The rainbow never sets

WHO GETS THE HEAD AND WHO THE TAIL?

"In Rote we seldom hear people say 'let's go to a party.' As a rule they say 'let's go to eat meat.' This expression is, of course, quite accurate, for everyone gets such a big piece of meat, that sometimes they cannot even finish it. What is left of it may be taken home. At a wedding feast, for instance, the food consists of unlimited amounts of rice, boiled meat and black soup. The latter is due to the fact that the goat or pig killed is not skinned but put on the fire just as it is. After it is partly roasted, it is cut into pieces and then boiled.

"Then an experienced person is chosen to deal out the meat to the guests. You can't take just anyone for this job. The person dealing out the pieces must know whether it is proper to give a certain piece to a certain guest or not. Usually, the animal is cut up according to a set rule and divided among the guests according to their social status. If the guest is a local king, a chief, a village elder, the head of a family, or a foreigner, he gets the meat that is on the head of the animal, as a sign of honouring him. Each other part of the animal is dealt out according to the social status of the receiver. The neck, for instance, goes to the elder brothers; the ribs and sides to the highest females at the party, the mother and elder aunts; the hips to the lower class females and all the sisters. The legs are for children, the tail and stomach for the hired workers, and the flanks are for ordinary people and neighbours.

"For each feast many animals (between 20 and 40) have to be killed. 'We don't want to appear mean,' say people from Rote, 'What's the point, otherwise, of working hard all our life, collecting food and breeding animals?' At other times they very seldom eat rice or meat. Their staple food is corn and tuak (sugar palm juice), fish or prawns. Meat and rice is kept and saved up, as their saying goes: "Have your umbrella ready before it rains." Their umbrella is a tuak leaf, and if it rains you can't just climb up the slippery trunk to cut your big leaf then.

"Sometimes rice is being sold, but only for emergency, such as if people need a parang (bush knife), kerosene, beetle nuts, tobacco or clothes." (see M. Manafe: Pulau Rote).

We discussed this story and learnt from it that Rotinese have a strong tie to tradition, that their society is rather stratified, that they are ready to share, and that they have great joy in celebrating. This would need to be taken into account when they want to minister to them.

This study tour gave our students also a better insight into their own culture and tradition. When we came back to the class, we tried to link the Christian faith with some of their other deep seated traditional beliefs. For instance, in their traditional stories, their creator spirit was called Uis Neno. He manifested himself in the fierce crocodiles, but also in the water

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