Balim Valley Villages
West Papua, Indonesia

A Dani village fence and gateway, West Papua, Indonesia.

Indonesia Travel Guide | Indonesia Map

The classic Dani village is a rectangular, muddy plaza, encompassed by a long thatched kitchen, pig pens, one or two mossy huts for the women and one double-decker hut for all the village men, married or single.

Men wishing to fulfil their conjugal obligations, visit their wives' huts, or take advantage of the ample greenery around the spread.

A Dani men's sleeping hut, with one smoking chief and one smoked chief.

The top floor of the men's hut is also occupied by their mummy. This character, the crouched, smoked, apparently screaming corpse of a long dead chief is dragged out for tourist photos, on receipt of a contribution to the current chief's 'Buy a Pig' Fund.

Pigs, special occasion food only, are either killed slowly and ceremonially by bow and arrow, or exchanged for a wife. Village chiefs often have several of each, and treat them with roughly the same degree of care. Generally there are no grander ambitions than possessing a pig or a wife , although cigarettes are an all-consuming short-term interest.

Another pair of chiefs, though it doesn't look like this ex-chief went quietly...

Cooking pig, sweet potatoes, banana and cassava in an earth oven, wrapped in banana leaves and heated by stones.

The staple diet - when pigs are not on the menu - is sweet potatoes cooked over a friction- started fire, in a smoke-choked communal kitchen. Pots, pans and other utensils do not exist, so neither does alcohol, lacking containers for fermentation. Pigs are only served for special occasions or when a tourist has agreed to pay for the meal.

A Dani widow, having lost several relatives and one finger joint for each death.

Widows plaster orange mud over their torsos and faces for several months after their husbands die. In addition, what at first may seem to be an epidemic of leprosy, turns out to be the result of removing one finger joint for every dead relative. The amputations are initially concentrated on one hand, so eight joints missing on one hand is commonplace. Older women often have all fingers cut down to stumps.
In spite of this self-mutilation, the Dani women still manage to deal with most of the daily chores (potato cultivation, wood collection, cooking) while many men consider themselves overworked if they have to do more than light a fire.

Indonesia Travel Guide | Indonesia Map | Indonesia Pictures