1980: Klaus-Peter & Doris Kuegler were a German couple living in Nepal. Both were linguists and Christian missionaries. They were parents to three children; two girls and a boy. One was named Sabine.
Per their duties as missionaries, the Kueglers departed Nepal for West Papua in Indonesia.
The only inhabitants in the dense jungles were the Fayu tribe - indigenous people who had little to no contact with the outside world. They had only been discovered a few years earlier. Some tribesmen had committed cannibalism.
No white people had ever lived among them… until the Kuegler family arrived.
Aside from learning to speak the Fayu tongue and translating the Bible into their language, the Kueglers’ goal was to bring the word of Christ to the backward people. That meant teaching them love and forgiveness instead of fear and deadly retribution that was leading to the tribe’s extinction.
Sabine was age seven when she encountered other Fayu children - all of whom were naked. She spent the next ten years of her life among the primitive tribe and assimilated their simple lifestyle.
On Day One in the jungle, young Sabine made a trade with one of the native children; her hand mirror for a bow and arrow. She made fast friends with several Fayu children, including a boy named Tuare who would go on to call Sabine his sister. She and her siblings taught them how to play simple games. They in turn taught her how to use her new bow and arrow to kill prey. The Kuelger kids swam in crocodile-infested waters.
Mrs. Kuegler had brought western foods like oatmeal, but those provisions didn’t last. Soon Sabine joined her jungle hosts in eating strange new foods like grub worms and fire-roasted bat wings.
Klaus-Peter gradually compiled a dictionary of Fayu words and phrases. He and Doris also helped settle disputes among tribal members. Doris also introduced them to rudimentary medical treatments.
Life among the Fayu was simple in every way, and with the Kueglers’ influence the tribe became less embittered of one another and more forgiving. Sabine grew deeply attuned to nature.
But at age 17, her family left the jungle for the so-called civilized world. She entered boarding school in Switzerland.
Modern society was entirely alien to her. She knew nothing about television, automobiles, or fashions. Food was foreign and strange. Customs were bizarre. Sabine longed for the simplicity of jungle life.
She became pregnant after a brief sexual encounter and proclaimed that she and her new man were a married couple. A friend explained that marriage required a license and a ceremony and besides, that man was already married.
Sabine raised her child out of wedlock and later married another man. That led to divorce and a suicide attempt. Sabine longed for the simplicity of jungle life. But she knew she could never go back.
Sabine Kuegler moved to Germany and wrote three best-selling books about her life in and out of the Indonesian jungles. In 2005, she returned to visit her childhood friends among the Fayu, and she has become an advocate for the endangered tribe.
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