Photograph by Amy Toensing
Posted on 02/13/2012 6:52:51 PM PST by SunkenCiv
But for the glow from the campfire, it is impenetrably dark. Never are there stars, as if that would be too much to hope for. Instead, beyond the rock overhang, it's pouring, waves of water relentlessly slapping the giant fronds of the jungle. It always seems to rain at night here in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. This is why Lidia and what's left of her people, the Meakambut, seek refuge in rock shelters -- they're dry. Located high in the cliffs, sometimes requiring a treacherous climb up vines, caves are also natural fortresses that once protected the Meakambut from their enemies: headhunters and cannibals and bride stealers. But that was generations ago. Now their enemies are less violent yet no less deadly: malaria, tuberculosis.
Pasu shoos away Biyi, their hunting dog, and sits down by the fire. He smooths his leaf loincloth and rests Lidia's head in his lap. She peers up at him wanly. Pasu gravely tells his brother John to ask us if there is anything we can do.
We -- a team from National Geographic -- have unwittingly walked into a crisis. Our plan, to follow the Meakambut, one of the last cave-dwelling, seminomadic peoples in Papua New Guinea, through their mountainous homeland, has been eclipsed by the present emergency. A member of our team, trained as an emergency medical technician, examines Lidia and discovers that her lungs are filled with fluid, her heart is thrumming at 140 beats a minute, and her temperature is 104. He determines that Lidia likely has a life-threatening case of pneumonia and gives her double doses of antibiotics and Tylenol.
(Excerpt) Read more at ngm.nationalgeographic.com ...
Photograph by Amy Toensing
"We have caves in our country too, we just don't live in 'em, A-holes!"
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
Thanks Renfield. |
|
|
|
|
Is Lothar home?
Oh oh.....oooohhhhhh!!
Fascinating! My Father spent a year in Papua New Guinea during WWII while in the Army Air Corps and always wanted to return. He took me to see “The Sky Above, Mud Below” in the theater back in 1960 or so. He was actually planning a trip back there in the late 1980s when a heart attack took him from us.
I miss that poor, blaspheming, bastard, Sam Kinison. Oh, to know what he would have said about Obama!
Really liked that Lidia lived. Poor people, but as for their promise:
“We, the Meakambut people, will give up hunting and always moving and living in the mountain caves if the government will give us a health clinic and a school, and two shovels and two axes, so we can build homes.”
they can go on into the 21st century and not go the way of the dinosaur.
What Sam Kinnison would say about Obama couldn’t even be printed on paper because it would burn up at he went along.
He was a human verbal flamethrower and we loved every second of it. Made George Carlin seem like an amateur.
I think he did the starving Ethiopians/comb routine and one about women and comparing them to whitewashing a fence. Absolutely rude, crude, lewd and pee-in-the-pants hilarious.
I was fortunate enough to work in the highlands of PNG. It is without a doubt the most fascinating place I have been on all the seven continents.
I wish I could go back there and a whole bunch of other places!
VCR, CRT TV, probably incandescent lamp.
Just what you’d expect in a cave.
I worked at the Grasberg mine on a three-month project. It is a beautiful place (well, not the mine so much...). The local people were pretty cool. The locals that I worked with at the mine were hard workers.
The mine had taken over the main village and made another village for them with half-way modern buildings, etc. They used the modern school, but I heard a lot of them ended up building and living in their traditional huts again!
We worked on the far outskirts of the mine - it snowed on us three times. One time, while snowing, a family of locals came walking down the trail dressed in shorts, t-shirts, the wife in a skirt. All barefoot. Each carrying a small net bag.
Our local helper spoke with them for a bit. I asked him how far was the next village in the direction that they had come (up and over the pass at 15,000 feet where we were at.) It was almost 20 miles!
Few years back on a “last flight before snowing in” flight from Timmons, sat next to a Geologist who was headed back to Grasberg. He had some neat “natives” stories. PNG and Grasberg always my “Dream Project”..... someday.
Interesting read. Thanks!
I’ve always liked that one. Brace yourselves though, Far Side is verboten on FR, copyright complaint, probably because Larsen’s a left-wing bigot. One Google search for “The Far Side” will easily illustrate why. And selective complaints about copyright weaken not only the individual copyright, but the entire copyright act.
“Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!”
Hill if I know. /rimshot!
Thanks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
