Copyright © 2005 Tom Ludvigson. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE: A DAY IN THE LIFE(1)
I
wake with a start. It is dark all around me and I am
momentarily disoriented, not knowing who or where I am.
There is a rumble to the left of me, then a creak, and I
turn my head just in time to see the silhouette of a young
boy against the pale light of dawn coming in through the
half-opened door.
Then he is gone and I merge again with my identity: I am in
central Espiritu Santo, in Lisa's house in Kuvutana; an
anthropology student struggling through the
rite de passage
of my first field research project. Across the house from
me I hear the puffing sound of forced breathing and a fire
bursts into flame, driving the darkness back towards the
corners of the house, where it will remain, hiding in nooks
and crannies that never see the light of day. Lisa is
sitting up on his mat, leaning over the fire, almost
embracing the flickering flames with his body. Suddenly I
am aware of the cold, and, sitting up, I nudge together the
logs of the smoldering fire next to me, knock the ashes off
the end bits with a dry length of cane, and blow it alight.
On the other side of the fire Vanlal's sleeping-mat is
empty. It must have been the noise of his getting up that
woke me up. Now he comes inside again, jamming the door
wide open with a block of wood on his way back to his mat
and the warmth of our fire. He sits down, puts a foot up on
each log, and hunching his shoulders and rubbing his upper
arms in a familiar gesture he looks at me and
smiles:
Akira mina inia!
"It is cold!"(2)
In
the light of the fires and the open front door I can now
see the house gradually coming alive. Shaded from the door
by the large bamboo cupboard where I keep my papers and
medicines, Vanlal's younger brother Riki is poking his
fire. His small brown face lights up with the red glow of
the embers as he blows on them. Across the logs from Riki
little Maritino is stirring in his sleep on Lisa's mat.
Next along the wall is Lisa, now carefully balancing
yesterday's pan of
koro,
tiny river fish, on top of his and Vekrai's fire. On the
other side Vekrai is getting up, careful not to wake Epin
who has been sleeping in her arms. Skirting the oven stones
in the centre of her part of the house she makes her way to
the back door. She removes the length of wood with which
she bars the door every night and swings it open, only to
hurry back to a crying Epin who has woken up on feeling the
absence of the warmth of her mother's body. With a string
of soothing words Vekrai sits down, lifts Epin to her
breast and puts a nipple in her mouth.
I lie back on my mat and look up at the sooty sago-leaf
thatch above my head. Through it I can hear the sounds of
morning - roosters calling to each other between Kuvutana
and Vorozenale, the sound of birds in the bush sloping down
from the settlement. No human noises yet from the outside
– people must still be in their houses, just waking
up or occupied with their morning meal.
As indeed we are. The
koro
having boiled, Lisa lifts them off the fire, putting the
blackened old frying pan down on the earth floor. With his
fingers he shifts a few of the fish on to a metal plate,
then he pours some of the salty stock over them. This he
places on the floor in the centre of the front part of the
house, midway between the centre post and the front door,
then retires to the rear part of the house. Squatting in
front of Vekrai's mat he takes a cold cooked taro from the
pile behind the centre post and begins to peel it with a
small knife, letting the peelings fall on a worn piece of
sacking, spread out on the floor for the purpose. I stand
up and take a couple of my taros from an aging coconut-leaf
basket, hanging from the house post next to my mat. These
taros have been given to me by people in the hamlet as part
of the normal distribution after cooking. They are black
from being scorched in the flames while firing the oven
stones - this ensures that they do not irritate your throat
as you eat them. I fetch an old rice-bag for taro peelings
from among the oven stones, retrieve my small knife from
its place in the thatch above my mat, and squatting next to
the plate of
koro
I begin to peel one of my taros. Vanlal and Riki both fetch
taro from the pile behind the centre post and join me by
the plate. We chew our taro and swallow it with fish stock
and maybe a few strands of the white flesh with each
mouthful.
Non-vegetable foods are so scarce that there is not enough
to just chew the fish with the taro. Instead we have
to
zimzim
- holding a piece of fish with the right hand fingers and
repeatedly dipping it in the juices on the plate and
sucking it we manage to make a finger-size fish each last
for a whole meal.
Lisa has woken Maritino up and they
zimzim
in the fry pan in front of Vekrai’s mat. Vekrai is
eating too, but pauses intermittently to turn over a small
taro that she is roasting in the embers of her and Lisa's
fire for Epin - infants are not fed on cold taro; it has to
be hot. When it is cooked and she has scraped it clean of
ashes and the charred skin, she chews a little at a time
and puts it straight from her mouth into Epin’s. It
looks like she is kissing the little one.
Meanwhile the rest of us have finished eating and I put my
knife back in the thatch, then gather up the four corners
of the rice bag with taro peelings in one hand and walk out
through the front door to feed my pig. The peelings from
the meal in the rear part of the house will go to
Lisa’s huge sow in the enclosure across the street
from his house, sloping down towards the Zari river. My pig
is in Sulu's enclosure, behind his house on the other side
of the hamlet.
Ducking out from under the shade of Lisa's verandah I am
hit by the sun. Though it has only just risen over the
treetops of Truvos it still warms me in the chill of the
morning. Above me the sky is clear with the promise of a
hot day.
I walk briskly up the street, noticing in passing the tiny
padlock in place on the front door of Eilili's house. He
and Meriulu must have left for their gardens really early
this morning. Being childless he tends to get away before
any of his brothers most mornings. As I pass Popoi Trivu's
house I can hear him and Vepei talking inside. I cut across
the slope up towards the rear of Sulu's dwelling. Here I
stop, turn around, and admire the view.
Closest to me is the black and tattered thatch of Popoi's
residence. Here and there along the roof are patches of
brown indicating where a leak has been repaired with fresh
sago thatch. The split tree-fern trunk that forms the ridge
of the roof is overgrown with green moss. It is the oldest
house in the hamlet - Popoi's three sons have all built
themselves new houses since I first came here.
Above the ridge of Popoi's roof I can see Eilili's smaller
dwelling. The light brown colour of the thatch reveals that
it is a very recent structure. Eilili still makes fires in
it daily, smoking the thatch to preserve it for long life.
Opposite the two, on the other side of the street, are the
remains of Lisa's old house. Built after the last big
hurricane that ruined all the houses in Kuvutana except
Popoi's, it is small and low to withstand strong winds. It
is now rotting away, though still standing up. The thatch
is torn, and both the roof and the gable I can see from
where I am standing have large holes in them. That house is
not used anymore, except by children playing - and by
Lisa's dog Ravet when she had a puppy recently.
Further away from me, close to the front of Eilili's house,
is Lisa's new house, where I live. It is wider than the
others and, like his old one, placed along the street
instead of at an angle to it. It is more than a year old
and is taking on the dark brown colour of maturity. Smoke
from our fires is seeping out through the roof and rising
up into the still air of the morning.
Beyond is the end of the Kuvutana
mazara,
the street and clearing surrounding the houses, kept free
of weeds. Here the sun-baked red clay gives way to tall
grasses, sloping up a small hill that separates the hamlet
from its neighbour Vorozenale, blocking it from my view. I
can see a man coming down the track from Vorozenale -
probably Lahoi, judging from the colour of his loincloth:
orange with large white flowers; cheap cotton bought in a
Chinese store in Luganville township on the South Coast.
Looking to my left over the trees that border the hamlet I
can see the steep slopes of Paten on the other side of the
Zari. The ridge is still in shadow, a uniform murky green
that reaches the skyline unbroken. On my right I look down
into the Art valley, with tufts of cloud and mist still
lingering in the gullies on my side of the river, but with
the opposite side bathing in the morning sun. Squinting, I
can see the houses of Tonsiki, just below the skyline. My
eyes travel left along the ridge, past the peak of
Patunlapevus, its slopes haunted by the spirits of people
killed in warfare in the past, and finally come to rest on
far off Santo Peak, visible through the high pass that
forms the head of the valley, at the source of the Ari.
Turning back to my task I continue around the back of
Sulu's house. It is larger than any of the others and also
recently built. Then a short stretch down a path and I'm at
Sulu's pig enclosure, calling my pig. "Ah, ah!" A rustle in
the bushes and here he comes, sniffing and grunting his way
up the "well trodden clay bank. He has been blinded, as he
kept jumping out of the enclosure and going on nightly
excursions foraging for food. The enclosure is large and
only partly fenced in, the rest of the circumference being
steep banks or gullies, some of them fairly easy to
negotiate for a determined animal. Even sightless he used
to escape in the company of a small pig belonging to Sulu's
son Lino, but since that was killed to feed the builders on
completion of Sulu's new house. My pig has been alone in
the enclosure, and has kept to his place. He walks up to
the foot of the bank where I am standing, lifts his snout
up towards me and I pour the taro peelings all over him.
Leaving my pig to his meager breakfast I retrace my steps
back towards Lisa’s house. As I pass the spot with
the view I can hear a familiar sound: "Touk, touk, touk,
touk, touk!" Grandma Vepei is calling them, and from all
over the hamlet fowls come running as fast as their legs
will carry them, converging on a spot in front of
Popoi’s house where his wife has thrown the refuse
from their morning meal. Pecking and clucking among the
woodchips left over from countless battles with logs of
firewood they scatter in front of my feet as I walk through
their morning feast. I cross the open space between the
houses, duck under the low fringe of Lisa's verandah and
re-enter the house.
It is dark inside, and more so in contrast with the bright
daylight outside. I head for my sleeping place and barely
notice a man sitting on the edge of Vanlal’s mat. I
sit down. As my eyes get used to the dark I can see that it
is Lahoi - the man I saw coming down the path from
Vorozenale earlier on. I suspect he has come to see me
about some ailment of his. This is routine - practically
every morning somebody shows up.
My ticket to membership in the community and my
entire
raison d’etre.
as far as the local people are concerned is as a healer.
With the aid of some medical training received during my
military service in Sweden and free medical supplies from
the British authorities on the coast, I do my best to look
after my hosts' health. In exchange for this service they
feed me and put up with my ceaseless questioning.
Lisa tells me that Lahoi is indeed here to see me as he is
ill, so I turn towards him, asking what the matter is.
Lahoi’s face looks haggard and he answers me in
Tohsiki, the language of the people on the other side of
the Ari:
Patunku me vasisi;
"My head hurts." I don't speak Tohsiki, though I can
understand simpler phrases, so I carry on in Kiai, the
language of the people I live with:
Na nisa?
"Since when?"
Lahoi informs me that he has had headaches every morning
for the last three days, but they finish well before noon.
He indicates the time by pointing to where the sun is when
his headaches desist. I take his pulse - 120 - and feel his
forehead. It is hot. It must be malaria, a chronic ailment
they all suffer from, though the attacks seem to affect
them less than they do me. I fetch four tiny Nivaquine
tablets and a couple of Disprin from my stores in the
bamboo cupboard beside the front door. Having filled a cup
with water from the huge demijohn in front of the centre
post I drop the Disprin in and hand Lahoi the cup and the
Nivaquine. He watches, fascinated, as the headache pills
bubble and boil and dissolve, then swallows the
anti-malarials with the mixture. Before he leaves I tell
him that he may have a mild attack tomorrow morning, but
the day after tomorrow he will feel well. I know this from
both personal and others' experience with the
anti-malarials, and I tell him mainly to reassure him that
he will be better soon. These predictions and cures have
earned me a considerable reputation, though.
The local healers derive their success from personal
powers; I suspect they see me as powerful too, instead of
just the meek wielder of powerful tools. Sometimes people
come all the way from the South Coast to see me, instead of
going to their nearby dispensary - a practice that annoys
me, as it takes up enough of my time just dealing with the
needs of the people of this valley, not to mention the
delegations of sufferers from further inland.
By now Lisa and family are ready to leave for their day's
work. Lisa selects a long bush knife from the array wedged
into the bamboo network of the cupboard by the door and
walks off first without a word, closely followed by Ravet,
wagging her tail. Vanlal takes a knife and follows, while
Vekrai shuts and bars the back door to keep the fowls from
entering the house during the day. She is carrying Epin in
a cotton sash tied across her right shoulder, the little
one straddling her left hip. Vekrai is wearing the
traditional
saksakiri,
a bunch of fresh red and green cordyline leaves back and
front, hitched up by a string around her waist. All the
women in the valley wear
Cordyline;
they plant it at the back of the houses and in gardens, to
provide fresh clothing every few days.
Closer to the coast with its missionaries, market and
money, the women wear cotton dresses. The local women have
them too, but use them only on visits to the coast, and -
very occasionally and only some of the younger women - when
going to a feast.
Vekrai now tells Riki to stay home and look after his
little brother Maritino. Then she hoists a basket of taro
stems on to her back, suspending it by the many plaited
strands from her forehead. The taro stems she has collected
from the back of the house, left over from carrying taro
home for cooking. They are obviously going to plant a new
garden today. Lisa and Vanlal must have gone ahead to carry
taro shoots from one of their old gardens.
With Vekrai gone up the path to Truvos and Riki and
Maritino playing outside, there is only me left in the
house. I’ve got a large backlog in notes to transfer
from my little jotting pad to my duplicate notebooks, so -
wise from countless interruptions when trying to write at
my table under Lisa's verandah - I pack my writing
materials into a shoulder bag, grab my mat, bush knife and
umbrella, and go outside. I’ll do my writing in peace
in one of my hiding places in the bush surrounding the
settlement.
I walk up the street past Sulu's front door and take the
same path as the others, following the ridge up towards the
grassy summit of Truvos. The path is wide and worn free of
vegetation through years of use, and lined with Hibiscus
trees with beautiful pink and white flowers, and tall
grasses. Here and there are a few trees - scattered
outposts of the denser bush on the slopes down towards the
rivers on both sides of the ridge. Truvos used to be full
of houses, I've been told. In the past this was the main
settlement of my hosts, before they dispersed into the
smaller hamlets of Kuvutana and Vorozenale, and Matanzari
and Palakori on the other side of the Zari. Outsiders still
refer to them as
mera i Truvos:
"people of Truvos". Tall, majestic coconut trees bear
witness to the history of the summit, their leaves moving
gently in the morning breeze with a sound like a distant
waterfall. They grow around most settlements, though they
bear no fruit at high altitudes - here a good seven hundred
metres above sea level. People still plant them, as the
leaves are useful in many different ways: for baskets,
"ground sheets", kindling and so on. For fresh coconuts we
rely on fruiting stands on the valley floor.
Here at the summit the path divides into two. One goes off
to the right where it soon branches again, leading to
gardens on the slopes down to the Zari. I take the other
one, turn left across a wooden catties stop and into a
large expanse of short grass that slopes gently down a
forked ridge towards the Ari, with a wedge of bush dividing
the field into two.
The view from here is magnificent. The whole exuberant
valley is spread out beneath me. I can follow most of the
outline of the Ari with my eyes, as it runs its jagged
course down towards the flatlands south of Big Bay. I can
even see the sea, as a streak of glaring light, reflecting
the sun between the sky and the blue haze of the distant
shoreline. The entire valley is covered in luxurious green
forest, except for a few irregular patches on the hillsides
opposite the river from me – the gardens of our
neighbours, the Tohsiki-speakers. I can also see two grassy
spots in the valley, a bit like the one I am standing on.
One of them, on a low ridge in the centre of the valley, is
the former settlement of Morkriv. This is the old home of
our neighbours, complete with coconut trees, but no houses.
First some of the people moved away to Vunpepe, closer to
the river, after a quarrel. Later, as many of those
remaining in the old settlement died, the survivors moved
further down the ridge to Duria. They blamed the deaths on
the locality - they bury their dead inside the houses and
there were too many dead bodies underfoot at Morkriv. Later
a few of them left Duria and settled high up on the
mountainside at Tonsiki.
The other grassy area is on my side of the Ari, but much
further down river. This is Moruas, another abandoned
settlement. Some years ago a young man living there eloped
with a married girl from Duria. The people of Duria were
enraged and threatened the Moruasians with witchcraft. They
all fled the settlement, living instead in garden houses
and gradually establishing new settlements further down
river. Only one of them, Mol Sale moved up river, allegedly
due to bad relations with his neighbours - he has a
reputation as both witch and sorcerer. He now lives with
his married sons at Zinovonara, just next to the river
close to the coconut grove at Miremire, where Lisa has a
garden house.
Looking left instead my eyes follow the ridge past Tonsiki,
traveling the same path as earlier this morning. I can see
smoke curling up from Taskoro, although the houses are
hidden from view. There lives Pune Tamaravu, a Vorozenale
man who moved across the river and allied himself with the
Tohsiki-speakers, after one of his daughters died. Further
up the valley are the coconut trees of Vunpati, where
Lisa's and Sulu's father-in-law lives with his two married
sons. I take the path to the left, and skirting a small
herd of cattle I continue down the grassy slope. There are
a few bushes and lots of large, light grey dead trees - a
popular source of firewood for the settlement on the ridge.
I turn off the path to the left and continue down to the
edge of the grassland, to where I have cleared a level
patch well out of sight from the path. Spreading my
umbrella to shade me from the increasing heat of the sun I
sit down on my mat and go to work on my notes.
I
have been writing for hours. My back and legs are tired
from sitting cross-legged on the mat, it is near noon and
I'm getting hungry. The day has gradually changed its
character during the course of the morning: scattered
clouds occasionally obscuring the sun becoming more
frequent until now they form a uniform grey cover all
around the horizon, like a roof placed on top of the
valley, heralding the usual midday showers. It is time I
went back to the house and had something to eat. I start
packing up as the first heavy drops begin to fall. By the
time I am back on the path through the grassland the rain
has turned into a steady drizzle. I hurry along under my
umbrella, knowing it will get worse before it gets better -
I can see a grey curtain moving steadily up the valley from
further down the river.
I've passed the summit of Truvos and turned right, down the
path towards Kuvutana, when the shower hits me with a roar
like heavy surf. Within a minute the path has turned into a
slippery stream, wetting my legs with the splashes from the
barrage of raindrops. I run the last stretch down the track
and past the houses until I am safely out of the downpour
under Lisa's verandah, dispersing a group of fowls that
were hiding there from the rain. They quickly find their
way to shelter under the eaves of Eilili's nearby house.
I go inside and have a bleak meal of cold taro with
cucumber and salt - we finished the last of the
koro
this morning. Maritino is asleep, but Riki shares my meal
in the perpetual indoor twilight. He tells me that he has
been clearing a new track in the fallow bush on the far
side of Akara - a nearby stream where we bathe and do our
washing - and would I like to come bird hunting with him
tonight? We have done this before with varying success; me
with bow and arrow and him with a torch of dried bamboo,
lifting it high in the search for sleeping birds on the
branches of the saplings. This is a favourite evening
pastime of the young boys of the valley, especially as it
sometimes results in a bit of extra meat, a welcome
addition to our near-vegetarian diet. Riki, trying to
enthuse me with the prospect of a successful venture, says
that he has seen some droppings on the ground under some
trees in the area. I tell him yes, perhaps, if the rain
stops. Wait and see.
Our meal finished, I take my papers outside under the
shelter of Lisa's verandah. The rain has slackened off to a
drizzle; it will probably stop soon. I sit down at my usual
place of work - a small bamboo table that Eilili has made
for me, and an empty kerosene drum for a chair. Again I
immerse myself in my perpetual backlog.
I have only worked for a short while when I hear footsteps
along the side of the house, coming down the street from
the direction of Vorozenale. I look up and notice that the
rain has ceased and the sun is bombarding the village
clearing with heat. The hard red clay surface is steaming
after the shower. A tall man with graying hair rounds the
corner of the house and ducks under the edge of the
verandah. I have never seen him before. He walks up to me
and hands me a basket that he has been carrying hanging
from his shoulder.
I can see cooked taro inside, and a tin of mackerel. I
recognise the gift as a
susu tana,
normally given by a visitor before asking for a service or
some counter gift. Behind the man I can see a woman with a
child on her hip just rounding the corner, so I know what
is coming: it is time to play doctor again.
I invite the man into the house. He walks straight through
to open the rear door and let the woman in. Meanwhile I
find a couple of taros and place them on the floor inside
the front door, together with my small knife. Having no
good meat to offer my guest I take a tin of mackerel from
my dwindling supply, open it, and pour the contents on to a
plate which goes on the floor beside the taro. The man
picks up the food and retires to the rear part of the
house, to eat together with the woman and child - she must
be his wife, as they share their meal.
We exchange a few words while they eat. The man tells me
that if it had not been raining yesterday and the river too
violent he would have brought me some
puru i ari:
little freshwater snails that have become extinct in our
valley - fished out since the introduction of diving masks,
as they are considered a delicacy by the local people. My
guest must be from the Vailapa valley as he speaks Moiso, a
language sufficiently similar to Kiai for me to understand
most of what he says.
Meanwhile Riki has been off to spread the news of the
visitors to the people in Sulu's house. Sulu and family are
home early, firing their oven stones judging from the
amount of smoke I have seen billowing up through the roof
of his house. Riki now returns with Sulu, who walks into
the house with a big smile and greets the visitors with a
stream of words.
His little boy Lino follows in his wake, pausing shyly just
inside the door to watch the proceedings. I open the
susu tana
tin and Sulu, Riki and I eat a little with the taro brought
by the visitors. When he sees us feasting on tinned fish
Lino joins the three of us squatting in a circle on the
floor in the front part of the house.
When we have all finished eating Sulu takes a taro and a
piece of fish and goes to give them to his parents. The
visitors put the rest of the food I offered them in their
basket which I have returned, then come up to the centre of
the house with the child.
The little boy has an ugly infected sore in the groin. His
father explained that it started as a swelling which
eventually burst. These boils are common and account for a
large part of my medical work. They usually take a long
time to heal - especially as they are rarely kept covered,
and dirt and flies have free access. I have been told on
the coast that yaws has been eradicated in this area but I
have seen some suspicious-looking sores among the people a
bit closer to the South Coast.
Fortunately the sores respond quite well to treatment with
penicillin. I use it in both injections and powder form,
cleaning the pus out of the sores, and dressing them. I try
to examine the little boy’s sore close up, but he
screams in terror and hides his face in his mother's arms
as I move closer. My pale face always frightens the little
ones; I probably do not even look human to them.
I give up the attempt and fetch from the top of my cupboard
a small aluminium kettle, part of a camping set that has
served me well ever since I was a boy scout. Inside is a
small syringe and a few needles, all cleaned since last
time and ready to use after sterilization. My fire is out
so I relight it, using for kindling some of the dried cane
kept for the purpose on a rack under the ceiling in the
front part of the house. Having half-filled the kettle with
water I place it on the fire to boil. I usually boil the
equipment for about ten minutes to be on the safe side.
This gives me time to attend to the sore. It is not easy;
the little boy kicks and struggles as I try to clean out
the pus. It must be very painful - he yells as only a
one-year-old can yell, and it takes both his parents to
restrain him while I put a dressing on.
Finally I’m through and retire to my mat, checking my
watch to see if it is time to take the kettle off. Another
minute to go. Still time enough to get my things organised:
a bottle of Triplopen, a phial of sterilized water, a small
file and a pair of tweezers. I have to pour the water out
of the kettle without dropping any of the contents on the
ground, then assemble the syringe and put the needle on
with the tweezers, make a notch in one end of the glass
phial with the file and break the tip off, fill the syringe
with the right amount of water from the phial, inject this
into the bottle of penicillin, shake the bottle and draw
the right amount of milky white fluid into the syringe, all
without contaminating any of the sterile equipment. It is a
tricky business - sometimes I drop something, or the phial
won't break or else shatters, or the needle gets clogged
and has to be changed, or I find a speck of dirt in the
syringe after filling it with penicillin - the water I use
to boil it in is never completely pure, being our ordinary
drinking water from a nearby stream.
Frequently a mishap means having to start all over again,
washing the equipment and boiling it a second time. All
very time-consuming - there are days when I have worked
from early morning until late afternoon without a break,
giving fifteen or more injections in a day. I find it a
strain; it takes a lot of concentration, and I am also
apprehensive in case one of my patients should get
penicillin shock and keel over and die upon being given an
injection. I always keep a phial of adrenalin handy just in
case.
I take the kettle off the fire and start the preparations
by pouring the water off. My audience watches fascinated as
I slowly and carefully work my way through the entire
procedure. No problems this time. When I am ready I tell
the man to hold his son really still while I give him the
injection. Riki who has seen this many times before joins
in, holding the little boy's left leg in a vice grip so he
won't kick, and I plunge the needle into the muscle midway
between knee and hip. The little boy goes rigid and fills
his lungs with a big gasp of air, while I rapidly push the
plunger down and jerk the needle out. By the time the
screaming starts it is all over. The man carries his son
outside to walk him around until he calms down. I fill the
kettle with water again and go outside to wash my
healer’s tools.
The equipment washed and put away, I lie down on my mat to
have a rest. Everybody has gone up to Sulu’s house, I
am alone and it is quiet. I find I tire easily here in
Santo. My health has been bad all the way through, my body
riddled with parasites of one kind or another, all taxing
my energies. I relax and lose myself in daydreams.
Steps outside and the doorway darkens as Lisa, Vekrai and
Vanlal enter in rapid succession, laden with heavy burdens
of fresh taro. Vekrai carries hers on her back in the
basket she left with this morning; on top of the taro I can
also see a large roll of Heliconia leaves for covering the
oven. Lisa and Vanlal have cut themselves carrying-poles
and carry their loads on their shoulders - a bunch of taro
at each end of the pole, suspended from the tied-together
leaf stems. I can also see a fresh kava root hanging from
Lisa's pole - we ran out last night and had to search the
ceiling for old, dried roots that are hard to chew.
They all walk through the house and put their burdens down
in the rear part, close to the oven stones. They must have
decided to come home early and fire the stones as we are
running low on cooked taro. When Lisa's eyes get used to
the indoor dusk he notices me on my mat and greets
me
Io, ku to malamalau malum!
"Oh, you are lying down!" I tell them about our visitors
and offer them some of the taro and fish I received,
sitting on my mat and telling them the details of the visit
while they eat.
When they are finished they start preparing the oven, Lisa
removes the large, smooth river stones from the shallow
pit, placing them in a pile to one side. He also picks out
a few bits of charred wood left over from the last firing,
finally spreading the remaining lot of little stones into
an even lining for the hollow. Vanlal climbs a ladder up on
to the
saruru,
the spacious firewood rack that forms a ceiling over the
entire rear part of the house. He throws down lengths of
firewood, one by one, cut to size and split lengthwise -
each piece is about one metre long, the same size as the
oven pit. Lisa picks them up and places them alongside each
other, covering the oven pit with one layer of wood, then
another few bits of wood on top, at right angles to the
rest. Finally he lights some dried cane and sticks it into
the middle of the rough square, heaping the large stones on
top as it gradually begins to smoke.
Meanwhile Vekrai has cut the stems off the raw tare brought
home from the garden, careful to leave a thin slice of the
tuber on each stem for replanting. The taro she leaves in a
heap between the centre post and the burning oven; the
stems go outside the back door. She then selects a few
taros, sits down, peels them and proceeds to grate them on
a long, prickly dry tree-fern leaf stem, letting the
starchy white pulp drip down on to a large folded-over
Heliconia leaf. She is preparing
uri,
the well-known New Hebridean(3)
pudding dish known as
laplap
(B)(4)
throughout the group.
The house is getting so smoky that my eyes are beginning to
sting. Lisa shuts the back door, but the improvement is
minimal. I lie down on my back again, finding relief in the
thin layer of fresh air hugging the floor under the dense
clouds of choking fumes. I know it will get better soon; it
is always worse to start off with, before all the wood has
caught fire properly. Lisa follows my example and throws
himself down on his mat, while Vekrai bravely works on with
long, even strokes along her grating stem.
Presently the oven is all aflame and the air gets cleaner,
though it is still by no means free from smoke. As the
burning wood collapses under the weight of the stones,
signaling that the fire will soon have burned down, Vekrai
calls out to Lisa to singe the taro. He gets up and throws
the larger taros on the fire one by one, leaving the little
ones in their place by the centre post. The taros hiss as
the flames lick their moist skins.
Having finished grating all of the taros she peeled, Vekrai
now places some dark green Heliconia leaves on the floor,
so that they form a star, crossing each other in the
middle. On this she makes a bed of
rau oke
or "island cabbage" – the young leaves of a
cultivated bush of the same family as Hibiscus.(5) On
top of this goes the gluey grated taro, then another
layer of
rau oke.
Finally she turns it all into a neat package, by folding
the Heliconia leaves one by one inwards across the top of
the foodstuffs. The pudding is ready to go in the oven.
And the fire has finally burned down. Lisa and Vekrai both
go to work with long wooden tongs made from saplings split
down the middle up to two thirds of their length, the last
third remaining whole. They first pick out the singed
taros, replacing them among the others by the centre post.
Next they lift and push out the hot stones, leaving them
around the rim of the pit. The few remaining bits of
smoldering firewood go in a pile by the back door. It is
hot and heavy work; the large stones keep slipping out of
the tongs, bouncing off the other ones and rolling along
the floor, forcing Lisa and Vekrai to quickly jump to the
side not to get their feet burned. When all the large
stones are out Lisa grabs a stick and stirs the embers in
among the smaller stones lining the pit.
Next they cover the smoking hollow with one layer of taros,
all carefully placed so as not to waste any space. On top
of this they wrestle most of the larger stones, again using
the tongs. Then the rest of the taro and the wrapped-up
pudding, with the last of the hot stones on top. Finally
they cover the pile with long, fresh Heliconia leaves,
first across the top and then around the edges, all held
down by brown packages of old leaves fetched from a stack
against the rear wall. Their work done, they both retire to
their mats. Lisa shreds some plug tobacco with a knife and
gives part of it to Vekrai. They both roll cigarettes and
lie back smoking while the oven slowly starts to give off
steam through the leaf covering.
Lisa does not rest for long. When he has finished his
cigarette he grabs an axe and walks off in search of
firewood, with me and Vanlal trailing behind. On the way we
stop at Sulu's house for Lisa to greet the visitors. The
father of the child with the sore is sitting on a mat by a
fire by the wall to our right as we enter the house. On the
other side of the fire is grandpa Popoi. Sulu is lying on
his mat further down the length of his enormous house. Way
back towards the rear door I can see his wife Levtoro with
their daughter Evlin in her lap, the visiting woman and her
child, and grandma Vepei, all surrounding a steaming oven -
it must be just about ready to open up by now. Riki,
Maritino and Lino are nowhere to be seen - they must be off
playing somewhere. A glass bowl half filled with an opaque,
honey-coloured liquid in the centre of the men's part of
the house bears witness to the afternoon's activities:
kava-drinking.. Lisa and I squat down by the bowl, he fills
the half coconut shell floating in the bowl with kava and
drinks, fills it again and hands it to me. After me he has
another shell full, emptying the last sediment-filled dregs
out of the bowl on to the earth floor. We remain squatting
on the floor during a short conversation, then we are on
our way again.
On the path up to Truvos Lisa explains to me that the
visitor is a man from Napaka in the Vailapa valley, two
thirds of the way between here and the South Coast. His
wife is a "sister" of Lisa's, as her father was of the same
clan as Popoi - Vunu Maliu, the Mushroom Clan.(6)
This makes the man a
tau,
a "brother-in-law" of Lisa's. I see an opportunity to
pursue some questions about kinship and marriage rules, and
we continue up the path, talking.
We turn left at the summit, then right immediately after
the cattle-stop, following the Miremire track. Again I am
struck by the grandeur of the scenery, but now it looks
different again. Though the sun has come out again after
the rain the mountain wall on the opposite side of the
valley is now in shadow, which lends a look of gloom to the
landscape. The day is less hot now. Tall dead trees cast
long shadows across our path as we descend the rolling,
grassy hillside.
After walking for a while Lisa turns off the track to the
left, and we enter the bush next to the paddock, following
an overgrown path down into a narrow gorge. The ground is
still slippery here after the rain and I have to dig my
heels in with every step, lest I fall over. I am pretty
good at negotiating these mountain tracks by now, though
when I first arrived in Santo I used to come back after
each excursion into the bush covered in clay from slipping
over so many times. I still occasionally end up on my rear
end, much to my companions’ amusement, but if I
exercise care I am usually all right. So I concentrate on
the track as we follow the side of the gorge in the shade
under the late afternoon trees.
I am so intent on my feet that I hardly notice at first
that we have arrived at the top of an old garden. Below us
and all the way down the slope to the small stream at the
bottom of the gorge is a tangled mass of waist-high
greenery interspersed with saplings and a few dead trees
with- the branches lopped off. In amongst the chaotic
growth, I can distinguish here and there a few large taro
leaves, some red, green and purple cord/line plants, a few
stands of sugarcane and some "island cabbage" bushes. But
everything is overgrown with weeds and creepers. A lot of
it I recognise as
asi merika,
a fast-growing creeper allegedly introduced during the war
to provide rapid camouflage for military installations,
which has since spread to become a noxious weed all over
the island.
Lisa heads for one of the dead trees - ring barked when the
garden was first made, maybe two years ago - and starts
chopping it down with heavy, regular strokes of the axe. It
is not long before the grey pillar comes thundering down
with a crash, breaking in half on impact, which is fine -
less chopping to do. Lisa and I take turns with the axe,
cutting the tree into one-and-a-half-metre sections; the
top for Vanlal, a mid-trunk section for me, while Lisa
takes the heaviest base section. A couple of sections we
leave behind for another day, after standing them up
against the tree-stump to keep them from getting wet.
Shouldering our logs we begin the tiresome uphill journey
home.
Walking with a burden is even trickier, though I generally
find it easier to walk uphill without mishaps. We make our
way back along the side of the gorge and up on to the grass
slope, stopping to rest at the foot of a tall sago trunk,
charred by lightning years ago. Then another leg up to the
summit of Truvos, shifting our logs from shoulder to
shoulder by bending our heads and rolling across our necks
as we get tired. Lisa has placed the axe over his free
shoulder and under the log behind his neck, to distribute
the weight of his heavy burden on to both shoulders.
A final stretch downhill and we are back in Kuvutana,
continuing straight inside and dumping the logs on the
floor in Lisa's house. After a short rest we lift them up
on to our respective
patapata
- firewood racks made out of bent saplings tied to the
rafters to enable us to store our logs above our bedside
fires. It makes for really dry wood which will burn all
night without going out.
Looking down I can see three small taros that were not
there before at the foot of the post next to my mat. I bend
down and touch them - they are still warm. They must be
from Levtoro; by now they will have opened up the oven in
Sulu's house. I ask Vekrai, who is sitting in the warmth of
her steaming oven, engaged in the seemingly endless task of
plaiting a mat, Epin asleep beside her. She confirms my
guess: Lino brought the taros a little while ago. I pick
them up and put them in their place in my coconut leaf
basket on the post. Then I go outside on to the veranda to
get some more work in before it gets dark.
Looking up from my books I occasionally see small groups of
people coming down the path from Truvos, following the
street through Kuvutana past Lisa's house. These are
Vorozenale families - the day is drawing to an end and they
are all returning home from their day's work, clearing,
planting or weeding their gardens. Nobody will have burned
a garden today owing to the rain - it takes at least a few
days of sunshine before the debris is dry enough to burn.
Some of the people carry taro, others carry only their bush
knives. Most of the women have small children on their
hips, held in position by the inevitable cotton sash.
As Mol Paroparo and family walk past, his teenage son Ravu
comes over to me with two taros. They have been spending a
few nights in their garden house at Vatenzari where the
Zari river flows into the Ari. They have cooked their taro
before returning home to Vorozenale - this gives them a
lighter load as the corms are much heavier when raw. After
handing me the taro Ravu cuts himself some of my plug
tobacco, rolls it up and lights it, standing next to me
smoking and watching me write while I deliberately ignore
him to get some more work done.
When Eilili and Meriulu arrive home I finally give up, put
my papers away and walk across to their house to give them
their share of the Napaka taro and tinned mackerel. As I
put the food down on the floor in front of him with a
concise
ameurua
- "for the two of you" - he immediately asks me who brought
it:
Isei mo vatia tau?
He can tell from the fact that I am bringing him food that
we must have had a visitor from some other area.
I sit down on some coconut leaves and recount the events of
the day. Eilili is the closest thing I have to a "buddy" in
the mountains. The youngest of the Kuvutana brothers, and
childless, he spends a lot of time with me in youthful
pastimes - like hunting flying foxes at night in the
season, or just swapping tales and joking over a bowl or
two of kava. He offers me food and I stay around talking
while outside the night descends on the small group of
houses.
We are interrupted by a call from Lisa’s
house:
Ra somai ani te uri!
"Come and eat some pudding!" They must have opened up the
oven. We all leave immediately, Eilili and I ducking under
Lisa's veranda and in through the front door, while Meriulu
rounds the house and enters through the women’s door
at the back.
Inside Lisa and Vanlal have carried the hot, wrapped-up
pudding into the centre of the front part of the house and
are in the process of unwrapping it, one hot leaf at a
time. It is a slow process, as the leaves are stuck
together from the heat and burn their fingers. In the dim
light from Lisa’s hurricane lamp, hung up high in the
centre of the house for maximum effect, I can see Vekrai
attending to the cooked taro. Meriulu joins her in her
task, shifting the steaming taro corms into a neat pile at
the back of the centre post, on top of the now dry leaves
used to cover the oven.
The pudding unwrapped. Lisa cuts it into long strips with a
flat stick of wood. Repeating the cuts at a ninety-degree
angle to the first lot he transforms it into a checkerboard
of rough squares.
Aniani to!
"Eat!" Lisa urges us laconically, and we start in on the
delicacy holding our starchy bits of pudding in pieces of
leaf torn off the unfolded wrapping. Lisa moves a few
pudding squares into a metal dish for Vekrai and Meriulu -
they eat in the rear part of the house. He then sits down
on his mat with one piece, sharing it with Maritino, while
the rest of us squat in a circle around our still-steaming
meal.
.
When we have all eaten our fill the rest of the pudding is
split into two parts and carried off by Riki and Vanlal to
Popoi's house and to Sulu and his guests, as none of them
came to eat with the rest of us. The boys also carry some
cooked taro from the pile by the centre post. Lisa offers
me and Eilili some hot taro and boiled rau oke, but we both
decline. We have had enough.
Instead I fetch my torch from next to my mat and the two of
us proceed up to Sulu's house, taking with us the kava root
that Lisa brought home today. As we arrive Sulu greets us
with the news that the water is finished, so Eilili borrows
my torch and goes to fetch a full kettle from his house.
While he is gone I make myself comfortable, taking a mat
from on top of a firewood rack and spreading it on the
floor next to a pair of huge logs, lighting some dry cane
in our visitor’s fire and kindling my own, cutting
some tobacco for a cigarette, finally lying back, smoking.
I exchange a few words with Sulu and our visitor while
watching the network of shadows among the rafters under the
ceiling stir faintly in the flickering light of our fires
and Sulu’s tiny improvised lantern, made from the
foot of an old broken pressure lamp.
Eilili soon arrives with his big kettle of water and puts
it down on the floor. He then takes a bush knife from the
wall thatch inside the door and starts peeling the kava
root. Squatting, he holds it steady on the floor with his
left hand and more or less chops off the skin with his long
knife, with seemingly infinite precision. Never before in
my life have I seen people handle knives with such ease
coupled with accuracy as here in the mountains of Santo.
Perhaps it is not surprising - the first toy a child gets
here is a knife. Toddlers stumble around hacking away at
everything in sight from the time they take their first
steps.
Having finished peeling, Eilili pours a little water from
the kettle into the glass bowl and washes the root. Next he
starts chopping little pieces off, putting them into his
mouth one by one and crushing them with his teeth, chewing
continuously. He puts in more and more pieces until his
mouth is full and his cheeks puff out, like a chipmunks.
Even so he keeps on chewing for a while, masticating it all
thoroughly before finally spitting it out into a cloth bag.
Again he reaches for the kava root and the knife, starting
all over again with the chewing. I have tried chewing kava
myself, and I find it very difficult - my mouth goes numb,
and as the mush works its way down into my throat it makes
me want to vomit. I avoid chewing it whenever I can, though
I quite like the drink itself.
When Eilili has finished his second round of chewing he
takes a mouthful of water from the spout of the kettle,
washes it around in his. mouth and sprays it out against
the thatched wall of the house in a well-aimed jet. Then he
washes his hands in the glass bowl and pours the dirty
water out, calling Riki over to help him. Eilili holds the
cloth bag over the bowl while Riki half fills it with water
from the kettle.
Holding the top firmly closed with his left hand Eilili
then squeezes it with the other, careful not to spill the
yellow liquid that comes gushing out of the bag with each
squeeze, gradually filling the bowl. They repeat this
process, the liquid getting paler and thinner each time,
until nothing but clear water comes through the bag. The
fibrous remains in the cloth bag Eilili shakes out on to a
folded-over Heliconia leaf, hanging the empty bag over the
handle of the kettle, ready for re-use. Finally he fishes
the half coconut shell out of the bowl, leaving it to float
on top of the brew. Then he comes and sits down on some
coconut leaves on the other side of my fire, rolling
himself a cigarette from shredded plug tobacco while we
others start in on the kava. Eilili does not drink for a
while, waiting for the effects of the chewing to disappear
before he has his first shell full.
Now Riki comes and sits next to me on the mat and whispers
in my ear:
Kera vano pula sara!
"Let’s go hunting!" I recall my half promise from
earlier on today, and reluctantly give in - I would really
rather stay and listen to the conversation as our visitor
will be full of news from the Vailapa valley.
Ale, ku lui, nau ka tau,
I tell him; "You go first, I’ll follow."
When you go hunting you should sneak away as unobtrusively
as possible, I’ve been taught. It is too easy for
others to ruin your hunt if they know about it. It is
enough that somebody mentions your name and your quarry
will hear it and hide, and you will fail to catch anything.
Riki takes off out the door and I follow him a couple of
minutes later.
Walking down the street towards Lisa’s house I can
see Riki waiting for me next to the veranda. He is standing
in a circle of light, his short frame illuminated by the
bright yellow flames of the bamboo torch in his hand - just
a long section of dried bamboo lit at one end. He hands me
my bow and two arrows, tipped with four barbed prongs each,
made from the black spikes that form in the pith of
tree-fern trunks.
Holding a spare length of bamboo in his free hand Riki
leads the way along the side of Eilili's house and down the
Akara path.
I have never been down this way after dark before, and
though I am familiar with the track from countless trips
down to the stream for a dip, it now seems completely
different, transformed by the shadows of night. Friendly
rows of flowering Hibiscus trees planted along the sides of
the track now form a strange, lifeless tunnel around us.
The colours look all wrong as they enter the bubble of
light that surrounds us, only to quickly disappear again in
the dark as we pass them by - like a ghost-train ride at a
childhood carnival. Further down in the gully, as we enter
the bush proper, the vegetation looks surprisingly
grotesque, the network of shadows receding among the tree
trunks writhing and turning as we walk past. I can see why
the local people prefer to stay indoors at night - it would
not take a lot of imagination to encounter one of the ogres
that haunt the bush after nightfall.
We descend to a small creek, jump across it and follow the
track past the sound of the waterfall where we shower on
hot days. Shortly afterwards we cross the Akara and begin
the climb up the slope on the other side of the gorge. As
the track levels out towards the top, Riki takes a turn to
the left in among the young trees of an old garden. I
follow close behind him, careful where I put my feet, as he
has cut away only the undergrowth and there are lots of
sharp sticks and roots along our path. We walk in silence,
making as little noise as possible, the only sound in the
night the distant rustle of the waterfall. Riki holds his
torch high up among the trees, constantly turning his head
back and forth, looking for birds asleep on the branches.
We follow the rough track in zig-zag fashion down the hill
side, stopping only for Riki to light his spare length of
bamboo as the other one burns out. About a half hour later
we emerge again on the main track, not having seen one
bird. Perhaps the others have been talking about us at the
kava session in Sulu's house? Riki looks disappointed - no
extra morsels of meat tonight. We resume our journey back
to the houses in silence.
As we again cross the Akara, Riki suddenly crouches down
and rapidly dips his hand in the shallow water, straightens
up and continues up the bank on the other side.
Para mo ese:
"A spider", he informs me. He has caught a water spider,
without even stopping. This sort of thing never ceases to
amaze me.
The local people don’t seem to miss any opportunity
to enrich their diet with whatever game comes their way. If
there is a wood-pigeon on the track, a quickly cut-to-size
stick will be flying through the air before I know it. Or
somebody will follow a fleeing gecko up the trunk of a
coconut tree. I once saw a whole crowd chase an eel through
the shallows of the Vailapa river, striking at it with
their bush knives, after someone spotted it during a
crossing - a constant alertness in the quest for food, gone
out of our lives with the advent of the supermarket. Riki
balances the spider on his burning torch, roasting it as we
keep walking our way home. When it is cooked, he breaks it
in two, handing me one half over his shoulder. It is
charred and rather tasteless, but at least some reward for
our nocturnal effort.
On arrival back in the settlement I first go to put my bow
and arrows away in Lisa's house. The village women are all
gathered in the back of the house, including the visiting
mother with her child. They are having their own separate
get-together, talking and working on their mats and
baskets. I return my hunting gear to its place under the
rafters and proceed up to Sulu's house.
Lisa has arrived while we’ve been out, sitting
cross-legged on a mat with Maritino asleep in his lap. The
pile of pale yellow fibres on the folded-over leaf has
grown, revealing that the men have drunk their way through
at least another two bowls full of kava during our abortive
hunt. I note the absence of people from Vorozenale -
perhaps they have their own session going tonight.
Sometimes they come here to drink, sometimes we go over
there; there is no fixed pattern to our socializing.
I have a cup of kava and sit down again, rolling a
cigarette and listening to the others talking, rambling
from topic to topic, exchanging news from their different
parts of the bush.
Living closer to the coast our visitor also has news from
the larger society. He tells us about a fatal road accident
on the South Coast a few days back - a young man from
Tangoa was killed on the day of his wedding. He talks about
unrest on the coast following the recent first-ever general
election in the New Hebrides. Some men from East Santo have
been chasing people from other islands off European
plantations on a "Santo for the Santoese" pretext, also
involving party politics. My hosts express their approval
as there is a shortage of work on the coast these days,
owing to the low price of copra. They in turn tell our
visitor about happenings in our valley – about
births, deaths, marriages, disputes and house building,
both here and among the people across the river.
Some
topics are sparked off by more immediate circumstances.
Riki has a rash on his buttocks, so they discuss what food
taboos are appropriate to get rid of it. Popoi ate the
Napaka taro that Sulu brought to Vepei, though he normally
only eats taro from his own oven, refusing to share
proceeds-from any oven with menstruating women, as it gives
him headaches. This brings up the possibility of erecting a
menstruation hut, as the mountain people resettled at
Ipayato at the mouth of the Navaka river have done. Pros
and cons are weighed up.
It goes on and on. We finish the bowl of kava and Lisa
chews another batch. Though the kava we drink is made with
more water than on most other islands in the New Hebrides,
it still has a mild sedative effect if you drink a lot.
Eventually I nod off on my mat, waking only when Lisa prods
me with his foot.
Tomasi! Ku turi! Kera mule! "Stand up! Let's go
home!”
I sit up slowly, shake my head and stretch. The house is
quiet - Eilili, Popoi, Vanlal and Riki have already left.
So I rise and follow Lisa out the door, down the street and
into his house, barring the front door behind me with a
stick.
Vanlal has already lit our fire so I stretch out on my mat
in the warming glow. Before going to sleep again I scribble
a few words on my jotting pad in the dark, to jog my memory
of the evening's conversation for tomorrow's note taking.
Then I curl up with my back towards the fire, slipping back
into oblivion after another day of fieldwork in central
Santo.