The Diary of Roland'O

Roland'O is on a 10-year mission, hitch-hiking around the world, bearing a simple message: "I want Peace on Earth" http://www.worldwidepeacepetition.org/pmp/ This blog presents excerpts from his communiques, together with a few observations on them.

I want Peace on Earth

Diary 2007


This story isn't about me.  It isn't about Roland'O either.


It's about you.


In "The Blank Slate", Steven Pinker correctly observes that violence and warfare are a human universal.


But we are also 
Intelligent Plastic Machines

http://lcipm.blogspot.com/2013/11/living-computers-intelligent-plastic.html

and hence capable of reprogramming our dispositions



Peacewalker



One day, my dive buddy Eng brought along a new chap. His name was Roland Hohn, but for some reason still mysterious to me, he prefers to be known as Roland'O.


A pleasant and unassuming fellow, he was not a scuba diver and had come along just for the ride. Naturally, i asked him the usual questions people ask when meeting an amiable stranger.


- where are you from? - what do you do? etc

Roland'O explains his mission on YouTube 


His responses aroused my curiosity and interest. So much so that we have kept in touch and from time to time he sends me anecdotes of his experiences. Like this one:

Kapau River, Gulf region, Papua Nugini

Vincent told me one day that he could "see" the infinite. He must have been 6 or 7 years old.

With my friends we often discuss the infinite. The eternity of our soul, for example. We smile when we remember ourselves having lived together in the molar of a dinosaur. Our souls were probably not distinct at this time. Or maybe we have just been in a herd of dinosaurs, like we were already part of the first mono cellular molecules, at the dawn of all life.

So, you see, the Today takes another colour. Considering where we come from, the Tomorrow becomes absolutely fantastic. We realize that All is possible. If Vincent wants to become King of the World, he can. In reality he already is. He has just to express it, to implement everything for his goal.

Lately I was on a tumultuous river in Papua. I sailed on four trunks bounded with vines. Yutas devotedly guided me during four harassing days through mountains of jungle. A ceaseless equatorial rain fell on us all the time, days and nights.

I was told that my experience is palpitating but I always have the impression that what I say importunates. I realize that when I tell about an anecdote or another, my partner often starts to speak about his own life. Like for excusing himself not to have an as exciting life as mine. It’s usually touching and interesting. So I listen !

That's why I now have the life of thousands of people in the ears. That’s why I feel pride to have a rather good idea of what we are, we all humans. And I can tell you : we are good ! We are on the right place ! Earth is a paradise and humankind is full of Love and Kindness. We just sometimes forget.

Yutas took nearly one hour to assemble the raft with four logs and some quite solid vines. I couldn't progress anymore. Since the morning I walked only very small steps. We spent the last night under the shelter of sort of a cave. But it rained so much all the night and vermin hassled us. We couldn't really sleep. We both were quite exhausted.

We were at the end of the mountains and the path, which wasn't since long not a real path anymore, the way we walked went up and down at every corner because of the numerous creeks joining the river. The soil was very slippery, a sort of clay, and no step could grip the ground. Sometimes we followed a cliff where there was even no small plants to hold on. I thought dying at each step. I could, why not ? I was ready for it. I didn't feel any fear, everything was fine. I just had to keep going and watch my steps.

Sometimes we had to walk on a simple log to cross a deep creek, not wider than my thigh, and I’m quite skinny. With my two bags I couldn't hold the balance so Yutas carried one on his shoulder to the other end. Sometimes, he took it to the end of the slope, so I could also use my hands to walk. It was heavy for him too but he was more used to walk in those conditions with his large bare feet.

Just before we met, I was in a remote village, Kaintiba. There was a sloppy air field. I tried to get on the little plane that just landed. The pilot was a rude oozy and didn't want to take me on board for free. I didn't had the 200 Kinas fee to the next town. I don't understand why he refused me. The plane was already full and I couldn't jump on it anyway. He could have just smiled to me but he wasn't sorry.

Sixteen different captains invited me on their board since a few months I crossed all the Indonesian islands. From West Malaysia to Borneo and then to Sulawesi, the Molukes and Papua. It took a while, maybe half a year, because sometimes I had to wait five or ten days for the next boat. I walked in incredible places. All the people I met did everything they could to help me on my Mission.

In Lae, on the North Papuan coast, I met the first lift I was refused. I was trapped. There was no road further. I think I walked all the roads I could, but now I was trapped. I first thought going to the Solomon Islands but the only boat going that direction couldn’t take me. It was the only one to leave from that place.

The boss even didn't want to look at me. For sure I wasn’t looking good, I just landed from over a month on the roads, all way down from the deepest valley in the terrible Hailands. The last time I asked him I only could speak through a wall with five little holes in it. After a while I realized he was not behind the wall anymore. I'm not a beggar. I usually just tell my story in two words and show my paper.

So I had to walk ! I don't mind, I like to walk, but there was no road anymore. The Consul of Papua Nugini I met in Jayapura when I applied for the visa gave me a map. There was only a hundred kilometres to the South coast. I thought there must be a trail to go there.

First I met a proper road and I could hitchhike for forty K. I walked a lot also and had four lifts in an amazing landscape. The last driver, the unique police officer of a remote little town lost in the mountains drop me two hours before arriving. The road was washed away by the heavy rains. It was dark night when we arrived at the village.

They all told me that we are supposed to be in the dry season. Well, you know, the climate changed everywhere. Nobody understand the weather anymore. I crossed all Europe and Asia these last 5 years and everywhere people tell me the climate became crazy.

So I had to walk. I could weigh my bags at the airfield : one was 8 kilograms and the second 12. Dry ! I carry a huge number of things because I never know where I'm going to sleep. I carry everything I received on the way : mat, blanket, mosquito net, etc, etc. I tell you, with all the water we received on our face, the bags became really really heavy.

Thank you Yutas for taking one of the bags from time to time, but now it doesn't help me so much anymore. We hadn't had proper food these last days. Only a few okari nuts two women we met in the forest gave us, and also the sweet potato a strange man offered.

Mr Tobo was walking in a large creek when we met. He came all the way up from Port Moresby, the capital. He had some lifts from there too but because of the rain he also had to walk. He was not far from two hundred K already. He seemed to be a bit more organized because he had food and he knew his way. He was really kind to share his meal with us. That wasn't enough to be strong and powerful to walk from dawn to dark for so long.

When Yutas finished the raft he told me to lay down on the logs where he added some vines so I could hold my self. He took a long stick to guide the raft and we launched in the terrible river. There was so much water that we were pushed right and left and Yutas sometimes couldn't keep the train strait in the flow. We turned in circles and the trees on the sides wanted to turn us over.

I had a giant ant on my shoulder. It must have jumped on me just before we left. There was also a little grasshopper and a bug. Just for those three I didn't want to fall in the water. I was praying that my papers didn't get wet. They were well wrapped in plastic bags and were still dry, but a jump in the river would have killed them. And us too, for sure. It was no question to turn the raft over.

“Take care on the left !” I shouted to Yutas. He was standing on the front, trying to keep the raft in line with his long stick. “Keep cool, man, you're a strong guy, everything is all right !” I repeated. There was no chance to turn over. We had only one choice : keep calm enough so nothing will happen. Only one false movement and it was over. No chance to keep alive swimming in the wild waters.

Huge waves everywhere, tared off trees and water, so much water. I had a painting in my mind, from J.J. Meynier, about a man sleeping in a boat in a storm. He said to his friends that if they had Faith, there was no reason to be afraid. So I wasn't. I just knew that if the raft went over, it would be finished with that beautiful life I had. And it was all right, why not ?

I just would like to complete my Mission. I am collecting Signatures for Peace. I am walking since five years with the Worldwide Peace Petition. I visited forty-eight countries already and I would like to go everywhere and meet people from all over the world.

I want Peace on Earth. I am a Peace Walker. Walking and hitchhiking around the world with no cent in the pockets. Collecting one point five billion Signatures for a global Peace day, a Planetary Armistice on December 2012 and Vincent is my 14 years old nephew living close to my hometown Geneva.

Yutas signed the Worldwide Peace Petition on Aug 21 in his place called Imundi. He recited me the names of 60 of his family. He has a hare-lip so he doesn’t often leave the forest where in lives with his mother. He didn’t speak any Tok Pisin so we communicated mostly with signes.
Mr Tobo Atoam signed the Worldwide Peace Petition on Aug 22th in a creek between the Werr River and Kapau River. We had the feet in the flow while discussing.

Peace Love and Light,
Roland'O

Not Just Another Hippie

"Peace, Love and Light". Sounds like one of those throwaway lines from the sixties. And so it is. And so it is not. It just depends on how you look at it.


Some 45 billion years ago, plus or minus seven, a cloud of gas and dust coalesced in a ball that settled into a planar eliptical orbit around one of the stars in the Milky Way.


44.5 billion years later, the inherent electromagnetic attractive properties of matter that had brought forth into being things called atoms, molecules, amino acids and proteins, had managed, by those same natural laws of physics, to assemble them into structures that we call cells. Cells have some unusual properties; inside them is a long piece of plastic which, again by those same electromagnetic attraction properties, had the remarkable ability to direct the process of molecule assembly in such a way that it ended up making a copy of itself out of the stuff that happened to drift past.


0.5 billion years after that - about 50 years ago - two pieces of multicellular protoplasm calling themselves Francis Crick and James Watson unravelled the structure of this self-replicating plastic that we call deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short.


Meanwhile, armed with their imaginary consciousness, philosophers and sophists had been indulging in introspective and extrospective speculation about the meaning and purpose of life, coming up with all kinds of convoluted, poetic, romantic theories and political ideologies, repectively. Sense did not appar on the scene until Richard Dawkins pointed out that this thing that we call life is nothing more and nothing less than a rather complicated cascade of chemical reactions, all built upon ways and means of helping DNA continue its self-replication, generation upon generation.


Survival and reproduction; the basic instincts of all life-forms. Who survives, and who reproduces, is driven by the unseeing eye of electromagnetism. And as the right stuff to make new copies (ie amino acids) doesn't always conveniently drift past, calls and multicells have to go and get it. And, although there's plenty of the right stuff around, it isn't always conveniently to hand, so the more evolutionarily successful variations were successful because they were either good at finding it, hanging on to what they had found, stealing it from others or, even better, getting others to deliver it unto them.


Multicells come in all shapes and sizes, possessing all kinds of mechanisms to assist them in their endeavours, such as fins, legs, wings, eyes, fists and brains. Some of the smaller ones found themselves going around in packs, and found themselves needing to cooperate so as to coordinate their activities so as to be able to individually survive long enough to reproduce in an increasingly crowded marketplace/battlefield with all kinds of other species each digging out their own ecological niches.


And, just to complicate things even further, along came sex. Somewhere along the line a big cell ate a small cell, (or maybe they other way around!), only to find its own DNA falling in love with its meal's DNA and wrapping themselves around each other in such a way that they managed to replicate, not themselves, but some combination of each of them. By the time muticells had evolved, almost all the successful ones had inherited this meiotic method of replication that we call sex.


Sex caused a lot of trouble for the multicells, for they found themselves competing with each other, not just over sequestering food and shelter, but over mating rights as well. Intra-specific competition became every bit as savage as the predator-prey relationship.


In all this mayhem, our psyches have become wobbly balance-wheels, tilting this way and that as the joint forces of egotism (survival of the individual) and altruism (self-sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the group) tug at our hearts and minds.


World War I, "the war to end all wars", provoked a reaction which spawned the League of Nations, a group opposed to such global madness. It didnt get very far, for World War II started soon afterwards. However, that occasioned a reaction too, which saw the League reborn under a new handle called the United Nations. But that didn't get very far either, as a fog of mutual suspicion settled upon the peoples of the triumphant allied armies, nourished by Machiavellian entrpreneurs who could see an easy way to make money by selling things designed to destroy themselves, thus ensuring continuing demand for their products.


The Cold War heated up in USA when paranoia and greed escalated its military activity in Vietnam, in turn creating conscription when technology failed to overcome determinedness. But whereas teenage youths were happy to flock to the battlefield in 1914 and 1939, their 1965 US counterparts were less enthusiastic. The counter-reaction to this war was grass-roots rather than official. The Flower Children of the 1960's dressed not unlike the Bohemian hippies of the 1950's and the appelation was transferred and stuck. Their attempted mini-revolution was social and cultural, but it had affinities with prior political and economic anti-plutocracy revolutions in France and Russia.


The govenrnments of the day were better organised than their French and Russian predecessors, so "flower-power" had even less impact than the UN. The most prominent pacifist of his day, John Lennon, was eliminated in much the same way as earlier threats to vested interests such as John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.. By the 1990's, youth culture was oriented back to insularity, inter-group xenophobia, and intra-group materialistic competition. The social revolution-to-be never happened, but it did spawn a few leftovers such as the Green movement and various peace activists. These days, the new kid on the block is Osama bin Laden and so far he's been quite successful at ramping up WWIII, no doubt to the secret delight of the Orwellian doublespeakers and their bank managers.


Kennedy was a President, King a preacher, and Lennon a rock star, but Roland'O is just a hitch-hiker. His programme, however, is arguably even more symbolic than theirs, for his personal material gain from his efforts is zero. But, as his anecdotes reveal, his personal spiritual gain has been so much more. Let's read another one...

May 8, 2007 4:49 PM

Hello David !

I couldn't read your slide show yet but I keep on trying to find a fully equipped computer !

I am back in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo. It is much more quiet here, I feel much better.

It was quite tense in the Philippines. If it would be like that in the rest of the world, I don't think that I would still be on the roads. It was exhausting. I had to walk a lot under a blazing sun of the tropical summer.

I was much solicited but not always in the way which pleases me more. Often, the glances were wary, suspicious. As if one could fear something from me.

Sometimes peopled were laughing, for example. Then I approached them and was offered a glass of water, or a meal. I collected a lot of Signatures. In such a climate, a wind of Peace is really welcome.

Everyone is wary of everyone else. You may be killed for nothing. There have elections at the moment. Contracted smiles on all the posts. The candidates kill themselves with organised gangs. People do not dare to undertake anything any more, corruption is everywhere.

One evening, by sunset, I was looking for a shelter to sleep. I was exhausted and my mood did not allow me to be cheerful anymore. While leaving a borough, I saw a grand-ma cleaning pots in a shanty hut next to the road. Our glances crossed and I asked her for advise.

That woman literally exploded with happiness ! She run to answer me that she had thousand places where I could sleep. If only I did not mind me to sleep with two old ladies. Than she started to tell her life very fast : she was a millionaire before, she has travelled in Europe in 1957, she was Imelda's friend (former first lady), she has been married when she was 12, she could not have children, she is eighty-seven years old, her girlfriend is about sixty plus, she went to collect plastic bottles to resell them a few pesos the kilo, her husband died and everything was taken from her... But how ? What happen ? Never she hosted nobody, it is impossible ! I must be sent by God ! "Impossible ! impossible !" she repeated in Spanish way.

She quickly forgot that I didn't understand Tagalog, I forgot too and I listened to her like perhaps never anybody didn't listened to Dona Lolita de Quenio, who shells large seeds she collects from trees behind to make soft pillows she sells 100 Pesos piece.

Well, I did not sleep very well on the half bench she offered me, but her hospitality was enormous ! That night, her friend Rosalita, who never brings nothing back, returned from her round with a meal that we shared. Pure happiness we lived !

The following day before sunrise I was on the road again with a great smile on my face, walking energetically in a country I could only love. I refused heavy coloured Jeepneys passing by and the rare private cars didn't stop.

Randomly some truck did ! A side-car motorcycle embarked me once. The driver felt to adore me suddenly. He left me with regrets at the exit of the town. He was three-wheeled taxi driver like so many others.

Well on, with the terrible sun I needed to cover myself ! I wear sunglasses. But attention ! The great model, almost the size of a diving-mask. I hold it from Russel, an American who hosted me in Brunei. His wife was blind, he knows about eye-care. He recommended highly to protect my eyes from UV which are shingling under the Tropics at the moment.

On the head I wear a yellow scarf, which is the half of the sarong I rolled up in Thailand last winter. Once knoted, the wings are hanging in my back and I certainly look like a pirate.

Equipped like this, one sees me heavily loaded with two enormous bags. I weighed them at the airport, close to Mount Pinatubo north of Manila. The leather bag is 8,4 kilograms and the exotic fabric one, 9,7. It is heavy !

But what do you think ? I received all these things as presents and I cannot give them away like that ! It is very rare that people I meet accept something from me. And I also got accustomed to all that scrap !

I have stuff to sleep, for example. Even when I sleep anywhere, I like to sleep like a king ! I still have the very beautiful mat my sister offered me, when she came to visit me in Bangkok December 2006.

The mat yields in 24 pieces and it's always in my bag, over all the remainder. It protects it well, because the slide is broken and my bag is always wide open. I fixed two large buttons which I connect with a ribbon to hold the two lips as narrow as possible.

The violete blanket is from my friend Spencer I met at the Rainbow Gathering in Ulan Baatar last summer. He gave it to me against a new pair of Jean I received in India. I use it as mattress, yielded in two on the length side. I realized later the light blanket had been stolen from in a night-bus in Thailand.

Some have plane blankets or hotel bathroom towels. I only could steal cottons stems or shampoo in the luxurious hotels I get offered occasionally. It also happens that I pick a score of toothpicks when they are of good quality. I have hollow teeth and often the sticks that they ordinary give you break like nothing.

In a Buddhist temple in the north of Malaysia, I was offered a saffron robe. A large gold fabric whose the monks cover themselves. I use it as bed-sheet. I sleep very well.

I also have a pyjama ! The full white tunic, made out very light cotton, comes from Fes. Mohamed gave it to me the evening I arrived at his place on his invitation for the Peace-Festival we were going to organize for the nights of December 28th and 29th 2004, in Morocco.

The pant, also white, comes from India, from the family Singh who inaugurated a temple dedicated to Krishna. I was expressing the Divine approbation, Krishna accepted their present and I was his representative. What a great ceremony !

It is also there that I lost my big leather bag which came from San Cristobal in Mexico. A bag of more than twenty years of age ! I was very sad to loose it. I left it in a car which went away.

The Singh's also gave the exotic cotton bag and full more useful things that I still carry now, like the sandals, which start to arrive at the end.

I still have a pair of wool socks which Ali bought me at the very beginning of the journey in Istanbul autumn 2005. He covered me with wool in prevision of the winter road I was going to follow : Anatolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

It happened quite differently and I escaped from the cold. I quickly found myself in full desert, in the Peninsula of Arabia. I slept in the artificial lawns between the sky-scrapers of twenty-first century Dubai and I crossed the petro-desert of Oman. The weather was dry and hot.

I all gave away in Bombay. I couldn't carry that any more. I planed going more to the south and I gave my winter-stuff to a guy who hosted me for one night in this enormous city. I was about to take it back 3 months later and he could keep it all if I did not return. I passed by again before the end of the delay, but he had already kept or resold it. Never mind, the weather was hotter after.

I have also a pink royal mosquito net ! Several people can sleep in it and I almost can stand up inside. I tell you, when I find small shelters in a park in a town, it looks really space ! When a small wind moves the veil and a ray of light passes, the few passers who can see me have an eerie sight.

I stop here the list of the things I carry, but it's epic. Each thing has a history or even several which I'd like to tell you.

I only can say thank you. Thanks to all of you, thanks to the ALL. Thank you for allowing me to carry out this wonderful life. Thank you for allowing me to visit our planet. Thank you for allowing me to meet you, to establish a link between us.

Thank You !

Peace, Love and Light
Roland'O




During WWII, the island of Tanna in the Kingdom of Vanuatu in the Pacific ocean became a temporary base for the American military.  As US soldiers do, they brought in vast quantities of cargo, the contents of which were eye-openers to the islanders, who had never before seen such a wealth of material. 

White men in brown lands go by various appelations; for example, in Indonesia the orang putih is called "Mister" or "Tuan" (= Mister/Master/Sir/Lord/Boss) to his face - whence Conrad's flawed hero "Lord Jim" - and in Phillippine villages and other Pacific islands they are called John. 


On seeing the affection his fellow islanders had for the cargo of the Johns of Tanna, an enterprising local fellow devised a deity he named "John Frum"  (= from ...), who would return with aeroplaneloads of cargo for them, so long as they followed his chosen prophet. Thus started the "cargo cult" of Tanna, who turned their backs on the Christian missionaries that had usurped their culture and instead built symbolic landing strips for John Frum to return to them laden with cargo.  They borrowed just one Christian meme -  the missionaries have their Christmas day, so the cargo cultists have their John Frum day (Feb 15); the day of his prophesied return.
Jun 22, 2007 Sorong, West Papua, Indonesia
-  Hello Mister !
-  Selamat Pagi Captain ! (Good morning, Captain ! )
-  Dari mana ? (Where do you come from ? )
-  Saya nama Roland’O, dari Geneve, Suisse.  Jalan kaki Damai di Dunia. Koleksi Tandatagan dan Petisi Damai di seluruh Dunia.... Kamu ingin Damai di Dunia ? ...Nama, Tandatagan ! … Semoga Beruntung Captain Sofian ! Saya ingin jalan ke Papua, Papua Nugini, Salomon, Australia, Amerika Latin, … seluruh Negara.
      (My name is Roland’O, from Geneva, Switzerland. I walk for World Peace. I collect Signatures with the Worldwide Peace Petition. ..Do you want Peace on Earth ?  Write your Name and Sign ! … Good Luck Captain Sofian ! ....I want to go to Papua, Papua New Guinea, Salomon, Australia, Latin Amerika, … all the countries.

This converstion took place in Ternate, North Maluku archipelago on June 10th, 2007 in the Captain’s home. I repeat these words hundred times a day since I cross Indonesia and more than 1000 Signatures are already in my bag.
I would like to tell you now about the Chance which pleases me so much since a few days. I was on a ship, the Kie Raha I, which links Ternate to Sorong, on the West coast of the island of Papua. The journey lasted six days and everything was well. We zigzaged on the equator line. I frequently saw the lattitude zero on the GPS, sextan of modern times, close to the lever which now replaces the rudder and looks like a video game Joy Stick.
The sea was quiet and I was the privileged host of Captain Sofian and the crew. They dedicated me a sheltered space on the upper bridge, between the pray room and the control room. I could eventualy sleep in the mosque if it started to rain. A crowd of heteroclite passengers embarked and desembarked from the sixteen stopovers we made, hopping from an island to the other. Sometimes there was no jetee and dugouts transboarded people and their luggage. It was comic and acrobatic.
Once we arrived in Sorong, I was very happy to take some steps and I started to walk along the road which leaded to the city. The Papoos have a well different look than Indonesians. They are negroid aborigene type, with a rather dark skin, a broad nose, cripped hair and fierce eyes. Their attidude to the stranger is different. Much less greedy than on the other islands I crossed. Here no "Hello Mister" which sometimes sounded a little narguish. Here the called me with a much more respectful "Good morning Sir" and often with a broad and frank smile which remainded me the Africa of my childhood.
It was a real joy to step the plain ground again. I walked like this some kilometers in a steamy equatorial heat. I did not see any downtown coming but the buildings along the road became a little more compact and the shops more oppulent. I saw a few stars hotel and wanted to enter to enjoy the air-con to cool down in the loby and to rest in the broad armchairs I was sure to ind there.
In front of the door a man called me. I wasn’t sure he spoke to me because he was wearing his mobile phone at the cheek and he might be speaking to someone else. So I only stood a second and smiled to him. He called me again and asked what I was looking for. He offered to help me. I answered that I was looking for an Internet access and he told me that I would only find one at the post office I passed by but it was closed because we were Sunday today.
He than asked me if I wanted to stay at the hotel. I presented my work and he read the Worldwide Peace Petition. I have the translation in Indonesian language. I asked him if he did know somebody who would be able to host me because I cannot pay any hotel room. He didn’t answer me but followed his conversation on the mobile.
When he hung up, he asked me to follow him and said that he had a friend who will be charmed to host me one night, one week or even a month if I wished so. He leaded me towards a home dwelling not far from there and we soon arrived in front of a small house surrounded by a pretty white barrier where many children were playing. All shouted "Good morning Sir!" to me.
We took our shoes off and stepped up on the terrasse and a strong chocolate woman told us to take a seat in the armchairs. She had the stature and the elegance of a queen. Immediately some fruit juices were served. She spoke only a few English words but my guide, Louis Kaitana, translated my explanations. She confirmed that I could stay in her home as long as I wanted but she was sorry that her husband, Pastor Yance Wutoy, wasn’t there. He was on a journey on the Serui island.
Louis told me that there were constituting a network to make of New Guinea a zone of Peace, "Papua Zona Damai". It seemeds that I was at the right place. Louis promised that the Worldwide Peace Petition would be added to their program and that he would send thousands of Signatures to Geneva.
A little while later I was guided towards a wide clear sleeping room and a bathroom where I could refresh myself. Then a good meal was offered : fried fish, vegetable soup and the traditional white rice. Delicious lunch followed with a little nap.
Once rested, I joined the family on the terrasse. All had already written their Names and Signatures on the Petition and each one presented himself personally to me : Maya 16 years old, Gloria 13, Josua 7 and the youngest, Mossad, one year and half. There were also Angel 4 years old, Ajay 24, Michal, Ejon, Donal and many other cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, the grand-father and the grand-mother. Beautiful team full of laughter and smiles which showed lot of sympaty and respect. Ajay and Gloria were rather well speaking English and even Josua gave me a really well educated "Please to meet you Sir". To all I wished "Semoga Berungtung!" Good Luck, in bahasa Indonesia.
In the evening somebody brought a laptop computer so that I could register my Names and adress in a file. I could play my old CDRom and we watched the few images still readable saved there. Louis came back to tell that he was connected with the sales manager of PELNI, the national company of maritime transport. The free ticket for the next step, Jaya-Pura, should not be a problem. A vessel will have a stopover in Sorong two days later.
Mama Melinda, the Pastor’s spouse, said she was ready to offer the way but she would like me to stay little longer with them. Moreover, her brother Moses was at the Papua Nugini consulat in Jaya-Pura and he offered to host me and help to facilitate the visa application. The family is also connected with many others on the other side of the border and even until the islands of Solomon and Fidji. How lucky I was !
The next morning I woke up around 8 AM with Ragga Muffin fullon the speakers. A hot black coffee and some good chocolate cream sandwiches awaited me. There is no better breakfast than that one ! The elders were already gone to their studies and Josua and Mossad were happy to share the delicious sandwiches with me.
In West Papua you also can listen to R'n’B, Reggae, Hip Hop and I even heard an old air of the Ivorian Alfa Blondie. You can see effigies at the glory of Bob Marley everywhere and I already wear a red-green-yellow cord bracelet, so beloved by the afro-jamaican culture. It was knoted by the pretty Gloria.
Mama’s sister is chewing pinang (betel nuts). She pulls her ear lobe while spitting the red juice which dyes her teeth and she laughs all the time clashing her thighs. I like her a lot with her real dark skin and smily face.
Later I went for the Internet connection and luckily I ask my way on the road because I found a CafeNet less than to two kilometres from the house with a rather fast connection with the worldwide web.
I received some bad news: my friend Karin, from Uri in the Swiss Alps, I met at the Rainbow Gathering in Thailand last January and who proposed to join me in Papua Nugini wrote that she had to give up because she was seriously ill in Lombok, close to Bali. She preferes to join China to recover as the climate is better there. This news saddened me much because it’s about 6 months now that I didn’t had any contact with somebody from my own culture and I was really looking forward to the affectionate conversations we would certainly have had.
I poured some selfpitty tears because I can’t stand this terrible loneliness my mission drives me through anymore. I walked a heavy gloomy sadness on the way back to the house. I suddently wanted to give everything up and hug my daughters and enjoy the beautiful summer which starts now in my hometown.
Once at the house, a good meal was ready and the laughter of all the family dispersed quickly the blues from my heart. Grand-father Izaach brought a sheet covered with Signatures and he undertook to tell me the vision he had thirty years ago about a Papoo nation united around a flag he concieved and discribed wide and broad in a letter sent to the United Nations in 1998. I didn’t understood everything he told me but the message of sympaty and support was clear, the old man ensured about his entiere co-operation.
After noon, the youngsters took me for a walk along the road I walked the day before. We passed the port and went to a large bay to assist to an absolutely amazing sunset. They took many digital photographs with their mobile phones and the girls were quite caline on the poses. It was very touching. I hope that they will send me copies by e-mail so that I can show them to you. Ajay, who works part time at the CafeNet, promised me. He asked to tell him the next time I wanted to connect, he would facilitate the access.
We travelled back with a shared taxi which we filled entirely eight of us and it was already dark night when we arrived home. I played the video clip of Rammstein to Ajay. He studies German and I wanted to show him the title "Ich will" Sam, the last grandson of the Prophet Abraham, copy on my CDRom at the time of my stays in Teheran in December 2005. The tempo of the music and the images are a bit violent but the words are very touching: "I want that you hear me - I want that you like me - I want that you tell me the truth, etc.". I want Peace on Earth, I often insist about the importance of the self willing. When I pressed "Play" to launch the clip, I was asked on the terrace.
Two men with serious aspect presented themselves as Mr. Johanis Goram-Gaman and Mr. Theo Wambrauw, of the Traditionel Papua Council of the Maya sub-ethny group. They heard about my visit in Sorong and they came to present their homages. They also ensured me of their entire support and all their tribe and gratified me for my mission. The Mayas are a powerful tribe of Papua Nugini and they are represented everywhere on the island and in the rest of Indonesia.
Since a few months I make a particular repeated dream in which I am received like a King by the Papoo tribes and easily obtain their assistance to propagate Peace. For sure my imagination is fertile, the nights of a lonely traveller are long. I should say here that I do not have much distraction : The Glass Pearl Game by Hermann Hesse, read and read again since Thailand, and a playing cards set that I have since China last year with which I play unended Solitaire games.
I told them about my journey in South of Mexico in 2000, in the country of the disappeared Maya native Indians, where I received the premises of my present mission. I asked them if there were similar Prophecies in their tradition. Sir Johanis told about a story told from father to son since ever in the families, according to which a King will leave Papua to propagate Peace in the world and will return triumphant in this paradise island. They left me shocked.
Peace, Love and Light
Roland’O

To be so seized of a conviction that one dedicates one's life to it is rare, if not entirely unprecedented in the history and folk-lore of this world.   Like Kipling's fictional Daniel Dravat ("The Man Who Would be King") and Heyerdal's theorised trans-Pacific Viking sailor (prompted by his observations that images of the Polynesian god "Tiki" have distinctly Caucasian features and that the oceanic circulation and prevailing winds in the southern hemisphere run counter-clockwise so a white man (maybe a Viking) could have sailed on a reed raft from South America to the Marquesas), received as he was with such adulation by peoples clutching their own version of that ubiquitous anchor of a returning redeemer, it is only human of Roland'O  to have wondered whether his chancing upon the Maya people of West Papua was more than coincidence.



Nov 9, 2007  Nimbin, New South Wales, Australia

Hello Dear David ! Thank you so much for worrying about me. How are you ? are you still in Brunei ? What a nice time I had there. I still have a beautiful piece of white coral on a string round my neck I found it on this magical tiny island we went on after your diving. It reminds me of that wonderful time in Borneo.

You're right, I'm in Australia right now. I landed in Cairns 3 Sept. after two month crossing Papua Nugini. It was an incredible journey there. I was really surprised still being alive after I had to cross the island from North to South in the deep jungle. The Divine was on my side, I had to suffer no injuries and no problem at all. It was only very tiring and food was missing, only a few nuts and some sweet potatoes for two weeks. At final I had to follow a furious river on a four logs raft my mate made with vines. It was a really powerfull experience.

In Australia I heard about a Rainbow Gathering holding close to Byron Bay, in the mountains, at the Washpool National Park. So beautiful Brothers and Sisters I met there. I met Love there too and Svea invited me in her home. I forgot everything, for sure. I even thought maybe giving up my Mission as I'm allowed to. I'm still balancing.

I was looking to write a bit of this incredible journey but till now I didn't found people who seem to be interested enough to help me for that. I don't know how to proceed. I'm used to walking forward, meeting ordinary people and getting the Worldwide Peace Petition signed. Do you remember the talk we had in your home with your Chinese diving instructor?  Here, I feel I can only answer questions as I don't know what people are interested in. I will take a flight for New Zealand on Dec. 3rd from Melbourne. A few thousand K to hitchhike there and maybe a few interesting people to meet. I'm at the halfway stage of my journey and also at the half of the world tour I'm on. I'm close to the antipode of my birthplace, a wonderful feeling.

I wish you all the best David. It was a great thing to meet you. Peace Love and Light.  Roland'O

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