Expedition guide and lecturer, Dr. Jacqueline Windh, was confronted with an unusual offer on her recent visit to Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik River region.
“You want to buy?”
The man curled his fingers around the croc’s snout and thrust the animal towards me. His friend’s black eyes glimmered with shy hopefulness as he held up its tail. The croc’s body hung between them, the pale yellow scales of its belly shifting and gliding as it slowly writhed and curved its spine.
The crocodile itself exuded a Buddha-like tranquility. Its eye glittered, flecks of gold dust set in a sphere of glass. It seemed so calm and wise.
Not that it had any choice, I reminded myself.
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| (c) Jacqueline Windh |
Its snout was wrapped in black twine. Its front and hind legs were twisted and tied back over its spine (and probably broken). Oh, and it had had a spear thrust through its body by hunters in a canoe the night before.
We had beached our zodiacs on the black sand beach here, in front of Kopar village on the be-jungled bank of the mighty Sepik River - some refer to it as the “Amazon of the Pacific” - along Papua New Guinea’s remote northern coast. The animal’s suffering made me uncomfortable, even though I knew that it would soon be brought to an end: that croc was destined to be someone’s dinner tonight.
That juxtaposition, and my discomfort, are part of why I am so drawn to expedition cruising through the islands of the South Pacific and in Island Southeast Asia. The suffering of that one particular creature is but an insignificant moment in a tale which has been unravelling for millennia. I am awarded the privilege of witnessing a mere instant of this ancient cultural thread.
Nearly all of the villages we have visited on this voyage are not accessible by road - nor do they have airstrips. The only way in is by boat. Some only see a cruise ship once every few years.
Our stops here are not merely some sort of voyeurism, where the locals put on their grass skirts for the visiting tourists and then disappear. Yes, they do put on shows for us! But the visits truly are mutual cultural encounters. The locals are as interested in us (and as mesmerised by us) as we are in them. The voyeurism so often goes both ways.
Our stop at Kopar was yet another reminder of the diversity of peoples, and the richness of cultures that - unlike my own - have continued stable traditions dating back tens of thousands of years.
Dr. Jacqueline Windh has a PhD in Earth Sciences, and she lectures in the fields of Geology and Anthropology on expedition cruise ships. Her regional areas of specialisation are North America’s Pacific Northwest, southern Patagonia, Polynesia, and Island Southeast Asia. A paddler herself, Jackie has a profound interest in the canoeing peoples of the Pacific Ocean. Find out more about Jackie and her books at www.jacquelinewindh.com
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