Mamberamo – Papua – the forbidden river

The Mamberamo River – New Guinea Island – Indonesian province Papua (Irian Jaya)

Mysterious Mamberamo

The Mamberamo River is situated in the east-west forest of Papua. For many years this area has been almost totally closed off. Many maps mark the basin of the river Mamberamo as „Strictly prohibited territory“.

Mamberamo, Mamberamo, Mamberamo… it nags at my mind all the time. The closeness of the area evokes curiosity and desire for more knowledge. Why is it so? Why is Mamberamo so guarded? Is it because crocodiles are hunted there? Is it because of the dangerous aborigines? I don’t like unanswered questions.

In 2004 we organized an expedition into the Mamberamo territory. It succeeded. We managed to contact the right people, get acquainted, and finally obtain the unobtainable permits. We are there. We headed towards the mountains, and sailed up the river. At the end of our expedition, we find the warriors of the Mamberamo River. The success of this expedition challenges us to return! Mamberamo enriched our voyages with new possibilities. Only there did we find what we had been searching for the ten years of our expeditions in New Guinea.

We have tips concerning several promising areas in the vicinity of Mamberamo River.

Our trips to Mamberamo fall into the category of first contact expeditions. It is not actually the first contact with people living in this area, because missionaries operate here as well. However, tourists get there very rarely and we want to penetrate areas which are outside the sphere of influence of the missionaries anyway. These might be a real first contact expeditions with everything you might expect from it. Are you prepared for the challenge?

Mamberamo – West Papua – Vano Tribe – stone axe makers  – Harrers´Ja-li-me

Vano tribe is one of the best manufacturers of stone axes not only in the Mamberamo area, but also in the whole Papua. It is said that the stone that they use, is one of the best kinds to be found on the entire New Guinea Island.

On this island lies the legendary village Ja-li-me (The spring of stone axes). Heinrich Harrer writes about this village in his book “Coming from the Stone Age”. Up to the present day Wana men wear kotekas, and women wear skirts made of grass.

The tribe still produces stone axes. It is fascinating to observe how they choose the right place in the dike of the stone, and how they use fire to quarry it. They erect primitive scaffolding, and they more or less shin up on it. Then they build a small platform below the streak, and pave it with flat stones, finally building a fire on them. The rock has to be heated for almost a whole day, until it cracks and gives away to a block consisting of several dozen kilograms of stone.

No sooner than the next day does the difficult and lengthy treatment of the future stone axes begin. The stone has to be broken first. This process begins by throwing a big stone on a block, which was previously cast loose from the rock. Then they proceed by smashing (cleaving) the stones into the approximate shape of the future axe heads. In the end, the stone is sharpened against other stones (or sometimes by them).

This is one of the very last places where you can actually see how stone axes are made. Perhaps this is the last place in the world where production of stone axes is an every day event. For how long will this custom preserve? How long will it take till the stone axes will be replaced by more powerful steel axes or perhaps chain-saws? I would like to say that it will happen in the distant future, but I would be lying…

Ja-li-me (The Spring Of Stone Axes) and Vano tribe which Heinrich Harrer writes about are still there. Vano tribe lives its traditional way of life and Vano tribesmen manufacture their stone axes in the very same way which was described by Heinrich Harrer in his book. New photos that we have made during our expeditions in the third millenium are very similar to those brought by Heinrich Harrer in 1962. We have reached the same Ja-li-me as he did some fourty years ago. However, we have managed to reach the tribe in much simpler and safer way.

West Papua – The warriors of the Mamberamo river

The warriors of the Mamberamo river wear skirts with a „tail“ in the back, and cone-shaped grass hats decorated by casuar feathers. They are always armed with unusually large bows and arrows.

How many photographs of these tribesmen have you seen? Certainly there weren’t many of them, since these are the warriors of the forbidden river, of the Mamberamo River.

They hunt big crocodiles; this is the reason why they have to wear bigger and stronger bows, and more robust arrows than other Papuan people. Their different outfit should perhaps resemble a casuar, a big cursorial bird resembling the ostrich, which it actually hunts.

One can only note: strange clothes, strange people, and a strange, mysterious river named Mamberamo, on the strange New Guinea Island, in an even stranger area, Papua (Irian Jaya).

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