In the morning, a ‘lusuve’ performed a ritual to banish the ghosts of two accused witches who were recently killed and buried. An hour later, a neighboring clan offered a brideprice for the daughter of a clan-mate who has been staying with us because his house was burned down in recent intra-clan fighting. The daughter said she would abide by the wishes of her mother’s mother, who had cared for her grand-daughter for many years, with respect to whether or not she would accept the brideprice being offered. The maternal grandmother said her grand-daughter should accept the offer of betrothal, but the grand-daughter insisted that her maternal grandmother be given an additional gift of 500 kina. I then had a long conversation with the grandmother about her hand, which was missing a finger. In the upper Asaro, people (both men and women, but mostly women) sometimes cut off a finger, or cut their ears (in the past, men sometimes punctured their nostrils), to ‘finish’ their sorrow or anger when they have experienced a loss. The grandmother had cut off her middle finger after the death of her first born son, who had been bewitched by a man and a woman in her village. This man and woman witch, it turns out, were the parents of another witch, the “witches’ lawyer,” who is said to have given the ‘go ahead’ to other local witches to kill a man last year -- the very death that elicited the accusations that resulted in the killing of the witches whose ghosts we were attempting to banish in the morning ritual.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 07:16:54 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015