Chapter 7 - Feasting at Kibigilagi

A pig feast among the Moni or Wolani tribes is exciting. The gathering of clans, renewing of friendships, making of political alliances…brides to find and flirt with, and sometimes a private bartering with the father over the bride price. And there is the eager smell of roasted pork for people who don’t eat meat that often.

I am around seven on this trek to Kibigilagi—from Homejo among the Moni tribe, to the edge of Wolani land. We cross the raging torrent of the Kemandoga River with trepidation. My dad tells my younger sister Ro and me to sit very still—don’t wiggle—as our carriers cross the swinging rattan bridge. Arriving in late afternoon we camp near a large village, and while Mom cooks supper my sister and I mingle with the natives. We watch them eat baked sweet potatoes and slurp tasty greens.

The next day crowds gather in open meadows and large pigs squeal as sharp arrows pierce their hearts. They run, fall, slowly bleed to death and I watch, sorrowful and fascinated.

Around noon family groups circle pig carcasses, butchering and cleaning. I see kids my age blow up pig bladders like balloons and long to inflate one myself. The sun is hot…we lunch on cheese sandwiches with Mom’s homemade bread. Dad is taking notes on language and customs.

I don’t remember if we nap in the tent in the late afternoon, but in the evening after the tribes have feasted on pit-baked pork, greens, and sweet potatoes, there is dancing. A large, circular-roofed hut has been erected on stilts, floored with pliant saplings. Twenty to thirty natives at a time leap in unison on this floor, singing joyous refrains…a giant pinwheel of people moving counter-clockwise.

It looks like so much fun! I enter the happy crowd and jump with them. Round and round among the dark figures I circle, our large trampoline bouncing us high on the dance floor. I sing the refrains loudly!

Finally Dad leads Ro and me back to our tent. Tucking us in for the night he asks, “Are you enjoying the ugwai? That’s what the Wolanis call this dance floor. The Monis don’t have them so much.

“Yeah,” I answer. “It’s great! The Monis should have ugwais like this.”

The next morning we break camp and are ready to head back to Homejo when commotion erupts. Yelling, shouting, a young girl is being dragged down the trail. She breaks loose and runs back to the village to an older couple who seem to be her parents. She holds onto them. Then stronger men tear her loose, and in spite of her parents’ pleadings pull her again down the trail. “What’s happening?” I query in Moni to a young Bible school student.

“That girl doesn’t want to marry an old man. She likes someone else. But the older man has paid for her, and his relatives are taking her to his village.” I watch, horrified. The teenage girl continues to sob and cry out midst the teaming crowd as they yank her down the trail. Their outcries slowly fade.

Later on the trek home I ask my dad about the incident. “Couldn’t her parents try to get her back? She doesn’t want to marry that old man.”

It’s more complicated than that,” he explained. “This older man probably also paid other clan relatives of hers, and they won’t give back the bride price.”

That night back in Homejo I muse on the recent happenings, upstairs in my cozy bed. Exciting trekking, exuberant pig feast, joyous dancing, mingled with the cries of a terrified girl being torn away from her family. Why is this tribal life so strange?

I consider the reason our family has come to Dutch New Guinea (now Papua, Indonesia)—to share the good news of Jesus. The Wolanis don’t know the Lord yet…many tribal customs are cruel. I fall asleep praying for the teenage girl and her tribe, that they will find Him.