T A B L E_T A L K Spending one night in Bangkok? Get tips on visiting Thailand in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Check out barnesannoble.com's fabulous selection of travel book bargains! ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Teaching the cannibals to dance By Craig Nelson An adventurer journeys farther than expected into a land of penis gourds and pig sacrifices (01/17/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/15/99) Beijing's Backingham Palace By Mary Elizabeth Williams From back rubs to bowling to B-movies, this Chinese spa has it all (01/14/99) New York serenade By Pico Iyer An ex-Gothamite returns for five days -- and finds that attitude has its charms (01/13/99) Cold front By Mona R. Washington An ugly encounter on a Viennese metro colors a winter's day (01/12/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		TEACHING THE CANNIBALS TO DANCE: PART TWO | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - Now I don't know about you, but I'm fascinated by cannibals, because they've got a thought process I just can't assimilate. Think: You see someone really good looking, and your mind (or whatever) immediately responds with: what a beauty. Would your next thought be: Sauce béarnaise? These are two ideas I just can't put one after the other, but every people-eater can, and does. All the human meat-eating nations also make up their own peculiar forms of people-eating etiquette. Paraguayan cannibals, for example, aren't allowed to eat their immediate family (which would be something to them like incest), aren't allowed to eat brains unless they're old men, aren't allowed to eat penises unless they're pregnant women and aren't allowed to eat any vaginas, ever, no matter who they are. As I wandered around the Dani villages, I couldn't help but remember that Barbra Streisand classic: "People, people who eat people, are the luckiest people in the world!" All this time, dour guide Yos was being a damn sourpuss, so I decided what the hell? I made him ask all the Dani (even though I knew he wouldn't like it): When was the last time you ate long pig? "Long pig" is what they call human meat, and practically every Dani replied in exactly the same, evasive way: "Oh, ah ... ah ... a really, really, long time ago." The way they said this, though, made me think that by "long time," they meant, "last week." Though there weren't any human skulls lying around, the more time I spent with the Dani and saw that, except for candy, cigarettes and those 100-rupiah notes, they weren't remotely interested in anything about 20th century culture, the more I was convinced that they'd stuck with their entire traditional way of life, even if some of it now had to be done secretly. After all, they were an unbelievably proud people, so much so that the formal version of their hello is the outrageous boast, "Narak-a-la-ok" -- I eat your feces! It was time to check out of the Baliem Palace and get to the middle of nowhere's middle of nowhere. As I had my last lunch there, Hubon, seeing my luggage, asked in his most perfect Diana Ross diva voice, "Will you remember me ... here?" and then giggled in hysterics. Yos and I piled our stuff into a Jeep and took off down the highway, which turned out to be a placed line of boulders that kept you from sinking into the mud. We bounced around for two hours, finally reaching the far corner of Dani territory, and checked into the worst hotel I've ever seen in my entire life. The Losmen La'uk (Motel Hello Woman) is run by a nasty Javanese-Chinese man named Toukimen. If you have to stay in this territory you have to stay at Motel Hello Woman, and his monopoly made Toukimen about as gracious and hospitable as the Microsoft Corporation. A German tour group of four was also staying here, and when we arrived, Toukimen was shouting at them about something. He turned to us and announced that our pre-paid voucher didn't include meals (there was nowhere else to eat), so dour guide Yos had to dig up the paperwork and call back to the agency in Wamena (which I had to pay for) to prove we would indeed get food. Toukimen then had us seated in the alley instead of the dining room with the Germans, so he could cover up that he was feeding them better. While I took video of the toilets and the cook and the wife cleaning the vegetables, I had Yos explain to the innkeeper that I was here to make an American television special, and so would be interviewing everyone who worked at Motel Hello Woman. This got us back into the dining room and the better food. After lunch, I went for a walk in the cloud forest, which, just like its name, was moist and damp and filled with mosses and ferns. As a Dani family approached, a tiny snake crossed the path, and when the family saw it, they halted dead still and began screaming in terror. Snakes are extremely rare in the Baliem, and the Dani think them all viciously poisonous and terrible omens of bad luck. I tamped my foot, the little reptile sidled off into the grass, and the family, obviously grateful, kept walking. When I reached the path to the holy Waga Waga caves, it started to pour, and the path's boulders turned wet and slippery. I was pathetically making my way downhill and slipping and sliding around when, out of nowhere, before I even realized what was happening, two big Dani men appeared and picked me up under each arm and carried me really fast down the hill and into the caves. At first I thought I was being dragged off for some nefarious purpose, but then I realized this was their moonlighting business, and it was a great ride. They showed me the sacred rocks while, overhead, flying foxes squeaked and rustled their five-foot, leathery wings. I passed out smokes, and then they lugged me back into the forest. In a way, they made me feel honored and well taken care of, and in a way, they made me feel like luggage. That night, I got to find out just what a pit Motel Hello Woman really was. The communal toilet turned out to be a brick tub of river water, black with silt, and a filthy towel lying on the floor. There was no soap and no toilet paper, and it smelled just like a morgue. My room had paper-thin walls and a bed of plywood covered by a thin piece of foam, one sheet and an itchy blanket. At 9 o'clock sharp, Toukimen turned off his generator and we were thrown into primal darkness; I hadn't known this was coming, and so had to crawl around on the floor looking for my flashlight. An unholy ruckus (which would last the entire night) started up outside: Dogs howled piteously, there was a ratcheting whistle from the cicadas and the nightjars called out in their low tock-tock-tock. Every time I moved a muscle in bed, the plywood would creak and squeal. Then it started to rain like hell and I realized the roof was made of tin, since the raindrops sounded like a marching band of snare drums. The minute the rain stopped, the dogs, cicadas, nightjars and whatever the hell else was out there started up again, including a dozen boisterous roosters, and I too was now ready to ooh and aah over the Baliem Palace. At breakfast, Yos and the German guide told us we had some options to consider. Both our agendas today included a two-hour hike up the slippery mountains to a brine pool, where women stick banana fronds into the water, get the fibers completely soaked, then go back to their villages and burn the plants on a rock. The gray ash result is used as salt and stored in leaf jars. Or instead, we could go see the village of Jiwika put on a battle, a festival and a pig roast, but this would cost an extra 20 bucks each. I'd already had my slippery hike the day before (and today, with no sleep, wasn't interested in another), and so immediately voted for the battle/festival/roast, but one of the Germans, a doctor, was convinced we were being taken to the cleaners, that this was a guide scheme. "Why does it cost so much?" he whined. Yos simply answered, "You have to pay for the pig." Finally everyone agreed to this supplement, and we were all led to an open field, but there was nobody there. We waited and waited -- and suddenly there was a scream of "Whoop whoop whoop whoop!" that came from the horizon, and we looked up to see Kain Yali Mabel, the chief of Jiwika, standing about 20 feet up in a kaio, a lookout tower made from saplings bound together with vines, and pointing his loaded bow directly at us. Thirty warriors rushed into the field, screaming the mournful call of the mountain pigeon -- "Who-week! Who-week!" -- and battling with spears, bows and arrows, the lines of men moving back and forth like a gridiron, offense, defense, countermoves and even a kind of instant replay. Before, every Dani we'd seen had his penis-gourd or her cord skirt, the men adding a feather or furred crown for the hair, and the women's backs always draped with their string-net bags. For this battle, however, the entire village of 50 people had dressed to the teeth -- literally. The men's pierced noses and ears held boar's tusks and pig ribs, curved up or down like polished-white Fu-Manchu mustaches. They'd coated their faces and chests with pig grease mixed with ash to look as black and feral and gleaming as possible, and many had stuck broad, white ferns into their hair to stick out, like antennae, from the corners of their eyes. There were headdresses of black, swooping bird-of-paradise tail feathers and red ginger blooms; armlets of braided ferns and dried pig testicles; bibs and breastplates of cowry, snail shells and stone worn as armor. Along with bows, arrows and spears, the men thrusted and parried with white egret feather batons and black cassowary feather whisks to confuse and distract the enemy. They looked completely alien, completely primitive and completely fantastic. N E X T+P A G E | The post-battle party