“I stood stock-still on the jungle path, confronted by a Papuan pygmy, a former headhunter. I stared at the diminutive creature. At such close range he seemed subhuman.” So the Reverend Don Baker relates. A member of the Armed Forces at the time, he had been assigned to New Guinea and was instantly fascinated by the indigenous people he encountered. He longed to communicate with them, to find out what made them tick. He knew that missionaries had been serving in that area. What had they accomplished?
“I tried a dialect with this little fellow on the path,” he relates, “for I had picked up a few of their words. I supplemented them now with sign language, but he stared at me 19. He seemed more like a wild animal than a human being. Then I hit upon a word that worked like ‘Open Sesame.’ I said, ‘Christos? Christos?’ His eyes lighted up at that name, and he put both his palms together, prayer-fashion.…
To view this resource, log in or sign up for a subscription plan
