Fr Ennio Mantovani SVD 33 the burial place,. And when this happens you go and look’, continued Mondo. So Gande took Mondo to that place, killed him and buried him there and put a wooden fence around the place just as he was told. Then he went home and for three consecutive months, he waited for the ’kangi grass’ to grow on the cemetery. When the sum began to rise from the third mountain, Gande came to see the cemetery, just as his brother had promised and within the fence, he surprisingly saw several pigs of varied colours- black, white, red, brown, black-spotted and many other with stripes. He returned with his clansmen, and put ropes around their legs and took them home. Since then they have bred pigs and eaten them, and they have made arigl- the head gear and also other decorations in commemoration of their ancestor, Mondo, who gave them life through pigs. Had Mondo not given his life, we would not have pigs. (This version has been collected by one of my students Gabriel Kuman,after in one of my lectures at Fatima College,I had narrated the version provided by Rev. Bergmann working among the Kamaneku near Kundiawa. Kuman’s version is from the upper Simbu,the style is a bit embellished as my students used to do when reporting stories. Sun God is a case in point. Yagle does not mean god but being. The main story is identical to that of the Kamaneku in the lower Simbu.) To understand this myth one needs to know the culture of the Simbus. The pig is the greatest value of the Simbu. Nothing can replace it. The society of the Simbus is a web of relationships that is kept together by the exchange of pigs. Without pigs there is no marriage, or burial. The pigs are needed to keep the relationship with the whole ‘family’ that comprises the living and the dead, the flora and fauna, the bush and the rivers. There is a famous movie: Man without pig based on the true story of the first PHD of PNG. After his studies he wanted to marry but could not as he had no pigs. That great value, as the myth states, came from the death of Mondo who died to bring about the pigs from his grave. Amazing similarity with the Christ Event: Jesus who had to die on the Cross, to give us the true life that was missing. What the people around Schäfer suggested is amazing: they replaced the Bolin Post with the Cross. Christ is the One who gives us the true cosmic life. The Bolin post, the pigs are only symbols, leaves, while, Christ on the cross is the root of the new Simbu culture. A true case of Inculturation. (The central post of the Bolim house is called ‘Ende Mondo’ according to Gabriel Kuman and his informants.) This study is a warning for everybody and especially for us missionaries not to call primal people primitive in the negative sense. They may be much richer than those of us belonging to the modern societies that have lost their roots and put their identities on empty leaves: a dress, a car, riches, etc. but lost their roots, hence the many suicides also among the rich, especially the young. This study is a warning for everybody and especially for us missionaries not to call primal people primitive in the negative sense. They may be much richer than those of us belonging to the modern societies that have lost their roots and put their identities on empty leaves
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