http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/02/karawari-cave-people/jenkins-text
Just back from the Karawari today, so Ive only just now seen the Nat Geo article and have calmed myself from the usual sense of outrage that accompanies these things---beginning of course with being labeled an anthropological researcher rather than, for example, an anthropologist (like Borut Telban), and rising in level of potential hysteria through the bizarre creation story the writer seems to have been told that has judeo-christian overtones (all sin began at a certain time...) to the mention of all the game being gone in their bush...and their sense of having personally caused Lidia's illness by sorcery!!!...to the appalling fictionalization of what actually occurred with this young woman Lidia, who was indeed very sick and sent ahead to me in another camp down the mountain a bit (because the writer refused to have me accompany them to see Pasu's family, as they were too 'focused' on me) where we read a note pinned on her from their so-called photo assistant who was in fact a 'physician's assistant' illegally practicing medicine in PNG of course requiring us to airlift her out right away! We went ahead and carried her, with Pasu and others down the mountain to the canoe and took her to Munduku aid post where they diagnosed pneumonia but had not meds, and in the course of this spent so much of the Nat Geo's precious motor fuel that they were livid when we got back to Awim and they couldn’t go on that evening to the lodge but had to rough it with us for a night. They then put the terrified Lidia on a drip for no real reason but to seem like saviors, and left her with us in the morning, so we had to nurse her back to health (not a problem). They were a bafflingly arrogant and disruptive team of voyeurs who seems deeply disgruntled that a white woman had any role as a liaison between them and these noble savages.
We conducted another medical patrol through all the villages, Meakambut included, with the ex CEO of Boram Haus Sik, Dr Louis Samiak, and checked out all the new babies and everyone. Lidia has a baby girl and is fat and happy, as are others. We have put some in school, and have helped supply farming tools, seeds, etc for their emergent village of Tembakapa. It is absolutely true that as of 2008 they were hunting and gathering only, returning to wild sago stands at intervals, and then (as now) finding a steady amount of game in the bush, but are convinced that settling down in Tembakapa is the way forward for many reasons and are moving only periodically from place to place (we saw them a few days ago in a camp by the river, for example, where theyd been helping the Impoin and Yimas people bring garu bark to market). Dr. Samiak says, in concordence with earlier patrol reports of the area, that the Meakambut are now and have always been remarkably fit people.
This is what I just wrote to the fact checker who contacted us during the editing of the article:
I want to thank you for your hard work as fact checker on the Meakambut cave article. I just got back from the field today and read the article, along with emails from colleagues who were apparently sent earlier versions to read that, they tell me, were even more outlandish and fictional, and even described me as having ‘furtive’ blue eyes. So thanks for getting as much right as you could. It does irk me that the writer would call me an anthropological researcher rather than an anthropologist (which he calls Borut Telban), and omit the small fact that I was the one to take Lidia to the aid post far downriver, thus spending so much of their precious Nat Geo fuel in the motor canoe that the team was none too happy they had little left afterwards. I do also want to say again that the ‘photo assistant’ amy toensig brought was a physician’s assistant and, while well-intentioned, succeeded in terrifying that young girl by putting a wholly unnecessary drip on her just to show that he could I suppose. She is fine, fat, and the mother of a small baby as of last week. We have, not incidentally, brought the head of the Wewak Hospital on patrol to see them twice so far, and he has both times said that they are remarkably fit, in fact, and not ailing as the writer says in the article. They have plenty of game in their bush and still hunt regularly (it is precisely this biodiversity that we are working so hard to maintain, thus the mention that they have hunted out their bush seems strange to us). There is also obvious fiction in the creation story either the writer concocted or our worker, Josh Meraveka, told him (although I have to imagine that the former is the case as this story is nowhere else recorded by Joshua)—how all people acquired sin somehow (strangely Judeo-Christian) after leaving the origin stone. You can reassure the writer that he was not in fact the cause of Lidia’s illness or sorcery, and that the team’s presence very briefly in the Meakambut territory has had no horrific psycho-social impact on them, other than the fact that villagers who accompanied them from other villages love to describe how the writer and photo assistant stripped off entirely naked to swim in the river, shocking everyone on the Arafundi (a very traditional culture, if apparently ‘without clothes’ to outsiders). We so appreciate the time and effort everyone took to come see the site, and the Meakambut, but it should be said that people living in very fragile environments are extremely vulnerable to carpetbaggers, storytellers, and fictionalizers, and the next time such a remote population is covered by the magazine they should consider issues of cultural sensitivity and experience in similar situations before selecting a team. I know the photog and the writer thought I was ‘furtive’ in the end because they found everything so expensive, and that I spent too much of ‘their’ budget on my team (perhaps), but their like or dislike of me should not have ever entered the story. I am familiar with people resenting the fact that a white woman becomes their interlocutor for remote people, when they want to make ‘first contact’ as adventurers themselves, but it is not to no reason that I live here, raise children here, and spend 1/3 of my time in the Arafundi/Karawari area with these people: even a mere ‘anthropological researcher’ comes to know one or two things eventually, and should be consulted on the facts of a story about her field site, rather than treated as a ‘fixer’ for their expedition.
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