
Sometimes the idioms and metaphors are oftentimes not a strong trait of these often concrete and literal people, and prone to legalistic readings. It is probable that the same message on Matthew 22, which speaks metaphorically of a guest coming into the King’s marriage feast with the wrong wedding garment was not communicated properly. Our righteousness is as filthy rags, so that we need to, “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh.” When this was translated from English into Indonesian into Biriati, this was probably communicated as, “Don’t come to church in filthy rags.”

Narrative stories, especially the Old Testament are very powerful. The Book of Judges strikes these people with awe…“and every man did what was right in his own eyes.” “That was how we lived..and many of us now live…” folks report. In many respects, the culture of 1st Century Judaism was much more advanced than the Lakes Plains area of the 21st Century. Stories of working the fields, or clan warfare, or sacrifices to strange gods is contemporary news, not ancient history.
“My oxen and fatlings are killed..” Matthew 22 reads, speaking of preparations for the marriage supper in that particular parable. I never thought that an explanation of what a cow was would be needed!