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Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
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Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
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Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
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Book Chapter
Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
2008,2009
Overview
On 13th January 1954 my wife, baby-daughter and I settle down for several months of intensive research on the spot, in a guesthouse in the village of Ipiri, west of the administrative centre of Kaokonao, after a few hours travelling by canoe loaded to the brim with our barang. Fortunately the treacherous shallow sea behaves properly this time. On our arrival we learn that Paremakani, a middle-aged man, a reputed singer and drummer, huntsman and fisher is gravely ill, for the second time. He is said to have turned down sound advice by selfrighteous wailing relatives and his mother-in law to be transported by his bride taking in-laws - the society's jacks of all trades - to Kaokonao hospital. His illness and his anticipated death is a public event. The hut is crammed with lamenting relatives and friends. His bride taking in-laws are forbidden to partake in wailing lest they want to risk being slapped on the face (which I once noticed). In front of the house wailers come and go, their lamenting time depending on the degree of kinship. Earlier, the sick man has been asked if the ghosts of his late bride taking in-laws have already arrived to take him upstream to the abode of the dead. He then nodded, his staring eyes believed to be flabbergasted by his ghostly companions. Asked again this time there is no answer: he is unconscious. Close relatives and affines move and pinch his head arms and legs in order to implore his wandering soul to return to the body; to no avail. On January 20 in the afternoon some thunderclaps - usual in this period of the season - announce his death. He passes away on 5.30 p.m. His wife, close relatives and affines sitting around the body move his limbs and head in grief. 'The limbs, the head do not stir anymore, life has gone.' Outbursts of wailing last for hours. The widow wallows in the mud and outrageously hacks away at trees and shrubs with a machete. Returning to the body of her husband she throws herself at full length on it, sobbing, wailing and moving his limbs in utter sorrow. So do her children and his sister's children. Amongst them, his son, a schoolboy, who is lifted over the milling crowd and lies on his father, motionless, in grief.
