Chapter 5 - Jungles of New Guinea

JUNGLES OF NEW GUINEA

We are lodging at the Christian and Missionary Alliance guest house in Bangkok—an elegant old colonial mansion with broad verandas and thick white pillars set in the midst of spreading trees and tropical gardens. Late afternoon tea is served to the guests and mission couple who host this house. I sip my tea, sitting on the marble porch, then wander among the guests. Returning, I find the family dog has lapped up my drink. “May I have another cup,” I ask hopefully.

“No,” the hostess replies firmly. “You should have watched your tea!” I am surprised at her coldness…Grandma Larson had refilled my milk coffee over and over.

Each night Mom and Dad tuck Romaine and me in bed beneath mosquito netting…a gauzy tent of safety. I snuggle in, enjoying our adventures.

In a few days we fly to Manila, then Biak, a tiny island on the equator, north of Dutch New Guinea. The hotel room in Biak is rustic, with a whirring fan and gray sheets. Mom asks for fresh linens, but the ones the maid brings are just as dirty looking. However, the next morning the hotel dining room gleams clean and spacious, and Ro and I lavish Dutch chocolate sprinkles on our bread.

Later, walking on the front lawn, we meet a man with a snow-white cockatoo sporting a lemon colored plume. The bird caws, and we talk to him, enchanted.

Our next flight is a Catalina seaplane which takes us over cloud covered mountains deep into New Guinea’s interior, to Enarotali. February 4, 1953 is a momentous day for Mom and Dad—to finally splash onto Lake Paniai, after years of preparation. A motorboat picks us up, and chugs to a long pier where Lloyd and Dorie Van Stone greet us among crowds of dark Ekari tribesmen. Singing tribal songs they escort us up the hill to a large log house where Mom tells us we will live for a few weeks. The Deiblers, Michaelsons, and Posts pioneered this base years ago, and the Dutch government also have an outpost here.

But we wait for two months for our belongings in drums to arrive. Romaine and I play with the Van Stone kids and other Indonesian children. Mom and Dad study the Malay trade language, and Dad treks with Mr. Michaelson to mission outposts.

When the drums do come and are carted up the hill, the contents are repacked into rectangle metal containers (blicks), carriers are hired, and we say good bye to the mission family. Our three day journey turns into five days. Our first day we travel by motorboat, the rest on foot. Mom becomes ill…the natives build a stretcher for her, but she finally sits up and presses doggedly on. Ro and I are bourne on the shoulders of the Ekari—others carry the blicks.

Our small caravan winds on and on, plodding slowly through muddy marshes, up rocky streambeds, and over the ridges of mountains. The jungle is thick with undergrowth and hanging vines, and I am glad to be riding high, though the tribesman’s sweat is strong, as I jounce forward. One day it rains continuously, drops pattering onto the woven palm-leaf mat that is protecting me and my sturdy Ekari.

Our tent is finally set up for the night, and food aromas waft from the smoky campfire where boiled rice and corned beef are cooking. As Mom dishes up our supper onto tin plates we pray and wolf it down. “It’s so good…” I exclaim.

“We’re all so hungry I think anything would taste good!” Mom laughs. She was feeling better.

On the fifth day we climb the hill to Homejo in the Kemandoga Valley, and Bill and Gracie Cutts welcome us with open arms. Gracie is a beautiful chubby woman with curly brown hair, a warm personality. They serve us a delicious dinner, then Bill takes us down the hill to show us our new home. He is blond, a thoughtful man who walks slightly tilted to one side (because of birth trauma, I am told). He tells jokes…we laugh.

Our new home is a cottage, a 1 ½ storied log frame house covered inside and out with woven rattan matting. Two rooms downstairs, with a cookstove in the kitchen, two bedrooms upstairs, beneath a bright tin roof. I like it.

In the days following Mom and Dad settle in while Romaine and I explore the hillside and make friends with Moni kids. One girl—Boma Kumba—is perhaps eight, three years older than me. After helping her mother in the potato gardens she can spend time with us. I point to objects, she gives Moni works…and in a few weeks I start putting small sentences together.

There are fields of tall grasses below our home. My sister and I burrow in them with the Moni kids, catch grasshoppers. One shows us how to string them on stalks of grass, roast, eat them. Crunchy, strange tasting...

Later, on Saturdays I begin to hike with Aunt Gracie to villages, inviting Monis to come to church the next day. One rainy day after trekking long we both slide down a steep muddy hill instead of stepping gingerly. Our jeans are mud caked, and I am cold. But when we reach the station, a warm sudsy bath in the metal washtub and Mom’s hot meal make life complete!