Abstract:
The speaker of these words, a Weyewan elder of Sumba, Indonesia had just given all his worldly possessions to ‘pay’ for a mighty headstone to honour his father: ‘My father knows this. Sometimes when I hold my father’s betel-nut bag I try to look into his heart…’ A ceremony for his father, a vast drama, united the village; 400 people helped haul the stone.Here is a strength, a purposiveness, a social and spiritual sense of belonging, a life-thread binding one generation to another which frames a certain freedom lo create and to manoeuvre within the charter of cultural tradition and custom. ‘A mother and a child are like a tree and a branch’, say the Xavante of Brazil, ‘Children must be taught to be strong like trees.’ A family is where you learn to laugh and cry, mainly laugh. A boy is first taken into the hot sun where he is taught to be strong like a tree.
Details / PDF:
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