Copyright © 2005 Tom Ludvigson. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 4: TRIP III 12.11.75 - 26.12.75
4.1 Maliu Tin on
masulu
and
pulana tamate
4.2 Kava and dreams
4.3 Eilili on Patua's marriage
4.4 Sulu on
patua
4.1
Maliu Tin on
masulu
and
pulana tamate
After
ten weeks in New Zealand I returned to Santo, to pick up
Sulu and take him with me home for three months, as
planned.
I arrived on the island in mid November 1975. As this was
during the wet season I found myself having to spend ten
days at Namoro: the rivers were all running high owing to
heavy rain inland, making travel all but impossible.
At Namoro I met my old Vorozenale acquaintance Maliu Tin,
proudly displaying to me his new daughter, born during my
absence in New Zealand. Already about six weeks old she
hadn't been sick once, he told me apropos of nothing. But
up in the mountains children got ill when even younger,
because up there people were kilan: "hard".
Ku masulu ran i rua, ran i tolu, zalo i pai
mai,
said Maliu Tin: "If you get angry for two or three days,
sickness will come."
I realized that he was hinting at a quarrel that had begun
during my second field trip. Maliu Tin had fallen out with
his neighbours at Truvos over some marriages that he had
arranged - a quarrel that had led to him and his family
moving out of Maliu Kalus' large house at Morvari, just
across the Ari on the Vunpati track. They would continue
living there, he said. Not until the people of Vorozenale
were no longer
masulu:
"angry", would he move back. This was not yet.
Another day, still at Namoro, Maliu Tin told me something
else that I found interesting, partly because it struck a
theme that also pointed to the
kleva:
powers conferred on people in dreams.
I came across him and his "brother" Maliu Tavaliu, also
originally a Tazia man, carving arrowheads out of wood
inside the latter's house at Namoro, where he lived
nowadays. The ready products looked different from any
arrowheads that I had seen in Santo so far. They were
heavier, flat instead of round, and had barbs or serrated
edges on two sides.
Senai vina na takun,
explained Maliu Tin helpfully: "For shooting people." A
recent rumour had foretold the visit to Canal of a
passenger liner, laden with tourists looking to buy samples
of traditional crafts as souvenirs. My two companions were
now hoping to finance a visit to the dentist at Canal for
Maliu Tin - usually a costly affair - by making and selling
some arrowheads of the type that they used to shoot people
with in the days of warfare in the past.
Maliu Tin showed me an arrowhead, pointing to the serrated
edges. If shot with one of them, you were dead, he assured
me. He demonstrated with one of the wooden objects,
pointing at his chest, as if he were just being shot in
slow motion.
But some men survived, he went on. They had a spirit to
protect them from arrows and bullets.
Pulana tamate mo vatilovoia,
said Maliu Tin: "His
tamate
took it away."
The mention of a tamate caught my interest - especially the
idea of having one of your own, as his words seemed to
imply. Was there anybody nowadays who had
pulana tamate,
I asked him in reply, echoing his own words when just
referring to it: "his tamate".
Maliu Tin denied this.
Soena skul mo somai,
"Like Christianity arrived." People had them in the past,
as they were still fighting then -
matana nora kilan:
"because of their (being) hard."
I asked him how the men in the past acquired their helper.
He replied that a man would
ru la pon:
"wander at night", and see the
tamate.
Tentatively I took this to be a reference to meeting
the
tamate
in a dream: I had heard dreams referred to in similar terms
in the past. The
tamate
would show the man leaves to use, continued Maliu Tin. It
all sounded close to what I had heard about people learning
rain magic, and about how the
kleva
learned their craft.
4.2. Kava and dreams
I myself was bothered by strange dreams those hot nights at
Namoro, waiting for the weather to clear - dreams strange
enough for me to comment on them in my diary, which is not
my practice otherwise:
(Saturday 15.11) "...I'm having bad dreams these days. The
theme isn't horror and death or pursuit or anything along
those lines; the horror is "sociological"; it has to do
with interpersonal relations. It is the horror of being
abandoned and of lack of love; the horror of indifference
towards me in people that I love and (in the dreams) should
love me. Brrrr."
(Tuesday
18.11) "...It occurs to me that maybe it is the kava that
is behind my strange dreams and all my sleeping or
semi-sleeping, while reliving memories of the past! Funny
that I never thought of this before - it provides an
explanation for this that keeps happening to me here in
Santo. And I always thought/say that kava has very little
effect, except making you sleep heavily! It is perhaps a
drug working 'on the mind' after all!"
Both extracts suggest that my dreams at the time were
really out of the ordinary. Moreover, the idea that all the
kava I was drinking possibly could be a contributing factor
seems worth a mention. If kava in fact is instrumental in
inducing vivid dreams in the avid drinker, it adds to our
understanding of why, in a society of habitual users of the
drug, there would be the noted elaboration of meanings of
dreams - vivid dreams taken as glimpses of the future, or
encounters with spirits, conferring powers on the dreamer
for future use.
4.3. Eilili on Patua's marriage
Eventually there was a break in the weather, and I left
Namoro at five-thirty one morning together with Krai
Tamata, who was heading home to Vunpati after plantation
work on the off-shore island of Aore, close to Canal. We
made our way inland walking fast along the banks of the
Vailapa river, then climbing high, crossing the main divide
and descending into the Ari watershed, arriving at
Matanzari at two in the afternoon, resting there for two
hours before the final ascent to Kuvutana.
I stayed only one month in the mountains this time, before
it was time again to leave, for a last few days of
arrangements for our journey at Canal. Most of that month I
spent in Kuvutana, sharing my time between medical chores,
participation in everyday village activities, and note
taking. By this time I was able to follow most
conversations in the vernacular, and each new evening
around the kava bowl left me with lots of fresh information
of all kinds to record, sometimes working on my notes from
dawn to dusk, leaving me with an ache in my shoulder at the
end of the day, from all the writing.
I learned a bit more about Patua's conjugal circumstances
from Eilili, one night when we drank kava in his house on
our own. A good time for it: I often felt shy about asking
personal questions - questions about the details of the
lives of particular individuals - when there were many
people listening. It made me feel somehow too nosey - as if
I were any less so by discussing such matters in a more
private setting.
Our conversation had drifted on to marriages, one of the
more popular subjects debated on kava evenings under any
circumstances. Eilili made some critical comment about how
many women from Truvos had gone in marriage to Duria, but
only two had married here in return, and neither of them
was a Duria woman anyway. Then he listed them, some of them
paired with other women in straight exchanges. Among them
was Vematankin, Pune Tamaravu's daughter, married to Pos
Vea and living at Vunpepe. Eilili said that was a
particularly bad case: Pune was
mera i zarain:
"a man from this place", but the woman given in replacement
for his daughter had gone to Duria. She was Voitrivu,
Patua's wife.
I could see his point - it did seem to violate the exchange
etiquette. But then Pune had left Truvos and moved across
the river to side with the people of Duria. Perhaps he was
only displaying his new allegiances in this fashion, I
thought to myself.
4.4. Sulu on
patua
I made only two trips away from Truvos during my month in
the mountains, spending a night each at Duria and a hamlet
named Ambolombo, located on the slopes down towards the
river Vambut, in the Moris-speaking area east of Truvos.
Both times it was on a direct request for me to come and
attend to people who were ill - too ill to come and seek
treatment at Truvos on their own accord. Feeling more
secure in my position in the community my attitude
hardened. Only in case of real emergencies would I leave
Truvos to visit other areas with medicine. Sick children
could be carried - if people wanted treatment they had to
come and see me at home.
Having thus limited my sphere of operations I saw and heard
little of the
kleva.
Sulu only spent two weeks at Truvos, tending his gardens
there. The rest of the time he was busy planting yam at
Namoro for the market at Canal, working hard to get a lot
done before our departure, so that his gardening projects
would not suffer too much from his impending absence. But
during those two weeks an incident occurred that rekindled
my doubts about my guest-to-be.
As usual the source of my wonder was not something Sulu
did, but something he said. One evening I heard him recount
in great detail the events of that night more than seven
months ago when he had been ill and had found the
mysterious crab at the entrance to his house, provoking his
younger brother's untimely visit to Vunpati to fetch me to
his aid.
We were drinking kava in Eilili's house that night for a
change. Lisa and family were away weeding a garden on the
far side of Paten - the ridge on the other side of the Zari
from Truvos - spending their nights in a leaf shelter there
until the work was done. I had just returned from my visit
to Duria, escorted by Krai Tui and a boy named Rurueli from
Vunpati - they were now part of Sulu's fascinated audience.
Apart from us and Eilili there were also his wife Meriulu
and old grandma Vepei - they were in the rear with us men
in the front of the house as usual, all listening,
wide-eyed, to Sulu's tale.
A wind had swept the house. A basket hanging on a
house-post had fallen to the floor. The crab had been put
there by the witches who had come to kill Sulu. There were
three witches.
Mera i tavtavui nasa:
"Just people from close by", said Sulu, naming only one of
them: Tavui Pro, an elderly man from the Moris-speaking
area further east. Sulu had seen them - he claimed to have
gone walking about outside during the night, invisible to
his attackers.
I don't know why he brought up the incident - perhaps it
was my recent visit to the territory of the Moris-speakers
that prompted the story. They were known and feared at
Truvos for their witchcraft and sorcery. Vepei, who had
come with me to see the patient, a relative of hers, had
spoken fearfully about having to spend the night at
Ambolombo.
Na matatau ini na nora patua,
she said: "I am afraid of their patua."
I sat quietly in the background, content to listen to
Sulu's incredible tale. Was he making it up on the spot? Or
had he thought it out beforehand, perhaps when telling it
to some other audience in the past? Judging from the
reactions of the people around me in the half-light they
hadn't heard the story before - their faces and
exclamations of
Io!
and
Luleukun?
("Really!", "True?") seemed to suggest both surprise and
awe. I took it for granted that the tale was a product of
Sulu's imagination - a deliberate construction, intended to
perplex his audience and perhaps aid his, as I thought,
carefully cultivated image of possessing powers beyond
those of the rest of us.
I thought the wind sweeping the house was a nice touch.
Memei had explained to me when I visited Duria during my
first field trip how you can tell the presence of
patua:
they will appear as a gust of wind sweeping close to the
ground while the tops of the trees above remain still. And
I heard a noise of something falling inside a house
commented on as
maurini tuape,
"someone's life", or "spirit". Whatever its basis, Sulu's
tale certainly appeared consistent with notions about like
phenomena current in the valley.
In the discussion that followed Sulu said something along
the lines of "Well, now they have had a go at me once." The
way he talked about it seemed to suggest that the incident
was part of an expected series of organised attacks, as if
the collective of witches had sent three of their kind to
kill him - though he, of course, stood up to their assault.
I had never seen witches quite in those terms before. I had
heard that they were supposed to hunt sometimes in numbers,
but Sulu seemed to imply more than that, though I wasn't
sure exactly what.
Next Eilili contributed two tales of his own encounters
with witches in the past, both seeming more realistic than
Sulu's story, though at the same time less clear cut. Once
a pig had made noises outside Eilili's house during the
dark hours of night. It had come up to his front door and
tried to push its way in. But the next day there were no
pig tracks around the house. It wasn't a real pig, said
Eilili. It was
patua.
Another time he had seen a strange fowl crossing the
Kuvutana central clearing at night, when by rights it
should have been asleep. A hen it was, with only one
chicken in tow, and Eilili knew for certain that there was
no such fowl among the flock that lived in and around the
settlement - he knew them all by sight. It must have been a
witch.
Eventually I entered the conversation, asking innocently
what they were talking about.
Nakaemas
(B), replied Eilili - he still retained his habit of
speaking Bislama to me, though I now kept doggedly to my
stumbling Kiai.
I knew the word meant witchcraft and asked confirmation in
the vernacular:
Na patua?
Eilili affirmed, and while I feigned ignorance he proceeded
to tell me the story of their origin on Santo. I had
already heard it told by several other local people, but
its seeming popularity just added to its interest. Versions
differed in detail, but the essence of the tale was this:
In the past there were no
patua
on Santo. Then a man, returning from overseas back in the
days of the Queensland labour trade, brought them to the
island. They were part of the payment he received from his
white
masta.
His employer had told him to leave them among the roots of
a banyan tree.
Nowadays they come and fetch their host and go and
ani na mapeni takun zai:
"eat other men's liver", concluded Eilili. And when a man
who has
patua
dies,
a rovo sin te takun zai:
"they move to some other man." The
patua
had come to stay.
I pressed on, asking who, then, had patua. Eilili said
anybody -
ke kai pinisia,
"we don't know." Maybe even some of us here at Truvos.
Eilili seemed ill at ease there in the shadows. I think my
hosts saw witches much like the plague - I heard several
local people blame the decline in their numbers since the
coming of the Europeans on the introduction of
patua.
Witches were killers. Sulu had survived the attack,
suggested Eilili, because he was different from
inke, takun purono,
"us, ordinary men." I agreed with Eilili about Sulu being
different, wondering silently just how different he was.
Just over three weeks later Sulu and I flew out of Santo on
the ten o'clock plane to Vila, finally on our way. It was
Boxing Day, the tail end of 1975. Ahead of us lay three
months of late New Zealand summer; by the end of March we
were due back again on the island.