Sun, Jan 16, 2005
This time Bruce wants a taste of life with the Kombai, a Papuan tribe. They are so remote it proves an adventure in itself, even with a local guide, just to find and approach them in the vast, largely unspoiled forests of New Guinea. The men go naked except for a penis-cover, which is applied after a bewildering penis-inversion, and go on long hunting and gathering trips. They live in dizzying high, self-made tree houses, once a useful protection against headhunters from the south. In their tradition, cannibalism is practiced only as ultimate punishment for khakhua-kuma, evil human 'soul-eaters'. There is no metal, all tools are still made from wood and stone. Their staple food is sago, to Bruce's Western taste inedibly dry but easily available in the wood, leaving them lots of spare time. The favorite food are wild pigs and, for special celebrations, bred pigs; as delicious as those taste to the Westerner, so disgusting seems their smaller treat, fattened grubs, a smaller kind is put in the ear to eat the wax.
Mon, Sep 3, 2007
On Anuta, an extremely isolated small island, part of the (formerly British) Solomon Islands, Bruce gets the chief's permission to share 3 weeks the arguably most authentic Polynesian way of life with its 250 inhabitants, just 24 families who form a single, close community, bound by 'aropa', the principle that all produce -the entire atoll, behind low reefs, is gardened- and fishery catch -in the shallow using tidally flooded walls, and by canoe at sea- is shared, which facilitated the conversion to now devoutly practiced Anglicanism. Schooling in the distant national capital Honiara implies some westernizing, yet medicine remains so primitive -the chief refused a popularly desired clinic, claiming prayer helps best- that Bruce's first aid kit, mainly the antibiotics, must save a man's life with a badly infected foot. The traditional woven bark has given way, except for ceremonial use, to textile sarongs or Western dress. Native names are replaced in practice by Western ones, one boy was even called Mel Gibson- his father and another man went missing fishing a sea, presumed dead.
Mon, Sep 17, 2007
Bruce spends a month in Laya, a village of the Luna people in the inaccessible north of Himalayan Budhist kingdom Bhutan. The local spiritual (and social) headman teaches him about ascetic detachment, but the traditions are more animistic. Even by yak, the local bovine and burden animal, traveling to even higher Lunana has to be abandoned. Returning also means participating in the three days annual festival, including an archery competition
Mon, Aug 8, 2005
Bruce spends a month with traditional nomads in the Darhad Valley, near the Siberian border of Outer Mongolia. Barely arrived, he gets his first lessons in the two national obsessions: wrestling and horses in a mountainous land almost without car-fit roads. He soon attends in Rencenlumbe the Naddam, a festival of traditional contests, the main ones being wrestling and a 15 km bare-back horse race for riders from age 6 up. Twelve years after the fall of Communism, the valley gets its first own newspaper, yet 'revolutionary' remnants, often Soviet- Russian, remain common. An old Lamaist monk recalls the persecution which in 1938 destroyed the 1000 men strong monastery, never replaced. His hosts, Mishig's family, expect Bruce to help out when everyone migrates, four times a year, with the yak, sheep, goat and horse herds, whose self-processed produce makes them nearly self-sufficient. The whole dwelling is designed for easy mobility, mainly in gerts, an ingenious traditional type of tent.
Mon, Sep 24, 2007
Bruce joins one of the last authentic nomadic hunter-gatherer bands of the Penan people in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in northern Borneo. he's charmed by their kind, clever way to live in harmony with neither and each-other. But most of all he's sadly impressed by the tragic ruin of their ancient way of life by government-authorized logging, which ruins the primary rain-forest forever: even when it grown back, the resulting secondary forest never regains the necessary rich variety to properly support wildlife and the Penan.
Mon, Aug 27, 2007
Bruce passes five icy winter weeks with a traditional nomadic group -half live in modern villages- of the Nenets, a pastoral people on the Northern Siberian Yamal peninsula, inside the Arctic Circle, which holds a quarter of the world's known natural gas reserve. They live in tents, following reindeer herds, which are wild except for the semi-domesticated beasts of burden, given the huge distance a five month annual tundra migration. Everything is made and organized for the polar climate, actually too complicated for a novice guest to be much use. They also fish in the ice.
Sun, Jan 2, 2005
Bruce visits the Adi, an isolated tribe in the foothills of the Himalaya between India (in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, carved from colonial Assam) and Tibet, ethnically closest to Bhutan, and shamanistic animists, enjoying governmental protection for their ancestral culture. They live in practically isolated villages, which few ever leave, practicing subsistence farming, clearing forests tracks every three year, and are omnivores, even live beetles, even fecal material is fed to 'toilet pigs'. The gam (elected chief, in a consensus model) of Jorsing village accepts to host Bruce, and gets everyone to help building a hut for him with simple forest produce, but many villages are beginning to use more permanent, comfortable modern materials, like electricity, connecting roads, even TV, all introduced by the Adi's own pragmatical choice. Apong, beer made from fermented millet, is crucial for social and ritual purposes, such as blessing the new hut. Bruce is 'adoped' by the 'gam', who brings some heirlooms. The measure of wealth are mithuns, a bovine species they keep in the forests, for work nor milk, rarely slaughtered except for offerings to the unseen, omnipresent spirits. The 'miri', traditional healer, is a female healer, whose influence and status wane because her healing inefficiency drives mostly youngsters to abandon animism in favor of modern medicine and often convert to Christianity, which however stresses prayer. They practice gathering and ambush hunting for days, using modern guns or traditional bow and traps, especially for deer, wild boar, monkey, squirrel and the surprising favorite: rat, which is eaten in the whole, fur and bones included. For the Aran festival, when neighboring villagers visit but Christians stay away, 'roti' bread is baked with raw-mixed in frog and cut-up rat; a mithun is strangled by hanging to be eaten with song and dance. Gratefull Bruce gets a send-off in style.
Thu, Aug 30, 2007
In this episode Bruce stays a month with the Atie, a hunter-gatherer tribe, which lives in Tanzania, surrounded by the far more numerous, pastoral Maasai, who look down upon them as 'cattle-less primitives' and soil the pools by washing in them, so the Atie generally must drink dirty water. They significantly supplement their meager hunting harvest by braving bees for honey, for Bruce a personal phobia.