DEEP IN West PAPUA

The expedition I undertook at the tail end of 2023 was, as it turned out, problematic - and of course part of the reason anyway for undertaking such a journey is that it's not easy or necessarily safe, otherwise a non-specialist would do it.

But this one always was going to be especially tricky. My objective was to seek out the Obini, an isolated lowland people I'd come across (see previous post) on one of my very first expeditions, aged just 24 when I was trying, as an environmental scientist, to record a fast-disappearing world as missionaries, loggers and Indonesian government officials moved in. Poignantly, the only images or written information we now have of the Obini are the pictures and scribbles that I took as an idealistic and naïve young man all the way back then, in 1984.

There'd been no sign of the Obini since - this small band of men, women and children (see previous post) that had invited me into their settlement and showed me something of their world.

Now, forty years on, I wanted to go back, thank the Obini - if I could find them - and see what had happened to their forest.

From the start on this return expedition there were 'issues' - and I have been detailing some of these each week on Instagram and sometimes Twitter/X. My main concern - for my indigenous companions as well as myself - was security. A New Zealand pilot, Phillip Mehtens, had been kidnapped by rebels seeking to secure the liberation of West Papua from the Indonesia, which took over that half of the island in highly questionable circumstances in the 1960s, and the word was that they were looking for another Western hostage.

Finally, though, with the help of Sadrak, a Papuan translator, I gathered supplies and hired a plane to take me and Sadrak over the lowlands to a remote airstrip called Yaniruma.

The view was extraordinary - even with all the threats of the intervening years, mile after mile of intact forest lay stretched before us. And, somewhere down there, may or may not be the Obini. It was immensely heartening.

And soon, with the help of a people called the Korowai, I assembled an small group of their men who were happy to walk with me back through this forest, seeking out the Obini.

My chances of success were low, however: we'd have to move fast, before word got out to any potential kidnappers that I was out here and furthermore, even down here in the lowlands no-one had even heard of the Obini.

But onward through the forest we went, day after day - again, I've tried to give an idea of our daily ups-and-downs through Instagram and Twitter/X.

Sometimes we came upon remoter Korowai settlements, and I asked if they knew anyone who was in the few photos I had of the Obini, from four decades before.

But no luck so far - just the hospitality and help of the Korowai, an indigenous people who knew this forest as their home, and were guiding me so diligently through it.

One reassuring thing, in a sense: many of the customs that I remembered from the Obini, and that I'd assumed long-since discontinued, were alive and well. There were the same sago skirts, the same crops of taro and plantain. The watchtowers too, still towered over their land - ready for any aggressors.

Deeper still we went into the forest, and, tantalizingly, I now knew where the Obini were - because the Korowai recognised that the ochre colour the Obini used on their shields was of a more orange hue, the clay to be found yet further west of here.

But time was now running out. Understandably, the Korowai were more and more reluctant to head further and further into unfamiliar terrain and of course I couldn't put their lives at risk.

One day, we all sat down on the forest floor and, without saying a word, we knew it was over. We would turn back.

But sometimes things work out like that on expeditions: you don't achieve what you want. And you instead come away with something different - maybe even better.

There was so much more here than I'd never thought possible. Against all odds, an indigenous people not unlike the Obini had survived through the decades since my last visit - and their forest too had survived. It was astounding. And it was immensely reassuring. Who would have thought, when we hear so much talk of habitat destruction?

One day I hope to go back, and find what happened to the Obini - I owe that to them, as I do to so many indigenous people who helped me on my early expeditions. For now, though, it's a great comfort to know that so much of what I witnessed back then is alive and well today.