CHAPTER 3: TRIP II 26.3.75 - 1.9.75
3.1 Sulu's sickness
3.2 My illness
3.3 Instant diagnosis at Vunpati
3.4 Nautalapa story
3.5 Sulu the dreamer
3.6 Patua's illness
3.7 Usa Pon on health, morals and mataioro
3.8 Maliu Kot on Pos and Noti names
3.9 Maliu Kot on Kinglu in marriage dispute
3.10 Kinglu in the rain
3.11 Pos Vea on Mol Kleva, Mol Sahau, and tapu
3.12 Krai Tui on tapu and kleva
3.13 Mol Sale
3.14 Vunapospos host on kleva
3.15 I eat malino
3.16 More diagnoses
3.17 The death of Krai Kule
3.18 Varavara at Vorozenale
3.19 Eilili on lulu
3.20 Valavala at Taskoro
3.21 Sulu to New Zealand
3.22 Review
3.1
Sulu's sickness
During my second field trip I learned more about the kleva,
repeatedly stumbling upon clues that marked them off as
special in one way or another. It was by no means my main
focus of interest, but along with other material I
dutifully recorded all information that seemed relevant to
a sympathetic understanding of them and their part in
everyday life in central Santo.
My circumstances were changed. Instead of staying on with
Maliu Kalus at Vorozenale, I had moved in with Lisa and his
family at Kuvutana. This brought me closer to Sulu: his
enormous new house, built during my four months absence in
New Zealand, lay on the opposite site of the clearing from
Lisa's and we saw each other often.
Early one morning, less than two weeks after my return to
Truvos, Lisa's brother-in-law Krai Tamata appeared at
Kuvutana and invited us to a feast at Vunpati. The day
before he and some others had caught one of his cattle, a
calf, part of a small herd of beasts kept on the grassy
east side of the river, not far from the ford on the main
track between Vunpati and Truvos. Their intention was to
walk it all the way to the South Coast and there sell it
for some easy money. but the poor animal nearly died of
exhaustion when being dragged uphill in the searing midday
sun. Seeing the handwriting on the wall they killed it - if
the calf had died on its own it would have been deemed
inedible. But they acted quickly, and the sudden surplus of
meat now warranted a small feast - today.
This was short notice, but we abandoned our plans for the
day and went to Vunpati - all except Sulu, Eilili and
Meriulu who had already left for their day's work, and so
didn't hear about the feast.
Just on dawn the next morning an anxious Eilili shook me
awake inside Krai Tamata's crowded house at Vunpati. He
must have left Kuvutana while it was still dark, I
reflected, peering up at his face in the half-light. Eilili
looked serious and talked quickly. Sulu had been sick
during the night, vomiting with bad stomach pains. Could I
come with him home to Kuvutana - now?
I thought it rather inconvenient, having planned to stay at
Vunpati until the other guests went home. But Eilili seemed
so worried that I started to collect my things, and soon we
were on the steep track down towards the river, walking
fast in the cool, clear morning.
Eilili now went over the night’s happenings in
greater detail. When he told me that he had sat up with his
.22 rifle, watching for fowl and lulu: "owls", I began to
suspect that there was more behind his concern than simple
gastritis. The owl was the favourite animal shape of
witches when out hunting with their
patua,
and any fowl afoot at night was bound to be a witch -
decent chickens sleep from dusk to dawn.
We found Sulu in the rear of his cavernous home - by far
the longest and most voluminous at Truvos - lying on his
sleeping-mat looking weak but cheerful. I questioned him
about his condition and he assured me he was much better.
The pain had gone and he had not thrown up again. It all
seemed much less urgent than Eilili had led me to believe.
But there was more to the story, and I suspect this is what
shook Eilili up. Sulu told me that he had discovered a
small crab on its way through the front door of the house.
His initial reaction had been to pick it up and put it in a
saucepan with the lid on top. Later he changed his mind and
threw it away in the bush behind the rear of the house. He
said it was a devel and was making him ill.
Wondering what kind of spirit was hidden behind that vague
Bislama label this time I took a lead from Eilili's tale
and asked Sulu if he meant
patua.
"Yes", he replied, but with some hesitation, so I queried
him again - I had put words in his mouth; maybe he really
meant something different. This time he affirmed so
strongly that I couldn't very well ask again. But he left
me feeling dubious. If he had really thought the crab was a
witch in animal shape, why didn't he kill it? Those were my
doubts as I later entered the incident in one of my
notebooks.
3.2 My illness
A week later Sulu had an opportunity to repay me in kind
for my attentions. It started with a slight headache and a
queasy stomach as I returned at noon from two days away
visiting my friend Krai Tui at Duria. I lay down for a rest
on my mat in Lisa's house, feeling cold all of a sudden,
teeth chattering with an oncoming fever.
At first I thought it was malaria - I had had attacks in
the past in spite of prophylaxis - and treated it
accordingly. I must have been wrong - attacks of acute
malaria only last a few hours; this lasted the rest of the
day and all through the night, as I lay there, hardly
sleeping at all, partly delirious, looking at my watch
often discovering only five minutes had passed when I
thought it was at least an hour.
In the morning I felt a bit better and ate a little, but
threw it up again shortly after. The fever continued
throughout the morning while every muscle in my body ached
with pain, making it impossible to rest comfortably and
sleep. It was murderous; in the early afternoon I finally
knocked myself out with some of the contents of my medical
stores.
I woke up at dusk, feeling much better, and tried eating,
but threw it up again. I was lying back on my mat, feeling
exhausted and abandoned when Sulu came through the door. He
squatted down next to me and told me he had come to treat
me with a spell - just like Popoi at Miremire, he said.
I remembered: that was at the very end of my first field
trip. In spite of a prolonged illness I had overstayed my
planned departure in order to visit a feast at Zinovonara,
to witness the culmination of a land dispute that had been
brewing for some time between my hosts and their neighbours
to the east, the Moris-speakers.
I could have gone home and saved myself the discomfort: by
the time the feast began I was so sick with dysentery that
I spent most of the time asleep or just lying down, too
weak to keep track of what was going on or muster up the
energy for enquiries. After a few crowded days in Mol
Sale's home I retired to Lisa's garden house at nearby
Miremire. By this time my hosts were really worried about
my health, and Popoi Trivu approached me with an offer of
help.
He squatted beside my mat and told me to sit up. I propped
myself up with my arms behind my back. Popoi reached out
and started scratching at the sides of my stomach with
short, quick movements of his hands, while rapidly mumbling
a spell in the same rhythm. I couldn't make out the words,
except for one:
zalo
- "ill" or "illness", depending on whether used as a noun
or a verb. Then, without interrupting the recitation, he
made a semicircular movement with his hands, starting at my
sides and bringing his thumbs together at the solar plexus,
where he pressed hard, for a long time, until he ran out of
words and spat a few times at my stomach. Then back to the
scratching and the rapid mumbling again, and so on until he
had gone through the performance three times.
Sulu did it differently, though. His actions today were the
same as Popoi's then, but Sulu remained silent throughout -
he didn't even move his lips, but looked absently to the
side when not pressing his thumbs into my stomach and
spitting. I watched his face, so close to mine in the
half-light, and wondered as I had that first time at Ariau
whether he really ran through an incantation in his head,
or if it was just an act.
When he was through I asked him what he had done, hoping to
glean some further insight into his methods of healing from
his reply. But instead of explaining the therapy, he
without a moment's hesitation voiced a diagnosis of the
cause of my ailment.
Devel blong man i ded long Duria mekem yu
sik
(B): "The spirit of a dead man at Duria made you ill." This
devel had talked about me, said Sulu.
I was puzzled. I recognised "talking" idiom from my first
field trip, but I couldn't see how Sulu had been able to
arrive at that conclusion so quickly. There had been no
examination, nor had he questioned me about my symptoms -
it was as if the matter was already settled when he came in
through the door. But I also remembered what Usa Pon had
told me: it was the
kleva's
ability to "see" the causes of illness that marked them off
from other healers, and ensured the success of their
remedies.
Later that evening I heard old Vepei use the word aviriza
in an interchange with some of the women in the rear of the
house. I didn't understand the rest of what she said -
brought up at Tonvara on the far side of the Ari she still
spoke her childhood Tohsiki. I thought she may have been
talking about me - had Sulu perhaps told her that the
"devil" behind my suffering was one of the aviriza?
That night I slept soundly, and in the morning I felt all
right again, save for a residual fatigue that lingered for
another day.
Sulu had blamed my illness on one of the spirits of the
dead - much as he and Mol Kleva had proposed at the feast
at Vunpepe, half a year into the past. Months later, as
Lisa and I were discussing my by then chronic dysentery, I
suggested a similar diagnosis: perhaps one of the dead at
Truvos was the cause of my plight. Much to my surprise Lisa
dismissed my suggestion with a laugh. It was not likely, he
said, as I was not a child.
3.3 Instant diagnosis at Vunpati
One morning Krai Tamata brought the news to Kuvutana that
his father lay ill at Vunpati. "As usual", I thought to
myself - old Linsus seemed to me by then a bit of a
hypochondriac. But both Lisa and Sulu were married to
daughters of his, so I could hardly refuse to help. I
packed my bag and set off to Vunpati with Sulu.
It turned out to be a false alarm as far as I was
concerned. Linsus didn't want my services, only Sulu's -
perhaps fearing another injection like the one I had given
him two months previously, sending him into a big display
of suffering. But he willingly sat up on his mat next to
the oven stones in the rear of his narrow home, and told me
about his ailment.
Stampa blong em long bel, emi go antap long hed blong
mi
(B): "It started in my stomach, then it moved up to my
head."
While I quietly wondered if it was malaria, staring as it
does with body chills and ending with a splitting headache,
Sulu announced his diagnosis: a rat had eaten some of
Linsus' excreta and then a bit of his food - a piece of
banana. He asked his father-in-law where he could find a
certain kind of tree nearby. The old man explained and Sulu
disappeared off in search of those leaves to use with his
spells.
Again I offered Linsus my assistance, but he declined. A
trifle annoyed at having come all the way too Vunpati in
vain I bade him farewell and turned back down the track. I
didn't stay and watch Sulu deliver his spells, as I had
urgent matters to attend to at home. But the incident
triggered a resurgence of my doubts about Sulu and his
instantaneous and self-assured diagnoses. I couldn't get
over it - it all seemed too easy. I found it absurd that
this young man, younger than I was, should be doing what he
was doing. I felt he was a con man - that he was insincere,
cynically making things up to surround himself with the air
of a healer, pretending to administer "cures" that
according to my own understanding of the aetiology of
diseases were spurious. The fact that I myself had
recovered from a violent sickness after his attentions I
had all but forgotten, having explained it away as a
coincident.
3.4 Nautalapa story
Though I didn't see Sulu perform his healing craft again, I
did hear a story about a past success of his. It was told
to me as background to an agitated kava discussion of a
proposed marriage - the past, as so often, gaining its
relevance from present concerns.
We were drinking kava in Sulu's house that night. With us
was Kavero, the son of one of Popoi Trivu's dead brothers,
grown up at Truvos but since resettled at Namoro on the
South Coast. He had arrived for a visit a couple of days
back.
The discussion among my companions seemed to revolve around
women and marriage, though I didn't know who they were
talking about - the names were strange. Nevertheless the
intent was clear: a particular marriage should be arranged
for some reason. My curiosity aroused, I asked Lisa to
explain, and he told me the following tale.
Some time ago Sulu went to Nautalapa, a village in the
Tazia valley, the heal a man there whose limbs had swollen
up so that he could not move. His arms stood straight out
in front of him; at night he slept with them in a sling.
Sulu did his work - they called it
maumau
in Kiai - and the swelling subsided. The man was cured.
Sulu then announced that henceforth, should the people of
Nautalapa want his services again, they would have to pay
him
ten paun
(B): twenty Australian dollars, each time.
This was not remarkable; I was later told that it was
common practice among the
kleva
to charge a fee for their services. But in spite of this a
Nautalapa man named Maliu Esea had come to Sulu for
maumau
while I was away in New Zealand, and then left without
paying the fee.
Because of this, he must give a woman to Truvos, said Lisa.
There were several unmarried women of age at Nautalapa, all
Maliu Esea's to give away, but he was "hard" and would not
let them marry. He should give one of them to Truvos, to be
given to Kavero.
Kavero was single in spite of being years older than his
Kuvutana "brothers" - a tinge of grey at his temples
betrayed his age. I believe it was his presence at Truvos
that had triggered the discussion. They were trying to find
him a wife, seizing on Maliu Esea`s fault to further their
cause.
3.5
Sulu the dreamer
I walked into Kuvutana after a week away treating sick
people at Vunpepe, Duria and far off Toravonggu overlooking
the Peolape valley. With me was Lisa, Vekrai and their
children - I had met up with them at Tonvara, where we had
spent two days together at a feast for Pau Sikel's little
boy who had died.
Sulu must have heard us arrive, as Lisa was still busy with
the padlock on his front door when his brother called out
to me, hurrying across the clearing from his house in our
direction. I put down my knife and medicine bag and waited
for him, wondering what was the matter. Sulu walked up to
us and immediately launched into a tale about how Lisa's
dead daughter had come to him in a dream while we were
away.
I had heard about the girl. She had been Lisa's eldest
child, killed in an earthquake a few years before I first
arrived at Truvos. One morning, just before dawn, a strong
tremor had shaken the settlement. This was not unusual - we
were in a belt of seismic activity with three active
volcanoes on other islands in the group, and tremors were
common, always starting suddenly without warning and
rocking the houses back and forth with a rhythmic creaking
of timber and lashings. Immediately someone would
shout:
Mo mui!
"It's quaking!" Then everybody inside would run for the
nearest door. The firewood racks above the fires along the
walls were held with lashings of vines which had been known
to break in earthquakes, filling the house with rolling
logs. So as soon as Lisa and Vekrai felt the beginning of
the tremor they grabbed the children and rushed outside.
Just outside and to the left of the front door of the house
they lived in then stood a huge dead tree. Lisa had thought
of felling it a number of times, but had not got around to
it. The quake did it for him. The ancient grey pillar of
dead wood toppled, fell right across the clearing
immediately in front of the house and landed on the girl,
pinning her body to the ground, Vekrai still holding her
hand. They tried pulling her out from under the tree, but
had to dig to free her in the end. By then she was dead.
The gist of Sulu's tale was this: the girl had told him in
a dream to go to Lisa's house and push his hand into the
sago thatch, where he would find a tobacco stick. In the
morning he had followed her instructions and indeed found
the promised tobacco. Sulu took us around the corner of the
house and showed us where. It was just above my sleeping
place. Had I put a stick there, he asked.
I couldn't remember putting any tobacco in the thatch,
though I sometimes hid my supply on top of the firewood
rack under the roof next to my bed, just a little to the
left of where Sulu claimed to have made his find. I also
occasionally kept a few sticks handy away from my main
supply, so as not to reveal the embarrassing extent of my
riches when giving some to a visitor. It was common
practice to keep smaller personal items stuck in between te
layers of the ceiling - I kept my small knife for peeling
taro in the thatch above my mat - but I honestly couldn't
recall putting any tobacco there, and I told Sulu so.
Lisa suggested that it probably was his dead daughter's
doing: she had placed it there for Sulu to find. And Sulu
assured me that he had only tried in the one place
indicated to him in the dream.
By way of background I might explain about Sulu's smoking
habits. He never used any of the locally grown tobacco -
like me he found it too harsh on his throat. He only smoked
plug tobacco - an indulgence made possible by my giving it
away for free. I only gave the sticks away one by one,
though, and Sulu always came for more when he ran out. But
this time I had been away for a full week, and there was no
other local source of plug tobacco for him to turn to.
Having myself one been a habitual smoker I knew what it is
like to find yourself without tobacco. I can imagine Sulu,
desperate for a smoke, perhaps having seen my main supply
on top of his firewood rack in the past, trying to reach it
through the leaves. Or perhaps I had indeed put the stick
in the thatch and forgotten about it, and Sulu, having seen
it, remembering and trying for it when he ran out? I
couldn't think of any other explanation, short of Sulu's
own - which of course left him blameless: he had only done
what the spirit had told him to do.
It was not so strange to hear Sulu talk about his
dream-life. Often at evening kava sessions he would tell us
about dreams he'd had, reading them as indications of
events to come; a preview of the future. Neither was he the
only local to have prophetic dreams, or to take them as
prophetic - it appeared to be commonplace. Often the
connection was not made until after the event, as when
following a mild earth tremor one night Vekrai told me and
Lisa that she had had a warning.
Na poroporo inia
"I dreamed it." At other times they were genuine
predictions, as when newly arrived back from my stay in New
Zealand, I was waiting at John Alto's plantation at Nakere
on the South Coast for a party of men from the mountains to
come and pick me up, to help carry my baggage up to Truvos.
I had waited for a week already when one morning Lulu's
brother Tom who was working there as a labourer assured me
that my friends were sure to arrive that day.
Long naet me luk Memei
(B), he explained: "During the night I saw Memei."
Mi go luk, mi luk plante man
(B):"I went looking, and saw many men."
Even so, Sulu had a special reputation for his dreaming. As
a
kleva
he was known to have been taught his healing spells by some
spirit come to him in a dream. This was different. Anyone
could have prophetic dreams from time to time, but the
kleva gained more subtle kinds of information from their
dreamed encounters with spirits - or at least their
neighbours seemed to think so. When I asked Eilili from
whom his brother had learned magic to protect his wet taro
gardens from the constant hazard of pollution by some
careless passer-by ruining the crop, he told me that Sulu
had probably learnt some from their father Popoi Trivu, and
also dreamed some.
Olgeta oli no olsem yumi
(B), was Eilili's comment on the
kleva:
"They are not like us."
3.6 Patua's illness
I didn't see much of Patua during this field trip, but one
day he turned up at Kuvutana. With him was his "brother"
(MZS) Memei, and two other young men from across the Ari:
Rara Tanisi and Pos Mol. They had just come from the south
Coast, arriving early in the day after having spent the
night in the bush halfway, in a small leaf shelter that
they quickly put up as it became evident that they wouldn't
make it to Truvos before nightfall. They were held up by
Patua, who only walked very slowly, they said. They were
bringing him home after a stay at a hospital at canal,
where they
had pinim long botel
(B): "pinned him with a bottle" - intravenous drip by the
sound of it - and discharged him after a week, saying there
was nothing wrong with him.
His companions left him at Kuvutana, for old Popoi Trivu to
treat him with spells. As in the past Patua showed no
outward signs of being ill, though he seemed withdrawn and
didn't say much. As I felt I could not improve on the
treatment delivered by trained people at the hospital, I
didn't press my attentions on him, but left him alone.
Patua's arrival at Truvos triggered some discussion of his
long and mysterious illness - it had been going on for a
year at the time. Kavten told me his own suspicions. It was
because Patua had not
vavaulu:
"confessed", that he was ill.
Kavten elaborated: Patua had first changed his name from
Muramura to something else - I do not remember exactly
what, except that it contained the stem
sui,
meaning "bone".
Emi go lukaot bun blong man i ded
(B): "He went and got a dead man's bone", said Kavten. With
this Patua could "steal" any woman. Invisible he could
enter her house at night and make love to her, and not even
she would know about it afterwards. That was the cause of
his illness. Patua was committing adultery all over the
place, but didn't confess. He wouldn't dare, according to
Kavten. By now he must have had a go at just about every
woman in the valley - if he confessed, he was likely to be
beaten up by irate cuckolds.
He told people to call him this
sui
name. Then, later on, that he was now to be called Patua.
Just like
patua
- Kavten clarified by using the Bislama word for
witchcraft:
nakaemas.
I asked why.
Yumi no save
(B): "We don't know", Kavten replied. Maybe he has patua.
Apart from that time at Truvos I only saw Patua briefly,
twice: first at a feast at Taskoro, high on the
mountainside across the river from Truvos, then at another
feast at Usieve, on the far side of the river Peolape.
Besides exchanging greetings we didn't talk to each other,
and I didn't get any further explanation that trip of his
rather allusive appellations.
3.7 Usa Pon on health, morals and
mataioro
Breaches of the moral code, particularly illicit sex,
seemed to be a stock explanation of illness in the area.
The Nautalapa man with swollen limbs was reaping
retribution for a murder there in the recent past,
according to Sulu. It was
totonos,
or
panis blong em
(B): "punishment for that." The murder also accounted for
the ulcers that plagued the Tazia people, though Lisa had
jokingly urged the crowd of young Nautalapa women who once
came to me for treatment to vavaulu, drawing a lot of
giggles from the rear of the house at what I heard as an
oblique reference to secret lovers. It may have been funny,
but it was also serious. If they didn't vavaulu their sores
would not heal, I was told.
Usa Pon gave me the most elaborate account of this link
between health and morals, though he left me still
mystified by his explanation.
I had spent three days at Taskoro, working on some extra
houses that they were building there to accommodate the
many guests expected at a feast that Pune Tamaravu was
planning to give in the near future.
On the morning that I was going back to Kuvutana Krai
Tamata appeared at Taskoro, looking for me. His children
lay ill at Vunpati, so instead of heading straight home I
made a detour to his village, to see what I could do to
help.
As we were about to leave for Vunpati two boys left Taskoro
along a different track, headed for Vorozenale. Nosey as
usual, I asked why.
Rulali nasa,
replied Vohia Oloran, Pune's eldest son: "Just for a walk."
When I finally arrived hime later that day, I learned
differently. The boys had come to Vorozenale to fetch Usa
Pon, who had gone with them back to Taskoro to treat Pune's
youngest with
maumau.
I was surprised. I didn't know that the child was ill - no
one had told me so at Taskoro. That, and Vohia Oloran's
deception, made it seem as if they had deliberately tried
to hide it from me, preferring Usa Pon's
maumau
to my medicines. I wondered why - everybody else in the
area seemed only too keen to make use of my services.
Pune had given me a basket full of food as I left. The
basket belonged to Usa Pon, so when I heard that he was
back I walked up to Vorozenale to return it, hoping to also
find out more about the sick child, and why they had kept
so quiet about it at Taskoro.
Usa said the child was ill with something called
mataioro,
and Pune hadn't told me as he didn't think I had any
medicine for it. He was probably right. From Usa's
description it sounded like epilepsy: fits of cramp in
fetus position, with foaming mouth.
Mataioro
was
sik blong fis
(B), said Usa when I asked him to explain: "fish disease".
A man following a stream would see a fish swim up to him,
touch his leg and die. Then he or one of his children would
get ill. But it only happened to someone who
stilim woman
(B): "stole a woman" - committed adultery - and
didn't
talemaot
(B): "confess".
I asked Usa if it was a
gudfala fis
(B): "real fish", or a
devel.
Mi no save
(B): "I don't know", came the reply.
Emi no gudfala fis
(B): "It is not a real fish."
Further probes yielded this account. A man
stilim woman
and doesn't
talemaot.
Then one day when walking in the bush he sees a gecko or a
snake lying on a rock somewhere. Then sickness will strike
him, maybe even kill him, or one of his children.
The man sees a snake, but it is not a snake. It is the
thing that he did that he hasn't confessed, said Usa.
I suggested to him that it was
totonos
that caused the illness. Usa told me he didn't know the
word; he had never heard it before!
3.8 Maliu Kot on Pos and Noti names
Though I still didn't know all the names of all the people
at Truvos, let alone in the upper Ari valley, I had
realized that most of them had more than one name. My
former host Maliu, for example, was also variously known as
Kalus, Marau and Pos Zuzuru. Lisa was also called pos
Zuzuru or Korian, but had given his name to Maliu when
applying for a gun license at Canal - I had seen the
papers. Krai Tui of Duria had the added name Pos Loloran.
Usa Pon's wife was called Semei Tintin or Noti Kerekere.
Vuro Kiki's wife was Noti Pelo or Vekrai.
These are just examples. Underlying this proliferation of
names I had by now discerned a measure of order. Except for
twins, who were simply called Avu (males) or Veavu
(females), everybody had, if only by implication, what
could be called a "family name". These were names
associated with the bearer's father's clan, like the names
Maliu and Semei respectively for sons and daughters of men
of Vunu Maliu, the Mushroom clan, or the names Krai and
Vekrai for sons and daughters of men of Vunu Krai, the
Flying Fox clan, and so on for all clans.
In addition to this most people had a personal name, either
used on its own, like Kalus and Lisa, or else in
conjunction with the family name, like Krai Tui, Krai
Tamata and Semei Tintin. Some people had nicknames, like
Marau, meaning "left hand" - he was left handed - or
Matavuso, "white eye". Additional names were sometimes
inherited by a "shoot" from his "shell" - Korian is an
example.
On top of all this many people in the valley had names
starting with Pos for men and Noti for women - Pos Zuzuru,
Pos Loloran, Noti Kerekere and Noti Pelo in the examples
above. I had enquired about these, and had had a number of
different replies.
Noti
was synonymous with
pita,
which meant "woman" in Kiai.
Pos
was used to refer to people in charge of some endeavour -
most likely it came from the English word "boss" and had
entered Kiai via Bislama.
Pos
was also Kiai for a chief's representative, supposed to do
much of his debating for him and assist with settling
disputes and keeping the peace. Our chief at Truvos had
three such
pos:
Lisa, Lahoi and Pos Ee, but there were far more people with
Pos names than there were representatives of chiefs. I had
been told that the Pos names were given to people who
excelled in oratory at the
varavara
- the local court sessions where disputes were settled.
Later I found out that this was true only for the
combination name Pos Zuzuru. Others told me that the Pos
and Noti names had no special significance - they were just
names. Then one day at Tonvara Lulu's eldest brother Maliu
Kot told me that they were names given to people by Patua.
I had been fetched to Tonvara for the usual reason: to
attend to sick children. Having performed my medical chores
I relaxed in Maliu Kot's house, conversing with my host.
Though a native speaker of Tohsiki he politely responded to
my Kiai efforts in the same language, but when he asked me
how my garden was doing he didn't use the word
varea,
the common Kiai word for "garden". Instead he called
it
sarilan.
When Maliu Kot saw that I didn't understand he quickly
substituted the synonym with which I was familiar, and when
I asked he confirmed that
sarilan
was the name for garden in
mamara noni Zek:
"Zek's mamara". This was a whole language of substitutes
for common words, invented by the leader of the Naked cult
a quarter of a century back. It had survived until today as
a host of synonyms for common words, used readily by people
in the area, regardless of native tongue. I jumped at the
opportunity to check on a list of words that I suspected
were part of the cult vocabulary - at Truvos they were
reluctant to talk about the movement, but Maliu Kot didn't
seem to mind.
When I ran out of synonymous pairs to ask about, it
occurred to me that the Pos and Noti names may also have
originated at the time of that movement, so I questioned my
companion about this. It was then that he told me that it
was Patua who had renamed the people in the valley.
Intrigued by this revelation I asked why. Maliu Kot didn't
know. When I persisted he told me it was because Patua was
a
kleva
- another explanation that just posed further questions.
But Maliu Kot seemed as genuinely mystified by the name
changes as I was, and in the end I dropped the subject.
Perhaps the ways of the
kleva
were as puzzling to him as they were to me?
3.9 Maliu Kot on Kinglu in marriage
dispute
If you follow the track from Kuvutana to Truvos and take
the right-hand path after the cattle stop close to the
summit, it will take you down to the Zari next to where it
flows into the Ari. Ford the stream and another few
minutes' walk across a low ridge will take you to Lisa's
garden house at Miremire.
Large and airy with walls of plaited bamboo the house sits
on the edge of a low bluff overlooking a grassy glade,
centred on a stream and bounded on one side by the big
river. Here Popoi Trivu's generation planted coconuts,
brought back into the mountains after work on European
plantations on the coast. Their tall trunks have turned the
little valley into a hall of pillars, roofed by the
perpetual rustle of their lofty foliage and carpeted by
lush, green grass, trimmed short by a small herd of cattle
- a park like paradise in the midst of tangled jungle
growth.
Outside the front door is a small yard, partly shaded by
ornamental trees and bordered by a barbed wire fence to
keep the cattle out, should any of them manage to negotiate
the bank that slopes down to the valley floor. Here I sat
on a rock, breathing in the peace of my surroundings after
a hectic week.
It was not long since my arrival back at Truvos after four
months in New Zealand. My head, like my jotter, was full of
new information, but there had been little time for
recording it. I had been too busy working off a four
months' backlog in medical attention, facing new crowds of
visitors with sores, pains and fever every day, as the news
of my return spread through the bush. When Lisa and Vekrai
had announced their intention to spend a few days at
Miremire to see to their gardens in the area I had
thankfully come with them, hoping for a few days' break
form pills and syringes. After a morning in the chilly
waters of the Ari, learning to shoot little fish with an
arrow tied to a piece of elastic, I had just got my books
out to start working on my notes, when I noticed a man
fording the river and heading up towards where I was
sitting.
It was Malui Kot from Tonvara. He was on his way to
Kuvutana to see me, to obtain some medicine for one of his
children who lay sick at home. By chance he had taken the
route past Miremire. He thought himself lucky to have found
me there, saving him the steep climb up the track to
Truvos.
I offered him cold taro and the few
koro
river fish that were the result of my morning's effort in
the river. Lisa and others were away gardening, so I had to
act the host.
Maliu Kot ate and we talked. I discovered to my relief that
his medical needs could be handled by proxy - I gave him
pills for the child. In the usual fashion of visitors he
stayed for a while, asking me about my time away from the
area and passing on news and gossip from his part of the
bush.
In the course of our conversation I asked him about his
brother Ravu Puepue, resettled at Namoro on the South
Coast. He had come back with me into the mountains, helping
to carry some of my stores to Truvos. Then he had proceeded
further inland, planning to visit his native Tonvara, and
perhaps also Patunpangga, where his wife was staying with
her aging father Pau.
Maliu Kot told me that Ravu had returned to Namoro with his
wife. I was surprised, as I had heard that Pau was against
her settling on the coast. Was it all right then after all
for Ravu to take her back there?
Mifala jenisim finis
(B): "We have replaced her", came the reply. Pau had no say
in the matter anymore, as another woman had been given to
him in exchange for his daughter - only a little girl, in
fact, who was now being brought up at Patunpangga. If Pau
persisted with his objections they would have to
mekem kot
(B): "make court", to settle the matter, explained Maliu
Kot.
Later the same day, after my visitor had left and the
others returned, I brought the matter up with Lisa, hoping
to find out more of the background. Now I learned that
Kinglu, the Vatroto
kleva,
had played a part in the controversy.
Ravu's wife had been ill. Kinglu had cured her. After
performing his
maumau
he had warned her not to go back to the coast; if she did
she would
kasem wan sik i no save finis
(B): "catch a disease that can't end", according to Lisa.
This was now Pau's argument against his daughter's moving
back to the coast. It would mean risking her life,
therefore she should stay in the mountains.
3.10 Kinglu in the rain
That was the only time during that field trip that I heard
about Kinglu's activities as a healer. Perhaps not
surprisingly: he lived two rivers away, and my hosts had
little contact with the people of his home area. There was
only the occasional reference to his mastery of rain and
sun. When it rained in our valley while there was good
weather across the ridge in the Peolape valley, the local
people gave him the credit.
I only saw him once again. This was after I had ventured
into his part of the mountains, revisiting the area around
Tombet after more than a year away. The old chief, Mol
Zuzuru, staged a
velu
- a feast with dancing - at his newly founded settlement at
Punoro. I had gone there to witness the
polo susulu,
the "fire dance" - one of the traditional dances that I had
not yet seen performed.
Feasts were often ruined by rain. The houses got
overcrowded as everybody sought shelter indoors. The naked
red clay turned to sticky mud with the constant treading of
feet as the visitors moved from house to house with
umbrellas or big leaves over their heads. After a while it
got everywhere.
This time we seemed to be in luck with the weather, though
many people commented that it was Kinglu`s work. The sun
baked us during the day and at night the moon shone down on
the dancers from a virtually cloudless sky.
In the afternoon on the second day it started raining, and
most people headed for the houses or the
vale i vos:
"kava shack". This was a bamboo structure with a roof of
green Heliconia leaves covering a long table with benches
on both sides, also of bamboo, where a crowd of men sat
preparing and drinking kava in copious amounts.
I took refuge under a thatched verandah, together with a
couple of friends from Duria and Tonvara - the only people
from the upper Ari valley that had come to the dance.
Presently one of them pointed towards the central clearing.
There I saw Kinglu, looking slightly incongruous in
loincloth, straw hat and umbrella, shaking a twig of leaves
in the air with his right hand, while walking with his
crooked old man's gait around on the dancing ground in the
drizzle.
3.11 Pos Vea on Mol Kleva, Mol Sahau,
and
tapu
Though we were relatively close neighbours I didn't see Mol
Kleva practice his craft again. Neither did I get to talk
to him about it. But I heard a tale about his exploits in
the past. Pos Vea from Vunpepe told me that Mol Kleva had
killed Mol Sahau - Maitui's father - the old chief of
Tonvara, who was reputed to have taken many lives there and
at Duria with his
patua.
One night Mol Kleva had shot a strange cat, and together
with another man had cooked and eaten it. But it wasn't a
cat; it was Mol Sahau in animal shape, out hunting with his
deadly familiars.
I asked Pos Vea how he knew that it was Mol Sahau's spirit
that had died with the flesh of that cat. He replied that
news had reached them soon after that Mol Sahau was sick
with diarrhoea, and a few days later he died. Apparently
that connection was close enough to count as established.
We were talking inside Lisa's house. Pos Vea had come to
Kuvutana carrying a cooked taroa pigeon wrapped in leaves
with some taro in a basket. About two weeks before then I
had given him some .22 calibre ammunition. Now he brought
me a bird shot with one of the bullets.
I offered him food: prawns with taro this time. To my
dismay he declined the prawns. Sulu had lifted the taboo
(tapu)
on fish, but Pos Vea wasn't allowed to eat prawns, for his
daughter's sake.
3.12 Krai Tui on
tapu
and
kleva
Krai Tui's little daughter had a swelling on her neck. He
crossed the Ari and fetched me home to his house on the
lower side of Duria, where I gave the girl a shot of
penicillin.
The next day Krai Tui presented me with a festive meal,
consisting of
uri
ipu
"five-leaf yam pudding", drenched in coconut milk and
served on a large wooden plate. He served it to me outside,
even though a slow drizzle was falling. Krai Tui
apologised. It was because of the coconut milk. He was not
supposed to take coconut inside the house. Patua had
forbidden it because the girl was ill.
This was not the first time that I ran into people from the
Duria side of the river avoiding coconuts in similar
circumstances. A month back, when Pos Non Kot brought me
his sick daughter to Kuvutana I had to examine her outside
as there were some coconuts kept just inside the door of
Lisa's house.
Tabu blong em
(B), explained her father: "Her taboo."
By now I was really curious about this, so I asked Krai Tui
what was so special about coconuts. Did they somehow bring
on illness?
He didn't know -
olgeta nomo, oli drim (B):
"only they that dream", they knew. It was the
kleva
who sometimes tabooed coconuts for their patients. All
except for Mol Kleva - he never did, said Krai. But when
a
kleva
gave you a taboo, you kept it.
I also asked Krai Tui about
maumau.
Who could do it? I had never seen or heard of a woman
doing
maumau
in central Santo - was the skill restricted to men?
No, said Krai, there was no such restriction. Some old
women also knew spells, and anyone who knew them could use
them. Krai Tui had himself been learning some recently
himself from his illustrious stepfather: Mol Kleva was
teaching him. That was how people usually learned spells -
from each other, down the generations, father to son. But
some men learned their spells in dreams, and they had the
most powerful
maumau.
Krai listed Mol Kleva, Patua and Sulu - and Popoi Trivu,
Tokito Meresin, Maliu Kot and Mol Sale. Clearly there were
more people laying claims to special powers than I had
known about up until then.
That Popoi Trivu was on the list of
kleva
came as no surprise. It was he who had treated Patua at
Kuvutana recently, and in the past I had frequently heard
of people going to him for maumau. One example was Pos Ee's
son who died in Popoi's house shortly after my first
arriving in the valley, nearly a year ago. But I had always
put the expertise attributed to Popoi down to his age:
being one of the oldest men in the valley he was regarded
as a repository of knowledge - knowledge of things not
known to a younger generation grown up since the demise of
feuding and the
mele
pig festivals.
Neither was Tokito Meresin's being one of the
kleva
completely unheralded. At the outset of this my second stay
on Santo I had got to know him well when spending ten days
at John Alo's plantation at Nakere near the end of the road
that runs east from Canal along the South Coast. I was
waiting there for my mountain friends to come to pick me up
and help me carry my medical stores up to Truvos. Muscular
and lively, as if to contradict the evidence of his grey
hair, Tokito Meresin spent almost all his time working for
John Alo at the Nakere plantation, only occasionally
visiting his former home at Tonsiki. It was his name that
had suggested to me some involvement with healing: "Doctor
Medicine".
Maliu Kot was my acquaintance from Tonvara. Krai Tui said
that he had become a kleva only recently, but I heard
nothing more about this during the rest of my stay on the
island.
3.13. Mol Sale
That Mol Sale was a
kleva
seemed to me somewhat incongruous. I already knew him as a
man of powers, though they were not of the healing kind,
according to what I heard, and for some reason the two
parts seemed to me incomprehensible: the curer and the
killer. True, I had seen Mol Sale in the capacity of
healer. When I lay sick in his house during the Zinovonara
feast at the end of my first field trip, he dissolved a
headache pill bought on the coast in a cup of water, spat a
spell into the cup, and gave it to me to drink. And when
Varalapa had
mata ara:
"red eye", and eye infection, I heard that she went to
Zinovonara for
maumau
by Mol Sale - for
aviriza.
This was well overshadowed, though, by the tales of his
witchcraft and suspected sorcery that I had noted during my
first field trip. There was also the following story, tok
to me by the "stockman" at John Alo's plantation - a
Melanesian cowboy named John Avu, originally from Big Bay
on the north side of the island.
John Avu once went to Zaraparo in the Vailapa valley, in
the company of my old friend and guide Lulu, and his older
brother Ravu Puepue. Lulu had a terrible headache - he had
had it for a long time, and nothing seemed to help. Now
they were going to visit a
kleva
at Zaraparo, to see what he could do about it. I don't know
who the
kleva
was - we had little contact with the people in the Vailapa
valley, and I knew very few of them. The old man told
everybody present to close their eyes, but John Avu peeped,
watching the healer pluck a stone right out of Lulu's
cheek. The man said it had been planted there by Mol Sale;
it was his
vezeveze.
Since then John Avu felt very reluctant to venture into the
mountains again, in spite of invitations to feasts in our
valley. Sorcery had died out on the coast with the coming
of skul (Christianity), but the interior of the island was
apparently still unsafe.
John Avu added that he had heard that Mol Sale also had
ruined the eye of a man. He had made it go white and blind.
Remembering Mol Kleva's affliction, and the tale of Mol
Sale's being forced off Duria land after living there for a
while, I asked if the blinded man was Mol Kleva. Yes, said
John Avu, Mol Kleva was the man.
Later Ravu Puepue, visiting the Nakere plantation from
Namoro on a lazy Saturday afternoon, confirmed my
suspicions. It was indeed this deed of Mol Sale's that had
precipitated his having to move again.
Though his evil reputation appeared to have made him the
victim of ostracism, it seemed to also have boosted Mol
Sale's influence over other people. They were reluctant to
go against his wishes for fear of deadly retaliation.
A young woman from Patunvava brought me her sick child for
treatment. After they had returned home, Usa Pon
volunteered the information that she was not married.
Originally she had been promised to Mol Sale, for him to
give as a wife to one of his sons. As none of them wanted
her, the people of Patunvava gave her to another man. This
angered Mol Sale, so her husband left her again. By then
she was already pregnant; the child was born not long after
they split up.
I wondered at Mol Sale's having such an influence over the
lives of people in a different settlement. Usa Pon
explained:
Oli fraet. Emi gat na patua
(B) "They are afraid. He has
patua."
He elaborated: in the past Mol Sale had lived in a large
settlement at Moruas, further down valley on our side of
the river. But at night he took the shape of an owl and
killed several of his neighbours. Many times they tried to
shoot the winged animal creatures, but without success.
Finally an old man named Maloi who knew the right charms
put a stop to the nocturnal butchery. He weaved a spell to
trap their attacker; one more attempt and they were sure to
kill him. Somehow Mol Sale found out about this and didn't
come again. But after all this his neighbours didn't want
him around anymore, and he moved away from Moruas. Now that
he was a known witch, people treated him with
circumspection, careful not to draw his anger
unnecessarily.
Patua
witchcraft was not a matter to be taken lightly.
Later, as I was writing an account of my conversation with
Usa Pon, it occurred to me that Mol Sale was not the
only
mol
reputed to have
patua.
I had heard similar allegations about Mol Zuzuru of Punoro,
close to Tombet in the northern interior. And there was
also Mol Sahau, Maitui's father, though from what I knew he
may only have become known as a witch posthumously. Perhaps
this association was no mere accident: a reputation for
having
patua,
however defamatory, would well be an asset for a
mol
in settling disputes. The parties involved might be less
inclined to quarrel with his arbitration or ignore his
decisions, if they thought it within his power to kill them
or their children in revenge. I made a note of this
hypothesis in my papers.
3.14 Vunapospos host on
kleva
Vunapospos: a tiny hamlet high up on the north-eastern
slope of Santo Peak, with a breathtaking view of the
jungle-clad folds and crevasses of the upper Peiorai basin.
I had gone there with a party of Truvos people, led by Mol
Paroparo. It was his wife Voimapu's home area, and we had
come to attend a velu - a feast with dancing.
We had journeyed for two days in good weather, spending the
night at Tavimol in the Peolape valley, but the day after
we arrived at our destination the weather turned bad. Dull
grey clouds drizzling a constant rain closed in on our
hamlet, obscuring the magnificent surroundings and forcing
the guests inside overcrowded houses.
Dancing was delayed for a day owing to the rain, and so the
seven pigs that were set aside to feed the dancers on
completion of their all-night feat were not killed as
planned. Because of this we ran out of meat to eat with the
mounds of taro provided, and the guests complained.
On the second night there was a lull in the weather and the
dancing started, but renewed rain soon broke up the crowd.
Our host was beside himself; the intended festivities were
turning into a disaster. That night he staggered into the
house where I was staying with my Truvos escort. We were
crowded into a corner next to a bamboo alcove where some
enterprising local people sold drink - a source of much
criticism from the guests.
Oli rab
(B): "they steal". A can of beer cost five
silin,
50 cents, but only three
silin,
30 cents, on the coast: 20 cents was profit.
The feast giver first approached Krai Usus, the mol from
Tavimol, who had come with us to the feast. He wanted
to
ripotem
(B) the man who had ruined his feast by making rain -
report him to
gavman.
Our irate host insisted that the man must
kalabus
(B): "go to prison". He knew who it was: a brother-in-law
who had neither paid for nor replaced his wife with another
woman, but still had taken her away to live with him. Now
he hadn't even shown up to help with staging the feast.
I heard about it when they came over to me together, Krai
Usus and our host, wanting my opinion on how the case might
fare if they took it to court ac Canal. I guess they
thought I might be better able to interpret the strange
customs of my fellow Europeans on the coast.
I wasn't sure what to say at first. Then I remembered what
Maitui had told me about
gavman's
reply to allegations of witchcraft, and passed this piece
of information on to the man, so confident that he knew who
lay behind the bad weather. When gavman asks:
Yu luk?
(B): "Did you see it? - what is there to say?
The counter was illuminating: the man proposed contacting
a
kleva,
who would testify to who had made the rain. So the
kleva
were not just expert healers but also diviners, revealing
the hidden also in the realms than that of disease. Our
host seemed to take it for granted that the word of
the
kleva
would be accepted, and no doubt raised as to its validity,
as if the power of a
kleva
was a fact beyond question. Did he perhaps take
gavman's
objection literally? A
kleva
could, presumably, "see" who was responsible to the
downpour.
Nothing came of it in the end. The feast giver got
progressively more drunk as the night wore on, apologising
loudly in Bislama to this guests for the way things had
turned out. He cried, raged and eventually collapsed in a
snoring heap among the guests crowding the floor inside his
house.
3.15 I eat
malino
I returned to Kuvutana with a bad cough. It had started,
mildly, before we even left for the velu; now it was severe
enough to cause me considerable discomfort. I blamed it on
the damp conditions at Vunapospos.
Lisa, though, was of a different opinion.
Ku ani malino e ku toma?
"Have you eaten
malino
or what?" he asked me, as I was catching my breath on my
mat inside his house after a particularly bad fit of
coughing.
The word
malino
was new to me so I asked him what he meant. Lisa told me
that I might have eaten food dreamed by a
tamate,
a spirit of the dead - this could be the cause of my cough.
There were spells to cure it though, he assured me.
Someone else added that it was likely to have happened at
the feast at Vunapospos, as the meat we ate there had been
kept outside. A platform had been erected, five feet off
the ground, where raw meat was laid on leaves after a beast
had been butchered, to keep it away from the multitude of
dogs that had followed their owners to the feast. In that
case my cough would be hard to cure.
Lisa elaborated, the appropriate spells contained the names
of the dead, but no one here knew the names of the dead in
the area that we had visited. If a Vunapospos
tamate
was the cause of my cough, we were stuck for a remedy.
3.16 More diagnoses
With by now a full-blown case of bronchitis I coughed my
way through many a kava evening at Lisa's house, giving
cause for a fair deal of comment from the people assembled,
who offered a variety of suggestions as to what might be
the source of my trouble.
A couple of young women had
vusi
("whitened") me at the
velu:
thrown white powder at me from a shaker of Johnson's Baby
Powder. They were popular items at feast. A white dab of
powder in your hair was fashionable, and putting it on
others a common joke.
Between single men and women it may also have been
flirtatious, as generated a lot of talk, both while we were
still at Vunapospos, and back home in Kuvutana
afterwards.
Oli pleplei long paoda olsem, oli lukaot
wanem?
(B) "What are they after when they play with powder like
that? Maybe they want a kiss?" He had the whole house
laughing at his teases.
This affair now provided an explanation of my respiratory
troubles. Maybe one of the women who put powder on me had
been thinking about
wan samtin
(B): "something'. That would be enough to cause my
problems. But if she valaulu I would soon recover.
A variation on the same theme was the suggestion that my
wife was being unfaithful back in New Zealand.
Others sought the cause in something I had eaten. Several
people offered the opinion that the cause was my eating
salt at the velu. This was when we temporarily ran out of
meat owing to the rain. We had had to resort to salt for
something to eat with the taro, much to our host's
disgrace.
Eilili blamed some yam pudding I ate at Vunapospos. It had
been drenched in coconut milk. He suggested that I stay
away from coconut foods until I was well again.
Sulu, too, saw the cause in my food. I had eaten some yam
grown by Popoi Trivu. He put spells on his yam to make it
grow better, Sulu explained. I had swallowed some
residual
maumau
- this was what was making me cough.
When I mentioned to him Eilili's suggestion that coconut
milk was the agent, Sulu dismissed it. There was no call
for me to keep from eating coconut because of my cough.
Only if a
kleva
ordered me to abstain from some food, like yam, coconut or
fish, need I bother.
3.17 The death of Krai Kule
Two Patunvava men showed up at Kuvutana one morning,
looking for me. They wanted me to come with them back to
their village, to see if I could cure a man who had been
ill for two weeks.
I had met the prospective patient; a well-built
healthy-looking Patunvava youth named Krai Kule. He had
come to Kuvutana once in the past, in the company of an
equally young woman with a nasty boil on one of her
breasts. Very shy, they had waited outside Lisa's house
while I boiled my equipment to give her a shot of
penicillin. They were both dressed in European clothing: he
wore long trousers and a shirt, she a long dress. They
looked very clean and a bit out of place next to my
Kuvutana friends. From the gossip in the rear of the house
immediately following their visit I gleaned that she was
Vemaliu from the mission village Ravoa much nearer the
South Coast, and that her liaison with Krai Kule was a very
recent affair.
Since then I had heard that Krai Kule was ill. Only
yesterday another Patunvava man had passed through Kuvutana
on his way to Zinovonara to get Mol Sale to come and heal
him with
maumau.
At first I was reluctant to go, preferring to spend my day
with my notebooks. Apart from my usual backlog in note
taking I was only part of the way through an account of
a
varavara:
"talk" - a local court session, held at Vorozenale only
three days back. I wanted to finish writing the account
while the events were still afresh in my mind.
I asked the two men about Krai Kule's symptoms, hoping that
he only had malaria or something equally simple - something
that I could treat by proxy, by sending him some pills
back. No such luck. Grandma Vepei, noticing my lack of
enthusiasm for the journey, cleverly interfered on behalf
of our visitors.
Ku pai sa?
she asked. "Will you go?" - and immediately after pointed
out that Krai Kule was
mapini
Popoi: "Popoi's grandson" - his sister's daughter's son, in
fact, and so also a clansmen of his.
Makopa, ka to komiapa,
I replied, stalling: "Wait, I'm thinking about it first."
But Vepei just repeated her question, again stressing the
kinship tie, making me feel as if the request came from her
and Popoi personally, in which case I could hardly refuse.
She kept up her performance for a short time, and I rapidly
gave in, saying yes, I'd go.
Once decided, we were soon on our way, one of my companions
shouldering a bag of medicines that I had packed in a
hurry.
Patunvava lies about two hours' walk south-east of
Kuvutana. For most of the way there you follow the same
track that we used to take to and from Narango and the
South Coast; eventually a fork to the left will lead you to
the village. We were way past the crossroads and getting
close to our destination, when from around a bend in the
path obscured by vegetation an old man and a small boy
appeared, headed the other way. We had scarcely halted when
the man spoke.
Mo soena. Mo te mate:
"It is like this. He has died."
I was truly astonished. Krai Kule had looked in such good
shape when I had seen him less than six weeks previously -
well fed and groomed, he had seemed to me like a Melanesian
version of the All American Boy. Now he was dead - gone -
with us still hurrying up the path to his aid. Too late,
all in vain.
Not completely in vain, though, it seemed. After a quick
consultation there on the track we decided to continue on
to Patunvava anyway - there were other sick people there
waiting for me, said the old man. The news had spread in
the neighbourhood that my companions had gone to Kuvutana
that morning to fetch me and my medicines.
We continued down the track, as it wound its way through
the perpetual gloom under trees growing ever bigger and
taller with the gradual drop in altitude - more than two
hundred metres between Kuvutana and Patunvava, with a
noticeable difference in the surrounding vegetation.
Presently we could hear faint crying from among the tall
trunks ahead of us, growing louder and stronger until a
short rise brought us to the edge of the village clearing.
We headed straight for the sound coming from inside one of
the houses, ducked through the front door and joined the
mourners around the body, squatting with heads on hands
resting on our bush knives propped vertically in front of
us - a peculiar posture I had first learned when crying at
the burial of Mol Sale's grandson during my first field
trip. The wailing rose to a crescendo in acknowledgement of
our arrival, and for the next few minutes the atmosphere
inside the house was imbued with overpowering grief.
Eventually the crying subsided some, and we retreated out
the door and into another house, where I was treated to
some tinned mackerel with cold taro.
I asked what Krai Kule had died of, hoping for a
description of his symptoms.
A veia,
came the reply: "They did him". He had been killed
by
patua.
I queried this, asking if he hadn't just died of
zalo:
"illness"- after all he had been ill for two weeks before
he died, so I had heard. No, only one week, I was assured,
and there was no doubt about it:
A veia.
Then it came time to attend to the sick. One by one they
came to me with their complaints - men, women and children
with boils, open sores, aches coughs or diarrhoea. I
questioned and examined them, dispensing pills and dressing
ulcers as needed, while keeping a mental tally of the
number of hypodermic needles I would need to sterilize for
penicillin injections. But when the time came to boil the
equipment I couldn't find the syringe - in the annoyed
haste of my departure I had left it behind! I was quickly
reassured that it wasn't my fault. I had come on a
ran tei:
a "bad day". It was quite appropriate that I forget the
equipment as I was going in vain anyway: Krai Kule had died
before we had even left Kuvutana that morning.
We soon agreed that I would go home, taking the news of the
death to Truvos, and return the next day with some of my
friends for the burial - of course also bringing the
syringe, to complete my medical chores. It was especially
important that I tell Trivu Ru and Popoi Trivu, I was told,
as they were clansmen of Krai Kule's. They had to be
informed of the burial.
After another meal - chicken pieces and yam, with my host
Paia Maravu emphasizing that in future I should always come
to Patunvava with medicine when asked, as they fed me so
well - I was off again, another two men accompanying me up
the track. The escort seemed to me superfluous, as there
was only one path and little opportunity for getting lost,
so when we joined the main track I persuaded my companions
to return home to Patunvava. I knew the way home from there
on my own. They seemed reluctant to leave me at first, but
I insisted: I would take the news of the burial to Truvos;
it was just a waste of their time and effort to come with
me any further. Eventually they gave in, we parted, and I
trudged along happily on my own.
The path to Kuvutana runs past Trivu Ru's settlement at
Matanzari. I halted briefly outside his house and spoke to
his daughter Varalapa, who came and stood in the doorway.
Had I come on my own, she asked, after I had told her the
news.
Ku kai matatau ini na nora
matea?
"Are you not afraid of their
matea?"
At first I didn't understand, but then she
translated
matea
as
patua
- it was simply a synonym I hadn't heard before. I still
couldn't see what she was getting at. Admittedly the
Patunvava people had a reputation for harbouring both
witches and sorcerers among their numbers, but this hadn't
stopped us from using that track in the past.
I crossed the Zari, climbed up the last steep rise to
Kuvutana, and soon found myself inside Popoi Trivu's house,
telling my story to him and Eilili. When Eilili heard about
my leaving the syringe behind, he commented much as they
had done at Patunvava. It was because Krai Kule had already
died.
Maurina,
"his life", made me forget it. This sort of thing was only
to be expected when a man died.
Eilili then likened my experience to something that had
happened to him the same morning. He had gone bird-hunting
with Lisa’ shotgun. He had fired on two birds sitting
close together in a tree and seen them both fall to the
ground, but when he went to retrieve them he could only
find one. He said that he had seen feathers and blood on
the ground where the other one had fallen, but that bird
was gone - disappeared. This made him think that Krai Kule
had died. He got scared and kept the shotgun at the ready
all the way home.
On hearing Eilili tell his tale, Popoi added one of his
own. He had been looking for his knife that morning, unable
to find it where it was supposed to be. Only later did he
discover it, somewhere else. This, too, was an obvious
portent of Krai Kule's demise, judging from what Popoi and
Eilili said.
Later, when Lisa arrived home, he too commented on my going
home alone. It was bad of the two Patunvava men not to come
with me all the way. I explained that it was my own fault;
I had sent them home at the crossroads. Lisa told me I was
stupid to do that. I had risked my life. After a death in a
village the local witches will be out looking for someone -
anyone - on whom to vent their angry grief, seeking
to
zeni
("counter") that death with another one, Lisa explained.
Under such circumstances it was not safe to travel alone.
Eilili, hearing Lisa scold me for my carelessness, added
that this was the reason why he had returned home with his
shotgun ready after his own premonition of the death.
The next day we went to the burial at Patunvava, as
arranged: Popoi, Vepei, Eilili, Meriulu and I from
Kuvutana, and Kavten and Lahoi's grown-up daughter Vetrivu
from Vorozenale. After we returned home I discussed with
Eilili the allegation that Krai Kule had been killed
by
patua.
Eilili was of the opinion that it was Krai Kule's liaison
with Vemaliu from Ravoa that had precipitated the killing.
The couple were not formally married, yet she had gone to
stay with him at Patunvava. Her relatives interfered and
brought her home again, asking a bride price from Krai
Kule. The matter was still unresolved when he died.
A veia matana,
said Eilili: "They did him because of that."
We also discussed another possible interpretation. Krai
Kule's sister had also fallen victim of
patua
- their grief-stricken father had told me so at Patunvava.
She had married a man in the Vailapa valley. Later her
husband took still another wife, and the two women argued.
They even came to blows, her co-wife hitting Krai Kule's
sister. When the latter died, the former got the blame for
killing her with
patua,
and was forced to pay compensation for the death. Perhaps
it was she who had killed Krai Kule, in revenge. Anybody
with a grievance outstanding against the dead man or
someone close to him was likely to be the killer.
Patua
appeared to be the expected form of retaliation when other
avenues of redress were closed.
3.18
Varavara
at Vorozenale
This became increasingly clear to me over the next couple
of days, as the sequel to the recent court session at
Vorozenale gradually unfolded.
It was a complicated affair with two of Mol Paroparo's wife
Voimapu son's from an earlier marriage arriving at Truvos
together with Mele Vete, an older clansman, demanding one
of her daughters while invoking an old custom whereby a man
can obtain the right to give away a clanswoman's daughter
in marriage through a series of gifts to the girl's father
while she is still little. If not, they wanted four hundred
dollars in bride price for Voimapu, retroactively. Mol
Paroparo had neither paid for his own wife nor replaced her
with another woman, when he married her many years before.
In the kava discussion the night before the varavara, the
general opinion seemed to be that it was a good idea for
one of Voimapu's daughters to return as a bride to the
place where her mother grew up. This was
kaston,
and it would leave open the possibility of a return of one
of her daughters in the future, as a wife for some local
boy. Mol Paroparo was not there to hear this though, having
gone to Lotunae to fetch Voimapu, who was there for maumau
by the old man Maloi.
Contrary to public opinion Mol Paroparo stubbornly stood
his ground the next day at Vorozenale, refusing to give up
the girl. The gifts they had received were just gifts by
Voimapu's sons to their sisters - Mol Paroparo had never
promised a daughter in return. And though he hadn't paid
for Voimapu, it was not for her sons and Mele Vete to
demand payment anyway, owing to the peculiar circumstances
of her previous marriage.
Mol Rarau, the chief of Namoro, who had come with Mele Vete
to further his claims in public, had to agree with Mol
Paroparo on both counts, and his client was displeased.
Then Voimapu brought out an old leather suitcase containing
clothes, towels, blankets and twenty dollars, and placed it
on the ground in the centre of the rough circle of men
seated in the Vorozenale village clearing. She also tied a
pig to a stake in the ground nearby. This all was intended
as a return of the disputed gifts.
Mele Vete first refused to accept the repayment. He
continued making angry speeches long after the end of
the
varavara
had been announced, and it was only on the repeated command
of Tavaliu, Mol Rarau's
pos,
that he finally, very reluctantly, walked over to the
suitcase, bent down and picked it up. No one seemed very
happy about the outcome. I heard several people make the
comment
varavara mo tei:
"the talk was bad".
The day we went to Krai Kule's burial at Patunvava, Lahoi
returned from a visit to Namoro, bringing news of further
complications. Mele Vete was dissatisfied with the contents
of the suitcase. The things were old and worn - he wanted
eighty dollars instead, bringing the total sum paid up to
one hundred dollars. The reaction at Truvos suggested
urgency: the next morning Eilili and Lisa went to inform
Mol Paroparo at the
varavara.
Later that day I heard Vekrai and Vepei berate Voimapu over
the way she and Mol Paroparo were handling the matter, as
she passed through Kuvutana on her way to their garden
house at the mouth of the Zari. The two women told her
about Mele Vete's reaction to the contents of the suitcase,
about the demand for another eighty dollars, and about Lisa
and Eilili going to see the two
mol.
Varavara mo kai iso tau,
they said: "The talk is not finished yet." And if Voimapu
and her husband
veia mo kilan:
"make it hard", Lahoi would move down - a gesture in the
direction of his garden house at Daiere - and we to
Miremire, to Lisa's large garden house there.
Inkomeu kome pai lukaot zarain:
"You will have to look after this place."
The two Kuvutana women repeated their threat to abandon Mol
Paroparo and family at Truvos and go and live elsewhere. I
heard it as an oblique reference to
patua
- if Mele Vete wasn't appeased he might turn to witchcraft
for revenge, though this was never said outright. But I
remembered the story of Moruas, the former large
Moris-speaking settlement further down valley. When one of
the villagers eloped with a married Duria woman, the others
fled the place in fear of witchcraft, and didn't return - a
grassy area visible from Truvos was the only memento that
remained of the settlement.
3.19 Eilili on
lulu
Eilili and I were squatting in the darkness, huddled
against the corner of Lisa's house. I held Lisa's shotgun,
Eilili a powerful battery torch. We were waiting for flying
foxes to come and feed in a fruiting tree, planted for the
purpose just inside the pig corral that formed the edge of
the Kuvutana clearing nearby. Earlier in the evening we had
heard a couple of them fighting in the tree from inside the
house, where we had been drinking kava together with Sulu
and Kavten - Lisa was away on the South Coast. Now we were
hoping to get a shot at one, for a late night snack.
Suddenly an owl cried out from somewhere in the bush on the
far side of the house. Eilili answered, repeating its cry.
After a moment's silence he whispered to me that it
was
patua.
How did he know it was not just an ordinary owl, I asked.
It hadn't replied to his answering cry, said Eilili, and it
had cried out close to the house in the first place.
Wan long yumi nomo
(B), he added: "Just one of us."
Eilili had heard the owl the night before, but didn't have
any cartridges for the shotgun. This was their pattern:
when a man was away, like Lisa, and only women and children
remained in the house, witches may come and kill a child.
If I ever saw an owl at night I should shoot it.
Then
man blong em
(B): "its man", would die.
We didn't hear the owl again, though we listened quietly
for some time. Emi go luk ol fren blong em (B): "He's gone
to see his friends."
Whether or not Eilili was right about the pattern of
attack, it certainly seemed to be the pattern of
precautions. When on their own at night the local men would
often arm themselves, trusting to a rifle or shotgun for
their protection.
I had seen Mol Paroparo take his shotgun when setting out
one evening for a night in a clearing on the ridge up above
Vunpati netting flying foxes. It had seemed superfluous to
me - a good night with the net at high season would yield
more than enough meat, so why take the firearm? Usa Pon put
me right. The shotgun was for
patua.
If our
mol
saw something suspicious, he could shoot it.
Another time, when some of us were absent at a feast, Popoi
had Sulu fetch Lisa's shotgun to his house.
Senai lulu,
Sulu explained: "For owls', as many people were away.
3.20
Valavala
at Taskoro
Another crowded evening by the kava bowl: Pune Tamaravu's
feast to feed those who had helped him build his and his
son's houses at Taskoro had drawn two hundred and forty
people to that tiny settlement. Another two thatched
houses, one leaf hut and a kava shelter had been added to
the two existing dwellings in order to accommodate all the
guests, but there was still a shortage of room to sit or
lie down. Some of the male guests had spread cooking leaves
on the floor in the front part of Pune's house and
stretched out there.
Two nights had gone by with
vos ran:
"kava-drinking until dawn", but no
valavala
singing. Now Supe Rave, an Usieve man married to Pune's
sister, came through the front door of his brother-in-law's
house shaking a rattle and wailing a song. Presently he
finished singing and put the improvised tin rattle on the
floor for whoever wanted to take up the game. It sat there
for a while, the crowd of men in the house seeming not too
interested, or responding to questioning glances with
grimaces or movements of the head, saying no, not me.
Krai Taktin from Tavimol, a tall man who had grown up in
our valley, eventually took up the challenge. He bent down,
picked up the tin in his right hand and started working it
back and forth, simultaneously starting another song and
aiming his steps out the front door. A shout from one of
the women in the rear of the house interrupted him.
Na kai male na valavala tei; aviriza i pai
somai!
"I don't want any bad valavala songs; the aviriza will
come!" Vematailulu, one of Trivu Ru's married daughters,
living at Duria since her liaison with an old man named Aru
Tun, loudly voiced her objection from where she was sitting
with their infant daughter in her lap.
Krai Taktin hesitated, then started singing again and
disappeared out the door. I don't know if he changed the
song or not - I only knew and recognised a handful
of
valavala
songs; a dozen at the most.
I asked Lisa, sitting next to me, about the interchange.
What was bad about the
valavala,
and why would the
aviriza
come? He said it was because
blad blong olgeta i mekem pikinini i sik
(B): "their blood makes children ill." There was a word in
the song that would attract the
aviriza
if they heard it - Lisa repeated the word to me, quietly.
I recalled what Maitui had told me about a secret name for
the aviriza spirits, not to be used, and asked Lisa if that
was it. No, he said, the dangerous name for
aviriza
was
ape
- he whispered it in my ear, perhaps relying on the overall
din inside the house to drown out what he was saying enough
not to disturb the beings referred to.
I cannot remember today what Lisa said was the offensive
word in Krai Taktin's
valavala.
It sounded to me like the name of a man - perhaps a man
killed in the past and now himself one of the dangerous
spirits? I knew that some of the songs told of events that
had taken place in the past. And I recalled being told
during my first field trip that Sulu had forbidden
valavala
singing at Truvos. Now I could see why.
3.21 Sulu to New Zealand
About halfway through my second field trip I had word from
home that I had received a grant from the University
Research Fund towards bringing an assistant from my field
area to New Zealand, to help me in my studies of his
language and culture during a three-month stay in the
country. In addition to that I had been granted some money
for a third trip to Santo. This would enable me to bring my
friend safely back to his mountain home, and pursue further
studies for a few months. The plan was for me to bring him
with me home to Auckland at the end of my current stay on
the island.
The background was this. In one of my many conversations
with Lisa during my first field trip, after I had again
tried to explain to him why I had come to Santo and what I
was doing studying their customs, he said rather pointedly
that it was all very well for me to come and learn about
their ways, but how about if one of them went to New
Zealand to see how we lived there?
This was not the first time that Lisa had played on the
many glaring inequalities between us - it seemed to be a
favourite them of his. And it so happened that in the
ensuing conversation I agreed to ask a "big man" back at my
skul kaston for money to enable someone from the valley to
come to New Zealand with me.
When I returned home I remembered my promise and asked
Professor Ralph Bulmer, then one of my supervisors at the
University of Auckland, if it would be possible to get
financial assistance from the university in aid of bringing
home a language informant at the end of my next field trip.
With his aid that dream was now coming true, and I was
pleased to be able to tell Lisa about it.
We now had a problem: who was to come with me? First I
offered Lisa the opportunity. He seemed to me
knowledgeable, and since I lived in his house at Kuvutana I
thought it would be nice to return the hospitality. And it
had after all been his idea in the first place.
To my surprise he declined. He had a family to feed - if he
went away for three months they would be short of food a
year later. Only by continuous clearing and planting of new
gardens were they able to ensure an unbroken supply. I then
offered him the choice of who was to go in his stead, but
his only wish was for it to be someone from Truvos - or
else from Duria, as
mifala saed wetem olgeta finis:
"we have sided with them".
Next I asked Eilili - he was my closest friend in the
mountains, and he had no children, so I thought it would be
easier for him to get away. But he too said no, and left me
with the impression that the prospect awed him. I hadn't
thought about that. I heard a few stories that painted the
homelands of the
tasale,
"white people”, in rather dubious terms. If taken
seriously I imagine they were strange enough to make a
prospective visitor think twice about going there. The idea
of flying there in an aeroplane didn't seem to appeal to
the local people either.
The issue of who was to come with me remained undecided
until it became urgent. Two nights before my intended last
supply trip to Canal before it was time to leave for New
Zealand, Lisa called me to a
varavara,
a "powpow", in Popoi Trivu's house in Kuvutana. I had to
arrange travel documents at Canal for whoever was going to
come with me overseas. If things went as planned, then next
time we went to Canal it would be for our joint departure
from Pekoa airfield. It was high time to decide who was
going to come.
The meeting in Popoi`s house that evening seemed very
ordinary. It was the usual gathering around the kava bowl,
perhaps with few more people there than usual - most of the
Vorozenale men had shown up for the occasion. Lisa brought
up the topic: we had to decide on someone that night. He
again excused himself with reference to his family. He had
many children to care for. Eilili also stated to the
assembly of men that he couldn't go - he had too many
gardens to attend to, including his parents': Popoi and
Vepei were getting too old to be self-sufficient, and
Eilili, being childless, had taken it upon himself to look
after them.
Then our own chief, Mol Paroparo from Vorozenale, offered
himself. He was an older man, very much a product of the
less domesticated past in my estimation, and I thought he
might have difficulties adjusting to my Auckland haunts. I
quickly decided against it and politely declined, pointing
to the fact that he spoke Merei, not Kiai - he had grown up
in the Peolape valley and only came to Truvos when his
mother married Mol Santo, the old chief of Truvos, after
his own father had died.
Next Sulu spoke up and said he would go.
Na kai matatau,
he said: "I am not afraid." Levtoro would look after their
gardens. If some of them got a bit overgrown Sulu could
weed them when he returned.
Again I was taken by surprise: it was only just over two
weeks since Levtoro had given birth to a daughter, and in
view of his brother's reservations I didn't expect Sulu to
want to go either. But there were no objections from the
gathering, and that settled the matter.
I felt a little dubious about the choice myself, though I
didn't say so. I had not got as close to Sulu as I had to
his two brothers. Partly this was because I didn't know
what to make of him and his mystical powers. I had wondered
about his integrity, at times suspecting him to be a fake,
deceiving his fellows for his own gain. Now I wasn't sure
how well we'd get on, or if I could trust him. At the same
time I was pleased at the prospect of having one of the
mysterious
kleva
to work with me in Auckland. Perhaps this would give me an
opportunity to get a better understanding of his talents,
whatever they were.
3.22 Review
A month after my supply trip to Canal I had to leave Santo
in a hurry because of a family emergency back home in
Auckland. Sulu was left behind because I departed two
months ahead of schedule, and his papers were not yet
ready.
This time I felt that I had come away with a deeper
understanding of the
kleva,
and a fuller appreciation of their place in the mountain
community.
This was at least partly due to a growing comprehension of
the world within and through which they practiced their
craft. I now knew more about the causes behind the sickness
that led people to seek their aid, and about the various
remedies employed in restoring health.
I had heard illness attribute to eating salt or coconut, or
else food mad unwholesome by residues of old
maumau,
by being tasted by a rat, or dreamed or talked about by the
dead.
Some sickness was blamed directly on spirits talking about
people. Indeed there was little mention of spirits at other
times than when illness was concerned.
Other diagnostic speculation traced illness back to
immorality - chiefly extramarital sex in thought or deed -
with dire consequences threatening not only the offending
parties, but also their spouses, children, and possibly
also other close relatives.
Sometimes symptoms were blamed on other people: sorcerers
wielding
vezeveze
or working harm with food leavings. And when illness led to
death, this suggested that
patua
lay behind it from the start, having consumed the innards
of their victims - or else led their hunting host to be
shot in animal shape, as had happened to Mol Sahau in the
past.
The main therapy used by the
kleva
on their patients was the
maumau,
sometimes followed by a
tapu:
dietary restrictions. The
maumau
charms were either spat directly into the body, or into a
liquid to drink. But though charms were supposed to be
effective in curing illness, they could also inadvertently
cause it. Eating charmed yam was enough to bring on a
cough, according to Sulu.
I knew little of the verbal content of the
maumau
in use, except that his charms used against illness caused
by
aviriza
and
tamate
contained lists of names of the local dead.
Another remedy used by the
kleva
was the direct removal of pathogenic material from the body
of the patient, be it food or
vezeveze.
In the case of illness caused by immorality, the way back
to health was through
vavaulu.
The patient, or someone close to would have to confess
their misdeeds before a cure could be effected.
But the
kleva
were more than just healers. They also figured as diviners,
revealing not only the causes of illness, but also the
identity of magicians responsible for rain and
vezeveze
- or locating hidden tobacco. Disclosure indeed seemed to
lie at the core of their art.
I had gradually come to think of the
kleva
in dramatist's terms - as skilled performers continually
engaged in maintaining an image in the eyes of their
audience, by making displays of their craft: the
instantaneous diagnoses, playing on the power to "see" the
causes of disease; the food taboos that nobody else seemed
to understand, but that were still followed; and the
frequent talk about dream experiences. Not to mention
taking
vezeveze
out of peoples bodies, the reputed feat of Patua's that
first set me to thinking along these lines.
Vezeveze
didn't fit into the world as I understood it, consequently
Patua must be resorting to trickery.
This view of the
kleva
was reinforced by the reactions their audience. Maliu Kot,
though himself said to be a
kleva,
seemed to me genuinely mystified that Patua renamed people.
Krai Tui, and others that I asked, seemed equally perplexed
by the taboos imposed by the
kleva
- no one could tell me the reason why, which made the
proscriptions seem like just more props in the production
of their air of secret knowledge and power. And Eilili too
seemed honestly convinced by the otherness of this
brother.
Oli no olsem yumi
(B): "they are not like us" - dreaming their magical
charms. There was also Lahoi's reaction to seeing
the
vezeveze
objects, mentioned above, and Kavten's comment on Patua's
name change. If the
kleva
were playing with powerful symbols, this didn't fail to
have its effect.
Perhaps this also accounted for the seeming ambiguity of
some among their ranks. The claim to power entailed in
presenting oneself as a
kleva
also helped focus my attention on their audience. Were
there then more people with claims to special powers than
some of their neighbours were prepared to acknowledge?
Simultaneously, I had seen some examples of the use
of
kleva
powers seemingly for purposes other than just healing the
sick or identifying malevolent magicians, like Kinglu
intervening in old Pau's quarrel with his son-in-law over
the young couple's place of residence, or Sulu's talents
being used as an asset in marriage politics, trying to
obtain a wife for Kavero - not to mention finding a
solution to a craving or tobacco.
I now also knew one more
kleva
to be a
mol
- or one more
mol
to be a
kleva.
This too painted
kleva
as a mask worn out of self-interest: if a mol like Mol Sale
gained political power by becoming known as a witch,
perhaps a reputation for
kleva
powers would work in a similar fashion? It all implied a
measure of artifice on the part of the
kleva,
leaving me wondering about the extent to which they took
themselves seriously, and how much of their "expertise" was
sheer pretence.
While I had difficulties accepting the
kleva
at face value, there were also many other discrepancies
between the way I usually understood everyday phenomena and
their causes, and the way people spoke about them in the
Santo mountains. In local discussions strange cats and owls
became witches on the prowl, illness revealed illicit sex
or ghostly interference, death was traced back to quarrels
and enmity, and so on, all alien conceptions to someone
schooled in a rationalist tradition.
At the same time I was fascinated by the way my hosts
detected the workings of agents like spirits, witchcraft
and moral retribution in their everyday experiences - each
particular instance itself seemingly confirming their
abundant presence in the area. It seemed ironical that what
I had at one time thought of as an empirical attitude on
the part of my Santo hosts should so easily accommodate
otherworldly powers such as those.
But the empiricism was illusory. While on the surface their
explanations seemed to move from cause to effect, this was
often not the case - many of them really went in the
opposite direction. Starting from some observation the
local people would infer a prior cause, in accordance with
widespread ideas about what were typical agents and
sequences of events behind typical phenomena: disputes
invited
patua
attacks resulting in deaths; shooting a were-animal also
killed the witch; spirits and immorality caused illness;
the right spell always effected a cure; and so on.
The deceptive character of such reasoning - the circularity
of post hoc "proof" of the workings of unseen causes
manifest only in their effects - made it seem less strange
to me that the
kleva
should be so easily accepted by their neighbours.
Simultaneously it suggested the possibility that at least
to some extent the
kleva
themselves may be taken in by their own
powers.