As I continued working through our culture study I came to “birth and dying”. I needed to dig into questions like “What happens when a person dies?”, “Is there a road to getting to heaven?”, “Are the dead conscious?” and “Does anyone ever return from the place of the dead?”.
In December an older Kovol man died. This man being a clan leader meant that it was a fairly big deal and people from all 7 Kovol villages came to mourn. There was tension at the time and fights almost started. In January a rumour was going around that the village the man came from was making accusations of sorcery. At a meeting in January, these were declared to just be rumours and everyone was “one stomach”.
Lots of areas of Kovol culture can be investigated by asking questions. I ask questions with my voice recorder on and learn all kinds of cultural tidbits and vocabulary. The best way to learn though is to see cultural events happening as a fly on the wall, and I got a great opportunity to dive into the justice system this week when a village court was called.
Gerdine hiked down to a Kovol garden 3 hours away and spent the night there as part of her language study. She filmed a little bit of her journey and talked about it – in Dutch, but don’t worry there are English subtitles 🙂