{"id":585,"date":"2021-04-05T05:48:02","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T05:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/duba.ro\/en\/?p=585"},"modified":"2021-04-12T05:32:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T05:32:46","slug":"vanimo-to-sepik-river-png","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duba.ro\/en\/vanimo-to-sepik-river-png\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanimo to Sepik River (Papua New Guinea)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Late afternoon on Sepik, the longest river on New Guinea, home to hundreds of ethnic groups. Ambunti, 2012.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In August 2012 I crossed from West Papua to Papua New Guinea, to stay a few days in Vanimo, a small border town, to renew my Indonesian visa. The process took only one day, so, why not, I left east for a short trip, to have a sight of the Sepik River.
I arrived in Pagwi, on the Sepik bank, where I looked for a boat to go downstream, back to the coast. But the first canoe which stopped was heading upstream. I hopped in and ended up on a two-month journey along the Sepik River.
My first stop was in Ambunti, an administrative centre, on Middle Sepik. There, under a religious\u2013public administration, a few ethnic groups divided into clans, live together. On Sepik, most of the public administration, education and other services are run by Catholic and Protestant missions.
In Ambunti I was introduced to a few community elders from the Kwoma clans, who took me into the fantastic world of Sepik mythology. I met indigenous artists tangled up in a net of taboos, superstitions and nowadays issues, saw churches featuring tribal-cult-houses designs (or vice versa?), and listen to folk tales from the local mythology. I even witnessed a trial held by a village court, applying customary laws, and I received my share of the compensation received by \u201cmy family\u201d.
Then, I didn’t know this was about to become a few years-long project, as the following years I kept returning to Sepik to record myth tales and legends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n