Dudugera, Pap’s scorching Sun
By Ana Santiso.
Watercolor on paper.
12,5 cm x 13 cm.
Registration: e76025126798a7ea7dcec59396a941213a3b7036d550981432dd7b4bedb10ecd
Token ID: 7214038304447267004
CREATURE: Dudugera’s mother was one day in a garden near the sea, when she saw a large fish frolicking on the shore. He got into the water and played with him, not knowing that he was really an ocean god. After a while, the woman’s leg, with which she had touched the fish, swelled, until her husband opened the swelling with a knife and a baby came out.
As a child Dudugera was evil with the other children, who threatened him. To avoid problems, his mother decided to send him to his father, so he went with his son into the sea. The fish appeared, put the son in his mouth, and disappeared swimming to the east.
But before leaving Dudugera had advised his mother to take refuge in the shadow of a rock, because he was going to take revenge on men by becoming a sun. He did so, and his heat was so scorching that it destroyed plants, animals and people. Moved, her mother took advantage of a sunrise to throw Dudugera a handful of lime in her face, which with the heat became the clouds that today exist and protect the earth from the heat of the sun.
CULTURE: Papua is the second largest island in the world, and hosts a cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity comparable only to its natural diversity. Even today its population, mostly indigenous, continues to live in rural tribes, speaking the 836 different languages and preserving ancient traditions.
Although there are also Austronesian populations, who arrived on the island in the great Malay sea expeditions of 1000 BC, the great majority of the tribes are Papuans. The Papuans came to the island 20,000 years ago, when there was still land continuity with South Asia, and they remained isolated for millennia. Isolated even among the Papuans themselves, since the geographical conditions (mountainous and jungle) and the way of life based on horticulture and self-sufficient hunting, resulted in an exponential multiplication of their languages and cultures.
Colonized by Europeans since the 19th century, when independence was achieved, the part of the island administered by the Netherlands joined Indonesia, while the eastern part, administered by the United Kingdom, became an independent country.
CURRENT POPULATION (the entire island): 10.110.066
