"They're ordering us to come to their side of the river," he whispers to me.
Kembaren murmurs to the boatmen to stop paddling. Moments later, I see a throng of naked men brandishing bows and arrows on the riverbank. Suddenly, screams erupt from around the bend. They call outsiders laleo ("ghost-demons"). Some clans are said to fear those of us with pale skin, and Kembaren says many Korowai have never laid eyes on a white person. But even he has never been this far upriver, because, he says, some Korowai threaten to kill outsiders who enter their territory. My guide, Kornelius Kembaren, has traveled among the Korowai for 13 years. Now the four paddlers bend their backs with vigor, knowing we will soon make camp for the night. Soon after first light this morning I boarded a pirogue, a canoe hacked out of a tree trunk, for the last stage of the journey, along the twisting Ndeiram Kabur River. For days I've been slogging through a rain-soaked jungle in Indonesian New Guinea, on a quest to visit members of the Korowai tribe, among the last people on earth to practice cannibalism.
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