Copyright © 2005 Tom Ludvigson. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND
1.1 Espiritu Santo
1.2 Canal
1.3 Vanafo
1.4 Tombet and the northern interior
1.5 The Ari valley
1.6 Early days at Vorozenale
1.7 Disease and death
1.8 Making friends
1.9 Avuavu
1.10 Big man
1.11 Lisa
1.12 Living at Truvos
1.13 Resistance to enquiry
1.14 Participation: exchanges
1.15 Participation: everyday life
1.1 Espiritu Santo
My interest in the mountain people of Espiritu Santo was
first sparked off by Dr Max Rimoldi. This was in 1973; he
was lecturing in anthropology at the University of Auckland
and I had come to see him in his office to tap his
knowledge of contemporary Melanesia. I was a post-graduate
anthropology student at Gothenburg University in my native
Sweden, newly arrived in New Zealand and looking for a
feasible spot in the Pacific where I could do field
research.
Dr Rimoldi told me about a friend of his, Bud Jackson, who
had lived on Santo, studying the Nagriamel movement. This,
he explained, was an indigenous movement with mild
anti-European flavour, aimed chiefly at reclaiming land
alienated by early European settlers. Bud Jackson had lived
for over a year at the Nagriamel headquarters at Vanafo, a
squatters' settlement on land owned by a French company. He
had told Dr Rimoldi about the occasional visitor to Vanafo
from further inland - short, shy and naked except for a
belt and a strip of cloth. These were the mountain people,
still holding their own against the onslaught of
missionaries and administration, leading a subsistence
existence in the centre of the island.
This sounded like just the sort of place I had been looking
for. Not very much was known about the mountain people;
there had never been any intensive anthropological study
made in the area. And the absence of missions held out the
promise of an ongoing indigenous religion with associated
ritual and other exotica - a romantic novice
anthropologist's dream.
I immersed myself in the literature available on the
mountain people. As deadlines came up for applications for
research finance from various likely sponsors, I wrote up
what I had learned so far and asked for money to go and
live in central Santo, to "study the language and customs"
of the people there. In between I read with growing
fascination about cargo cults and anti-European sentiments,
and a hard-headed people who, though numbering less than
two thousand, seemed determined not to give up their
independence to the newcomers who had settled on the coast.
The island had a chequered contact history. It was
discovered and first settled as early as 1606 by the
Spanish explorer de Quiros. His "Nueva Jerusalema" only
lasted for five weeks before it was abandoned, owing to
disease, hostile natives and a mutinous crew (Kelly 1966).
Though records are scant, Espiritu Santo certainly had its
share, along with the other islands in the group, of the
often ruthless practices of whalers, sandalwooders and
blackbirders, during the course of the nineteenth century
(Shineberg 1967:129 - 35; Harrisson 1937:206).
The next known attempt by Europeans to settle the island
took place not until more than two and a half centuries
after de Quiros. In 1861 the London Missionary Society
landed some teachers and their wives at Cape Lisburn in the
south - western corner of the jungle-clad land mass. This
settlement was also abandoned after a short time, but ten
years later a
renewed attempt was crowned with success (Bourge 1906:188 -
90). Shortly after, planters started arriving, settling
first in the Segond Channel in the south-east.
In 1887 Britain and France set up a Joint Naval Commission
to safeguard the interest of their nationals resident in
the New Hebrides. This was replaced in 1906 by an
Anglo-French Condominium, providing for the joint
administration of the island group by Britain and France.
At the turn of the century both planters and missionaries
were firmly established on the South Coast of Espiritu
Santo, though the island was in a state of chaos. Feuds and
epidemics were common, taking a heavy toll of indigenous
lives. There were outbreaks of violence between natives and
settlers, and several Europeans were killed.
I read about the British planter Grieg, who was killed with
his two daughters on the South Coast in 1908. In return a
punitive expedition shot five women and a little girl and
took eight prisoners, none of whom ever returned home
(Guiart 1958:76 - 78).
Fifteen years later, Clapcott, another planter, was killed
and mutilated at Tasmalum, also on the South Coast. This I
found a curious incident. It had been precipitated by the
activities of a prophet named Ronovuro in the mountainous
centre of the island. He had had a mission education. Now
he advocated the killing of all pigs and claimed to be able
to raise the dead. There were rumours of a ship that would
bring the ancestors back alive. Watch was kept on the
beaches day and night.
In return for that murder H M S Sydney shelled the bush.
Eighteen were arrested and Ronovuro and two of his
accomplices were executed.
In 1937 there were more rumours. Another prophet was said
to urge the killing of a white man in order to resurrect
the dead. The man, a mountain-dweller named Avuavu, was
arrested by the British and died in prison (Guiart 1958:202
- 03).
Though the fighting never reached the New Hebrides, the
Second World War had a large impact on Santo. As the
largest of the islands in the group and with a good natural
anchorage in the Segond Channel, it became the main base
for the Allies during the Solomons campaign. During a brief
period in the early nineteen-forties the island was
literally flooded with American troops. They drained the
swampland in the south-east, built a wharf, and put in
roads along the east and south coasts. The south-east
quarter of the island became one big military camp, with
thousands of tents huddling under the coconut trees of the
European plantations. At the peak period there were more
soldiers on the island than there are people in the whole
of Vanuatu today! James Mitchener's well-known documentary
Tales of the South Pacific is set largely in wartime Santo
(Mitchener 1947).
Then, as the fighting moved further north, the soldiers
moved on and the camp was closed. The equipment used to
maintain that amassment of people was destroyed - literally
thrown into the sea (!) at a place south-east that since
then has been known as Million Dollar Point.
The indigenous reaction to this marvel was not long in
coming. At the end of the war a road was being constructed
in the bush for the arrival of American "cargo". The leader
of the enterprise, a man named Atori, was arrested together
with five others. They were later all released (Guiart
1958:203 - 04).
Another prophetic movement, the so-called Naked Cult, began
in 1945, and lasted until the death of its leader, Zek, six
years later. The movement was centered in the upper Peiorai
valley in central west Santo, but it spread to cover most
of the mountainous interior.
The purpose of the movement was the same as in the previous
ones: to put an end to the disease and depopulation that
had followed in the wake of the settlers. The way to do
this was by returning to the primitive purity of Adam and
Eve. The followers of Zek took off their clothes, killed
off their domestic animals, destroyed all the European
goods they had acquired, stopped working on European
plantations, abandoned bride price and marriage rules,
burned down their houses and loved communally in separate
dwellings for men and women. Soon "Amerika" would come with
all things good and cult members would live forever (Miller
1948, Guiart 1958:208 - 13).
Not long after the death of Zek, in 1952, there was another
altercation between mountain people and settlers. Two men
were killed in a quarrel with the planter Chavereau at Big
Bay. As a result a mountain chief, Mol Valivu, again place
a ban on all plantation work and many planters found
themselves without labourers. In 1954 the French
anthropologist Jean Guiart was sent into the mountains to
try to put an end to the strike (MacClancy 1980:119). He
made five trips inland, all in all spending four months in
the interior - part of the time accompanied by police.
During this time he took a census of the mountain people,
gathered some ethnographic information, and managed to
negotiate an end to the blockade, thus securing the labour
supply for the new settlers.
Guiart had written a book about his exploits in the Santo
interior, which I read with great interest (Guiart 1958).
Though the sociological section of his publication was
meager, a large part of the volume was taken up by a
narrative of his experiences during the four months in the
Santo mountains. This I found very interesting. I felt I
was getting to know the mountain people through their
reactions to Guiart's intrusion into their territory. I
formed an image of a proud and independent people who
didn't want to have anything to do with Europeans and their
ways, still fighting their losing battle against a power
beyond their comprehension.
This image was further reinforced when I read the published
results of the 1967 census of the New Hebrides. A special
page was devoted to "The Census in Santo bush", explaining
how the figures were approximate, being based on estimates,
as many of the mountain people refused to cooperate with
the census teams (McArthur and Yaxley 1968:100). 1967 -
that was only six years into the past. I wondered how they
would receive someone with my intentions.
Another thing I learned from my reading was that they were
not the unspoiled traditional people that I had first
imagined after my interview
with Dr Rimoldi. They had undergone many changes since
their first contact with Europeans. They suffered
depopulation and pacification, they now used steel tools,
firearms and money, and they had abandoned the chief-making
rituals of the "graded society" - an institution at the
core of traditional political organisation in the Northern
New Hebrides (Guiart 1958).
At the end of the year I received notice that I had been
granted funds to carry out my planned research. Still there
were a few months before I was ready to leave, transferring
my studies to the University of Auckland with associated
formalities, obtaining research permission from the
authorities in the New Hebrides, purchasing field equipment
and so on. At the beginning of May 1974 I was finally
through with all the preparations and on my way.
1.2 Canal
I had timed my arrival in Santo to coincide with Bud
Jackson's paying a short visit to the island, to make a
film at Vanafo about the Nagriamel movement. We met in
Luganville township located by the Segond Channel in the
south-east, form which it also takes its local name, Canal.
He told me I had better go to see Jimmy Stevens, the leader
of the Nagriamel, to obtain permission before going into
the bush. This was standard practice - government
geologists traveling in inland Santo did just the same.
Without this permission I might find people in the interior
standoffish and uncooperative.
Bud came with me, both to introduce me and to act as
interpreter, as i didn't yet speak Bislama, the New
Hebridean variety of Melanesian pidgin. He took me to an
old house in the back streets of Canal, where Jimmy Stevens
lived when not at his house at Vanafo. Standing inside the
front gate and by the entrance to the house were half a
dozen New Hebridean youths, all with badges pinned to their
shirt sleeves or pockets. On the badge was an emblem
consisting of a bunch of leaves set above a five-pointed
star and with the letters N.G.M. at the bottom. I knew from
my reading that the leaves were a bunch of cordyline
surrounding a cycad frond - na karia and na mele in a
number of local languages, all adding up to na kariamele,
written Nagriamel, or N.G.M. for short (Jackson 1972:159;
Steinbauer 1971:92). Bud told me the youths were Jimmy
Steven's "guards", but they all seemed to recognise him and
made no attempt to stop us as we crossed the yard and
entered the house.
Once inside, we were taken to a glassed-in verandah where
the leader of the movement sat by a round table in a
corner. I saw an ageing man with grey hair and beard
wearing semi-military dress and a badge like the ones I'd
seen outside. Against the wall next to his chair stood a
pair of crutches - Bud had been telling me about Jimmy
Steven's recent leg trouble.
We shook hands with him, sat down, and Bud outlined my
plans, translating back and forth between me and Jimmy. I
was glad Bud was there, as Jimmy spoke a mixture of English
and Bislama, and I could only understand small portions of
what he said on my own. Jimmy had no objection to my
project, but he had one point to make. People like Bud and
me came to the New Hebrides to study, and when finished we
would leave and that would be the end of it. He was
concerned that we should give something in return, that
some time in the future I should remember to turn the
results of my studies into something of benefit for the
people of the New Hebrides. This was the first in a series
of reminders that however much I wanted to construe myself
as a detached "observer of society" I was also, and perhaps
primarily, a participant involved in the network of
personal relationships that made up that society, and that
I should honour these relationships as such, rather than
hide behind a smokescreen of "scientific objectivity".
Jimmy Stevens suggested that I move to Vanafo. There was to
be a meeting there in two weeks' time, and a lot of bush
people were expected to attend. This was surprising to me,
as up until then I had been under the impression that
Nagriamel was a coastal affair that didn't concern the
hinterland and the people I was aiming to live with. Jimmy
said that after the meeting I could go with the people as
they returned to their mountain homes. That sounded to me
like a good plan, though I was eager to get into the
interior, and two weeks seemed like a long wait. Still, I
had no better alternative - maybe some earlier opportunity
would offer itself once I got to Vanafo. At least it was a
step away from the coast and into the bush.
1.3 Vanafo
The next day I packed a minimal amount of necessaries and
took a taxi to Vanafo village. The driver dropped me short
of our destination, as part of the road was boggy and
impassable by car. I shouldered my pack and walked for
about an hour, uncertain that I had taken the right turn at
a crossing, and with misgivings about how I would be
received. Eventually I came to a wire fence with a gate. On
one of the gateposts was a blackboard with white writing,
saying:
NAGRIAMEL VILLAGE
PRIVATE PROPERTY
PLEASE KEEP OUT
Beside the gate was a small hut, like a guardhouse, but
there was no one in sight. I walked through and continued
up the road.
Inside the gate the road was straight and continued for as
far as I could see. It was surrounded by much denser bush
than that which I had passed through for the last hour. I
walked on in the midday heat, wondering where the village
was. I had expected a group of houses, bustling with
activity.
Presently the landscape opened up into a park like clearing
with a small house next to a huge banyan tree. The road
continued over a small hill to the left. Coming down the
road were a group of people, all wearing the now-familiar
badges. They shook hands with me, and not knowing how to
explain my presence I simply asked for Bud. I gathered from
their replies that he wasn't there, but he would come back
eventually. Meanwhile I could stay in the house by the
road.
The house was similar in construction to those I'd seen so
far since leaving Canal; plaited bamboo walls with a sago
thatch roof. Inside there was an elevated wooden platform
hung with a mosquito net where I could sleep. I made myself
at home and spent the rest of the day talking to people who
came by to have a look at the visitor, practicing my
minimal Bislama and trying to learn more. In the evening
some young people came by with a guitar and we sat singing
each other songs by the hissing light of a pressure lamp. I
was really pleased to be out of town and in a more
obviously New Hebridean environment.
The following day I spent walking around Vanafo with a
young man who spoke a little English. He showed me around
the village and taught me more Bislama. I found Vanafo very
extensive and scarcely deserving of the name "village". It
was more like a large plantation, with gardens succeeding
gardens in all directions. Interspersed with rows of young
coconut trees I saw taro, yam, kumara, manioc, plantain,
peanuts, bananas, pawpaw and pineapple. Here and there were
small groups of houses, some of them with boards with the
name of an island painted on them. I saw an Aoba hamlet, a
Malekula hamlet, an Ambrym hamlet. My guide also took me to
see a "headquarters" building, Jimmy Stevens' Vanafo
residence - a large traditional style structure - and a
church house. There were very few people within sight, only
a few around the houses, working in gardens, or walking
along the numerous tracks that criss-crossed the area.
That afternoon Bud Jackson finally arrived back at Vanafo,
and by nightfall a small crowd of people had gathered
around us at the house where I had stayed the night. Most
of them were young men in shorts or trousers and colourful
shirts, but one was an older man with a wooden comb stuck
into his graying hair and a large plastic bracelet around
his wrist. He was wearing only a belt with an old
ammunition pouch attached, a faded red loincloth, and the
inevitable Nagriamel badge, pinned to strip of cloth tied
around his upper left arm.
Bud, who had been talking to them, explained to me that
they were mountain people who had been to Canal because of
a dispute. Anglican missions had been established in two
mountain villages about a year back, staffed with teachers
from the Melanesian Brotherhood - two young Hebrideans from
other islands and two Solomon Islanders. In addition there
was a medical orderly, or "dresser", in one of the
villages, a Banks Islander, generously provided by the
British administration. By now some of the local people had
changed their minds about the desirability of the mission,
and one man had placed a Nagriamel "blackboard" like the
one I had seen at the entrance to Vanafo by the dresser's
house, telling him to get out. The sign had been pulled
down by a member of the pro-mission faction, and the
Nagriamel adherents had called in the French gendarmes. The
result was that the people involved had been taken to the
French police station at Canal to sort out their
differences. They were now on their way home, spending the
night at Vanafo, but intending to leave for the interior at
dawn. Through Bud I managed to arrange with one of them to
go with him and use his village as a base while he guided
me around, exploring the interior. The man's name was
Vohia. His home village was Tombet, the mission village
with the dresser.
That night I went to bed delighted with the turn matters
had taken. Instead of the anticipated two weeks, I had only
had to wait one day at Vanafo, before moving into the
interior proper. Admittedly Tombet was a mission village
and therefore not likely to be my final choice as a place
to do my research, but it was another step on the way, and
seemingly a large one.
1.4 Tombet and the northern interior
We left Vanafo early in the morning, crossing the Sarakata
river and walking to a village named Putmas, where we spent
the night. The following day we continued across Mount
Tankara, eventually crossing the Peolape river and arriving
at Tombet in the early afternoon. I was installed in the
dresser's house, next to the teachers' building and a
stone's throw away from the rest of the village - only six
houses surrounding a central red clay clearing.
I had only been in Tombet for just over two hours when who
should arrive but Bishop Rawcliffe, head of the Anglican
church of the New Hebrides, having walked in from Big Bay.
That same evening I was treated to my first course of
exotic ritual, as the bishop staged a service in one of the
village houses. Clad in full regalia including his mitre,
awesome in gold, silver, red and white he exorcised the
Devil and evil spirits from the villagers with cross signs
on their foreheads and a cross in oil on their chests, all
the time reciting his lines in Bislama. Afterwards he gave
the congregation a pep talk, encouraging them to be
"strong" and resist the attacks by Nagriamel - all adding
up to an enlightening first day among the mountain people!
For the next ten days I was confined to Tombet with
dysentery and big toes damaged by too small boots. As I
recovered I toured the Peolape and Peiorai river valleys
together with Vohia, looking for a suitable place to settle
in for intensive fieldwork. I wanted to find out where the
people were, as my maps were out of date and most villages
plotted on them were now abandoned. I also wanted to find
out what language was spoken in what area. From my reading
I had learned that there were at least ten different
languages spoken in the interior, some with only a small
number of speakers (Tryon 1972:50 - 52), and I wanted to
make sure that once I settled somewhere and learned the
local language it would give me access to a reasonable
number of speakers. What I had read about central Santo
language areas also turned out to be hopelessly misleading.
Even though the article was only two years old it listed
languages as spoken in areas now devoid of people with the
villages long since extinct.
During my time in Tombet and in villages I visited on my
bush tours, people often asked me what I was doing there
and why I had come. I explained as best I could in my
halting Bislama that I was looking for a place where I
could live for at least a year while learning the local
language and customs. When they asked why I wanted to learn
these things, I replied with a parallel: people went from
the New Hebrides to New Zealand to study and later returned
to teach in their home country. In the same way I had gone
there to study and later to return to New Zealand to teach.
But would anybody want to learn their customs, they asked.
I tried to put across the idea of a university, as a big
school where everything was taught, with a branch teaching
customs from all over the world. It was this
skul kaston
(B) or "custom school" that had sent me there to study.
Little did I know at the time that in coining this
translation of the "anthropology department" I had linked
two concepts that were radically opposed in the way the
locals talked about the world. Naively I assumed that skul
meant "school", but most schools in the New Hebrides were
run by the churches, and the word skul had come to mean
primarily "mission" or "Christianity" or even "cult" - the
so-called Naked Cult was known locally as Zek's
skul,
I learned later on.
Kaston
on the other hand was the opposite and opponent of
skul.
It referred to the old "heathen" ways, gradually being
replaced by Christianity. Inadvertently I had laid claim to
being an emissary of a "heathen mission", a description
rich in contradictions, but as such perhaps tickling the
imagination of the inhabitants of this cult-ridden area.
The discussion rarely went further, and I often heard Vohia
use the words skul kaston in what to me was a stream of
unintelligible discourse, as I lay back in the shadows
inside houses we visited on our tours, listening to him
presumably explaining why he'd brought this strange white
man to visit.
1.5 The Ari valley
After nearly a month in the northern interior I was forced
to reject it as a suitable area for my study. Only two
languages had a sufficient number of speakers for my
liking. One of these was Merei, the language spoken in the
mission villages and their surroundings, but I wanted to
get away from the mission influence and so it was
unsuitable. The other was Tiale, spoken in the Puria and
upper Peolape river valleys, but there the settlements were
too small and scattered for my purposes. I decided to try
my luck further south. Vohia took me across the Peolape and
left me at Tonvara on the ridge separating the Peolape and
Ari river valleys, after arranging for another man to take
me across the Ari to Vorozenale. From the edge of the
Tonvara village clearing I had my first view of the valley
that was to be my home for some time to come, though at the
time this matter was still not settled.
I liked what I saw. A lush, green valley, barely two
kilometres across at the widest point, sloping gently down
from the high pass in the mountains to the south-west, the
valley floor rarely level but sliced into chunks separated
by ravines and gorges, all centering on the Ari winding its
way along the foothills of the mountain wall opposite me.
Dominating the landscape was a large settlement by local
standards: Duria, with eight houses loosely grouped around
the inevitable red-ochre clearing, lifeless in the
merciless late midday sunlight. Further away and to my left
I could see a few single houses, scattered in the shade of
a large grove of coconut trees on the far bank of the
river. Spread sporadically over the valley floor and the
hillsides were jagged garden plots, suggesting the presence
of a fairly large population strung out along both sides of
the valley. It looked promising from the point of view of
my project; a possible area for me to live in for intensive
study.
The following morning my new guide took me down the hill
from Tonvara and across the valley, stopping for a meal in
one of the houses at Duria. I found the climb up from the
Ari to the top of the ridge on the south side of the valley
very strenuous. By the time the track leveled out on the
grassy slopes of Truvos I was dead tired. We walked through
a Kuvutana empty of people and continued along the ridge to
nearby Vorozenale, where I finally was able to rest my legs
inside the only house with people at home as we arrived.
Vorozenale had seven houses altogether. Together with
Kuvutana it made up the largest settlement that I had seen
in the Santo interior up until then, offering the best
prospects so far in terms of easy access to informants. But
I was out on a limb, having passed from Bud Jackson to
Vohia, and then to my present guide who wasn't even from
this settlement but lived close to Duria on the other side
of the river. I had no idea of what Vohia had told my guide
about my intentions; I didn't know anybody there and
wondered how the villagers would react to my presence as
they returned home at the end of the day.
As the day wore on the people started arriving, sitting
down talking to my guide after first having shaken hands
with me on entering the house. Some of them brought me
food, a customary gesture, honouring a guest by feeding
him. By evening the house was full of people, kava was
being made and I had been put through my by then
well-rehearsed explanation of my presence a number of
times.
All of a sudden a man in his mid-thirties came into the
house, sat down on a mat by a fire and asked me in what
seemed to me to be an aggressive manner - he talked very
fast - if we didn't have customs where I came from. I said
yes and he asked why we didn't "write" them instead of
those of Santo. In the dead silence that followed his
question I thought that this was it, I was going to be
thrown out of the village the next day. Keeping my surface
calm I retorted that we had done this already, and,
grabbing the bull by the horns, I suggested that he didn't
like me coming to his village and, if so, he could say so
straight out and I would continue on my way in the morning.
At this he retreated, saying no, he was only asking, and
repeated his question, the tension of a few moments earlier
gradually dissipating as people around us starting moving
again, having been frozen still during the peak of our
abrupt confrontation. I felt as if I had won a major battle
during that short exchange, though I couldn't say why or
how at the time. We then launched into a long conversation,
with others gradually joining in, touching on a number of
themes and topics that were to become familiar during the
course of my stay in the area. They laid at my feet all the
pain, confusion and resentment of a people finding
themselves reduced to a parish in their own back yard. As a
European I was held answerable for the behaviour of white
people on the island - for all the wrongs, injustices and
racial discrimination following in the wake of
colonisation.
You come here, they said, you eat for free, you sleep for
free. This is our custom. But when you go to Canal
everything costs money. We have go pay for food and for
housing. Nothing is for free. But we have no money. If it
rains you white men won't invite us inside for shelter. If
you are having a meal, you won't invite us to join you.
They call this "ravis
fasin"
(B): "bad manners".
They said they had to call white people
masta
(B), :"master" - a form of address I had consistently
refused since arrival - but the masters were only masters
because of their large plantations. They didn't work; only
black people worked, and for only a little money, while the
masters had lots of money and fine things. And it wasn't
their land either. They'd stolen it - shot the owners or
tricked them out of it for a little tobacco and matches.
They asked me if I had come
long han blong Mol Patundun
(B): "by Jimmy Stevens' hand" - most people called him Mol
Patundun in the Santo interior. They had heard that I had
come via Vanafo and thought I was involved with the
Nagriamel movement. This they didn't want to have anything
to do with. They said that Mol Patundun was only deceiving
people. You had to pay one or two dollars per family member
to join, for which you got Nagriamel badges for all of
them. Those you should wear all the time for your own
safety, as when merika, the American soldiers, returned to
Santo in the near future they would shoot everybody who was
not wearing a badge.
Mol Patundun had tricked them once before, they told me. He
had traveled around selling rifles - collecting the money,
the rifles to be delivered later. This was years ago, but
they never got their rifles, nor did they get their money
back.
They said Mol Patundun had a bank now, for people to put
their money in. When there was enough money in the bank
merika would come and the Nagriamel members would be
"masters" and have their own
stoa
- stores or shops full of goods, like the ones at Canal.
But it was all lies.
Another reason they were against Nagriamel was because it
was associated with
skul
- there was a church house at Vanafo now. They didn't want
skul in the mountains, as they wanted their children to
remain on their land.
Skul
people all eventually moved down to the coast; they had
seen this happen in the past. If it happened in their area
then maybe some white men could come and steal their land.
Skul
cost too much money, they told me. You had to buy clothes
and give money to the teacher and pastor - they knew, as
this was the case on the coast. That was all right for the
people on the coast, as they had coconuts and could earn
money by selling copra. But in the bush they had no way of
making money; there was nothing they could sell, as they
were too far away from the market at Canal. Except their
labour - work on European plantations brought in about a
dollar a day.
They also complained about the hypocrisy of the skul people
on the coast, contrasting what they had heard of Christian
doctrine with the behaviour of the believers. Nobody would
feed them on the coast, and they had to sleep in the bush,
like pigs. The
skul
people had taken
fasin blong waitman
(B): "taken the white man's ways". Worst were the people of
Tangoa, a small island just off the South Coast where the
Presbyterian Bible College is located. They called the
local people
man bus
(B): "bush-men", said they were dirty and smelled, and
ridiculed them because they wore loincloths rather than
clothes. But loincloths were
kaston blong mifala
(B), my companions said: "our custom".
It went on for hours while I sat cross-legged on my mat in
the shadows, surrounded by dark bodies, some of them only
barely discernible in the faint light of a home-made
kerosene lamp. I was fascinated, learning more about ethnic
stratification and Nagriamel in one night than I had during
my entire sojourn in the northern part of the mountains. At
the same time I felt defensive, as they seemed to be
challenging my right to be there under the circumstances
being discussed. I explained to them that my link with
Nagriamel was only incidental, that I was not a member of
the movement and that I knew very little about it. I said I
was not a "master" - in one way I was even worse off at
home than they were, as I didn't even have any land to grow
my food and build a house on like they did, but was doomed
to buy food and pay rent. I told them that I was not a skul
person like the ones that they had been describing, that I
wasn't interested in Jesus, but that my schooling was
concerned with kaston all over the world - the reason I had
come to their village in the first place. In this way I
rejected their attempts to fit me into categories of people
that they held grudges against, disclaiming responsibility,
hoping they would give the benefit of the doubt.
Towards the end of the evening the man who had started off
on such an aggressive note asked me if I carried any
medicine in pack, as he had a headache. Guessing after a
few questions that he was suffering from the all-too-common
mild attack of malaria I gave him Nivaquine. So it came
about on my first night with the people of Truvos I more or
less inadvertently sowed the seed that would eventually
grow into a place for me in their community, as a healer of
their sick; a source of western medicine in an area ridden
with disease.
The following day I continued further south, guided by the
man in whose house I had slept that night - he told me his
name was Maliu. We crossed a ridge and descended into the
Vailapa valley, passing through more villages, but I had
already made up my mind. I had found my hard-nosed
conservatives; I wanted to stay in Vorozenale if the people
would let me. We turned around at the river and came back.
As I offered to pay Maliu that night, like I had paid my
guides in the past, he refused. No, he said, I was a guest
in his house. Truly an astonishing difference from the
attitude in the mission village Tombet, where some people
had even quarreled over who was going to guide me, for the
sake of the money.
1.6 Early days at Vorozenale
Though I had now found a place that seemed suitable for my
study, I was not sure if I could stay. When I asked Maliu
if he thought they could let me live there for a year or
more, his reply was evasive, referring to his
neighbours.
Mi no save long olgeta
(B): "I don't know about them".
I knew what he meant, especially after that inauspicious
first evening in Vorozenale. In particular that one man who
had so eloquently opposed me over the kava bowl didn't seem
too keen on my presence in the area. But the way things
worked out I needn't have worried.
Late in the afternoon on the day after my first night
there, that same man came to see me about his youngest
child, a two-year-old boy named Maritino.
Emi sit wora
(B): the man explained to me: "He shits water." Did I have
any medicine against diarrhea?
I had in my pack a Tupperware container with medicines of
various kinds that I had brought from New Zealand mainly
with my own health in mind. After a month of handing out
medicines in the bush my supplies were almost gone, but I
found some Thalazole sulpha tablets left in a tin and
counted them out to the man, with instructions on when to
give them to his son.
He thanked me and disappeared off to his house in nearby
Kuvutana, but reappeared only shortly after with some
cooked taro and freshwater snails on a plate. These he gave
to me. Not long after he also gave me a piece of taro
pudding, and for the evening kava session a grapefruit and
a delicious slice of pineapple. He commented that if this
had been at my home I surely would have had to pay for the
food, while according to their ways they put no price on
hospitality.
Kakae natin, slip natin. Kaston blong
mifala
(B): "Eat for free, sleep for free. Our custom."
I protested at this rather harsh, though understandable,
interpretation of European custom, saying that even though
I would have to pay for food in a restaurant, I would eat
for free at another man's home. The white people on the
coast were held up as a counter-example, and the discussion
was under way again: Canal vs. the bush; money vs.
hospitality; skul vs. kaston.
That night I was told that a feast was imminent at
Vorozenale, and that I should stay for that. The man in the
southernmost house in the settlement was giving a feast
because a daughter of his had died some time ago - they did
this for all their deceased.
So I remained at Vorozenale and joined the others in the
preparations. A feast is called
aniani
in Kiai, meaning simply "food" or "eat", and the
preparations all revolved around food. The day after our
excursion to the Vailapa river I helped Maliu fill the rack
in the back of the house with split firewood for the oven
stones. The next day we carried taro to the village from a
garden on the other side of the Zari. The day after that we
all went down to the bank of the Ari close to Vunpati and
killed a cow, carrying the meat back to Vorozenale on
poles.
As the day wore on guests started arriving from all over
the upper Ari valley and were fed on the wealth of food. In
Maliu's house they made savisavi, a gigantic pudding, from
peeled hot taro fresh out of the oven, pounded for a good
hour on a wooden plate the size of a tractor wheel by men
in shifts of six, wielding wooden pestles as tall as
themselves. Lots of kava was prepared and consumed with
gusto. Throughout the night the lamp was kept burning, and
the men drank kava until dawn - in Maliu's house they
seemed to be sleeping in shifts, drinking more when they
woke up again. I too only slept intermittently as the men
talked all through the night and kept breaking into song
sporadically, the tune sometimes being picked up by someone
else, or others singing along, seemingly spontaneously and
without any set order.
Before noon the next day a pig was killed in front of the
house of the sponsor. A group of men pinned it to the
ground with their bodies, while another man stuck a knife
in its heart. The pork made a huge pile together with the
remains of yesterday's beef on a bed of Heliconia leaves in
front of the centre post in the sponsor's house.
I missed most of the rest of the proceedings, as I had my
first attack of malaria at noon that day. I took a dose of
Chloroquine and tried to sleep in the midst of all the
activity in Maliu's house, but failed. Instead I lay awake
all day in pain.
Strangely enough I felt quite good the following day - a
bit washed out, but still able to walk all the way to the
South Coast. One of the guests, a young man named Lulu, had
offered to take me to Canal and back to bring some of my
equipment and replenish my supply of medicines which was
running low. He came originally from Tonvara - the village
where Vohia had left me less than a week back - but Lulu
had joined a large -scale migration to the coast and skul
only three years previously, settling at Namoro on the west
bank of the Vailapa and planting coconuts there with a view
towards easy money for copra in the future. The trip down
to Namoro took us eight hours, downhill most of the way.
Needless to say I was exhausted on arrival, in spite of the
fact that we had been traveling light.
After five days on the coast during which we visited Canal
as planned, we left again for Vorozenale, loaded with
supplies. There was so much that Lulu had to recruit
another two men at Namoro to help us carry it all - his
elder brother Ravu Puepue, and Tavui Lotu from Vorozenale,
both now resident at Namoro like Lulu. Apart from a small
number of personal items, we had between us a four-gallon
drum of kerosene; a suitcase full of tapes, books and
paper; a rucksack loaded with medicine (generously provided
by the British District Medical Officer, Dr John Mills)
also containing plug tobacco, salt, matches and cloth for
gifts; another rucksack with a tape recorder and tinned
meat; and a sack of sundry items including a pressure lamp
and a hurricane light - the latter intended for Maliu, as
he had hinted via Lulu that he would like one.
The return journey took us two days. We slept one night at
Zaraparo, overlooking the Vailapa close to the place where
Maliu and I had turned back towards Vorozenale on our
bushwalk ten days earlier. In the morning we somehow ended
up on the wrong track, which involved us in an unnecessary
descent into a gorge with a murderous three hundred metre
climb up the other side at an unbelievably steep angle. I
didn't think I would make it to Vorozenale in the end - we
had to stop and rest every few minutes as my legs simply
refused to carry me. But we finally got there, ending the
day around the kava bowl in Maliu's house, recounting our
experiences on the coast to the usual assembly of
villagers.
I spent most of the next day on my back, recuperating after
the exhausting journey. News had spread about the things
that I had brought, and some of the local people brought
bottles to be filled up with kerosene from my drum. Though
I had intended to use the kerosene for my pressure-lamp and
the nocturnal sessions noting down the events of the day as
I had read that all good anthropologists did, I did not
want to refuse their requests after the lecture on the
stinginess of Europeans on the day of my arrival. I also
handed out plug tobacco without discrimination, eager to
show that I was different and hoping this would be taken as
a token of my good intentions.
The reaction was not long in coming, though it was
different from what I expected. I was absent from the
village for the next four days, going with Maliu and a few
others to a feast at the lower reaches of the Ari. At the
evening kava-session on the day I returned, I again had to
explain and defend my motives, this time to a local man who
had arrived home from a journey while I was away, and had
not yet met me. As before, I said i had been sent by
skul kaston,
to learn their language and customs. In support of my
claim, I fetched out my cassette recorder - newly arrived
from the coast with the rest of my equipment and supplies -
intending to demonstrate its use as a language-learning
tool. I put in a blank cassette, pressed the "record"
button, and urged the man to say something. When I was
satisfied that I had some speech on the tape, I played it
back to the kava assembly. On hearing his own voice on tape
my questioner suggested that it was
olsem stil
(B): "like theft".
Bambae man i harem, i mas pem long yu?
(B): Later when someone listens to it, he must pay you?"
The implication was that I was there to make money,
collecting things for later sale.
I was also questioned by the man who started on such an
aggressive mode on my first night in Vorozenale - by now I
knew his name was Lisa.
Man ia emi gud tumas
(B), he said: "This man is very good" - but why? Why was I
giving away tobacco and kerosene without charging any
payment for the goods? He wanted to know what I wanted in
return, as
longtaem finis ol waitman oli rabem mifala
tumas
(B); "in the past the white man robbed us a lot" - paying
for gigantic plantations with
stik mo mases nomo
(B): "nothing but plug tobacco and matches".
Bambae yu go long gavman yu talemaot mifala i no pem,
gavman emi talem olsem wanem?
(B) "When in the future you go to
gavman
(i.e. the British or French district agent in Canal) and
say we didn't pay, what will
gavman
say?"
I told him it was no business of gavman. I only gave these
things to them as they gave me food and helped me in my
enquiries, suggesting it was fair exchange. He did not seem
convinced.
I suspected at the time that Lisa was afraid of learning
one day that their land was mine by rule of gavman, as I
had "paid" for it, and they had accepted the "payment" -
the gifts I had been handing out.
But people kept coming, also from neighbouring villages,
with their empty bottles and their
stik i finis?
(B) "Is the plug tobacco finished?". I assumed word had got
around that there was a crazy waitman at Vorozenale who
gave things away for free, and they were eager to get their
share of the goodies before I came to my senses.
Two days later Lisa announced a "rule", as he called it, at
the now regular night-time kava gathering in Maliu`s house.
Everybody coming for tobacco and kerosene had to bring me
something - taro, sugarcane, bananas - and not accept
anything from me without giving something in return.
Following that announcement I had an influx of food, which
petered out with the kerosene - the drum lasted only five
of my days in the village! Most of the food I received was
eaten by visitors, and by the children who hung around me
as I attempted to work on my notes during the days -
watching me write, and trying to impress me as children do,
or asking for plasters for minimal sores after carefully
picking off the scab.
My guess about Lisa's fears was confirmed later, as we got
to know each other better. He had indeed been worried that
I was trying to trick them out of their land. Much later I
heard a story that most likely had served as a model for
that interpretation of my gifts. One of the largest
plantations on the South Coast had been acquired through
just such surreptitious purchase. A chief living close to
the coast used to recruit labour for a planter, who paid
him for his services with plug tobacco, the story went.
Then one day this "master" had told him that his land was
not forfeited. It now belonged to the planter, and the
tobacco was the payment. According to the story the planter
had "written" the tobacco on a piece of paper which he took
to the gavman, who confirmed the "purchase". Lisa had of
course seen me writing in my notebooks - no wonder he was
worried.
Now that I know more about Santo transactions it is quite
obvious that I was taken as buying something. Free gifts
were only common between people who were close to each
other in some respect - between kinsmen, neighbours or
friends. They called this
tuetueni:
"helping", in Kiai, as opposed to
volivoli:
"buying", which was appropriate between more distant people
- the purchaser usually initiating the transaction with the
"payment" before asking for the thing he wanted, putting
the other under obligation to reciprocate. They seemed to
stick closely to these rules, even to the extent that when
a man wanted to buy for example a pig for a feast, he had
to travel to another valley to make his purchase. No
neighbour would sell to him; it was strongly disapproved of
and destructive of any close relationship. So in a way I
was doing the right thing, being friendly the Santo way by
giving things away for free, but it was perhaps a little
abrupt as I was so obviously an outsider, which in its turn
implied that I was "buying" something. Lisa's "rule"
handled the discrepancy, as it turned my "helping" into
"buying" - leaving no outstanding obligations - as befitted
a stranger.
1.7 Disease and death
Though my clumsy "friendliness" with gifts no doubt had
some effect in the local people's initially putting up with
me - after all they were getting desirable goods on their
non-monetary terms - I don't think this was the crucial
factor in my eventually gaining acceptance in their
community. Of overriding importance was medicine, and my
activities as a reasonably successful healer.
This is perhaps best understood against the background of
the severe decline in population in central Santo following
the arrival of the Europeans. Though opinions vary about
the size of the population during the early contact period
(McArthur and Yaxley 1968: 17 - 18), it is clear that
introduced firearms and diseases had drastically reduced
their numbers. They described to me how the valley had been
full of people in the past, pointing out numerous village
sites that were now bush or gardens. All the inhabitants
had died. Ever since contact they had been growing fewer
and fewer in number. The various cults I had read about had
all been aimed at reversing this trend, so that there would
be fewer deaths and more survivors to "make the place grow"
again, as they said.
Disease and death was not just a past issue. Even at Tombet
they had talked about their newly imported cult - the
mission - in these terms. In the past there had been a lot
of sickness in the village, but now since skul had come
there was none. In other villages there were only a few
people, but in Tombet there were many, they said. If others
did not want skul, this was their affair - eventually they
would die out because of disease.
As it turned out I had arrived in Vorozenale just at the
outset of a minor cough epidemic, slowly spreading inland
from the coast and killing many children in its way. During
that first month in Vorozenale I learned about no fewer
than nine child deaths, four of which took place in our
valley. There may well have been more - only the ones that
people told me about would have come to my notice.
I heard about the first of these deaths when Lulu and I
were on our way to the coast to fetch my equipment. We had
covered about two thirds of the way to Namoro, the steep
mountains of the central massif were well behind us, and we
were following a gently sloping forested ridge on the east
side of the Vailapa river. Suddenly Lulu stopped and
motioned to me with his hand to be quiet. From somewhere on
the next ridge to our left I could barely hear what sounded
to me like singing: a strange, falling melody, repeated
over and over again by many voices, but seemingly without
coordination, which lent an eerie disharmony to the
sound.
Oli stap krai
(B), whispered Lulu: "They are crying". Someone had died.
The next child death I heard about took place in Parisa,
just across the Vailapa river from Namoro, also settled
fairly recently from further inland. Lulu and I were on our
way back to Namoro from Canal loaded with all my gear. The
path took us through Parisa and we walked right into the
burial feast. The child had died the day before, the
interment was over, and there were lots of people present,
eating and drinking kava. A cow had been killed to feed the
mourners, and we were offered food. We stayed for a while,
mingling with the kava crowd, many of whom I recognised
from my night in Namoro three days previously.
We spent the following day in Namoro where I was
continually pestered by sick people who had heard that I
had medicine in my baggage. They seemed remarkably
unhealthy. Half of my fresh supply of cough medicine
disappeared in that one day. During that day a rumour
reached us that still another child had died a bit further
west along the coast.
A week later the repercussions of the coastal malady first
started to make themselves felt in our mountain community.
A Vunpati man, Pos Ee, brought his son to Kuvutana for
treatment - both old man Popoi Trivu and his son Sulu had
widespread reputations as expert healers. The boy had
fallen ill during a recent visit to Namoro, and had been
growing steadily worse ever since, until his father decided
to take him to our specialists.
That night the discussion around the kava bowl in Maliu's
house centered on sickness and deaths on the coast. It was
bad that people should bring ailing children here from
Namoro, as it meant carrying the diseases from the coast to
the bush. They should not take their children to Namoro in
the first place, as it was known to be an unhealthy place,
they said.
Around ten o'clock we suddenly heard a rooster crow
somewhere in the dark outside. Instantly the talking
stopped, everybody listened attentively, while a few of my
companions counted out aloud the number of
cries:
Mo ese...mo rua...mo tolu...mo vati...mo
lima...limarave....
We all held still for another while, waiting for the
seventh cry that never came. Nobody moved. Then the uncanny
silence was broken by rapid discussion. Lisa told me that
in six days' time someone would come, or someone would die.
A rooster crowing at night was an omen - this one
foretelling the death of Pos Ee's son.
In the morning I went to Kuvutana to see the child. Pos Ee
carried him outside and stood him by the front entrance of
Popoi`s house. The little boy was so weak that he could not
stand up by himself and had to be supported by his father.
He was really a sorry sight: four years old at the most,
undernourished and grey with ashes from the "custom"
treatment he had undergone - they put spells on leaves and
heated them in a fire before pressing them against the body
of the patient. The boy was feverish and his breath was a
series of short, fast wheezes.
I gave Pos Ee a course of tetracycline for his son, helping
him administer the first capsule. Then I gave him careful
instructions in when the others should be given, stressing
the importance of completing the course once it was
started. But a few days later I learned that the course had
been interrupted. Popoi thought his treatment and mine
would "fight"; it was better to wait to see if the custom
treatment was effective, and if not they would resort to
the medicine I had provided. During those days I was often
asked what "number" day it was. The villagers knew I had
dates on my wristwatch and they were counting the days
since the rooster had made its prediction.
The fowl turned out to be wrong - the boy lasted nearly two
weeks before he died. But while he still clung to life in
the gloom inside Popoi's house we got news that another
child had died at Zaraparo, where I had spent the night
during that exhausting trek back from the coast.
Finally his frail body gave in during the dark hours of
night - Pos Ee's son was found dead one morning. As the sun
rose in the sky that day I watched Lisa and Pos Ee silently
file past Maliu's house with the body wrapped in a mat made
into a package and slung from a pole between them. They
crossed the Vorozenale village clearing and disappeared
down the path to Vunpati, taking the boy on his final
journey home. The next day Maliu and a few others went to
mourn at the burial. I asked him if I could come along, but
he thought it best I didn't, so I stayed behind.
We did not have to wait long for the cough to claim its
next victim. It was after nightfall four days later and we
were gathered around the kava bowl in Maliu's house as
usual. Suddenly we heard someone shout
Trabol!
(B) "Trouble!" from the house just next to Maliu's. Moments
later the sound of loud crying came through the wall. We
all remained seated, talking in hushed voices until the
wailing died down about an hour later.
The victim this time was the child of Krai Manuku from
Moriulu - a once-flourishing settlement in the upper
Vailapa basin, now reduced to only three houses after most
of the inhabitants had moved down to Namoro. Again a child
had been brought here to be treated by the Kuvutana
healers, and again the medicine I had provided had not been
used.
The crying resumed in the morning, taking on that chanting
character that had halted me and Lulu in our tracks on the
way to Namoro. The body was carried home to Moriulu later
that day to be buried, but by then I had already left on my
first healing expedition.
A man had come looking for Sulu, wanting to take him back
to his village Ariau, about an hour's walk south of
Vorozenale, where two of his children lay sick. On my
suggestion they took me along - I had talked to Sulu and
suggested that his and my healing technique would not
"fight", but would reinforce each other, merging into
something more powerful than each on its own. In the man's
house in Ariau I found two timid little girls, both
feverish and shaking with what I took to be acute malaria.
I gave them anti-malarials and sat back watching Sulu at
work.
He just squatted with a bunch of leaves held casually in
his right hand, conversing freely with our host while
occasionally spitting at the leaves - first two, then
three, then three, then five times. Now I know that a
healer supposedly runs through spells in his head and spits
them out through his mouth - at the time it looked too
simple to be of any significance. Next Sulu handed the
leaves to the father, who held them in a fire for a short
while before stroking one of his daughter all over her
shivering body with the now withered foliage. The same
procedure was repeated for the other girl, with a fresh
bunch of leaves. Then the man offered us food, and later
kava.
We spent the night in Ariau and proceeded to nearby
Zaraitaviri the next morning, on another sick call. Then
back to Ariau, where our host fed us on savisavi pudding,
pleased that his daughters had not had another attack of
fever that day. Sulu repeated his performance with the
leaves, and after still another night at Ariau we returned
home, a cooked taro each in our hands, and Sulu with an
Australian dollar bill carefully folded up inside his box
of matches.
As we arrived we found out that Pos Ee's infant daughter
had died at Vunpati, leaving him childless. We also found
more visitors. Piloi, the father of the child that had died
at Parisa, had brought his only remaining offspring to
Kuvutana for treatment - another infant, just two months
old. Piloi was another Vorozenale man who had resettled on
the coast, I was told. Popoi Trivu was his father's
brother. The coastal resources had not cured his other
child; now he set his hopes to the strength of the magic of
his old home.
The next day I followed the villagers to Vunpati to kill a
cow for the customary feast on the tenth day after a death
- the death of Pos Ee's son. Inside his house at Vunpati I
saw the graves: two clearly noticeable mounds, one
extending from the centre post into the front part of the
house - his son - and another, smaller, just inside the
front door to the right - his infant daughter. The graves
did not appear to be treated with any reverence; the mound
in front of the centre post was conveniently used to put
things on during the feast - plates of food and so on.
After two days and nights of feasting at Vunpati we
returned again to Vorozenale, only to learn that Piloi's
infant had died while we were away, leaving him childless
like Pos Ee. They had buried the child in Lisa's house in
Kuvutana the day before we came back. We were also told of
a death at Zaraitaviri, and another infant was coughing
badly - Maitui had brought his daughter from nearby
Palakori to his brother-in-law Usa Pon at Vorozenale for
treatment.
This time I thought things had gone too far. I determined
not to let this little girl die like the others, so instead
of giving medicine to her father I administered it
personally, four times a day - morning, midday, evening and
midnight. The tetracycline capsules contained too heavy a
dose for her tiny body, so I had to break each capsule
open, divide the contents and feed her only half at a time,
mixed with water in a spoon. I doggedly kept at it for five
days, ignoring the mortuary feast at Moriulu for Krai
Manuku's child in favour of staying home and looking after
the girl, watching her get better each day, until she was
completely cured.
I think this was a breakthrough as far as my becoming
accepted into the community was concerned. I had proven
that I had something to contribute: my therapy worked where
theirs failed; this was enough. As a healer I was an asset
to everybody, and whatever else I did while I lived there
was of minor importance, as long as I kept them and their
children alive and in good health. And even though I do not
believe they ever understood exactly why I wanted to live
with them and learn their language and way of life, from
then on none of them questioned my motives again. I finally
seemed to have won their trust.
1.8 Making friends
Another factor of importance in my gaining acceptance at
Truvos was my relationship with Lisa, who, as I had
suspected turned out to be a man of more than average
importance and influence.
The day after our initial confrontation I had given him
medicine for his son Maritino. The following day he brought
home taro from his gardens and fired the oven stones. In
the evening he fetched me to Kuvutana where he presented me
with a meal inside one of the houses: taro pudding with
tinned meat and coconut milk, then hot taro with prawns and
fish from the river. He served it all with flair, standing
back and watching me eat and not starting a course himself
before I had finished it. After the meal he chewed some
kava and we both drank.
Long ples ia yu kakae gud
(B): "Here you eat well", he told me. Otherwise I would
talk about them not feeding me well, after I left. Not
feeding a visitor well would reflect badly on their
reputation.
We finished the dish of kava and my host escorted me back
up the path to Vorozenale, after first giving me a giant
freshly cooked taro to take home. On the way across the
grassy hill separating the two hamlets he told me his name
was Lisa. Surprised at the coincidence I told him I had a
daughter in New Zealand with the same name. He looked at me
and laughed:
Olsem yumitu fren!
(B): "As if we two were friends!".
At the time his comment sounded mysterious - I had yet to
learn about the "shoots" and "shells" naming practice,
described below. In retrospect it seems noteworthy, as we
did indeed become friends, gradually constructing our
friendship out of mutual gifts and services, in true
Melanesian fashion. I gave Lisa the last of my plug
tobacco, a tin of pork and a piece of cloth for his wife in
which to carry their infant daughter, born shortly after my
arrival in Truvos. Lisa in turn gave me a locally made
sleeping mat to use instead of the flimsy straw mat I had
brought in a Chinese store at Canal.
Maritino got better and Lisa started taking me with him on
his daytime excursions. We went to his in-laws at Vunpati
to cut sago leaves for thatch for a new house that Lisa was
about to build - his old one had been severely damaged by
fire not long before I arrived, when his wife Vekrai fired
the oven stones in the back of the house and the flames got
out of control. I spent the day at Kuvutana joining a
working bee preparing thatch for his house - a slow and
tedious job, folding pairs of sago leaves over a bamboo
strut and fastening them to each other in partial overlap
with needle-thin sticks.
One evening at kava Lisa more or less spontaneously started
teaching me Kiai. The night before, I had managed to elicit
some Kiai vocabulary from Pos Ee, who was visiting from
Vunpati. I had put it all on tape and now the kava
gathering wanted to listen to the recording. As I played it
back to them they laughed and said
gyaman
(B): "wrong", at many of my informant's Kiai translations
of my Bislama. They told me he didn't speak proper Kiai -
his dialect was different from theirs, and I would have to
turn to them to get things right from the start. Lisa then
went on to tell me the names of: things inside the house,
birds, water creatures, animals, garden produce; plus some
verbs for common actions, the Kiai numerals and words for
"yes" and "no" - about one hundred words in all. He
patiently repeated each item as I struggled to copy them
down phonetically in one of my notebooks.
From then on Lisa often helped me with the language,
sometimes on his initiative, sometimes on mine. And when I
fixed a rate of pay for informants in order to encourage
more people to spend time with me teaching me Kiai and
answering questions, Lisa didn't want any money. "Pay the
others, but not me", he said one day after spending a long
time with me over his genealogy and Kiai kinship terms,
refusing the dollar I had offered him.
Yumitu fren, mi givim mata long yu, yu givem kakai,
meresin long mi, yu givhan long mi long pem
daeva.
(B): "We two are friends, I give you a mat, you give me
food and medicine, you help me buy diving glasses." The
last bit I hadn't done yet, but he had asked me to. Now I
felt committed.
1.9 Avuavu
It may seem strange that Lisa and I should become friends,
as he didn't like white people coming to his village -
witness the reception he gave me on the day of my arrival.
In 1967 he had sent a government census team away from
Kuvutana, saying that he couldn't go and count white people
in their homes so why should they come to his home and
count his people? The government team returned with police
and Lisa only narrowly escaped prison. His comment, reeking
of anarchy:
Takun mo pos la zarana, takun mo pos la zarana. Komeu
kome pos la zarameu. Na kai malena kome somai evekonau la
zaramau!
"Each and every man is master of his own place. You are
masters of your place. I don't like you coming counting us
on our place!"
Though Lisa held many grudges against Europeans owing to
their stinginess, petty racism, land-grabbing and low
wages, he explained to me that the root of his antipathy
was that
gavman
had killed Avuavu. Avuavu was the prophet arrested by the
British in 1937, because of rumours that a white man was to
be killed in order to resurrect the dead. He had died in
prison, allegedly of dysentery, but the local story was
that he had been poisoned by the police, on order of
gavman.
This was inexcusable;
gavman
had forbidden the taking of human life but had broken the
rule himself. Nowadays bush people took their disputes to
the French authorities only, despising the British for
arresting and, as they saw it, murdering an innocent man.
They held no grudges against the authorities for the arrest
and execution of Ronovuro and some of his henchmen after
the killing of Clapcott in 1923. Ronovuru had made
trouble;
gavman's
response was fair. But Avuavu had done nothing wrong - he
was a peace leader, still held in great esteem by the
mountain people. He had instigated a number of reforms, all
aimed at putting an end to rivalry and feuding - the main
cause of death and depopulation in the area, as he saw it.
But like many a social reformer before him he trod on the
toes of the privileged and powerful, who in familiar style
used the police to get rid of him.
It was Avuavu's attempt to stop the
mele
pig festivals that became his downfall. They were an
integral part of the "graded society", an institution then
found all over the Northern and North-Central New Hebrides
(Layard 1942:687 ff). It consisted of a ranked series of
Masonic-like grades, with accession based on the
accumulation and killing of set numbers of pigs - up to as
many as three hundred at a time in central Santo. The
members of each grade ate food cooked on separate fires,
taboo to all others, and the men who reached the highest
grade were titled
mol
and were the leaders of the community.
The local people explained tome that the
mele
was a fairly recent institution, imported to Santo from
other areas after the coming of the Europeans. The demand
for large numbers of beasts led people to ask for pigs in
bride price, which made marriage more complicated - before
the
mele
became popular a gift of food was enough to secure a bride,
they said.
All this required a large number of pigs. Avuavu saw this
as a major cause of strife in the area: someone's pig
getting into someone else's garden and damaging the crops,
or an irate gardener killing his neighbour's ravaging
tusker. Without the grades and the
mele
festivals there would be no need for large numbers of pigs
anymore. Bride prices could be phased out again - Avuavu
set a limit of three pigs at the most to be paid for a
bride. And he told the people to abandon the
mele.
A lot of them agreed - I imagine a shrinking population
having to repeatedly provide a fixed number of pigs found
each
mele
more and more of a burden. Not all of them were pleased
though: some of the old men who were already
mol
saw their power and privilege threatened and decided to do
something about it. They went to the British authorities
and told them Avuavu was instigating the killing of a white
man, as Ronovuro had done fourteen years previously. Police
were then sent into the bush and Avuavu was arrested and
taken to prison, never to return. But the people still
stood by the words of their martyred hero. The
mele
had not been performed again in the Santo mountains, bride
prices came down, and the peace movement was still very
much alive today, supported by quotes from Avuavu whenever
appropriate. And the role of
gavman
in the incident was neither forgotten nor forgive
1.10 Big man
In spite of these attitudes Lisa and I became friends. A
cynic may read this as nothing but self-interest on his
part: an obvious way for him to gain easy access to my
apparent wealth for his own purposes. Whatever the case, I
didn't see it that way at the time - indeed Lisa seemed
less interested in getting his hands on my possessions than
many of his neighbours. But it soon became clear to me that
he was something of a leader - a budding "big man", well
versed in the arts of social manipulation, skilled at
turning every situation to his own advantage.
I had begun to suspect this already on the night of my
arrival at Vorozenale, as Lisa so eloquently took the floor
to size up their strange visitor. The day after he
proclaimed his rule making counter gifts to me obligatory,
I wrote in my notebook that "... Lisa often seems to act as
leader /spokesman". But it was not until the day we
demolished his old house to build the new one that I saw
him put on a full display of his rhetorical skills.
Kuvutana was transformed: everywhere there were signs of
activity. Lisa's old house was a shambles, all of the
reusable building materials stripped off it, leaving only
the blackened remains of those beams and rafters too
damaged by fire to be of any use in the new construction.
It barely resembled a house anymore. The remainder lay in
front of the ruins, sorted into neat piles as Lisa and his
helpers systematically demolished the house that morning.
Further in front, taking up part of the large central
clearing, were the beginnings of the new dwelling. A
shallow ditch surrounded a low ridge of clay, forming an
almost square outline of the house. A few of the house
posts had been set deep into the red clay, the short ones
closest to the path from Vorozenale already supporting a
longitudinal beam, all these things together barely
suggesting the future shape of Lisa's new home.
Surrounding the new house-site were more building
materials. Two long and sturdy beams lay close to the posts
that were soon to support them. We had jointly dragged them
up to the village from the bush-clad slope down towards the
Ari early that morning, most of the men and boys of the two
hamlets taking part, all of us chanting in unison a
powerful charm to make the logs lighter. Dazzling
near-white freshly cut and barked rafters stood in bunches
leaning against trees on the fringe of the clearing,
brought to the village during the last few hectic days of
preparation. A pile of new sago thatch lay ready to be
lashed to the wooden framework, once it was completed.
In the midst of all this were the builders: all the men of
Kuvutana and Vorozenale, Lisa's in-laws from Vunpati, plus
a couple of people from the other side of the river who had
come to me for medicine and had stayed on to help. Leaning
against a few pieces already in their place, standing or
squatting among the posts and beams lying around the
work-site, they were watching Usa Pon haul clay out of the
post hole with a long piece of bamboo, ready to lift the
centre post into position once the hole reached the right
depth.
While the men had been busy pulling down one house and
starting to erect the other, the Kuvutana women had devoted
their time to preparing a festive meal. They had grated
yam, wrapped the mash in leaves and cooked it on hot
stones. They had shredded the white flesh of dry coconuts
from the grove next to Lisa's garden house at Miremire, for
coconut milk. Three fowls had been killed, plucked and
cooked. Now, as the sun approached the zenith, they were
bringing all the food out of Popoi's and Sulu's houses on
to the central clearing and arranging it there on huge
wooden plates and giant
Heliconia
leaves, placed in a line across the baked clay from Popoi's
house towards today's worksite.
I picked up my camera and wandered over to where the food
was being put in order. I knew what was to happen - Linsus,
Lisa's father-in-law, had told me beforehand. Two people
lay buried in Lisa's old house: Lisa's daughter, who had
been killed by a falling tree during an earthquake some
years ago, and Piloi's infant child, there for less than
two months as yet. Now that the house was being pulled down
there was to be a
natu i aniani,
a "small feast" honouring their memory.
I watched and took photos of the preparations. Eilili was
cutting the fowl into pieces, one piece for each person
present. Lisa and Mol Paroparo squatted with their hands in
enamel bowls, working the sweet, creamy fluid out of the
shredded coconut flesh, then grabbing both hands full of
the soggy substance and squeezing them hard together,
drenching the yam pudding, pieces of chicken and tinned
mackerel on the leaves and plates with white coconut milk.
When all was ready Lisa called everybody to come and eat.
As they crowded around to sample the delicacies, he told me
one of the fowls was for me. It was still in one piece,
sitting on a separate leaf, surrounded by pieces of yam
pudding and soaked in lovely coconut milk. He loudly
declared that he had killed this fowl for me as I was
helping them and giving them medicine. I had been there a
long time, he said, but no one had yet killed a fowl for
me. Now he had done so.
Kakai!
"Eat!" he urged me.
Kakae leg blong em! Sipos yu finis em, kakae wan leg
bakegen! Ples ia i no Malekula! I Santo yet!
"Eat a leg! If you finish it, eat another leg! This place
isn't Malekula! It is still Santo!"
As his voice gradually rose and he turned towards the rest
of the gathering it occurred to me that this was not merely
a transaction between me and him. It was as if he was
repaying me on everybody's behalf - now they owed him one.
This was never explicit, but somehow he seemed to be
putting everybody down by sheer innuendo, a forceful
mixture of pride and annoyance in his rapid delivery -
impressive, though looking slightly incongruous to me in
his loincloth and my socks and track shoes, borrowed for
the day owing to a cut on his foot.
The Malekula reference was directed at my Vorozenale host
Maliu Kalus - or so it seemed to me. It too concerned
hospitality and exchange. On our last visit to Canal we had
stayed with Maliu's Malekulan brother-in-law, who worked as
a cook at the Ecole Communale and had bought a small plot
of land on the outskirts of town. After we left he sent
word that he wanted me to pay him two dollars for
accommodation. This was regarded by some of the local
people as outrageous, as I had provided food not only for
our company but also for our host and his family during our
week in town: a sack of rice and large amounts of meat,
tinned food, bread, and so on. Again Lisa seemed to be
deliberately contrasting his own generosity with the
acquisitive behaviour of others. The message was implicit,
but nevertheless seemed quite transparent to me: I am
better than all of you!
I was taken completely by surprise and felt a bit
embarrassed. The food was delicious, but I was reluctant to
eat a whole chicken in the face of all the others who only
got a small piece each. I hadn't yet learned the proper way
under the circumstances: to eat a little by yourself and
then invite others to join you. Instead I ended up eating
the two legs on my own - for once I didn't have to
zimzim
to make the meat last. Then I declared myself satisfied and
withdrew to a less prominent position in the munching
crowd. The encounter had given me a new kind of respect for
Lisa. He knew what he was doing, all right.
1.11 Lisa
Gradually I pieced Lisa's background together. He was born
around 1940 in the old settlement at Truvos proper, only a
stone's throw further along the ridge from Kuvutana. His
father, Popoi Trivu, was a local man - like his father
before him born and raised in more or less the same place,
and a full-fledged member of the community. His mother
Vepei came from Tonvara on the other side of the valley -
Popoi Trivu had paid a rifle to the legendary Tonvara witch
Mol Sahau for the right to take her home with him to live
at Truvos. Lisa was their first-born.
He grew up in times of change. The movement known as the
Naked Cult swept the mountains with its peculiar practices
and promise of the millennium during his boyhood. He
wouldn't talk to me about it though, always seeming to
evade the topic by saying that he was only a child at the
time and disclaiming all knowledge on that basis.
I can accept Lisa's being too young at the time to have
understood the changes in lifestyle in the more elaborate
terms of his parents and the people of their generation.
They spoke about a return to the mythical customs of a past
golden age of peace and simplicity, aimed at putting an end
to sickness and death. They envisaged the return of the
ancestors in the shape of
merika
- American troops -to instigate a new order, where black
people would finally gain their rightful access to the
multitude of goods jealously expropriated and hoarded by
the white people on the coast. It may all have seemed to
Lisa as just another of the complicated things that
grown-ups talked about.
But I cannot see how he could have failed to notice the
more practical aspects of Zek's programme, as told to me by
others. Living without material possessions, they ate and
drank straight off the dirt floor in the houses. Without
livestock and forbidden to kill, they lived almost
exclusively on taro and leaves. Naked and with sexual
taboos suspended they made love promiscuously and in
public.
Perhaps it was a painful memory to Lisa, best laid to rest
in spite of inquisitive strangers: to see adult members of
the community change their lifestyle in pursuit of peace,
prosperity and immortality, only to look like fools a few
years later, reverting to their old way of life with
nothing gained, the laughing stock of their Christian
rivals on the coast.
The Naked Cult died with its leader, Zek, and all over the
mountains people returned to their old ways, also resuming
work on coastal plantations, to get money to replace the
bottles, lanterns, cloth, knives, pots and firearms that
had been smashed, burned or thrown in the rivers. But not
for long - less than two years had passed a new boycott was
engineered by a chief from the Navaka valley in the western
part of the mountains.
Two labourers had been beaten to death by a planter at Big
Bay in a quarrel over a wild pig caught on land the latter
claimed as his. Seeking strength in unity the chief, Mol
Valivu, toured the bush with the traditional peace symbol -
the
rau mele,
a cycad frond - organising backing for his cause. No one
was to look for work on the coast anymore. If a planter
wanted labourers, he would have to ask for them through
local chiefs - and pay them higher wages too.
The people of Truvos declared their support, tabooed their
track leading to the South Coast, and none of them went to
work there until the blockade was called off - except Lisa.
Fresh into his teens, perhaps fed up with the schemes of
leaders and reformists, and looking for adventure, he
traveled via an area further east where people had rejected
the boycott, to work for three weeks for a French planter
close to Canal.
A few years later, after the ban had been lifted, Lisa did
another stint as a labourer on the coast, though not for a
very lengthy period. Most young men from the area work for
some years before they get married, but Lisa only worked
for several months - just long enough to earn money to buy
himself a shotgun.
Firearms were highly valued pieces of equipment, not just
as tools for hunting birds and flying foxes, but also as
protection against witchcraft. If you kill a roaming witch
in animal form his human body will die - the only sure way
to rid yourself of witches. Many is the time I have seen
someone grab the aging musket from its resting place at the
bottom of my medicine cupboard in Lisa's house and steal
outside, after hearing the hush of the night pierced by the
nearby scream of an owl - the favourite animal shape of a
hunting witch.
A firearm was also something of a status symbol in central
Santo. They were particularly rare in the fifties - the old
ones had been destroyed during the Naked Cult - and were
lent as a favour to others, much like steel knives in the
olden days, before everybody had one.
The shotgun nearly became Lisa's undoing. Once, having
brought it to a feast further down valley in the hope of
shooting a bird for his hosts on the way there, he left a
live cartridge in the bore and forgot about it, placing the
firearm in a corner inside one of the houses. Later, as he
was about to leave, he grabbed it by the barrel and pulled
it towards him. The trigger snagged on something, the gun
went off, and Lisa caught the blast in his forearm. Some
friends helped him to the hospital at Canal, where they
stitched his arm together again, leaving Lisa with a
network of scars, impaired function of his thumb, and
perhaps also a newfound respect for western medicine.
By the end of the fifties Lisa was old enough to marry, but
there were complications. Bride prices had been abandoned
during the Naked Cult and had not been reinstated. Instead
Mol Valivu had advocated marriage by exchange. Fathers
should simply swap daughters to give as wives to their
respective sons, each woman "replacing"
(zeni)
the other.
Poe mo sanavulu mo vanu, poe mo sanavulu mo
somai:
"Ten pigs going, ten pigs coming", to quote the local idiom
- only, the pigs were left out of the deal, and with them
the harrowing disputes over damaged gardens. The aim was
the same as Avuavu's in the past: to simplify marriages and
put and end to the strife and bad feelings seen to lie
behind a lot of disease and death in the area. But, as is
often the case with social reform, this one backfired. It
may have solved one problem, but it certainly also created
a new one: men who, like Popoi Trivu, had no surviving
daughters were left without a simple way to obtain wives
for their sons.
Lisa was not long in finding a solution. He had taken a
liking to Vekrai Lintui, a Vunpati woman who lived there
with her father. First she had been married to a man in the
Tazia valley. He had given her two children: one survived
only for a few months; the other for less than ten days.
Then her husband died. One of his "brothers" was to be her
new spouse, but only a few days after that marriage she had
returned home to her father at Vunpati, and refused to go
back to Tazia.
Lisa now took matters in his own hands.
Na vanania,
he explained to me: "I fed her". He had bought some
mau,
a love charm, from a man down in Big Bay. This he later
managed to smuggle into her food.
The magic worked. Vekrai promptly fell for him and they
simply eloped together, bypassing the complicated exchange
negotiations and presenting their elders with a fait
accompli.
In order to save the situation Popoi's younger brother
Trivu Ru stepped in. He had more daughters than sons living
with him at Matanzari. One of them, Pusa, was sent to
Vunpati as a replacement for Vekrai and a wife for her
oldest brother, Krai Tamata.
The matter now closed, Lisa and Vekrai settled down to
married life at Kuvutana. I know little detail about this
period of Lisa's life, but I imagine that it was much the
same as that of any newly married man in the area. He now
had in-laws, to be dealt with in the same spirit of
cooperation and mutual assistance that reigned between the
members of his home community. In particular, he had to
garden regularly for Vekrai's parents at Vunpati - a
customary burden carried by all married men in central
Santo for as long as their parents-in-law remain alive.
Also a lot of his time at home was taken up by gardening.
Ripe taro doesn't last for long; the only way to ensure an
unbroken supply is by continuous planting, and with the
advent of children there was an increasing number of mouths
to feed.
With marriage also came recognition as an adult, and full
participation in the affairs of men, debating whatever
issues presented themselves around the kava bowl in the
evenings and at feasts. As the oldest of the Kuvutana
brothers and with his aging father slowly going blind, Lisa
would have to represent their interests in the wider
community more and more often as time went by. He must have
distinguished himself in public affairs as, when the
illustrious old chief of Truvos, Mol Santo, died at
Vorozenale and was succeeded by his stepson, Mol Paroparo,
Lisa was made a
pos
- a representative supposed to do much of a chief's
debating for him, and to assist with settling disputes and
keeping the peace.
There were still another few years before my arrival on the
scene. In that time Lisa had acquired a reputation as an
important man at Truvos. He had earned for himself the
honorific Pos Zuzuru, bestowed on men who excelled at
oratory, and was known to be
kilan:
"hard". Having Lisa as an ally at Truvos may well have
settled the question of my long-term residence there in my
favour. If he accepted my presence, the others would not
object.
1.12 Living at Truvos
So I stayed at Truvos, living with the people there for
sixteen months in all, split into four periods with visits
back to New Zealand in between. The first period I stayed
in Maliu Kalus' house at Vorozenale, but the rest of the
time I lived with Lisa and his family in their new house at
Kuvutana.
My living arrangements were simple. Like the rest of them I
had a mat by a fire to sleep on. I had a bamboo cupboard
just inside the door where I kept my medicines, and two
small metal suitcases for my writing materials, tapes,
camera and other equipment.
There was no privacy at all to be had indoors. The walls
shielded us from the eyes of those outside, but inside we
were completely each other. There were no barriers or
partitions in the house - even the invisible line
restricting women to the rear and men to the front of the
one big room disappeared when there were just us residents
there. If I wanted to work undisturbed, I had to commute to
empty garden houses or secret clearings in the bush. When I
tried to do my writing in the settlement during the days,
while the local people were away tending their gardens, I
usually ended up playing host to passers-through, or
attending to the ailments of people from neighbouring areas
who had come looking for medicine.
My diet was essentially the same as my hosts'. They grew
the food in swidden clearings on the mountain sides, the
gardens being left to revert to fallow after a year of
cropping. The staple was taro, supplemented with yam when
in season, and small amounts of sweet potato, plantain,
manioc and
Xanthosoma.
This was eaten preferably with fish, eels, crabs or prawns
from the river; bats, birds, eggs, rats or grubs from the
forest; or poultry, beef or pork raised locally, but
slaughtered only on rare occasions. There were also wild
pigs and cattle to hunt in the flatlands further north
between the mountains and Big Bay, but that required a
special expedition. A lot of time we were restricted to
eating the tubers with garden vegetables, as the frequent
wet weather often made fishing and hunting impossible. Only
when domestic beasts were killed at feasts was there a good
supply of meat. The rest of the time it was scarce.
In addition to the above there were various tropical nuts
and fruits to eat when in season, gathered from wild and
planted trees growing all over the area.
This may sound like a rich and varied diet, but I found it
hard to adjust to. It contained much more starch and less
meat and raw greens than I was used to. Most frequently a
meal consisted merely of cold taro and boiled leaves.
Still, there was no easy way for me to supplement this with
for example, tinned food from the coast. To eat something
in front of other people without sharing the food my hosts
considered grossly impolite, so I would have had to bring
enough for everybody, which was not practical.
I did manage to keep a small supply of tinned mackerel,
hidden on top of my medicine cupboard, but only by giving a
tin each to every household in Kuvutana, Vorozenale,
Matanzari and Palakori whenever I brought new stocks from
the coast.- much as they distributed meat to all
their
mera i zara mo ese:
"people of one place", when they had a lot. But apart from
two tins that I "stole" from my own stores and ate
clandestinely - once when I was alone in the house at night
and another time hiding in the bush - I rarely got more
than a finger size piece out of each tin opened. Mostly I
used them on occasions that demanded a gift of food, or
else to feed visitors in times of shortage.
Local produce came into my hands in a number of ways. I
received a normal adult share whenever food was distributed
in the locality. When an oven was fired in one of the
Kuvutana houses, some of the taro cooked was given to each
of the other households. Meat obtained by anybody at Truvos
was shared out among all the households in the four
hamlets, if there was enough. If there was only a little it
was distributed within the hamlet only.
In addition to this I often received
susu tana
food gifts from people who came to me for medicine from all
over the neighbourhood, or food to take home after visiting
other settlements to treat sick people. These gifts I
distributed as appropriate: within Kuvutana only, or to all
the people at Truvos, depending on the amount.
But in Lisa's house we shared all food, whether brought
from his and Vekrai's gardens, or obtained from others. Not
once did I need to buy food in the mountains. There was
always some available, and to pay for it was incompatible
with the relations of mutual help and sharing prescribed
and predominant between close neighbours.
Living on local food meant that I laid myself open to the
bacteria and parasites that accounted for all my medical
work, only I was more vulnerable than the local people, not
having the partial immunity that comes with long exposure.
When I returned to New Zealand after my initial six and a
half months on Santo, I was weak and emaciated from being
ill. It was four months before my physician would let me go
back there again, first having diagnosed and treated me for
malaria, amoebic dysentery, hookworm and other worms,
scabies, assorted skin fungi, and a few sores that proved
reluctant to heal.
Unfortunately this set a pattern also for my remaining
visits to the island. My diary can speak for itself. The
excerpt is from the tenth of June 1975, eleven weeks into
my second field trip.
Medical
Report:-
10 days ago I developed a blister on my upper lip, and
about the same time my mouth got tender inside, as if
burned by hot drink. This lasted until today; the blister
(which rapidly turned into a sore) is now almost completely
healed, and my mouth only slightly tender.
For the last three days (since 7.6) I have had
semi-diarrhoea like I had in NZ.
I also have red spots under my arms (armpits)- started in
left armpit almost 3 weeks ago, appeared in right armpit
about a week ago, possibly now also at scrotum. It has
spread from my left armpit on to lower side of upper left
arm. Spots turn into small sores, and remain.
I have been coughing a little and had a runny nose for
almost two weeks - as I arrived back from the
velu
("feast with dancing") it started getting really bad and I
started Penbritin cure before yesterday, in the evening. I
keep coughing up green mucus now, and have a pulse between
80-95.
I also suspect I have (still another round of) scabies, as
I keep scratching what look like insect bites - but no
biting insects around.
On top of this I have circa 10 days back a boil on my bum.
It broke during the
velu,
and I put a plaster on it, but I don't really know its
condition as it is awkwardly located. It hasn't healed yet,
though.
I also have 4-5 smaller and larger cuts on each of my feet,
acquired on my way to and from, and during, the
velu.
They keep me from longer excursions than to the latrine.
The initial response to my living according to local ways
was interesting. I only found out about it much later. Not
long after I first settled at Vorozenale, a rumour swept
the bush that I was Maliu Kalus' dead father, Tavui Alo,
reborn as a European and come back to Santo to live with my
son.
It was the old familiar "cargo cult" theme, part of their
mixed bag of old and new traditions since the days of
Ronovuro, the prophet who was executed after the killing of
Clapcott. He had taught that the ancestors were
reincarnated as white men in
merika,
I was told, and they would return to Santo to share their
wealth with their poor descendants.
Now, I was a white man, and I did things that they said no
other white man would do. Other Europeans who had come
through the area would not eat taro. They would not even
eat with the local people, taking their meals separately
without sharing any of the delicious-looking rice and
tinned meat. Neither would they sleep in the local houses.
They brought tents instead that were nice and clean inside,
retaining even when asleep the segregation between "master"
and "boy". I on the other hand slept and ate together with
them. I even wore the
sapsapele,
the loincloth so much ridiculed by the Christians on the
coast. And I gave things to them for free - highly unusual
for a European - being particularly generous to my host
Maliu Kalus. It was strange behaviour for a white man, but
made perfect sense if indeed I were Tavui Alo returned from
the land of the dead.
1.13 Resistance to enquiry
Though their reaction to my living like one of them was
positive, I found that most of my attempts at systematic
enquiry were met by the people with passive resistance.
Maybe it was just that they were too busy with their own
lives to have much time for an inquisitive and rather
stupid foreigner. Maybe they were reluctant to let me know
too much about themselves, not knowing how the information
would be used, or not wanting it written down. In their
world knowledge gave power over the known, and often
rendered it powerless - a magical notion where influence
depended on secrecy and waned with disclosure.
In any case this made gathering information about their
affairs often seem like a continual uphill struggle,
compounding my difficulties into the occasional bout of
fieldwork blues. A diary entry from the twentieth of August
1975 tells the story:
It is now nearly 2 pm and I've finally brought myself to
sit down and
uliuli
("write") again. My stomach has been slightly better the
last few days, but I have a cold/bronchitis/tonsillitis (?)
coming on. Hitting it ferociously with quadrupled doses of
vitamin C every morning for the last three days - the
future will see who wins that battle, me or the bacteria.
I'm fed up and I want to go home. I'm not sure that
"depressed" would describe my state of mind correctly - I'm
just fed everything. With screaming kids, with taro
urese
("gone bad", usually from being left in the ground for too
long; it becomes gelatinous and unpleasant to eat) and
no
pi
("meat", or whatever is eaten with taro), with Eilili
speaking Bislama to me, with a backlog of notes, with
blisters and small sores on my prick and balls, with rain
and slippery tracks, with the medicine business, with not
understanding Tohsiki, with myself for not being forward
about data gathering, but rather doing the "culturally
appropriate" thing (to the best of my ability) at most
times.
I've been searching for an excuse to flee Kuvutana and go
to Canal again for most of last week. I'm dying for
letters, esp. a letter from Jeune, and was extremely
disappointed yesterday when
kai
Lahoi ("the Lahois", i.e. Lahoi and his family) returned
from Namoro without letters - people had been going to
Canal, but only to the stores, nobody had bothered to go to
the P.O. This pissed me off.
Whenever (or at least sometimes) when I try to pry into
something, people seem to act negatively, and though they
are very friendly and helpful when it comes to me
living
here, it seems as if they prefer to restrict my data
gathering to just that.
E.g. Usa Pon one day (only a few days ago) told me the
names of their months; he must be the only person who knows
them at this time. When I suggested that he'd repeat them
some day so I could write them down, he asked Why?
Te nomeu tauae
("You have yours") (!).
(I guess I am depressed after all.)
I am fairly certain that there was a conspiracy to keep me
in ignorance about the cults, particularly the Naked Cult.
On the day I first arrived in Vorozenale, they had asked me
why Guiart had asked so many questions about
bisnes blong Zek
(B): "Zek's business", i.e. the Naked Cult. Why did white
men want to know about those things?
From then on they never talked about Zek's cult in my
presence, and they skillfully avoided my questions whenever
I tried to bring it up. Matters were not helped by a French
anthropologist’s visiting Kuvutana during one of my
trips back to New Zealand, asking questions about that very
topic, as they told me when I returned.
What I learned about the cult I learned from outsiders,
particularly from the people resettled at Namoro. My
suspicions about the conspiracy stem from one occasion when
Zek's cult had been the main topic around the kava bowl on
one of my stopovers there, on the way to or from the bush.
Afterwards Krai Tamata from Vunpati said to me, pointedly:
"They never talk to you about that up there at Truvos, do
they?", or something to that effect - I cannot recall the
exact words.
Again, perhaps this seeming resistance to systematic
enquiry was partly a feature of their own knowledge, and
the way they normally used to think and talk about things.
They never seemed to mind answering questions about
whatever subject was at hand at the time, explaining to me
some practical task they were engaged in, or filling me in
on the background to some issue being discussed at a
kava-session. They taught me things when they were relevant
to what was happening: warnings, admonishments, correcting
my mistakes, and so on - much as they taught their own
children. It was when I asked questions out of context, or
questions that were not tied to a particular person or
situation, that I got only cursory answers. It was as if
they did not know their own way of life - or, better, did
not know it as a "way" of life, but rather as
this
life; as a series of particular events involving particular
people. So some of my difficulties may have been rooted in
the fact that they simply did not know the answers to my
questions. They were not used to talking about themselves
in the abstract - it was irrelevant.
In any case it had the effect that most of what I learned
about the mountain people I learned through my own
involvement in their lives, helplessly caught in the mesh
of transactions that seemed to be the stuff of Santo
relationships. Living in the midst of them I learned how to
relate to others through food - always sharing or
exchanging, giving or receiving - and the subtle meanings
of raw or cooked, meat or vegetable, or feeding or being
fed, refusing food or not offering any, or of eating
together or separately, in a multitude of different
situations.
1.14 Participation: exchanges
Participation was the key to learning, however clumsy my
early attempts to cope with the flow of food must have
seemed to the local people: it was often only through
flagrant breaches of exchange etiquette that I became aware
of its rules.
At the beginning of my second period in Santo, towards the
end of the rainy season, when flying foxes came in swarms
up the valley every evening to drink nectar from the
delicate white flowers of the
Astronia
trees, and men who knew the appropriate magic to ensure a
successful hunt sat with nets high on the ridges through
the nights and hauled the unsuspecting creatures out of the
sky, I had a whole crowd of people visit me from the Tazia
valley. By this time my reputation as a healer was firmly
established, and as it was less than a week since I had
returned to Kuvutana after four months in New Zealand, I
had a large backlog of untreated sores to catch up on.
There must have been about twenty visitors: I gave
seventeen injections, applied countless plasters to
revolting boils and handed out medicine of different kinds,
not finishing until past four in the afternoon, having
worked in one long stretch since mid-morning.
The visitors had brought me the usual
susu tana.
As there were so many of them, they had given me two
baskets instead of just one, full of cooked taro with crabs
and prawns from their river. It was dark by the time we got
around to distributing the takings, but I had in my
ignorance placed the taro the visitors had brought at the
foot of the house post next to my mat, together with some
taro that I had received from local people. Now I could not
tell them apart. This was bad, said Lisa: now we ran the
risk of returning somebody's taro. He went to explain to me
that the taro brought from Tazia must not be eaten by the
donors. They should eat taro from our place, while we
should eat theirs. He made it seem like an exchange of taro
between Tazia and Truvos: highways of food with me as a
junction.
It was too late to do anything about it. I took taros at
random from the pile. Lisa placed them on the floor in
front of my mat, one for each family in Kuvutana and
Vorozenale. Next he placed a small pile of shellfish on top
of each taro, adjusting the size of each pile to the size
of the family, removing a crab or prawn here and adding it
there, correcting until he was satisfied. Then he called
out to the receivers present to come and get their share,
while the rest of the food was given to some children to
carry off to the appropriate houses.
Varalapa got her own share, separate from her husband
Kavten as they had split up during my stay in New Zealand.
She came up to the edge of the men's part of the house and
Lisa handed her the food. She returned to the place where
she had been sitting in the rear of the house, but then
turned around and came back again, handing me the taro she
had been given and taking another one from the few left at
the foot of the post by my mat. She had recognized the taro
as one that she had given me earlier that day, and
therefore wanted another one!
Every mistake became another lesson in local manners, and
what had originally seemed fairly simple and
straightforward grew more and more complex as I learned to
discriminate more delicate points.
Though most of my participation in exchanges revolved
around food and medicine, I was also drawn into
transactions that involved other goods.
My initial experience as I brought my supplies to
Vorozenale had been rather disconcerting - not because I
could not hang on to my kerosene, but because the last
thing I wanted to get involve in was the running of some
sort of trade store in the village, even if only by
default. Still, whenever I brought goods into the
mountains, I was rapidly cleaned out by people who came and
gave me food gifts and proceeded to ask for this, that or
the other. There seemed to be no way that I could hold on
the my own supplies.
When I finally found a solution to this problem it was an
appropriately Melanesian one: I gave it all away. In this
way I was able to give the only response in refusal that
did not reflect on my relationship with the people who
asked for something:
Mo te iso:
"It is finished." And when I needed to fill up my lamp I
could always turn to somebody to whom I had given kerosene
in the past.
This was very much their way of handling wealth. What they
did not want to share they kept well hidden, and if they
were caught red-handed with a full packet of .22 cartridges
or tailor-made cigarettes, they would immediately give some
of the contents away, explaining to me when I asked that
they had become
patepate:
"embarrassed". Another lesson in Santo mores: you could not
hoard wealth without appearing stingy and being called
a
takun tei:
"bad man". You could only hoard "credit"; wealth was for
sharing - which must make the store-keepers at Canal stingy
to the point of immorality in the eyes of the mountain
people.
Simple participation in exchanges turned out to be an
excellent way of learning the game, and I doubt that I
would ever have become aware of some of the finer points in
any other way. For example, I would make mistakes that were
not corrected, but rather acted upon, as people took what
was involuntary and accidental on my part to be deliberate,
leaving me to work out the meaning of what I had done from
their surprising reactions.
Towards the end of my short third stay in Santo, at the
beginning of the rainy season when pineapples were ripening
fast in the hot weather and my fellow Kuvutanians were away
gardening or building a house for the Matanzari women,
leaving me alone in the village with my notebooks, I had a
visit from Pune Tamaravu of Taskoro. He had been hunting
wild pigs in the depopulated flatlands around the lower
Peiorai, staying with a relative a bit further up the
river. Now he brought some cooked pork preserved in a
section of bamboo. He said it was
ani pereku:
"for my shoot", putting it in a basket hanging from the
house-post next to Lisa's mat, across the house from where
I slept and kept my food.
Maritino, Lisa's youngest son, was Pune's "shoot". When the
boy was born, Lisa had named him Pune Tamaravu after the
older man. The name Maritino had been given to him later on
by Sulu, after he had treated the child for some illness.
But Maritino remained Pune's "shoot", like the replanted
shoot of a tree that remains after the older tree has
withered and died.
Conversely, Pune was Maritino's
ruru;
his "shell", like the empty shells sometimes found in the
rivers, shed by a prawn in a seemingly endless process of
rejuvenation. And the shells gave gifts to their shoots,
caring for the welfare of the children gave them a kind of
immortality, as the shells themselves were living
incarnations of long lines of dead shells stretching back
into the past.
I offered Pune food and sat down on my mat to fiddle with a
transistor radio that he had brought from his relative's
village by the Peiorai river to see if I could fix it.
Radios, torches, people, it was all the same. They seemed
to think I could fix almost anything.
We conversed while he ate and I worked on the radio. I knew
Pune quite well. Although he had moved across the Ari and
joined the Tohsiki-speakers, he was originally a Vorozenale
man and spoke Kiai. Apart from seeing him at various feasts
and when he came for medicine a few times in the past, I
had spent some days at Taskoro helping him make thatch and
build two extra houses to house the guests at a feast that
he gave earlier that year. The existing houses at Taskoro -
Pune's and his eldest son's - were obviously not going to
be enough. In the end he had 240 visitors staying for five
days at his feast.
At the time I had just caught up with my backlog of notes
for the first time in two months. I was tired of sitting
home in Kuvutana writing, and wanted to do something
different. As I had heard about the Taskoro house-building
efforts I packed a
susu tana
with taro and a tin of mackerel for Pune, and left for his
hamlet on my own. In return he gave me taro and a cooked
fowl
senai sala:
"for the road", when I went home three days later.
This was only the beginning of our exchanges. When I went
to his feast I also carried a
susu tana
for him, as is customary. Then, at the feast, I gave him a
large amount of plug tobacco to distribute to his guests.
Tavaliu, a Tazia man resettled at Namoro, had brought a lot
of goods to
ve na stoa:
"make a store", at the feast. This was fairly common
practice at feasts in other parts of the bush, but it was
frowned upon by my conservative friends - it was not
kaston.
A feast was a time for
tuetueni,
"helping", not for
volivoli,
"buying", they said. They also complained that Tavaliu
charged more than he had paid for the things for sale -
small knives, Eau de Cologne, soap, combs and other items,
plus the much desired plug tobacco.
Mo rap:
"he steals", they said, referring to the fact that he was
making a profit.
As eager as ever to demonstrate my commitment to
kaston
I then borrowed some money from Lisa and bought Tavaliu's
entire supply of tobacco - fifty sticks - and gave them to
Pune, who had them all cut in half and distributed to the
people present. When I left Taskoro at the end of the feast
he gave me not only the usual taro and meat, but also a
live rooster, for me to take home to Kuvutana.
The next time I met Pune, at a feast in the Peolape valley,
he asked me how my rooster was - was it still around, or
had I perhaps killed and eaten it? Then he asked me if I
had any of the leather belts left that I had brought to
Santo after my first return trip to New Zealand. Pune had
seen a few other people wear them.
There was indeed one belt left, carefully hidden among my
things in Lisa's house so as not to invite attempts to
wheedle it from me, but as Pune had always been generous to
me I now promised it to him. Only a few days later I had to
leave Santo in a hurry because of a family emergency in
Auckland, cutting my second field trip short. I left the
belt with Lisa, with instructions to give it to Pune. Since
then I had not seen him, and I had forgotten about the
belt.
Pune finished eating and I gave him a stick of plug tobacco
- my standard gift to anybody from the valley who came to
see me. He filled his pipe and came over to watch me
doctoring the radio. Presently I got it going, with the aid
of a new set of batteries. I handed it back to him, new
batteries and all. Then I remembered the belt, and thinking
that it might still be lying around somewhere in Lisa's
house waiting to be handed over to its new owner, I asked
Pune if he had got it yet. He told me yes, he had already
fetched it while I was away.
Then, as he stood up to leave, he said something
about
my
pork that he had brought. I was surprised and asked if it
was not for Maritino. No, he protested, Maritino's pork he
had left at Vunpati, with Lisa's parents-in-law - could I
please tell Lisa? The bamboo of pork he had brought was for
me, he said - in spite of the fact that he had put it in
what he knew very well was Lisa's basket, across the room
from my sleeping-place.
This incident had me puzzled for a while, but I think this
is what happened: I embarrassed Pune by mentioning the
leather belt - especially on top of giving him the tobacco
and batteries. Since he had not yet made me any return
gift, the mere mention of the belt must have sounded to him
like my hinting that it was about time he did - much as he
had mentioned the rooster before asking if the belts were
all gone. What made it embarrassing was that he had
flagrantly neglected me when distributing the wild pork. He
only barely managed to save face by pretending that the
pork had been intended for me all along!
From then on I was more aware of the import of talking
about gifts, and kept a closer watch on my tongue.
1.15 Participation: everyday life
That was how I came to learn much of what I know about
central Santo ways - not by having them described to me by
some keen and subtle informant, but through my own
experiences in dealing with the people on a day-to-day
basis, the countless little encounters of the domestic
landscape adding up, bit by bit, to an ever growing
understanding of local concerns and conventions.
Much of my time in the mountains was spent coping with the
never-ending requests for medicine. Initially I found
myself traveling to other villages a lot as people came
looking for me with stories about sickness in their homes,
the demand for my services growing with my reputation. To
begin with I was quite happy about this development, as I
got too know the valley and the people in it, visiting most
of the villages and building up credit with the residents.
But people started coming from other valleys, until I found
myself almost constantly afoot, sometimes for more than a
week at a time. Though I kept learning new things every
day, I had no time to write them down in my notebooks. All
that I managed was cryptic mnemonic messages to myself,
scribbled on a jotting-pad, to remember that there was this
and that to enter into my notes when I got the time.
In the end I simply refused to travel anymore, unless it
was a matter of life and death. Sick children could be
carried to Truvos and I would treat them there.
This move kept my by then staggering backlog from growing
any bigger, but I barely had time to keep pace with the
influx of information, as I had visitors wanted treatment
nearly every day, still taking up a large part of my time.
Next I started hiding, first in garden houses, and when my
haunts became known and people just came and got me when
prospective patients arrived, I made myself secret
clearings in the bush around the settlement, finally
getting enough time to reduce my backlog of note-taking.
Though continually having to spend so much time on medical
work was a problem it was not without its rewards. It
resulted in my quickly establishing personal relationships
with a large number of people, both from the Ari valley and
from further afield. Everywhere I went they knew me, and I
was always a welcome guest at feasts and other larger
gatherings of people, bag of miracle cures on my shoulder.
My medical work sometimes also provided the setting within
which I became acquainted with the local interpretation of
disease and death. And I can't but think that being
involved in healing on a day-to-day basis helped me in
understanding the
kleva,
as fellow healers faced with a similar onslaught of
patients.
But of all that I learned by virtue of doing medical work
among the mountain people, what moved me more than anything
else was this: for the first time in my life I realised
what it was like to live in constant contact with disease
and death. It brought home to me the living reality of
their very self-conscious struggle for survival as a people
- depopulation very quickly stops being simply a matter of
statistics in a setting where parents talk about the future
of their children, saying not "when he grows up", but "if
he grows up".
Although they took a large part of my time, my activities
in central Santo were not limited to medical work and
note-taking. I joined my hosts in most of their activities,
including the everyday tasks of making a living from the
land.
I had my own taro plot, which enabled me to follow the
process of growing taro from its inception in choosing a
suitable site, through all the intervening stages until
harvest for a farewell feast. Apart from this I helped
others in their gardens - that way also learning the
customary ways of rewarding your extra labour, which
enabled me to treat appropriately those who helped me with
my patch.
I learned to shoot fish and prawns in the rivers and
streams with a pronged arrow, a piece of elastic, and
diving glasses, cautiously stalking the elusive water
creatures among the boulders in the cold, clear water.
Hunting birds and flying foxes, I learned in which
flowering or fruiting trees to find my game as the seasons
changed.
I could go on like this, describing the countless ways of
learning about other people's lives that offer themselves
to someone in my situation, gradually working my way
through the multitude of activities that are part of life
in central Santo, but this will do for now. The kleva
material below will itself provide plenty of illustration.
There is one more setting that deserves a mention, though,
in that it became perhaps the most important teacher of
them all: the nightly gathering around the kava bowl.
Its role as a source of information changed, going through
a number of different stages during the course of my stay
in the Santo mountains. Initially it was the setting where
I got to know the men of Truvos, learned their names, their
personal
characteristics and so on. The villages were usually empty
during the days, with people away working in their gardens.
Only at night were they all at home, usually converging on
the house I was in - I guess they must have been as curious
about me as I was about them.
The kava-sessions never completely lost this role as an
occasion to get to know people. Visitors to the settlement
were invariably treated to a kava pow-wow in the evening if
they were staying overnight, which provided me with an
excellent opportunity to observe their manners and listen
to what they had to say. The kava-sessions also provided me
with my main opportunities for learning Kiai. During my
first few weeks in Vorozenale, Lisa a number of times on
his own initiative pointed out items inside the house and
told me what they were called, or - later - translated my
Bislama words into Kiai, with me writing rapidly in my
notebook. I guess he thought it as good a distraction as
any between cups - there would be periods of silence
sometimes, when we would just lie back on our mats,
relaxing after the day's work.
When my companions conferred in Kiai, paying little
attention to me while they discussed some matter of
importance or whatever, I used to lie back and just listen
to the flow of conversation, mentally tracking the
unfamiliar successions of vowels and consonants, echoing in
my mind the empty sounds of speech that meant nothing to
me,
By and by I started recognising odd words in these torrents
of pure sound. I would remember them and later ask their
meaning. As time went by I recognised more and more, until
I would be able to work out the topic of discussion, even
though I did not know what was being said about it.
Prior to that I very rarely knew what they were
talking about. Only occasionally would someone lean over
and courteously inform me in sotto voce Bislama what the
topic was. Some other times they would draw me into the
conversation, switching to Bislama in order to ask my
opinion on some matter or other. But with time I grew less
and less dependent on their discretion to learn what they
were so fervently debating.
The kava gatherings then took on a new teaching role: there
I learned the local foci of interest. I found out what sort
of news was news and worth passing on, and what sort of
problems were problems and worth discussing. And with a
growing command of the language these meetings provided me
with an indispensable pipeline to my hosts' plans, fears,
hobby-horses and grudges.
There was a wealth of information to be drawn from these
sessions. From the news and gossip I learned what had
happened in other villages and valleys; from the comments
made I learned the significance of the events. Some events
relevant to the local people would be discussed
extensively, as they debated what action to take in
response, which was also very educating. From criticism and
praise I learned what actions they considered bad or good,
and who was on who’s side in the network of often
tense relations between individuals and groups.
Not only did I learn about events in the surrounding area.
To a great extent these kava-sessions were themselves what
was happening, as people showed theirstands on varying
issues by their comments and suggestions. There were
occasionally quite heated verbal clashes between the
participants in these meetings, as the locals and
visitors
ve na kot:
"made court", about some issue perhaps involving claims for
compensation for some slight or injury.
Such, then, was my situation in central Santo; the
circumstances under which through successive encounters and
discussions I came to know the kleva and the alien world of
meanings within which their lives and activities made sense
to themselves, their neighbours, and increasingly also to
me
In the account below I have tried to retain for the reader
this sense of gradual development, as I show how, through a
long string of incidents, often stemming from my everyday
living in Santo rather than from any particular
investigative undertaking, my picture of the kleva
gradually grew in depth and complexity, paralleled by an
ever-increasin familiarity with the idioms through which
the local people expressed their own understanding of the
kleva, and of their specialist spheres of operation - such
as disease, dreaming, disembodied spirits, and magic of
both beneficial and harmful kinds.
By presenting the material in this manner I hope to put
across a picture of kleva not as a reality easily defined
and described, but rather as something intrinsically
multifaceted and puzzling, something that exists in
different versions in different people's eyes - as
something that resists simple definition, because no
definition would do justice to that diversity short of
describing it in full.