history of the future
Nusantara
Nusantara

Manokwari

Manokwari is a town that is blessed; messages regarding God’s blessings are found on signs at crossroads, on school walls, and in homes. This is the place where Christianity was introduced to Papua, as a result of the work of German missionaries Carl Wilhelm Ottow and Johann Gottlob Geissler, who arrived in 1855. “Im Gotes name Tu Betraten (In God’s name we set foot in this place),” were their exact words, now engraved on a monument on the beach of Mansinam Island, a popular destination for religious pilgrims.

Island of Refugees

In the late 1970s, after the communist North had won Vietnam’s civil war, many from the South who did not want to submit to communist doctrine chose to flee on small boats. This exodus brought many of these boat-people to Galang. Nguyen was one of them. Escaping from her ravaged country, this young girl’s life ended in tragedy when she was a…