Gebusi Photo Gallery: Chapter 1

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 1. Gebusi carriers on our first patrol, spring, 1981: Left-to-right: Wahi (standing, with hat), Yuway, Nogo, and Swiman.

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 2. First patrol: crossing the Sio River on a makeshift raft.  Yuway is poling the flimsy raft, Nogo wears my pack during the tipsy crossing.

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 3. First patrol at the end of the line. Distant village of Honabi, south of which, “There are no more people!” 

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 4. The immensity of the rainforest (hard to capture on film!). For scale, see the boy standing in the upper middle of the photograph. 

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 5. Yibihilu from the air, afar: a footprint amid a sea of rainforest 

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 6. Yibihilu, place of the deep water: village clearing on a bluff at a bend in the Kum River. The village longhouse is toward the top of the clearing; Bruce and Eileen’s house is toward its bottom. The photo was taken from the air on returning from a field break, when the plane passed over Yibihilu in route to the Nomad airstrip.

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 7. Gebusi woman, Boyl, stands on a ledge by the rapids of the Kum River. These are overlooked by the Yibihilu longhouse, which is higher on the bluff, above where Boyl is standing. 

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 8. Approaching the Yibihilu longhouse from across the village clearing.

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 9. Sunset over the treetops, taken from Yibihilu village overlooking the Kum River

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 10. Yaba, a senior man and the biggest jokester in Yibihilu, 1980-82, wears a large bamboo noseplug. (Nasal piercings are begun with a small bone needle when the person is young. The hole is gradually stretched bigger by inserting larger noseplugs as the person gets older.) 

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 11. Dokiayn, a senior woman of the Yibihilu community. In 1980-82, women were not ashamed to appear bare-breasted in the village. 

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 12. Teenage Gebusi boys: Terkabo and his friend from another community dress up similarly to indicate their friendship 

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13. Good company among children: young boys play on a log. Gebusi children often play on their own in the rainforest near the village.

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