Book Excerpt

As I looked through the helicopter windshield, I marveled at the rugged, untamed Papuan landscape below. Towering gray rocks stuck out of steep, forest-covered mountainsides. Waterfalls rushed down the slopes into raging white-water rivers. Here and there I saw a cluster of tiny huts and gardens and sometimes even steel-roofed buildings next to a grass runway. We had long left the last road behind us, which connected some mountain villages to the town of Wamena where I lived. 

We were heading to an isolated pioneer mission station in the middle of a jungle-covered mountain range. Although the people had lived there for countless generations like their ancestors, they had only been discovered a few years earlier. I was about to meet some of the last people on earth who still lived in Stone Age conditions! While I looked at the exotic vegetation, patches of sand, and brown ponds gliding by below me, my feelings fluctuated between excitement and apprehension. 

Andrew’s voice in my headset interrupted my thoughts: “Would you like to take the controls for a while?” 

My heart raced. I had never had the courage to ask if I could fly a helicopter. During my childhood in Germany, my father had sometimes taken our family along on flights in the light aircraft of a flying club, but he had never allowed me to take the controls (unlike my brother). Now my time had come!

Andrew explained a few basic things about helicopter flying and the cyclic and collective control sticks, and then I took the controls. I was amazed at how sensitive they were.

“When I learned to fly my instructor told me: ‘You pull up the stick, and the houses get smaller, you press down on the stick, and the houses get bigger,’” Andrew said.

I guessed the same applied to trees, as there were no houses in sight for miles around.

When we got to a cloudy area a few minutes later, Andrew took over the controls again. I was disappointed that my first try to steer a helicopter had come to such a quick end, but I couldn’t wait to write to my brother about it.

Life is fair in the long run!

Back home I had loved to look at the beautiful German landscapes with the neat small towns, forests, and patterns of differently colored fields. However, the many roads, train lines, and other infrastructure marred the landscapes. Every square inch of the forest was managed. What a difference compared to the majestic and untamed beauty of New Guinea—the second largest island on earth situated just south of the equator on the Pacific Ring of Fire!

After about an hour and a half of flying, we came to an area where the mountains were completely forest-covered and looked uninhabited. At a closer look, I noticed smoke rising from a tiny hillside patch. It turned out to be a garden and a few huts. Part of the reason the Moi people living here hadn’t been discovered earlier was they didn’t live in villages but in tiny hamlets scattered all over the area.

Then I noticed metal roofs in the middle of a clearing on the hillside. People had built three wooden houses around a small, flat, empty patch at a short distance from each other. We landed on that cleared spot, which turned out to be the Moi mission station helipad. The three resident missionary families welcomed us.

A few tribesmen looked on from a distance. They were carrying bows and arrows and were wearing nothing but long hollow gourds covering sections of their private parts. They were virtually still living in Stone Age conditions.

A few minutes ago, I had looked at another world from a bird‘s-eye view. Now, I had been dropped in it for real.

As I watched the helicopter take off and disappear behind the forest-covered mountains, a strange feeling crept up inside me: “Left behind.”

 

 

Excerpt 2 

from the Chapter “Game on!”

 

 

 

After a twenty-minute flight through the beautiful mountains, we landed at Silimo. While Brian disconnected the helicopter battery and spun the rotor backward, to prevent a carbon lock-up in the turbine, we were warmly welcomed by Buzz, Myrna, and their two young sons, as well as people from the local Ngalik tribe. We women were even given long handmade necklaces as welcome gifts from the villagers. 

…

“We’re having some problems with the hydropower plant behind the house. Could you guys have a look at it?” Buzz asked Hans and Brian.

“Sure. Let’s get to work.”

The rest of us walked around the compound and the airstrip and took in the sights, sounds, and smells. Women were busy repairing the airstrip and the water channel leading to the small hydropower plant. 

“That’s interesting, why is it mainly ladies, who do the work?” we wondered.

“Well, that’s part of the culture here,” Myrna explained, “the men do the hefty one-off jobs like building the houses, clearing the land for a garden and the like, but the women do the ongoing everyday work. Traditionally, the men were responsible for warfare and for protecting the women while they worked. The ladies are used to working hard on a daily basis to provide food and they are also diligent at maintaining the airstrip.”

“Protect the women? From what?”

“From enemy warriors. If one tribe has killed more people than the other in a war, a woman or child could be killed working in the garden to even out the score.”

While we walked along, I tried to process all this information.

“Look at that old lady; she doesn’t have fingers, just stumps! What happened to her?” Ernst asked, and we all looked at the petite elderly lady distraught. When we looked around we noticed, several other older ladies had one or more fingers missing, with only the first phalanx remaining, while none of the younger women did.

Buzz passed on Ernst’s question to the lady and then translated her reply.

“When I was a young girl, my mother died. As it was our custom, my fingers were chopped off as a sign of mourning.” 

We were all struck by this revelation.

“So when you die, will your daughter’s fingers also be chopped off?” Ernst inquired.

“No, no,” the lady replied. “We know the gospel now and have stopped doing that.”

 

 

Rats!

​

Flame out!

It was better for this to happen on the gas stove in the kitchen than on the gas turbine engine in the helicopter but still, I was in the middle of cooking, and a meal was at stake. I called the hangar to ask for another propane gas bottle.

“We only have small ones left, but someone will drop one off shortly.”

“Thanks, Jan, that will save our dinner.” 

It would have been next to impossible to get the woodstove heated sufficiently in time to save the meal.

It usually took several weeks for the empty propane gas tanks to be flown to the coast, refilled, and flown back to Wamena, but the small one would be enough to bridge the time. When it was delivered, we placed the small bottle into a compartment inside the oven instead of outside where we kept the large ones. 

 

 

A few days later, while putting dishes away, my chin dropped. A long thin tail was sticking out behind a stack of crockery. 

How did you get in here?

Then I realized we hadn’t plugged the hole in the wall after pulling out the hose for the large gas bottle and now rats were using it to get into the house. 

Oh no! How do we get rid of them again? And how many have come in anyway?

It was an unsettling thought that these critters were now walking all over our plates, pots, pans, and going through our pantry. Rats could spread diseases like typhoid fever, so we needed to do something about them quickly. We plugged up the hole, and I thought of ways to combat our uninvited guests. What was the first line of defense against rats? Cats!

When I next saw the rat in my pantry cupboard, it was time to deploy M.G., Briana’s black tomcat. I phoned Luana, and a few minutes later she delivered the feline. We opened the cupboard, put M.G. inside, closed the door, and listened. Nothing. We tapped on the wood to set things into motion. Still nothing. We cautiously opened the door to take a peak. A pair of big round eyes stared back at us. M. G. was scared stiff—just like the hiding rat, smelling a cat. My plan wasn’t working. M. G. jumped out of the pantry and bolted behind the woodstove (Maybe we should have given him a proper briefing beforehand).

“Get something to hit the rat with,” Luana instructed me and pulled things out of the pantry. I raised an eyebrow and grabbed a broom. Nervously, I watched as foil, wrap, corn flakes, flour, sugar, noodle packages, etc. came off the shelves.

Zing!

We both screamed as we watched the rat fly from a top shelf and land on the floor. While the rodent was stunned from the impact, I pounded it with the broom—and hated myself for it. Oh, the poor little thing. It was still small but already had a long tail. 

One down. How many to go? Where was the rest of the family?

As a child, I kept mice in a cage and loved to watch the cute little animals, but I put my sentiments aside. This was different because these rats were putting our health at risk and destroying our food. Why couldn’t they open just one package and finish it? It seemed as though they wanted to try all the different flavors and textures. They chewed holes in the packages of oatmeal, milk powder, cocoa powder, and whatever else they would find that we didn’t keep in tins or glass jars. They even chewed through my sturdy Tupperware containers.

On one of the following days, while I worked on the computer in the study, there was a rustling noise in the wastebasket. Next, I saw something small and brown speed from the desk to the guest bed. 

What now? Cat failed—need a new strategy.

I closed the door to confine the rat in the study. I had to be quick before it got into the bag of rice we kept in the wardrobe in the study (to keep it safe from the rats in the storage shed—what irony). I firmly closed the built-in wardrobe. The next time I looked, I saw teeth marks inside the wardrobe door and concluded the rat had tried to gnaw its way out. With this abundant food supply in reach, that could mean only one thing: the rodent was thirsty. I got a bucket of water, put food scraps on its rim, and used an umbrella as a gangway. Then I left the room and shut the door. Less than an hour later, I peeked into the study.

“Gotcha!”

This was definitely “Dad” if not “Grandpa” swimming laps in the bucket. My delight turned into worry and pity. I phoned Hans.

“Can you please come quickly? I have a large rat swimming in a bucket. I can’t just let it struggle and drown. Can you shoot it to put it out of its misery?”

Hans came home to execute the task—and the rat. The air pellet broke the bucket in the process. We would have to come up with another strategy next time.