W A M E N A

  

February 1994,

Wamena, natural city in Baliem Valley is an obsession for all researchers for the trip, look at everything that happened and kept rolling with the passage of time. Indigenous peoples Dani learned in college sparked a desire to know what is really going on in the valley? City of culture leaves misty past.

Right perennial fog blanketing the valley, then men crowded use koteka passing along the road and turn the atmosphere anyway Nayak Market located in the heart of the city. Women wear sali shirtless, carrying crops, livestock as well as children, to run two tasks at the same time as a housewife backbone of the family, making a living. Dani tribe lived communally in a few honai silimo with mushroom-shaped houses -  there is a kitchen and there is also silimo pigpen fence capped with topsoil to preserve the wood from damage. Not far from silimo is the garden where the women worked hard in order to feed the whole family.

The war has been long gone, no longer be an activity that can be maintained, the men practically lost the role as commander of the highest position in the social structure. Now, they also have to earn a living to meet daily consumption. Some people wear penis gourds seem to write numbers to Rp. 1.000, - in the hands offered to pose with tourists for a fee of one thousand dollars. Some sell handicrafts Dani unique and artistic to be decorated in the house.

On the edge of the road looked too Flower Shop, where women sell flowers or paper flowers, Kurulu-also referred to as a thousand days. Is petal flowers with colourful pink, lilac, purple, white, yellow, and orange blossom keep up a thousand days. Friendly smile florist mothers and crops together in everyday situations Baliem Valley with cold-weather foggy, as if life were always in mystery.

April, 2012

Eighteen years after that, in such a long span of time provides an opportunity for every change and necessity. A question surfaced:

"Where would women wear Sali passed away?"

Some men still wear koteka --penis gourds looked naked body-dried pumpkin skin to cover the most secret parts of the body. Every tourist must pay about Rp. 50.000, --- blue money - in order to take a picture, the number is lim-fold increase compared to 18 years ago. But no longer visible women or teenage girls topless wearing Sali, traditional clothes are wrapped around the waist accentuate femininity. All of the women had neatly dressed as women who live outside Wamena. Nayak has been a shop market, traditional market move on the edge of town past the paved road is overgrown shade trees on both edges. Other markets stand in some places. Answering the demands of life and economic activity will meet the living. Silimo just left in the mummy as a tourist location with a central main objectives, 99% of people have settled in the sense of one thing that 18 years ago only a dream.

 

The situation really has changed, time-stretching, hard work, the Special Autonomy policy gives the possibility for anyone who lived around the valley to improve itself, the better, catching up with any community. There was the time will still rotate with certainty the changes will continue to roll in the Baliem Valley, the complete historical record of a long process in order to achieve equality. Sali is a traditional dress Dani woman who only looks at a painting.

Dewi  Linggasari