the candy trail …

Little boy aged five maybe 4, in my room talking to me in chirpy Indonesian like he thinks I can speak the language. Seconds of sounds rushing like knee noo, car-cool as he gestures to the fluffy white dog toy - red ribbon around neck – that I hand to him.

Neighbours and visiting family all wander thru to chat, to see the balway - the white visitor – in this community where communal life is the only-way, in this room in this house in Sarong,  Papua, outer-most Indonesia.

The rains have subsided. The rooster is silent. On the porch outside several young girls sing melodic, Melanesian-church sings accompanied by acoustic guitar. Erica’s sister directs the songs, please sing again ladies; so pleasing are your happy, sincere voices.

Had lunch of grilled fish – the uncle, bearded, eagle tattoos on neck, wooden bracelets, baseball cap, belly-bulged t-shirt, dark-wisened face – descaled the fish, and then wrapped in banana leaves they baked over the fire outside (all cooking facilities are simple and outside).  Also ate other fish – smaller and seasoned in herb soup; with rice, two kinds of local green salads with shapes and colors that resembled a jungle (one leaf apparently, is a prevention against malaria). Dinner was similiar with Erica cooking fantastic fish dishes and a chilli cabbage salad with steamed rice.

Rained hard last night. Our supply of fresh water running off the gutter into a 44 gallon drum. The pump had stopped, our usual water source, which is simply a hose running in from the dirt yard – banana palms, hen pens and roaming chicks, frogs – in from somewhere comes our water each day and into the bathroom: a concrete shell, pale-blue tiled walls and sit-down flush-tiolet broken, an open fresh-water tank from which we scoop out to wash ourselves, clean teeth or flush the bog … The water recieved is brown but clears once the murk settles to the bottom. It’s our water for the next two days.

Drawing-long on a joint, with Erica out at the market, the room is quiet; only spoons scrapping tin plates in the kitchen – beyond my flapping, curtained-door, fan clugging, and on my discman plays Ali Tour Farka, an Islamic blues guy from Mali; music I first encountered on my 25th birthday seven years ago while waiting for passengers to fill a bush taxi on the streets of a town in Niger, west Africa. It’s easy to reminiece: Sarong reminds me alot of Nigeria.

… Toyota mini-vans serve this sprawling town of shanty and shops as both taxis and buses. The unpainted, browned iron-sheet of many houses. The lush green of the tropics.  The darker skinned and facial features of the people are no longer Asian. The heat and the wet. A dog growls outside, a mouse runs along the floor, a child talks peacefully with another in the kitchen. A rooster’s crowing – why? Strangely there’s seems to be no bird life around here – not even the ubquitious sparrows.

Techno playing loud in front room, young kids dancing. When I watch them, eyes turned from the washing girls out the back to the the dancing girls out the front, them twisting, they laugh hysterically when they catch me watching them. On our porch, two girls sell red fruit they’re collected somewhere, for 300 rupiah each.

Erica and Starlett out the back yard, washing, soaping, scrubbing by hand, where Lukey stirs a massive cauldron of rice. Nearby, in the cupboard, where the pots are stored a black and white cat sleeps – annoyed at being splashed as pots and plates are being washed. Oddly it’s techno music that prevades across this quiet cluster of houses.

Went to visit other family, grandparents living on the beach. So we took a yellow taxi-van, me and Erica, her brother Lukey, 27, and Erica’s 11 year old son, Felix, and her sister’s three duaghters Ekie – 9, Rosa – 12, Starlett – 15.

And there a stunning vista of deserted sand shaded by palms, tinshack huts and simple homes directly on this beach of nearby offshore islands, outrigger canoes – sailing, paddling in shallow, tuquoise waters. Lazy dogs – hungry for coconut scraps. Trails of red ants under the tree shade. Crabs scuttling into holes in the hot, white sand.

Erica’s grandmother is very-hunched, with walking stick, severl- weathered face – like a witch but listening to reggae techno – loud – very loud. She must be deaf.

Elkie collects scores of various small fish – tiny goldfish, yellow black-striped, crayfish, crabs, blue ones – maybe 10 varieties – to make an aquiruam; later she cried, howled back home at night when fish had all  died (and the howling interrupted our sex – an intense session gripping towards mutual orgasm but ultimately a child crying isn’t sexy and so we stopped, opened the door to attend to the sad, young face (as Erica’s sister and husband were out).

The boys clambered up high to cut coconuts and then with a machette sliced them open for all to consume the milk and fruit.

Today Erica’s son, Felix, finds a balloon under our bed and attempts to blow it up but can’t. He asks Erica to help: she’s shocked – a used condom; she says, it’s not a balloon. What is it ma?” Says “something for adults” – as she throws it in the rubbish box.

All the kids have refused to go to school for the second day running. Threats from Pa came to nothing. Felix plays dominos with anther boy, slapping down the cards. Rosa deep-fries something outside – I hear the hiss of the oil in the wok. All the children seem to be hungry or are they bored? All scraps are eaten. What rare-food-treats I buy are secreted away from the fridge – cheese slices by slice, day by day, a open tin of fruit spoonful by spoonful. I don’t mind but I wonder what they usually eat.

Every second day Erica and I have gone to the market for fruit and vege and to the supermarket for the a few luxury goods I that I’ve bought – biscuits, batteries, tinned sausages, chocolate milk. And everyday Erica has cooked and thru my money they have been fed better than they would usally eat, like grilled fish with many vege dishes. Today Felix was content to eat plain rice. Yesterday, Lukey was frying bananas for everyone; I introduced them to fried, canned-crap-mush-sausages in bread with ketchup …

Their son is in Jakarta awaiting an eye operation and tomorrow, Christine, Erica’s sister leaves for Jakarta to have chermotherapy on a small cancerous tumour near her shoulder. Their medical expenses seem high. But then again, their house is so basic – the poorest here in the street – this dirt lane surrounded by grassland and trees – and what they own is so slight that maybe this is a simple reflection: these people are poor.

So far I’ve supported every rupiah that Erica’s spent over the last 3 weeks – about 4.4  million in the 15 days since Jakarta. Her brother, Lukey is broke and bored here. Nice guy. Nice family. But wonder where I’m going? Way south within Papaua to Maruake – Lukey and Erica have gone to check boat-departure details on the next stage of this crazy blind journey. Going towards a bottomless pit to be broke or a love & business oppportunity or to just experience life cos I get bored easy and need to keep moving?

I had a good life in Jakarta, although work was a bit dull at times and the emotional lonliness of a new woman every week was depressing. But I found love and adventure in Erica: some of the wildest sex ever, and then a nice family experience on a tropical island away from any trappings I ‘d enjoyed in Jakarata, except grass – which bought from JKT, and beer, which is twice the price here because of freight charges but still I must drink it. And so here into the unknown of Papua, outer-most Indonesia – will this work out?  Or waste my time and my money and get me in trouble? Or will it take us further in the world … together?

Hot, humid. A tropical port town with dozens of islands offshore, palm-fringed. Kinda like Nigeria meets Samoa maybe, in its appearance and ambience. Very friendly, with a million “Hello misters”. Absolutely no tourists.

Basic town stretched along coast with few ‘real’ shops buts lots of shacks kiosks, rustic housing, taxi vans and taxi motorbikes as the public transport, wild and colorful markets, tropical trees: bananas, coconut and sago palms, salaks (fruit: brown snakeskin-peel sheltering pear/apple tasting segments), papaya, pineapples, sirsak (soft green spiky skin, fruit big as a loaf of bread, tasting mushy, lemony, melting in your mouth incredible taste and texture).

First stayed some days with Erica’s sister’s family. Small shabby house of five rooms. Polished concrete floor. Jesus pics on wall. Few wooden tribal souvenirs, Chinese vases and flowers. Few things beyond beds, sofas, kitchen table, kitchenware, TV and radio. Cooking by gas or fire in the yard out the back. Washing by bucket – mandi – in a bathroom, as is the traditional Indonesian way. Hens and dogs and cats roaming. Crabs and frogs in the pond. Neighbors young children wandering in and out.

Then we stayed at the beach at Grandparents. Amazingly quiet beach and the view. Wicked sunset island sky. Horizon of palm islands – the nearest 500 meters away, which we reach by paddling to in an outrigger canoe. Basic shack right on sand. (Reminds me of Goa, India). Coconut palms and banana trees. Fishermen in canoes. Swimming warm waters but watch for deadly sea snakes. Coral reefs. Crabs that carry shells on their backs as their mobile homes and other crabs that burrow holes everywhere around the yard, with is the beach and sea.

It’s only 5 meters from our mattress to the water at high tide. Pack of family dogs yelping at nightfall. Family piglet in stilted pen, fattening up above the water, next to the outhouse mandi and toilet, washing water from nearby well. Cooking in a nearby kitchen shack of fire places and gas burner, kitchen bench and pots and utensils hanging in rack outside, beside a small fruit and vege garden.

Had a big beer session of 52 large bottles one day, with relatives and onlookers; I paid for everything.

Been eating fruit and various BBQ fish, some exotic veg dishes, tempe – slabs of fermented soybeans fried, chili, and rice. Coffee, fried egg and bread for breakfast. Food luxuries included processed cheese, chocolate chip cookies, beer, tinned sausages.

The beach days were stoned, restful, idyllic; paradise …

To Fakfak (pronounced fuck fuck!) – it was a 12 hour boat trip from Sorong, on our way south to here, Marauke, in southern Papua.

Traveled on a large passenger liner that carries thousands: five passenger decks – packed, all cabins booked, all economy benches crammed, and floors, corridors, stairwells – we slept on the covered wooden deck at the rear of the boat, behind the mosque, with scores of others around us.

Spent 4 days in Fakfak, awaiting another ship to Merauke, which took 4 days. Quite a journey. Every class cabin booked. Packed boat beyond belief. Thousands camped out on mats with food containers, washing hanging, babies, sleeping women, guitar playing youths, across floors and decks and corridors and on the stairs and even in the lifeboats!  Like a ship of refugees.

Luckily, we found a space on the 7th deck cafe, outdoor, but roofed. Sat a table or on the bench for 48 hours, sleeping, eating, chatting, cramped, with nearly 60 others in a space the size of the lounge and your bedroom. When it rained it rained and everybody was flooded out by the rain-river sweeping along the length of the boat’s deck. Huge waterfalls and surges. Monsoonal. Luckily our luggage was on a bench at our table, otherwise my computer would be history. Families on mats on the steel deck had to evacuate their things off the floor before everything was wet, then stand for hours, or crouch, huddled with others until the deck dried off and they could get back to sleep again. Three times the nights were sodden.

Second night was amazing storm, rocked the liner – people wet, tired, and seasick (not us) – women hopelessly ill, as was her child. Floor awash with plastic papers, cig butts, rubbish, gob, baby piss and puke, to be swept away with the next storm. Sea and sky illuminated by lightning. Lightning. Rain blown into us. Distant red moving of up-and-down lights warning of land in the big black void.

Fortunately when the ship pulled into Timika, we moved to a better space on the second deck of economy benches – like a dormitory open with hundreds camped out, the most wretched toilets that failed to work, often lacking water, abrasive smell of pure ammonia that burnt your nostrils. Timika – because the boat was 6 hours late and we’d missed the tide – was never in view, as we arrived at 3 am, cruising up a river lined by thin, 10 meter trees, white bark glowing under moonlight.

Maniacally driven, motorized dug-out canoes sped alongside us, and worn-out colonial riverboats and police launches all hovered around the ship, awaiting passengers down the steps to a barge-boat, others lumbering with luggage across boat decks – scene illuminated by ship floodlights – to the speedy canoes, that when full, zoomed off into the night, river churning, men with flashlights crouched at the front, acting as headlights on this dark river highway.

Meantime porters were chucking luggage and cargo from decks to boats below, others lowering stuff by rope. Then it rained again and the chaos of 25 boats and canoes amplified and passengers exposed, sought umbrellas, mats, plastic over their heads. It was like a jungle scene from a movie set on the Congo River, at night.

Now here in Marauke in southern Irian Jaya / Papua, for the past 4 days, staying with more relatives in a basic but comfortable house.

Cooler weather here, windy, often rainy.  Met up again with Erica’s bro, Lukey, 27, who we’d met with in Sorong and who’d left earlier headed for Marauke (- for boats only come here every fortnight). They have met their father for the first time – he’d separated from their mother when Erica was three, 27 years ago. Their mother died 5 years ago.

Her father was an Captain in the army, Indonesian intelligence. He has an incense – wood – business he wants Erica to help him with, and also a crocodile farm – I held a baby, 24-inch croc yesterday – with skins for export. Erica wants to work here for a few months with business visits to Bali, to make cash and then go to Holland to scatter her mother’s ashes, for she is half-Dutch half-Ambonese (from the Malaku: Spice Islands). And her Dad is Irian (West Papuan).

Who is Erica: I call her “Jungle girl.”

She’s brown, slim, shapely, sexy, crazy, fun, caring, and a mother of three – met her 11-year-old son Felix in Sorong, presently living with her sister, other two kids living with her older German, ex-husband in Bali. I met Erica in Jakarta at a club. She was a high-class pro and has recently given up her speed – amphetamine – addiction (both activities a consequence of broken marriage and hard times). She is also an asthma sufferer and has had two very close calls – to hospital; one the other day here, and the other on the ship from Jakarta.

Now, amazing big bright green frogs sit on the porch at night, under the lights, awaiting insects. The frogs are cute, wide-eyed but their poisonous spit will blind you …

And the large brown ants with green backs, they build houses for their many thousands by climbing trees and twisting and weaving with their silk, living leaves together, to make elaborate nests in the branches of a tree next to the outhouse and shower, a small  enclosure open to the sky, shaded by the fingers of trees, sun warming us as we wash … in the morning.

Have been made very welcome by all – family, friends, strangers, even police …