Bucket List: A foray into the Papuan wilds and encounters with former cannibals and crocodiles
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At a peace ceremony to commemorate the end of a tribal war, five pigs were sacrificed and cooked in pits laid with searing hot rocks.
PHOTO: LI-ANN TAN AND JON SONG
Li-Ann Tan and Jon Song
PAPUA, Indonesia – Dressed only in a traditional grass skirt and balancing a “noken” filled with tubers on her head, Howarerema, 60, navigates the hilly pastures of the Baliem Valley in Papua’s highlands with ease.
En route home to her straw hut, she casually plucks cucumbers from a nearby bush, washes them in a mountain stream and hands them to us to snack on.
