Bintang

In the small and extremely remote village of Davo in southern Papua New Guinea (PNG) there is this one guy that never goes unnoticed.His name is Bintang, and he explained to me that it means star. The name fits the bearer, no doubt in this case. I had been trekking through the New Guinean rainforest for about a week. There was nothing but peace, paradise and an intense moist from dawn til dusk, but I had learned to appreciate this fantastic isotope, the habitat for thousands of species. I had even had close encounters with some of them on my way to Davo. Don't anbody ask me what I was doing there, in the middle og nowhere, but I hadn't had a single regret since I started off a week earlier.

As I entered Davo, a small crowd of villagers had gathered in pure curiousness to meet Bintang' s brother. Well, I am not his brother, at the time I didn't even know of his exsistence. The people brought gifts like fruits, cooked meat, different kinds of fruit juices, tobbaco, lukewarm beer, wristbands and an enormous chant in a language I had never heard before. Drums were playing, and the kids were dancing. An old man took me by the hand and led me through Davo to a small hut, made of grass and branches. I was blindfolded, and gently pushed down on a soft "bedlike" thing where I was instructed to lay down on my stomach with my head down. Still, I didn't understand a word of what they were saying. I thought: " When I Rome, do as the Romans". A couple of minutes passed, and I felt two strong hands starting massaging my body. First, long and gentle strokes, then harder and harder. Every muscke was thoroughly given new energy. I was convinced, these hands must belong to the great Hulk. They were extremely strong. Some kind og healing cream was distributed on my back, my thigs, my lege and my feet. The massage went on and on. I had no idea who did it, since my blindfold was still on, but it sure felt like I had arrived in something close to paradise. I fell into some kind of sleep, still half awake I guess. You probably know the feeling right before you're supposed to let your body wander off into dreamland. I must have been exactly there for at least an hour. A soft voice set me back into the real world. The blindfold was removed. As my eyes adjusted themselves to daylight, I don't know what hit me, but it sure must have been something out of the ordinary. The face I saw, the enormous smile, the skin color, the way his body hair was distributed, his attitude. I felt like I stared at myself. Another Svennie. He looked like a replicate of myself. Me, myself and I. I wasn't sure I liked this at all. The whole situation was scary. Really scary. In a split second, all my doubts and fears vanished like a water melon on his way through the Sahara Desert. He reached out his hand, pulled me close to him, hugged me tightly and uttered in fluent American: "I' m Bintang". My people think you're my brother. I think they're right. Maybe not right here, right now. But in a past life or in the future." Borthr, you got the vibe. We're brothers. " My plans for Australia, Fiji and Los Angeles were cancelled. This is where I wanted to stay. For as long as possible. With my new-found brother. This is where the story ends, because what happened subsequently to this is filled with so much karma - and is actually on a personal level. But, I' ve realized that an experience like this one does not deserve to be held concealed, so what I'll do is that I'll tell you guys the rest of the story once my homepage achieves the magical number of 200.000 visitors. 20.000 to go.