A BREAF INTRODUCTION

JAYAPURA / SENTANI :
As the capital province, Jayapura is the biggest city in Irian Jaya / Papua inland. The city is lying on from Humboldt bay to Base-G beach with the population about 350.000. Formerly called Hollandia in 1910 during the Dutch occupied in the inland.
During the Pasific War Jayapura become the central Base for Allied Forces with the first landing in Hamadi Beach near by Jayapura town in April 1944.

Jayapura its self has more than ten (10) native tribes beside Sentani tribe is found the biggest tribe in Jayapura and surrounding. Sentani lied in the westward of 35 km from Jayapura town and the place for National Air transportation, so called Sentani Airport. Most people are settling along the lakeside of Sentani lake with an elevation 75m above sea level. Woman and men will take part all together in work such fishing in the lake, to build the house or make a dugout canoe and artifacts as their daily activity. They speak in their own language but sometimes different in dialect. To visit this people and their life style must take Motorized boat to tiny island in the lake for about 45minute.

BALIEM VALLEY :
Baliem valley is officially called Jayawijaya adopted from the name of the district. Hidden away from the central mountain ranges of Irian Jaya a mile above coastal jungles. The Baliem river flows through abroad temperate plain. The valley floor is inhabited by Dani tribesmen which men wear the so called “Horim” (koteka) a penis gourd. They also usually decorate especially in a certain Event, their head with beautiful parrot feathers and the nose with pig tooth. They key to the valley’s high population. Wamena is the central of Baliem valley and the capital for the district where you can see the Old smoked Mummy in this valley.

Dani woman wear grass skirt and beautiful, sometimes colored string bark. They mostly live in primitive way of life, farming by growing sweet potato, vegetables such as carrot potato, potato’s leaf, garlic, beans, cauliflower and breeding pig., they only consume sweet potato and vegetables which they cook in tradition by using steamed stones put in to a holed ground for daily diets, while bred pigs are only killed and cooked for certain event and sale. This is why Dani people is called “Stone age people” From the earlier the Dani have been very skillful in farming by building simple irrigation but today some of them have been controlled by local government to train them for gaining more experience.

ASMAT PEOPLE
The tidal swampland of Irian’s south cost are of the best known , tangle of mangrove line the shore and inland from the river the vegetation is so thick as to be almost penetrable. Only the riverbanks are habitable. This is land of the Asmat, now world famous for their spectacular wood carvings and previously notorious as head-hunters and cannibals.
Visiting the Asmat region around Agats requires hiring a dugout canoe with a guide and sleeping at night on bark floor of a JEU-the long raised men’s hut that serve as an architectural and cultural center of Asmat villages.

In the villages you can watch wood carvers at work, see how canoes are hollowed out and decorated and look around the place and chat with your host. You might even stumble onto a festival accompanied by night long-drumming and dancing, special carvings and general high spirits. In the morning you may join the Asmat people going fishing, collecting Sago grabs, and another kind of local vegetables for daily diet.

TREE HOUSE PEOPLE ( KOROWAI tribe )
In the lowland of Papua region there is found small group of People, so called “Tree house people” the well known Semi nomadic people of Korowai who are leaving in the trees. Among 250 tribes in Papua / Irian Jaya, Korowai is one tribe leaving in remote area and recently found by scientist. Different with the highland people of Papua, they most experience in farming, and more accessible by the outsiders, but naturally Korowai people looked wild / primitive and no experience, their life are fully depend on environment, there kind of food available for them. Men and woman going into the jungle every morning collecting sago grub-a kind of palm trees, and local vegetable, hunting wild animals such pig, kasowari birds, parrots, cockatoo, etc and also fishing in the river for sustaining their daily diet.

Visiting inter clan must take 4-5 hours, where the area are completely swamp and humid in average. Culturally the Korowai people are leaving in familiar even another clan, they always help to each other inter clan by providing some food, such sago and helping them to build house. A long house called “befak” must be built in cooperative when ever one clan find a new village and invite them to make a special ceremony of “Sago feast” to collect food and sago worms. Normally 3-4 month before the ceremony, palms trees are cut to process for getting larva and warm.