Nueve

Using the five senses, describe life through the eyes of a Sawi Child. How would they perceive the arrival of the Tuans?

I woke up to see the sun peeping in through the sago frond walls of the hut. The sound of the frogs was thick in the air while the musky smell of firewood and sago wafted into my nose. A dark stain on the dirt ground caught my attention. A few hours ago I had exploded in rage at my step-mother Kio, the second wife of my father. She had brought my sago loaves half-cooked and so I had flung them to the ground and stomped them into the dirt. I stepped outside the hut and found my little brothers playing nearby. They were stomping on some crickets, imitating my action toward Kio earlier. I grabbed my bow and arrows leaning on the wall of the hut and smiled: the boys were Kio’s sons.

My playmates and I had promised to go fish-hunting in the afternoon and it was now time. With the damp dirt against the soles of my feet, I headed toward the shallow part of the river. As I neared the trickling sound of water, I crouched down to level myself with the earth. Slowly advancing in the direction of our meeting place I slithered like a snake, keeping my eyes open for the enemy: my friends. Suddenly a movement caught the corner of my eye and I jumped up and released an arrow. It screamed past Izo’s face and sank into the bark of a tree just a finger’s width away from his right ear. “You’re dead!” I shouted as I ran to greet my playmate, Izo. One by one, more boys jumped out of the bushes, shooting arrows with deft accuracy just below or above one another and shouting “You’re dead!”

We had a splendid catch that day. After our routinely greeting of arrows, my fellow hunters and I had focused all our senses to catching the finest fish in the river. One by one the fish had leapt out of the water, blinded by the sago sap we had let loose in the river and one by one we had shot the fish down.

On our way back home with the trophies of our luck, we caught sight of the Tuans’ house. The house had a sun of its own and the sago frond walls seemed to leak with its light, a distinct contrast with the now-darkening day. “Come, let’s peek in the Tuans’ window and see what they are up to!” said Izo excitedly. We set aside our fish and crept slowly toward the light-filled window. Izo was the first to look. He let out a gasp as his face grew paler and paler. “What is it?” we asked. The others, out of curiosity, shoved each other to get a better view. Their eyes, like Izo’s, grew big and they also grew pale. Slowly, I raised my body to peer in at the seemingly horrendous sight my friends were seeing. And then I saw it too. The Tuans, in their light-filled sanctuary were eating brains! “We need to tell the villagers!” We were running before we knew it, cold sweat streaming down our necks, and completely forgetting the fish lying near the Tuan’s window.

Ocho

What should society do for “uncivilized cultures” like the Sawi?

First of all, society shouldn’t look upon cultures like the Sawi as “uncivilized.” In their own way they are civilized: they practice the arts of woodcarving and hunting, have hierarchies in their community, respect their ancestral traditions in song and have wise minds to live life. These aspects in the isolated cultures must be acknowledged. As for what the society should do for cultures like the Sawi, it is best for them to not come across as anxious to manipulate the culture in order to fit it to the modern world. Society’s first step should be to approach the culture with an attitude of respect and bring modern ideas in a manner of offering instead of enforcing.

Because cultures like the Sawi lack technology, medication, and convenience of such that we have in the modern world, it is only logical to offer them these things, especially medication. When these modern methods work well and it is evident that it brings improvement to their lives, the Sawi and others like them will be apt to accept modernism willingly.

In my opinion, the best messengers of the modern world to these isolated cultures are missionaries. Missionaries are, from what I observed, willing to position themselves to the level of different cultures. Unlike governmental officials, business organizations, and other groups who demand respect from cultures by just saying “because we are better than you,” missionaries approach cultures wearing similar clothes as the people of the culture, respect their beliefs, and do not tread on their traditions

Society, indicating the modern world, should by all means try to help cultures like Sawi to reconnect with the outside world. However, I strongly suggest that the first step toward this act to be done with kindness and without urgency. I believe it best to come to these different cultures with small steps and a respect for the culture that they already have and had since the days of their ancestors.

Siete

Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significance to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.

Pg 155:
“The gospel, coming as a message from another world, achieved its first ethnic conquest, not only by the demonstration of miracles, but even more significantly, by dynamic appropriation of Hebrew redemptive analogies. It had been God’s chosen strategy for introducing the Christ.
But to me, as I gazed wistfully across the swamp toward the Haenam manhouse, it seemed that God had not troubled Himself to prepare the Sawi in any similar way for the coming of the gospel.”

Don Richardson, the bringer of the Word into a totally new and outlandish culture that had no resemblance of the concepts of Christianity, found himself in a fix when trying to make the gospel comprehensive to the Sawi people. In the beginning of his ministry, Don was completely perplexed as to in which way he should approach the Sawi with the Christian religion. Don compares the culture of the Sawi with those of the Hebrews and the Greeks stating that the latter two cultures had a connection to the Christian beliefs and thus the religion had been fairly easy for them to embrace. What Don did not know until later was that God had indeed had a “chosen strategy for introducing the Christ” to the Sawi people: the tradition of the tarop (Peace) child.

Sometimes God works in ways I don’t understand. He gives me only a limited view of the whole scope of the situation and thus causes me to feel frustrated at Him for not showing me the whole picture. Like Don, it is easy for me to feel like I have arrived at a dead-end. With the world closing in around me and hardship happening after hardship, it is easy to wonder what in the world God is trying to do with my life. Nevertheless, I should always remember that God is the ultimate planner. He is the Creator and He knows this planet from top to bottom. Although sometimes it may seem that nothing good is going to happen and that everything is getting stuck in a rut, the only thing that I can do is to have faith in God and trust in Him to take care of everything; because one way or another, He definitely will.

Seis

How did Christianity change this culture?

Before the arrival of Don Richardson and his wife Carol, the Sawi were a malevolent headhunting tribe with beliefs centered on cannibalism. The Sawi tradition of “fattening friendship for the slaughter” was rooted deep within the minds of these isolated tribesmen. Violence, betrayal, and joy for treachery embedded in their very beings, the severity of their wicked practices was difficult to fathom.

Although a stubborn and thick shell, the evil looming over the Sawi could not resist the persistent knocking of Christianity for too long. And in due time the adamant fiber of the dark shell enveloping the Sawi people slowly gave way and cracked. With this new revolution, the Sawi were forever changed and were able to penetrate the satanic evil that had been obscuring their view and shift their eyes toward the Heavenly Father.

After the toils of Don and Carol Richardson, the Sawi steadily accepted Jesus Christ to be the perfect tarop child – Peace Child - between God and men. The Sawi decided to cast away their tradition of cannibalism and admitted the reluctance they had felt toward their own customs at certain times such as the ritual for burial, gefam ason.
The acceptance of the Christian religion was like a spurt of fresh water on a thirsty desert land. Renewed of the soul, the Sawi were changed to a trusting, loving people with peace in their heats.

Opening up to Christianity, the Sawi not only found redemption from the Holy Spirit in their souls but also, they found physical healing from the modern world. Having been infested with diseases and unsanitary lifestyles, the Sawi became healthier and more immune to sicknesses after the influence of treatment.

Although Christianity may have destroyed the native culture of the Sawi people, it brought to them something no culture in the world could offer: peace at heart and the love of the perfect tarop child of God.

Cinco

What does Jesus want us to do for the Sawi?

I believe that Jesus wants us to do the same for the Sawi people as he did for his followers in Bible times. Remembering that the followers of Jesus were not necessarily considered revered people but in fact prostitutes, tax collectors, beggars, and those of religiously low status, Jesus still loved them and treated them equally no matter how the world viewed them for deciding to put aside their sinful lives to follow him.

Although it can be said that the Sawi are inconceivably evil compared to the followers of Jesus, they are nonetheless the same in Jesus' eyes and so they should be in ours. The cannibalistic traditions of the Sawi are not important. In fact, if these people opens their eyes to the love of Jesus and make a life-changing decision to follow him as their Savior, it doesn't matter in the least that they used to be murderous barbarians.

I strongly believe that Jesus wants us to show his love to the Sawi. He himself loved the hands that killed him and even asked God to forgive them "for they do not know what they are doing." Even if lives may be laid down on the path to reaching the Sawi, the deaths would open more doors into bringing them to Christ, just like the death of Jesus on the cross for all mankind.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

– 1 Corinthians 13:13

Cuatro

What concepts in the Sawi culture intrigued / reviled / saddened / angered / surprised you?

I found the Sawi culture centered on cannibalism intriguing and somewhat grotesque at the same time. The Sawi traditions portrayed in the first two chapters of the Peace Child was mind-blowing and hard to accept as reality. It was hard to fathom by a couple of pages, which made it totally unthinkable to witness these customs in reality.

I find the mindset of the Sawi entirely intriguing. The vast difference between the values I know and those of the Sawi makes these primitive tribes people even more outlandish and alien. The fact that they respect headhunters who "fatten friendship for the slaughter" is unacceptable in the modern world. This concept keeps me thinking: how can they live when nobody around them is reliable? How can they live with the constant fear of being betrayed? But somehow they do live and live with relationships such as family and friends. It is difficult for me to understand how the Sawi differentiate between real friends and pretentious friends, making their way of life even more confusing but remarkable.

Although interesting in fascinating ways, the Sawi customs are sometimes grotesque to the point of repulsion. The tradition of presenting a victim's jawbone to a woman to wear smashed a single word into my head: evil. This close entwining of evil and the Sawi culture makes the people hard to embrace and pitiful.

However, no matter how the difference the Sawi and my culture may seem, even if their culture is primitively evil, it seems to me that as the novel progresses and Don Richardson reveals the truths about these people, there is good deep within their beings. The Sawi, in my eyes are a people of dark beauty cast in shadows: devastatingly beautiful but dangerously bloodcurdling at the same time.