Island Justice Part 1

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is it friday yet? i have a few extra moments at work here, and decided i better get a blog posted before someone realized i forgot to do just that on sunday. i had a great talk with sher and justin last night, which i hope will fuel me through the rest of this week. is everyone else as crazy busy i am? anyways, i hope this little intro finds you doing well. these next two blogs sher uploaded herself while on a neighboring island with internet access. they're pretty intense, so be ready. have a good one. love - b

Late February 2010

A week before the official first day of school, there were still no teachers and no movement towards taming the bush that dominated the school yard and staff houses. The headmaster of the primary school and principal of the secondary school were both off the island, as were a majority of the school board members. The principal had “run away” with his family at the end of the school year, cleaning out his house and leaving in the early morning on a boat without telling anyone. The headmaster was away on Santo, another island, working on his coconut plantation. The school was at an absolute standstill until one of those leaders came to authorize use of funds to buy fuel for the mower and announce that enrollment was open.

In fact, the secondary school had exhausted its’ funds during the last school year and not paid its’ auxiliary staff members, such as the cook, secretary, and handyman, for the last three months of work. The handyman would have been prime candidate to cut the grass, run a chainsaw to haul away two full grown trees that had fallen down in the school yard and the like. But, he was waiting for the debt the school owed to be paid before he lifted another finger (and who would blame him?).

The Tuesday of the week before school was to start, news that the headmaster of the primary school had died on Santo reached Maewo and circulated like wildfire. His death was a shock, as the death of a seemingly healthy, 40 something year old man would be to any culture. And, just as another culture may look for the cause of death in an autopsy report, the people of Maewo starting looking for their own answers. In addition to the late ZCA who died last August, this made two men who were native of Maewo and “big big men” in the school that unexpectedly and inexplicably died. This seemed like more than just an unfortunate coincidence to the locals as well as other islanders.

Teachers, who were planning to come to the school that week and start settling in to their houses at the school, appealed their postings, asking the school board to reassign them to another school. Boarding students who were supposed to get on the ship to come start the school year were held at home by their families. Everyone was spooked and hesitant to have anything to do with Gambule School.

On Thursday, the headmaster’s body was returned to Maewo by ship and buried. He was one of Justin’s host mama’s brothers (an uncle to Justin) and his family took his death very hard. As his death had a shadow of questions trailing it, the family buried him with a leaf that would help him seek revenge in the afterlife. Then, the youngfala boys of the village slept by his grave for the next ten days to make sure the leaf wasn’t removed.

Monday, February 15 was slated as the first day of school in Vanuatu. There were no snapshots of school kids standing on the front steps with their backpacks on for this island. Not a stirring on the school grounds, but in the town of Betarara there was an island wide meeting. Men representing villages from all over the island came to meet at the community hall. They were coming together to share what they knew, trying to piece together what happened and whether or not the school was a safe enough place to open. The general consensus before the meeting was that there was either something on the school grounds cursing the area or someone working custom on individual teachers.

The men crammed into the community hall, sitting on backless benches, then standing, then overflowing out into the yard. The concrete building with huge, un-finished windows allowed for the meeting’s audience to listen while outside. Women sat around the outskirts in small clusters, keeping their hands busy with weaving projects but a sharp ear towards the meeting hall. The paramount chief of Maewo, Chief Joseph, was the chair person for the meeting. Comments came at random from the audience. When a man had something to share, he would raise up his hand and was given the floor to speak.

Most of the meeting was held in local language, so I got the low down via translation from the nearest women’s cluster, who would gossip after each comment, for my sake, in Bislama, repeating what was said in addition to their digs on the given man’s character. One issue that kept coming up was that of the church. Since the school services communities from both Anglican and Church of Christ congregations, the men wondered if the issue was whether the headmaster was from a given church. Would someone from the opposite congregation spoil the headmaster so that one of their own could have that position of notoriety? They also talked about having people working custom to protect the school as well as the church’s blessings and whether those two forces would cancel each other out. (Last school year, the school had tasus, Anglican priests in training, come bless the school grounds.) One man made a plea that they needed to stick with one system or the other: church or custom. Another urged that whoever was working this custom needed to be stopped, punished, maybe even killed to make a statement that the teachers and students at Gambule School would be protected, that this kind of behavior wasn’t approved of by the islanders on Maewo. One man, a spindly legged ‘olfala’ wearing sunglasses, said he had stopped by the school earlier that morning and saw two custom things on the grounds that could be causing all the trouble. He also claimed that he could remove them if asked, but when pressed for specifics he clammed up and wouldn’t talk.

After a few hours of what seemed to me like a disorganized mess and no discussion or clear resolution in site, Justin and I left early to have some lunch. With such a hot topic like this, we’d be sure to hear the gist of the meeting just by “storian ol abaot” in the village the next few days.

The next day was Tuesday: plane day. Two teachers for the secondary school landed and, as we were the only two at the school, were brought to us. Which houses could they live in? Where was the headmaster or the principal of the school? And, the obvious one, Why wasn’t anyone else here? They had obviously not been in the loop and now it was up to us to decide just how much information we should give them. We tried to give the essential history sans superstitions. Too much information would scare them away, but they needed to know what was going on and enough about hype behind it to have functional relationships in the community.

The plot continued to thicken as the entire island donned their magnifying glasses and tan trench coats and listened for clues. Island style, that translates to sitting around and listening carefully to everything everyone tells you in relation to the given event, calling up odd occurrences over the past few weeks and trying to figure them into the puzzle. One such bit of relevant information came about after we left Monday’s meeting. There is a tasu from Naviso, the only village on the east coast of Maewo, who is gifted with prophetic visions. He allegedly dreamt that someone was working custom to spoil someone else, though he didn’t know exactly what or for whom. He had this dream the night before the headmaster died. Then, the headmaster‘s wife spread the word that, before she knew the headmaster died, she saw his ghost. His ghost came to her and she tried to touch him but couldn’t, but it told her that he was dead and that someone from Naviso had worked custom to kill him. She also remembered one morning last year finding a young man in her kitchen, burning a leaf over her small cook fire.

There are only so many men who are known to work custom in Naviso, and between those two testimonials, an olfala man was brought into question. He admitted to being involved in working custom on the headmaster, and also mentioned two other men who had helped him. Both of these men were from the headmaster’s village. One of those two was, in fact, the young man the headmaster’s wife had found by her cook fire one morning last year. The other had gotten on a ship and gone to Santo at the same time as the headmaster and hadn’t come back yet.

With three specific suspects in question, the headmaster’s home village called for another meeting, this time at the nakamol in their village. The only problem was that one of the three was still in Santo and couldn’t be contacted or found, even with police assistance. So, the power of custom was called upon again and a man sang into a coconut to call the young suspect back to Maewo. Sure enough, just before the only ship that delivers cargo to Maewo departed Santo, the young man came walking up to the docks and put himself on board.

Also that night, while the youngfala boys guarded the headmaster’s grave, they were awoken by a noise. They all turned on their flashlights and cast the beams to look around for what was causing the noise. All are in agreement that they saw a man, the other suspect, standing on the grave, and then he vanished. They feared that he had blocked the custom work that had been done so that the headmaster could avenge his death from the afterlife.

The ship arrived on Saturday, just in time for the 10 day event of the headmaster’s death. The two suspects sat among the crowd, grinding kava and storying just like everyone else. But, two days later, they weren’t treated just like everybody else.

Monday again, a full week after the official first day of school. Gambule was two teachers closer to starting, but not much more. However, the meeting at the nakamol was going ahead full force. Justin and I avoided the scene, not wanting to make a statement one way or the other, but when I was walking to the store that afternoon, two concerned mamas pulled me off the road to make sure I knew just what was going on. The meeting had been a heated one as men shot accusations at the three suspects. The accused had no alibi, no excuses, and didn’t defend their case strongly enough. Then things got ugly. Like something straight out of the Old Testament, the men were beaten and stoned with large baking stones. The two younger ones, being more able bodied and fit, ran away and disappeared into the bush. The older man, roughly eighty years old, was stoned, dragged, and kicked. Somehow, the frenzy stopped long enough for him to be loaded into a truck and driven to the health center. The pursuit of the other two younger men continued. There were threats that if they weren’t found that their houses would be burned. Also, talk that with no one to mediate the pursuers actions, if found, the suspects would probably die.

The people of Maewo were in awe of the events. Never before had the current population of Maewo had something like this happen. People were scared to walk about and go to their gardens for fear of stumbling across to fleeing suspects in the bush. Never mind trying to get things moving at the school; this conflict would dominate the thoughts, conversations, and actions of everyone on the island until it was resolved.

(Part II to follow)

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