Kobarweng or « Where is your helicopter »

Kobarweng‘s point of departure was Kaiang Tapior’s question: “Where is your helicopter?”, which puzzled me on the day of July 6, 1987 as I stood in the village of Pepera. Apparently in June 1959 a scientific crew, including anthropologists, had dropped down from the sky in helicopters; much to the terrified surprise of the villagers who watched in awe at these things from out of the sky, the likes of which they had never seen before. Memories of the colonial past interfere with those of the second World War. There is a follow-up to the “first contacts”, but… “We never tell everything, we always keep something for the next anthropologist”!, the villagers explain.