Going Tribal

S1 • E1

Adi

Bruce visits the Adi, an isolated tribe in the foothills of the Himalaya between India (in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, carved from colonial Assam) and Tibet, ethnically closest to Bhutan, and shamanistic animists, enjoying governmental protection for their ancestral culture. They live in practically isolated villages, which few ever leave, practicing subsistence farming, clearing forests tracks every three year, and are omnivores, even live beetles, even fecal material is fed to 'toilet pigs'. The gam (elected chief, in a consensus model) of Jorsing village accepts to host Bruce, and gets everyone to help building a hut for him with simple forest produce, but many villages are beginning to use more permanent, comfortable modern materials, like electricity, connecting roads, even TV, all introduced by the Adi's own pragmatical choice. Apong, beer made from fermented millet, is crucial for social and ritual purposes, such as blessing the new hut. Bruce is 'adoped' by the 'gam', who brings some heirlooms. The measure of wealth are mithuns, a bovine species they keep in the forests, for work nor milk, rarely slaughtered except for offerings to the unseen, omnipresent spirits. The 'miri', traditional healer, is a female healer, whose influence and status wane because her healing inefficiency drives mostly youngsters to abandon animism in favor of modern medicine and often convert to Christianity, which however stresses prayer. They practice gathering and ambush hunting for days, using modern guns or traditional bow and traps, especially for deer, wild boar, monkey, squirrel and the surprising favorite: rat, which is eaten in the whole, fur and bones included. For the Aran festival, when neighboring villagers visit but Christians stay away, 'roti' bread is baked with raw-mixed in frog and cut-up rat; a mithun is strangled by hanging to be eaten with song and dance. Gratefull Bruce gets a send-off in style.

S1 • E2

Suri

Bruce joins a village of the Suri, a particularly warlike tribe (belonging to the Surma people) of pastoral nomads in the Omo valley, in the Sudan-Ethiopia border region, which has long-running feuds with neighboring tribes in all directions, leaving them boxed-in in a rather poor territory of pastures. Since fire-arms spilled over from the Sudanese civil war, the area is dreaded even by the Ethiopian military. The favorite sport is donga: stick-fighting, which isn't ritualistic but often causes serious wounds, occasionally even a fatality, and yet is engaged without any protective armor, in fact even the fighters continue to be dressed extremely scanty, naked buttocks and/or genitals are often shown, adding to the sport's attraction as a way for bachelors to flaunt their virility. Bruce insists and ultimately gets permission to train for this highly unsafe test of manhood.

S1 • E3

Kombai

This time Bruce wants a taste of life with the Kombai, a Papuan tribe. They are so remote it proves an adventure in itself, even with a local guide, just to find and approach them in the vast, largely unspoiled forests of New Guinea. The men go naked except for a penis-cover, which is applied after a bewildering penis-inversion, and go on long hunting and gathering trips. They live in dizzying high, self-made tree houses, once a useful protection against headhunters from the south. In their tradition, cannibalism is practiced only as ultimate punishment for khakhua-kuma, evil human 'soul-eaters'. There is no metal, all tools are still made from wood and stone. Their staple food is sago, to Bruce's Western taste inedibly dry but easily available in the wood, leaving them lots of spare time. The favorite food are wild pigs and, for special celebrations, bred pigs; as delicious as those taste to the Westerner, so disgusting seems their smaller treat, fattened grubs, a smaller kind is put in the ear to eat the wax.

S1 • E4

Babongo

The Babongo people of Gabon take powerful hallucinogens which send them on a life-threatening, three day trip. Bruce Parry undergoes the initiation and finds it has some terrifying side effects.

S1 • E5

Darhad

Bruce spends a month with traditional nomads in the Darhad Valley, near the Siberian border of Outer Mongolia. Barely arrived, he gets his first lessons in the two national obsessions: wrestling and horses in a mountainous land almost without car-fit roads. He soon attends in Rencenlumbe the Naddam, a festival of traditional contests, the main ones being wrestling and a 15 km bare-back horse race for riders from age 6 up. Twelve years after the fall of Communism, the valley gets its first own newspaper, yet 'revolutionary' remnants, often Soviet- Russian, remain common. An old Lamaist monk recalls the persecution which in 1938 destroyed the 1000 men strong monastery, never replaced. His hosts, Mishig's family, expect Bruce to help out when everyone migrates, four times a year, with the yak, sheep, goat and horse herds, whose self-processed produce makes them nearly self-sufficient. The whole dwelling is designed for easy mobility, mainly in gerts, an ingenious traditional type of tent.

S1 • E6

Sanema