GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

CHAPTER 17
SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA
PACIFIC ISLAND HISTORY IS ENCAPSULATED FOR ME IN AN
incident that happened when three Indonesian friends and I walked
into a store in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian New Guinea. My
friends' names were Achmad, Wiwor, and Sauakari, and the store was
run by a merchant named Ping Wah. Achmad, an Indonesian government
officer, was acting as the boss, because he and I were organizing an ecological
survey for the government and had hired Wiwor and Sauakari as local
assistants. But Achmad had never before been in a New Guinea mountain
forest and had no idea what supplies to buy. The results were comical.
At the moment that my friends entered the store, Ping Wah was reading
a Chinese newspaper. When he saw Wiwor and Sauakari, he kept reading
it but then shoved it out of sight under the counter as soon as he noticed
Achmad. Achmad picked up an ax head, causing Wiwor and Sauakari to
laugh, because he was holding it upside down. Wiwor and Sauakari
showed him how to hold it correctly and to test it. Achmad and Sauakari
then looked at Wiwor's bare feet, with toes splayed wide from a lifetime
of not wearing shoes. Sauakari picked out the widest available shoes and
held them against Wiwor's feet, but the shoes were still too narrow, sending
Achmad and Sauakari and Ping Wah into peals of laughter. Achmad
picked up a plastic comb with which to comb out his straight, coarse black