Copyright © 2005 Tom Ludvigson. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 7: FURTHER INTERPRETATIONS 1976 - 81
7.1 The Manila folder
7.2 Taking Sulu seriously
7.3
Kleva
retaliation
7.4
Kleva
and
patua
7.5 Versions: spirits,
totonos
and
malaria
7.6 Versions: Patua’s illness and
death
7.7 Translating
poroporo
and
tapu
7.8 Translating
masulu
7.9 Kava and dreams
Because I wanted to stay true to my experience in the
field, and to the simultaneous gradual growth of my
understanding of the
kleva,
I have so far not discussed the often far-reaching changes
in my reading of some parts of the material that came about
after fieldwork, during the course of writing the above
account.
Throughout the writing period I kept a Manila folder into
which I put sheets of paper with sketches or summaries of
ideas that came to me in the process of turning my tapes
and field notes into an orderly narrative. They were ideas
that attempted to make more or different sense out of the
material in one way or another, relying on connections and
patterns that showed themselves as day in and day out I
handled my notebooks and diaries, carefully reconstructing
from their contents those situations and conversations that
together represented and contained what I had learned while
on Santo about the
kleva
and related matters. But it seemed like distorting the
record to explicitly discuss those more recent ideas and
interpretations earlier on in the account. This would
appear to be a more appropriate place for such a
discussion. Below I present the more important of those
ideas and reinterpretations that gradually collected in my
file.
7.2 Taking Sulu seriously
Some of the ideas came out of working on the tapes I had
made with Sulu in New Zealand. Transcribing and translating
the relevant parts of our conversations into English, with
the careful attention to every word and grammatical nuance
that such work demands, I noticed a number of details in
Sulu’s explanations, the wider implications of which
had passed me by at the time of recording.
For example, I checked up on a geographical reference in
Sulu's tale about how he became a
kleva.
The lizard fell on his head as he and his friend Sepeti
were passing by a rock named Vurombotani in the Peolape
valley. I didn't know the rock in question, though Sulu had
said that Memei told a story about it (5:6)(3).
Now I went over the traditional tales that I had collected
during my first field trip, to see if there was a rock
named Vurombotani mentioned anywhere.
There was no rock named Vurombotani. But there was the
story told by Memei about the kleva Krai Vurombo, who died
trapped by a
devel
inside a rock named Porovete, "Dreamspell", also in the
Peoplape valley (2:14). Most likely they
were the same rock:
tani
meant "cry" in Kiai, so the two names both clearly evoked
the same tale, and the location on the south side of the
Peolape also fitted.
So the lizard fell on Sulu's head just as he was passing by
a rock where a legendary
kleva
had died, in circumstances involving both a
devel
adversary and a spirit helper appearing as a kingfisher in
a dream - Krai Vurombo's familiar, perhaps? This seemed to
me of immense significance. It hadn't happened just
anywhere; it was a highly auspicious place for a lizard to
behave so strangely. Not only did it fall on Sulu's head;
it ran off, and then turned back to climb up his leg. And
he knew that old Letelete had been called to be a
kleva
by a snake coiling around his leg - Sulu had told me so
himself (5:5). He
had also told me about people obtaining
vezeveze
from a snake or a lizard, by another named big rock
(5:13).
Under these circumstances I suspect that Sulu may have been
very conscious of the possibility of the lizard incident
being a sign from a spirit, perhaps even thinking as he
went to sleep that same evening that the lizard might
contact him during the night. If so, waking in the morning
the next day and remembering about the lizard encounter the
day before, what memories of last night's dreams would
suffice to constitute a spirit visitation? Perhaps in
dealing with the unseen you always find what you look for,
if you have reason to expect from the outset that it is
there.
I'm not saying that it happened that way. But by
reconstruction one way in which it could have happened
which requires neither the assumption that an ethereal
being contacted Sulu that night, nor that he just made up
the story as part of artfully projection a
kleva
image, I had found what to me was a more satisfactory
interpretation of Sulu's tale. It helped dispel my old
doubts of his sincerity - an early suspicion regarding his
instantaneous diagnoses that had found fertile soil in
several other things that he did, growing into a picture of
Sulu and his colleagues as self-interested pretenders; a
picture with which I was not entirely comfortable.
On reflection, that cynical view of the
kleva
appeared to me less and less palatable, as I realized that
it would always be easier to dismiss a seemingly fantastic
tale as fabrication than to address seriously the question
of under what circumstances it might be sincere. Put
differently, if Sulu is sincere in his accounts of
encounters with spirits and witches, it means that he is
talking about experiences that he has had; he is not just
making it all up. If so, the interpretive quest is better
aimed at reconstructing what sort of experiences he could
plausibly be talking about in such terms, rather than
merely substituting the lazy version that it is all a sham.
Reviewing my skeptical reactions to Sulu from this point of
view, I was now able to accept more of his accounts of the
unseen as genuine. Even his tale of being attacked by three
witches, which at the time I assumed was pure fiction
(4:4), could be
sincere - isn't it possible that Sulu in fact lived that
attack during his bout of illness? Only a week later I was
myself floored for over a day, vomiting like he had, and
delirious with a high fever (3:2). If Sulu had all my
symptoms, how would he describe a fever delirium? In his
world dreams were understood to be the experiences of the
disembodied spirit of the sleeper. And Sulu had spoken out
publicly against sorcery (5:12) - was this enough
for him to fear retaliation; to expect an attack? Under
these circumstances his interpretation of the events of
that night no longer seems so farfetched as to warrant
being judged insincere.2
7.3
Kleva
retaliation
Not all of the added insights that came out of working on
the taped conversations led to such critical re-evaluation
of my past interpretations as the above. Some of them
instead seemed to merely confirm past suspicions. as I
found further instances in Sulu's speech of some pattern
that had suggested itself to me already during fieldwork.
When transcribing Sulu's tale of how he became a
kleva, I noticed
for the first time a remark that he made about Mol Kleva.
Sometimes Mol Kleva refused to go when people came to fetch
because of illness at their home. Sulu said that this was
because Mol Kleva was angry,
masulu.
He complained about people coming asking for women, but not
giving any in return (5:6).
I had already during my second field trip noticed instances
of the
kleva
powers quite blatantly being used as a resource in the
ubiquitous politicking over marriages (3:4, 3:9). A more recent
example was when Tokito Meresin tied leaves to a tree next
to Sulu's house and declared that no one was to go to him
for maumau again,
in direct response to a number of recent setbacks in the
quest for a bride for Kavero. Tokito Meresin was
masulu, the local
people explained (6:16).
The continuities were several between that later occasion
and what Sulu had told me about Mol Kleva - the anger, the
difficulties over women and marriages to which it was
attributed, and the resulting withdrawal of
kleva
services that made it manifest.
Anger resulting from difficulties over women and marriages
was by now a common enough theme not to present any
problems of interpretation. But I had puzzled over Tokito
Meresin's ban, feeling that I had not quite understood the
full significance of what had occurred. In the light of
Sulu's remark about his colleague from across the river, it
made more sense: to withhold your services from those who
refuse to cooperate with your wishes could well be the
conventional form of retaliation to be expected from a
healer.
Comments made to me by the local people on occasions when
someone's behaviour towards me was interpreted as a slight
seemed to bear this out. My friends then told me not to
give medicine again to the offenders or their children,
should they fall ill. Those suggestions bothered me in
their lack of compassion, and I never took the advice. But
they do suggest that withholding your services was an
appropriate response by a healer towards anyone who was
being obnoxious.
7.4
Kleva
and
patua
Another matter brought fresh to mind through work on the
tapes was that old man Maloi from Lotunae was a
kleva
- Sulu told me so at the end of our talk about his craft
(5:8). This seemed
to me now of new significance, as Maloi was also the man
reputed to have put an end to Mol Sale's nocturnal
patua
attacks on his neighbours, back when the Moris-speakers
from further down valley still lived together in the large
settlement at Moruas.
According to the story told to me by Usa Pon, Mol Sale had
already killed several people with his
patua,
when Maloi interceded with a special charm to trap and kill
him. But Mol Sale found out, and kept away from then on
(3:13).
Trying to imagine what circumstances might lie behind that
rather fantastic tale, I soon realised that Maloi himself
was the only plausible source of crucial parts of the
account. Who else could have revealed to other people the
part he had played in warding off the witch attacks? And
who but a
kleva
could have identified the witch as Mol Sale? There was no
telltale death to form a basis for that interpretation, as
there had been in the cases of Patua and Mol Sahau. I
imagined a situation more like Tavui Pro's attack on Sulu:
nocturnal proceedings revealed afterwards by the
kleva
involved (4:4).
But it was not just finding another
kleva
at the hub of an incident involving the naming of a witch
that intrigued me. It was the fact that in this case the
alleged witch was also a
kleva.
It looked like one
kleva
defaming another as a witch, by spreading a tale about a
hidden confrontation between the two, suggesting in its
turn some rivalry or strife between them - especially as
the eventual outcome of the situation was that Mol Sale
moved away, branded as a witch.
Reviewing my notes I found other instances of one
kleva
painting another as a witch or sorcerer. A recent case was
Sulu reporting on Patua's
patua
(6:9). Another was
the Zaraparo
kleva
finding Mol Sale's
vezeveze
in Lulu's cheek. There was also the story of Mol Sale
living close to Duria for three years, eventually having to
move again, after being held responsible for Mol Kleva's
blind eye (3:13).
Whoever started that story, it suggested strife between the
two kleva. It also
seemed significant that the first person ever to tell me
about Mol Sale having
patua
was Mol Kleva. And he didn't tell me that Mol Sale was a
kleva: it was not
until later that I found that out. An additional suggestion
of friction between two
kleva
was the early rumour passed on to me by Lahoi that Mol Sale
was causing Patua's illness with food-leavings sorcery
(2:8).
Several different readings of this material seem possible.
Was there competition among the
kleva,
manifest here in attempts by some of them to discredit
others as witches or sorcerers? Were
kleva
perhaps always likely targets for accusations of sorcery
and witchcraft, because of the ambiguity inherent in their
secret powers? Both
kleva
and witches dealt with spirit familiars in their sleep, and
as all extraordinary powers were known to emanate from
spirit beings of one kind or another, a kleva with his privileged
access to the unseen could well have acquired also other
more dangerous powers. Or, in view of the fact that only
one of the accusations against a
kleva
was not aimed at Mol Sale, was I only confronting the
legacy of his reputation for
patua
from his days at Moruas, making him a prime suspect from
then on whenever there was talk of evildoings, his bad
reputation snowballing in a vicious circle of cumulative
suspicion? Or did the tales about Mol Sale only reflect his
status as a relative outsider? Perhaps there were similar
tales about my immediate neighbours at Truvos circulating
among the Moris-speakers - part of the mutual suspicion
between people on the fringes of each other's social
universe. None of these interpretations necessarily
excludes any of the others, all being speculative in
nature, exploring the range of possibilities rather than
opting for one before the others.
7.5 Versions: spirits,
totonos
and
malaria
Another matter for comment is the plurality of often
contradictory versions of current events or other aspects
of central Santo existence that were told to me by
different people.
For example, while still on the island I puzzled over the
several words in Kiai for the beings referred to simply
as
devel
in Bislama.
Maitui had told me about
aviriza, ria
and
tamate,
and their characteristic differences (2:13). But Sulu, though
supposedly an expert on these matters, had given me a more
condensed version:
aviriza, ria
and
tamate
were all just different words for the same thing. When I
queried his account, drawing on Maitui’s, Sulu
responded with what turned out to be a common disclaimer
about the unseen: he had not seen these things; he had only
heard them talked about (5:2).
Then there was Kavten, who said that
pataika
was a
devel
–
ria
or
tamate;
they were the same. Eilili, in his turn, stressed the
differences between
ria
and
tamate,
while qualifying his account: it was only his own
understanding of what other people said. Lisa, finally,
acknowledged both their difference as beings and their
similarity of origin: they were all people who had passed
on into another form of existence (6:20).
One way of interpreting this material is to simply say that
Sulu and Kavten gave wrong accounts of the spirit realm,
whether due to ignorance or to other considerations. This
was indeed my initial reaction to Sulu’s version
– I had accepted Maitui’s as correct.
But who is right and who is wrong is a moot point when the
matter at issue is essentially unavailable for inspection
– a circumstance stressed by several of my informants
when I approached them with the intent of settling the
issue one way or the other. When they themselves recognise
the tentative nature of their own versions of matters
unseen (Koma
kai lesia:
“We have not seen it” 5:13, 6:10), it seems not only
futile, but even misconceived for the ethnographer to
attempt a verdict on the issue, one way or the other. A
more realistic approach would be to recognise, like they
seem to do themselves, the tentative nature of their
interpretations of the spirit realm, rather than project
onto the material some processed version of what
“they believe”.
Another
matter that received several disparate interpretations
was
totonos.
Memei was the first person to tell me about it, when at
Vunpepe he commented on little Zeklin's eye trouble,
blaming it on the boy's father's
totonos.
He then explained the idea in terms of unconfessed
extramarital sex (2:16).
Usa Pon, on the other hand, denied even hearing the term
before, when I mentioned it to him. He had been explaining
to me about
mataioro
- the illness afflicting Pune Tamaravu's child - in terms
of unconfessed adultery, when on the basis of what Memei
had told me I suggested that
totonos
was involved (3:7).
Sulu, in his turn, volunteered the term
totonos,
when during our first tape session in New Zealand I
questioned him about
mataioro.
He told me that
totonos
was Bislama, and translated it into Kiai as
ponana:
"its smell /taste". The small of something going dead
inside your nose caused the illness. Sulu mentioned neither
illicit sex nor confession (5:4).
A further incident that took place during my fourth field
trip helps throw additional light on the subject. Trivu
Ru's son Kila, the only man of Truvos origin who knew how
to read and write, was visiting Vorozenale from his new
home at Namoro, where he had attended school for several
years in the past. He told me a different version again. On
my question he explained that
totonos
was when you stepped on a rusty nail and had to go to the
dispensary for an injection.
Camden's Bislama dictionary indeed has an entry
tetanos,
translated "tetanus" (Camden 1977:122). This puts Memei's
and Sulu's versions of
totonos
on par with Andi Laman's interpretation of
malaria
as a
devel
with mosquito children, and Lahoi's translation of
tamate
as
malaria
(2:12). They are
probably best understood as partly personal interpretations
of alien (i.e. Western) concepts of disease in terms
familiar to the mountain people. All cases of use of the
words
totonos
and
malaria
were after all in statements directed at me. Presumably the
speakers were, in their view, speaking my language, in
order for me to understand what they were
explaining.
Totonos
and
malaria
as part of my material can then be seen to be purely an
artifact of my investigation.
7.6 Versions: Patua’s illness and
death
The most spectacular array of different versions in my
material is undoubtedly the many interpretations of
Patua’s drawn-out illness and eventual death.
During my first field trip Lahoi had talked about Mol Sale
being suspected of using food-leavings sorcery against the
young Duria
kleva
(2:8). I myself had
been mystified by his alleged illness, finding nothing
wrong with him when I examined him at his home village
(2:4).
My second stay on Santo saw Kavten voicing his suspicions:
Patua had a dead man’s bone, and was ill because he
had not confessed the illicit sex he had enjoyed with the
aid of that charm. The medical staff at the hospital at
Canal took a different view: Patua was not ill at all, he
was well (3:6).
Throughout my fourth visit to the island the
interpretations multiplied as Patua’s condition
deteriorated, each new wave of rumours about his precise
state of health giving cause for comment and discussion.
Early on there was talk of his wife, confessing to him, a
suggestion seeking a cause of his illness in some possible
sexual indiscretion of hers. Then Aliki from Tapunvepere
hinted to me that Patua’s having “bad
things” was the explanation for his illness (6:4).Up until then I heard
only lay interpretations of Patua’s state of health
(though the hospital diagnosis at Canal can be seen as an
exception). As Patua got worse, I was told about
kleva
interpretations of his condition. Kinglu, with the powers
available to a
kleva,
had “seen’ that someone was using a bit of
Patua’s loincloth to kill him with sorcery. Patua
himself had dreamed that Meah from Vunpepe was killing him
with food-leavings sorcery (6:7). And Sulu had
“seen” Patua’s
patua,
leading Lisa to suggest that the dying
kleva
had been shot in animal form (6:8) – an
interpretation later doubled by the tale of Ravu Liorave
killing a most unusual cat (6:9).
When news arrived of Patua’s death, there was talk of
both
vezeveze,
and of the young Duria
kleva
bringing this sorcery on himself through proud behaviour.
Still, the interpretation of Patua as a witch persisted in
discussions at Truvos (6:10, 6:14), while at Duria his
clansmen took to the view that Patua was killed by sorcery,
his in-laws at Vunpepe the prime suspects (6:9).
It is interesting to note that malevolent magic and moral
retribution, as theories or schemes for interpretation of
disease and death, together permit responsibility to be
placed either on the person who is ill or on someone else.
The afflicted person can be seen to be suffering because he
has “bad things”, or because he is the victim
of someone else’s “bad things”, just as
he can be seen to be ill because of his own, or else his
spouse’s /relative’s illicit sex – all of
these views exemplified among the many diagnoses of
Patua’s condition.
This multitude of explanations can be seen as a matter of
course, given the protracted nature of Patua’s
illness. Note, for example, how during the comparatively
short duration of my respiratory troubles during my second
field trip I was offered no less than six different
diagnoses of the underlying cause (3:15,3:16).(4)
Similarly, the several versions of the cause of
Patua’s death parallel the speculations following the
death of Krai Kule (3:17). Responsibility for
both deaths is sought among people with a grudge –
in-laws figuring in both cases, reflecting the
all-too-common difficulties over marriages.
More specifically, Kinglu – like Patua a
Merei-speaker from the far side of the Peolape river
– blames the “strangers” of Patua’s
new home in the Ari valley. Patua too blames a local
person: Meah from Vunpepe. Interpretations offered by local
people on the contrary shift responsibility away from the
Ari valley, blaming
vezeveze
from further inland (i.e. the far side of the Peolape), or
else Patua’s own sins.
This nicely mirrors the several assurances I had from local
people that no one had
vezeveze
in our area (2:6,
2:8), coupled with
the outsiders’ view that they indeed were held in our
valley (2:8,
3:13).
Indeed, witchcraft and sorcery were almost invariably
attributed to outsiders. The only exceptions were
Maloi’s past allegations against Mol Sale, which
resulted in them residing apart, and Patua’s
accusation against Meah, after he had moved away to his
original home area. The exceptions prove the rule:
accusations don’t go with co-residence.
We can continue reading meanings into these interpretations
by posing the question of who stood to gain by them. For
example, who gains by Sulu’s confirmation of old
suspicions that Patua had
patua?
Apart from Sulu’s thereby reaffirming his own
reputation as a
kleva,
we can see his interpretation as providing the Vunpepe
people with a defense against the sorcery claims made by
patua and Kinglu, supposedly taken up by Patua’s
clansmen at Duria. One can speculate that Sulu is
deliberately trying to defuse a potential conflict
situation, in the interest – so eloquently expressed
in his sermon against witchcraft and sorcery during our
joint visit to New Zealand – of peace and community
survival.
7.7
Translating
poroporo
and
tapu
There are many references to dreams and dreaming in the
account of the
kleva.
I have since wondered about the suitability of the English
verb "dream" as a translation of Kiai
poroporo.
Even though the word
poroporo
undoubtedly refers to that same pan-human experience that
we call "dreaming", one can question the wisdom of that
translation when clearly the meaning of that experience is
itself different in Santo from its Western interpretation.
In Santo the dream experience is understood as the
experience of the disembodied spirit of the sleeper
(2:5, 4:1, 5:8, 6:20) - what is commonly
known as "exteriorization" or "astral projection" in
English spiritist idiom (Walker 1977:11)
A few details in the
kleva
account make sense in this light. When the
aviriza
used to "take" Merei Tavui and put him high in a tree, or
on a sheer drop (2:13), this presumably
refers to his disembodied spirit - the astral/dream
experience remembered after the victim returns to his body
and regains (ordinary) consciousness. When Sulu during a
tape session in New Zealand speaks about
poroporo,
he calls it
vano poroporo,
"go dreaming" (5:8)
- here "go astral traveling" probably comes closer to an
idiomatic translation. And when the disembodied spirit of a
dead man renders my food unwholesome by his presence, this
gets spoken of as a
tamate
"dreaming" my food (3:15)
- i.e. experiencing it in his (permanently) disembodied
state.
We recall the centrality of
poroporo
in being a
kleva.
A
kleva
learns his craft during
poroporo
(3:5, 5:5, 5:6),
and though other people
poroporo,
it appears like one of the distinctive skills of the
kleva.
Krai Tui refers to them as "they that dream"
(3:12),
and Eilili takes it for granted that Sulu has "dreamed" at
least some of his protective magic for wet taro gardens
(3:5).
This all now takes on a new meaning. The skill that sets
a
kleva
apart from ordinary people (Eilili:
olgeta oli no olsem yumi,
"they are not like us." 3:5)
is then "astral travel" - the ability to leave the body and
commune with other disembodied spirits during sleep, thus
gaining access to knowledge not available to others. To
translate
poroporo
as "dream" obscures this fact, hiding a relatively exotic
understanding behind a too-familiar label.
The opposite case can be argued about the deceptively
direct translation of the Kiai word
tapu
as "taboo". For example, Vekrai used Tapu! to little Epin much like
an English-speaking mother uses "No!" to a toddler who is
about the table-cloth off the table, pick up a knife by the
sharp end or knock over the jar full of yoghurt. And the
food "taboos" imposed in connection with
maumau
don't seem much different from for example avoiding
strawberries because of an allergy, or sugar if you are a
diabetic - i.e. simple dieting. The underlying theory may
be different for each of these cases, but as long as people
take it on authority, following the proscriptions rather
than defying them, the similarities are over-riding. The
more mundane translation of
tapu
as "restriction" bypasses the misleadingly exotic
connotations of the word "taboo".
7.8 Translating
masulu
Another item calling for a refined translation is the Kiai
word
masulu.
Throughout the account of my field experiences with
the
kleva
I have translated it according to my understanding while
still on Santo - as "anger" or "be angry" depending on its
being used as a noun or a verb. I have since come to what I
think is a deeper understanding of that word.
Because
masulu
appeared to an important concept in the way my hosts spoke
about retaliatory action in interpersonal
relations,(5)
I took note when I heard the word used, and later wrote
descriptions of each speech-situation in my field notes.
Going through these cases of use of
masulu
while organising my material from my fourth field trip for
writing up, my attention was drawn to a couple of entries
that seemed slightly anomalous. They were both descriptions
of occasions where
masulu
didn't seem to translate well as "anger", given the
situation.
One of the occasions was the casual conversation with
Eilili, prompted by two roosters chasing a third across the
Kuvutana village clearing. Our exchange went something like
this:
"We will kill one soon", said Eilili.
"They chase each other all the time", I replied.
Then Eilili said something about there being too many
roosters in the flock of fowl living in and around the
settlement, and added:
A to etieti kara. Na lesia a to masulu.
"They copulate all the time. I see they are
masulu".
The link between copulation and
masulu
seemed to me peculiar. I could not see what anger had to do
with sex. This led me to wonder whether "anger" was all
there was to
masulu,
and I made a note to that effect in my books.
The other occasion was at the very end of my fourth field
trip, when I had already left the mountains and was staying
with some mountain friends at a South Coast plantation,
waiting for the day when I was booked to fly out of Santo.
A few of us had just had a swim in a stream, cooling
ourselves from the hot and humid weather that prevailed on
the coast. I was drying myself with a towel, just wiping my
genitals, when Tavui Pulupulu made a joke.
Ku kai tapuru zoia, vanake masulu!
he said, laughing heartily. "Don't wipe it too much, risk
of
masulu!"
Jokes with sexual allusions were a commonplace, and I heard
Pulu's comment as a clear reference to sexual arousal. But
if
masulu
could refer to sexual arousal, this also made sense of
Eilili's comment about the roosters - the link between
sexual arousal and copulation is obvious.
I found further support for this interpretation when I
realised that
masulu
could be analysed into the intransitive prefix
ma-(6)
, and
sulu,
meaning "burn".
Masulu
then translates literally as "catch fire", a metaphor that
indeed seems equally applicable to anger and sexual
arousal. This is nicely consistent with the fact that both
anger and sexual arousal were matters for confession.
The comment on Linsus' confession (6:18) now takes on a new
meaning.
Mo vavaulu ini na sava?
I was asked: "What did he confess?"
Nona masulu?
I translated the latter question as "His anger?". Against
the background that old man Linsus took a lively interest
in younger women - a topic for many a comment around the
kava bowl at Kuvutana - a more to the point translation of
that question is probably "His arousal?"
7.9
Kava and dreams
In the chapter on my third field trip I remarked on my
somewhat unusual dreams and reveries, and the idea that all
the kava I was drinking might have something to do with it
(4:2). It seemed
to me that if there were a connection between kava drinking
and dreaming, it would help make sense of the noted
cultural elaboration of dream experiences in central Santo
(7:2, 7:7).
The evidence in the literature for such a connection is
contradictory. Codrington provides the following bit of
information from nearby Aoba:
An anecdote of his, also from Aoba, contains the following
description:
Brunton states, in an article on kava drinking on Tanna
island, that
These quotes are all in support of the link between kava
and dreams. Yet Steinmetz seems to rule out any such
connection when he states that
A more recent publication throws doubt on Steinmetz
pharmacological interpretation of the active ingredients in
kava (Fastier 1976). Whether this has any significance as
regards the question of dreaming I am unable to judge. The
evidence, as it stands, appears inconclusive.
This brings to a close the discussion of interpretations of
the
kleva
material that emerged after the end of my field research on
Santo. We now move on to a recapitulation and appraisal of
the contents of the account of the
kleva,
and a consideration of some broader issues that come to
light in the account.