Customer Reviews

Living with the Kombai Tribe

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We absolutely love this show, and the following ones: living with the mek, and the new one currently on the travel channel: Mark & Olly: Machigenga Tribe. Believe me, I watch a lot of the popular shows like Lost and Prison Break, and this is just as riveting. On top of that, you learn a lot. It's fascinating to see how these tribes survive and their way of life. Mark and Olly always try their hardest and its so funny to watch the women in the tribe make fun of them for not being good at things like building huts and hunting. It might sound boring, but it is by far one of our favorite shows. Definitely worth a watch!

I have watched this show on the Travel channel and I was absolutely frantic to find it on DVD. After months of not finding it, I was thrilled to find it here on Amazon. I love to watch how people survive in the wilderness with no TV, no modern technology, not so much as metal for knives, something a lot of people take way too much for granted. Mark and Olly show nothing but respect for these people, even through they swam in the river after a ritual sacrfice to stop it from raining, and that caused it to rain for 4 more days! I can't wait to get the DVD to watch.

With each DVD I watched I grew to know Mark and Olly more and more. By the end to the tape I was sad to see them go. I felt as if they were me and not just the Kombai Tribe. I cried. This adventure has a warm spot in my heart. It is, as the Kombai say "Portarumbo"!

I watched this series last year as I was preparing to move to Papua Indonesia where I now work as a pilot. I thought the show was great because it seemed to focus on the local people and their culture. It was interesting to watch the foreigners attempt to adapt to there culture. It was a gripping show, especially to me since i was about to move around the world and perhaps fly into this particular area.

But after I moved here I met some people that work with the Kombai and they told me about how the show was made. There was about a 30 man crew that was in the village for 3 months. They paid a lot of money to some of the people and that has had some negative affects on the isolated village economy. They requested for the people to act "native" to fit there plot. It is filmed to make you believe that its just these two guys trying to adapt but in reality the whole thing is staged. I understand that you need to have an interesting story to sell t.v. shows but it seems to me that they have exploited these people by misrepresenting them. And as they do it they preach an anti christian world view that shows the village with the airstrip like it has been defiled by outside christian influences. Its a common enough them in most of the BBC and Discovery channel shows. If you watch it just keep in mind the world view of those that made it. Its extremely biased toward there views.

I am buying the DVD on amazon because I want to give it to my friend who works with the Kombai so that the Kombai people can watch it themselves. I am interested to hear their response.

This is a wonderful TV series about a hunter and gather society. Very spirited and enlightening.

It can be difficult to see women treated like objects and after watching the episode dealing with an abused woman I had to remind myself that this is their standards and way of life for thousands of years. Otherwise, I enjoyed viewing the dynamics of gender, the women tended to shoulder the bulk of the work while the men were decision makers and hunters. I appreciated both Olly and Mark's respect toward the tribe and stepping in when it was necessary, such as flying out a woman that was stabbed by her husband for medical attention.

It was quite eye-opening to see the effects of colonialism when they visited another tribe that wore regular clothes and believed in the Bible. They seemed more distant and less warm. It's amusing to see that pigs are valuable and are often exchanged as currency. All in all, this is an educational and entertaining series, but I preferred Mark and Olly's Living with the Mek Tribe which focuses on another tribe in West Papua.