saguma

(Sorcery.) I haven't thought about this since … taking first year anthro. Vague recollections of 17th c. Europe; of south Americas. Ritual and magic. Victor Turner maybe? But it’s alive and well in PNG; so prevalent I’m surprised I haven’t read mention of it outside of the country.

On my second day in Goroka I met a woman whose child had died 3 weeks ago (aged 12). The daughter had been away, and when she arrived back here she’d been sick for a while – vomiting, fever etc. They took her straight home, she was still sick, dehydrated, went to bed and 6 hours later had died. It is said that a spell was put upon her; a spell specifically timed: she would not die travelling, but when she arrived at home. On the day I met her mother, several people (I was told later) had been named as sorcerers, named for putting a curse on the dead girl.

In a nextdoor province from here, around 150 people died last year as a result of being fingered as sorcerers. There were a lot of burnings; a few were tied and dragged behind a car; horrible deaths; generally not recorded officially as anything but accidents or ‘cause unknown’.

And those dead – ‘they were mostly innocent’, I was told. Note the ‘mostly’ – it’s not just suspicions and accusations: the practice of sorcery is not in question. It’s not a weird thing. (This was what was most strange for me initially – the lack of strangeness to it all.) And nor is it doubted. Locals know who to go and see for what problem or issue. And they know the levels of seriousness. Whether they go themselves or not, and whether they would call themselves believers or not, well, you come up against a serious curse and almost everyone will shake their head and admit how strong that one is – even though 5 minutes ago they were laughing about such ‘primitive’ ideas.

There are the usual theories that it’s mainly widows and children. But I’ve been editing an article that gives the history of sorcery in a particular village for the past 5 or so years, and those who have been named are all men, men in positions of power and with land. (Land ownership is heavily contested in this area.) Perhaps each place gives rise to specific accusations, I don’t know.

Recently another white expat argued it was all about fear – which is true in obvious ways, but…well I find that word is a bit of a carry-all nowadays. (put fear in a grant application and i'd bet you'd be successful.) Can’t we be more specific? Australians voted for Howard out of fear – fear is why modern democracies are so sucessful - fear is a marketing tool and why obesity is prevalent in the west…yeah yeah. Fear can be made to answer a lot. It's disappointing, but i think that we'd get a lot of different answers than those we get now if the word itself were banned for a little while. I want to argue for a bit more complexity; situations in the world aren’t simple, they’re complex things and require complex explanations. Like sorcery here. Life, situations, events - they're rich and strange. and not necessarily bad.