Good Will goes hunting
THE story of contact between the “civilised” world and the ‘tribal’ one contains more dupes and scams than a whole series of Cowboy Builders. In the 19th century, Europeans greedily bought piles of sandalwood from Pacific islanders only to find they were mainly just old sticks.
In the 20th century anthropologist Margaret Mead explored love and sex on Samoa, guided by teenage informants who later said they had made it up.
As we learnt during the first instalment of MY YEAR WITH THE TRIBE (Sunday, BBC2), it is not always clear who is being used by whom. For Will Millard – experienced traveller and presenter though he is – this trek represents a true leap into the unknown. His mission, at least at the start, is to find a group of Korowai people, a hunter-gatherer tribe who only made contact with Europeans 40 years ago. Their numbers diminishing, many Korowai are being encouraged by their overlords, the Indonesian government, to leave their stilt houses in the forests and live in modern villages with electricity and running water. (Huge profits from the oil palms on Korowai lands have something to do with it).
As a last link between ourselves and our hunting-gathering past, the Korowai are highly prized by film-makers – and therein lay Will’s problem. With hindsight, perhaps it all seemed a bit too easy.
Will makes it to a “modern” village where the people say they know someone who still lives in the old style. He duly treks out there to find a man called Markus, who goes about naked and keeps the teeth of all the beasts he has killed in the thatch of his hut.
We see the eating of fat grubs and even – in an extra show of explorer bravado – the insertion of wax-eating grubs into Will’s ear canal. Then they move off to meet the neighbours. En route, Markus paused to hack at a tree and when Will asked him why he was doing it, he said, “So you can film me”.
The first bum note turned into a symphony of farce as they found a village where the stilt houses were three times the usual height.
It emerged the Korowai had built them for Canadian film-makers and would not dream of living in them.
Sensing a wider scam, Will asked the women in the group why they were naked. They giggled sheepishly – they had been told to take their clothes off because a white man was coming to film them. And so it continued, with Will bravely forging on in search of the last pure savages and finding the savages waiting for him with an invoice. Does it matter, though, ultimately? It reminds us how clever these people are at surviving.
A second season of the Belgian cop-show SALAMANDER (Saturday, BBC4) started out in a steamy jungle too. Whereas the first series was all Brussels banks and government offices, this began with red dust, rebel soldiers and roadblocks. A Belgian pilot smuggling blood diamonds for African warlord General Bombé (Mwanza Goutier) was given some extra baggage for his flight home. It was a USB stick, destined for Léon Tchité, Bombe’s exiled opponent in Brussels. Tchité was then found dead, his killer an unconnected criminal named Mercier.
Delving into those files everyone keeps telling him to shred and forget, Inspector Paul Gerardi (Filip Peeters) found Mercier’s mugshot and a link to the Salamander network he fought in series one. Tosh, but gripping tosh.