Ingeborg de Beausacq - New Guinea

New Guinea

In 1957, Ingeborg went to New Guinea. She experienced people and places, nature and living culture. She spent 1½ year in the villages along the Sepik River. She lived with the natives, sharing their life, photographed their initiation rites, wrote their history, and bought art objects.

Ingeborg first spent a month in Malekula. She explored the forest with three native guides. On the island of Touman she bought her first piece of art. It was the discarded head-hunter pole of the island's chief. Ingeborg met Kali, the chief of the Big Namb tribe of which Tom Harrison had written in his book "Savage Civilisation".

Her goal was now the Sepik river in Australian New Guinea. An Australian captain, Les Ingle, took her on his vessel, the Sea Lark, to Angoram, three days from Madang. The night before leaving, an earthquake shook the house. Ingeborg learned that 100 miles north-east was an island, Manam, whose volcano was violently erupting. To meet the emergency, the Administration had prepared total evacuation of Manam. The natives did not want to leave yet, they believed they were the volcano's children and that he would not destroy them.

At the end of her first sailing trip the Sea Lark anchored in front of Manam. No traffic was permitted anymore, said Les Ingle, but he promised her to find a way to get her to the island. She won Ingle's sympathy and he became interested in her venture while little by little she confided in him. He offered to lend her his 15 ft boat which he had equipped with a single cylinder motor for fishing trips. They made arrangements to get the boat for her from Madang.

The second sailing day brought her to Kopar, the first native village at the Sepik river mouth. Ingle took her ashore. She met Kurit and Eram, the two Kopar men who would later be her companions for many months. Kurit would be the motorist for the boat to come, Eram would cook and clean. Kopar would later become her headquarters.

The third day they arrived in Angoram, where she met some "Europeans": a Danish woman, two Welsh men, several Australians, a Canadian. She also met Tas Hammersley, a young Australian who had built a school community for native children in Pagui, 300 miles from Angoram up the river. She promised to visit him later in Pagui.

Ingeborg went on excursions and visited far away villages: Mendam, Karam, Darapap, Murik. She talked with the natives and bought objects. Les Ingle brought her over to Yogari, a village on Manam island. While they had their last dinner on the Sea Lark, before Ingle returned to Madang, the sea got bad. Only after hours of cruising in front of the active volcano she could get rowed ashore at two o'clock in the morning, though the sea was still stormy. She landed on the wrong part of the island, found herself alone with six native men around a fire. She persuaded them to take her to Yogari.

English anthropologist Camilla Wedgwood had been in Manam 25 years earlier. The natives thought that Ingeborg was the reincarnation of "Miss Camilla", and the women in particular transferred their love to her.

The week Ingeborg spent in Manam was as close to a life in a tropical paradise as one can imagine. The natives killed a pig for her, took her heavy sail canoe to sea so that she could photograph, brought carvings and made new ones for her. She went with women to the bush, they told her about their love call devices, she bathed with them in one of their grass skirts. The men discussed politics with her, told her the story of their ancestor, the volcano.

The Sea Lark picked her up a week later. Ingle left her in the river with the pinnacle and Kurit and Eram. They explored four villages turning their back to the lakes and swamps: Mendam, Karam, Darapap and Murik, and also the Murik lake villages. In Wewak, at a costume ball, she met again Tas Hammersley and promised to visit him and his school in Pagui.

One day, a ship like the Sea Lark anchored in front of Kopar. It was the Thetis, a government patrol boat with its captain Goya Henry. He used to be an aviator, who lost one leg in an accident which cost his only passenger's life. Henry was a man of impeccable manners who liked to quote Shakespeare. Henry took Ingeborg's pinnacle, with a broken shaft, in tow, and her belongings, Kurit and Eram and herself onboard and picked up her carvings at Kurit's uncle's village. They sailed to Angoram, where she left the pinnacle at the care of Johnny Young. The Thetis then took her all the way to Pagui where Tas Hammersley waited for her. In Pagui she went on collecting trips to the villages in the bush and tributaries of the upper Sepik. She then felt so one with the natives and the river that she slept alone tied up at any river bank.

It was Christmas. Ingeborg stayed with nuns in a bush village and attended midnight mass. Hammersley was promoted to Samarai, a small island at New Guinea's extreme south. They said goodbye to each other and also to the Sepik. She waited for the Thetis to take her down to Angoram, took a mission boat to Wewak, from there a plane to Hollandia, the capital of Dutch New Guinea. Her goal: the Asmath region on the south west coast. She flew to Merake and went by boat to Agats, the patrol station for the Asmath region. She now wanted to go to Cook's Bay.She went there with an administration boat and instead of two hours it took several days. The captain was afraid to go by sea and serpentined through inland waters. He got stuck at the Kronkel river mouth for days. The ship was crowded with a team of Eurasian geologists and their heavy equipment. They had to sleep in turns, the ship being too small for everybody to lie down at the same time.

Ingeborg left the ship and walked to Cook's Bay, in company of a native policeman. After six hours' walk along the beach with crab holes and rotten trees, she arrived in Primapam, the patrol station at Cook's Bay. She was then followed and surrounded and partly carried and guided by hundred naked natives. On her way she was once dragged over mud in a canoe like in a sled, the natives called her Mama and the women brought her their babies to touch.

At the station was a wounded chief, kept in a shed by the policemen. Ingeborg went to visit him, brought coffee and tobacco. Early afternoon he escaped and swam across the river. A canoe with natives was sent to catch up with him. She photographed the scene and waited for the man to come back. He went right up to her, coming out of the water, embraced her and licked her face. Only when he tore out some of her hair and started to eat it, the other natives came and freed her from him. They then explained that the whole day the chief had announced that he wanted to kill and eat her. Ingeborg was afraid to sleep in the house, assembled all available lights and slept on an open place, surrounded by lights.

Ingeborg followed the patrol officer on census taking trips, collected art and went bac to Agats. In order to reach Hollandia, she had to be paddled 15 night hours up the Eilanden river to an oil boring station from which once a week an aquaplane flied to Sorong at the extreme north point of New Guinea.

In Sorong she caught commercial flight to Biak-Hollandia-Wewak-Madang-Lae-Port Moresby-Samarai, then Sydney. The crates with all her acquisitions arrived in New York. A great part was bought by the Museum of Primitive Art, the rest went to Museums and collectors all over the world.

Later, Ingeborg wrote a book about her life in New Guinea which was to be published by Random House. She wanted to tell how these people lived, how intelligent, hospitable and honest they were. Her life with them had been the happiest time in her life, she said. But the editor did not like her approach and asked her to invent stories about rapes, lions, snakes, real danger. Ingeborg refused, the editor decided that the book would not sell and did not publish it.

Ingeborg left New Guinea in 1959 and spent several months visiting Thailand, India, Pakistan, Lebanon and Greece. In Nepal she hired a Sherpa guide in Katmandu, a cook and five carriers who took her way up close to the Everest. She climbed the Kala Patar, the Everest's close neighbour.