Slowly down the Sepik

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"Apinun. Yu stap gut?"

We arrive at the last stilt hut in the village late afternoon and shake hands with a lean, muscular man with a shaven head and triangular beard. The four high school students accompanying us have already told him what we want. Yanking a long-shafted paddle out of the dirt, he indicates that we should follow him down a dirt path.

Naked boys fling themselves off the two-metre-high river bank and shriek as their bodies smack the churning, muddy waters below. One plasters himself from head to foot in mud before coming to look us over. The Dio, a tributary of the Sepik River, is about fifteen metres wide and bordered by tall grasses and a rich tangle of vine-throttled trees. I see seven-metre-long dug-outs with outboard engines nestled against the near bank. Not what we are after. The man invites us to shed our backpacks, sit down on a log, and wait a while. Young mothers in flowery dresses and threadbare shirts, carrying babies on their hips, join us; they are also looking to go downstream.

In Canada, Nadya and I had wondered whether we might paddle down one of Papua New Guinea's arterial rivers, the Sepik or the Fly, in our own pirogue. It seemed like a good way to behold the natural splendours of the jungle and spend time with village people. We have crossed from Indonesian Papua to PNG at Vanimo,  bought a plastic bin of provisions (rice, tinned fish, instant noodles, tea, etc), and caught a lift to Green River on the Sepik with a school principal. On arrival at Green River Christian Secondary School, we found the students ready to disperse to their villages, some of which were on the Sepik, for their Easter holidays. If they could help us to buy a boat, we could give them a ride home.

"Oscar, im kumup nau," whispered the bearded man.

Papuans paddle standing up, I note, watching a rangy man with coal-black skin pump a skinny, four-metre pirogue down the river towards us. As he approaches, I see that the paddle has a crocodile head carved into the handle. He pulls in, and Nadya suggests I go for a spin with him. I climb in and almost capsize the thing. No way I could stand and propel this craft 1,000 kilometres to the sea. Our belongings would vanish into the muddy soup on the first day. We'd be crocodile food. Nadya joins me for a test run, and we learn that there are short paddles, too, for women who prefer to sit.

Back on the riverbank, we gnaw our lips. There must be wider-hulled, medium-sized canoes around... perhaps at Mockwai, the first village on the Sepik. Maybe we could ride with the mothers and their babies in a motor-canoe and make further enquiries. Another man turns up in a skinny pirogue like Oscar's. Would we be interested in buying two canoes? One student could travel with Nadya, another with me. The remaining two could ride in the motor-canoe with the mothers. Tom, an earnest nineteen-year-old wishing to travel furthest down the big river, has the answer. We should buy both pirogues and lash them together to make a raft. Using "tiktik" (cane) fibres as string and two trimmed branches (one at the bow, the other at the stern), the students join the two pirogues. Nadya and I can now stand or sit to paddle, and our improvised raft is sturdy enough to give all four students a ride home. We pay 200 kina ($80) for each pirogue and 20 kina for a paddle. The villagers of Dio only have one paddle for sale, so Tom lops off and trims another branch.

We load up and set off in the last of the light. White cockatoos and green parrots shoot by overhead, squawking. I scan the tarry riverbanks for crocodiles. These and piranhas are, apparently, plentiful in the Sepik.

Tony


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