Word: wewak
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...many others did, and later that year the former plumber's apprentice was told he'd been awarded the Victoria Cross for "the highest degree of bravery." By then he was in a Melbourne hospital, slowly recovering from terrible injuries and malaria. Just three weeks after his actions at Wewak with the 2/4th Battalion, Kenna was shot in the face and recalls hearing a priest at the field hospital being told he'd probably die. "I thought, Pigs," he says. Even as the last rites were administered, he remembers telling himself through the pain, "This is not going to happen...
...they struggle to obtain fuel for mobile patrols, investigating non-violent crime is not a priority. Time has learned that none of the people involved in the apparent attempt to export the two skulls has yet been charged. "I don't know why it's taken so long," says Wewak police detective Kila Tali, who took part in the original seizure. He says the prime suspect, local artifacts trader Ralf Stuttgen, has admitted some involvement in packing the boxes containing the heads and delivering them to the courier's office. A police raid on Stuttgen's home later uncovered...
...person, 66-year-old Stuttgen, a former Berliner, looks more like the Catholic missionary he aspired to be when he arrived in the country in the 1960s. But the interior of his wooden cottage, perched on the rainforest-covered heights above Wewak, confirms his fascination with tribal objects. Eerie hook-nosed masks and giant carvings cover the walls. Twenty years a dealer, Stuttgen defends the sale of skulls, saying, "It is a victimless crime. I was just trying to help the (local) people. They brought them here. I just helped them mail them," he says. The skulls were not genuine...
...These poles, made from a special hardwood, represent the most powerful spirit in a village and can fetch as much as $100,000 at international auctions, says Eoe. Haraha says he is seeking to question Stuttgen about some spirit-house poles that were put up for sale recently in Wewak...
...Tambanum village, about 65 km south of Wewak, more than 1,000 people from the Iatmul tribe live along the banks of the Sepik, and on the tiny creeks and tributaries that carve up the district. They know the power of the skulls. One of their people, they believe, paid a terrible price for selling a head. The man, Toni Kawa, "went into the bush and when he came back he started vomiting; and just from vomiting he died," says a fellow villager who preferred not to be named. "Then his wife died. The only way (to stop...