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Chapter 19

The View From Above

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
Psalm 46:10

Thump, thump, thump. The cadence of marching feet tramped out of the real world into the fog of dreamland. Slowly I awakened to the familiar sound of chanting male voices and the continuing slap of broad, bare feet on the split palm floor. Had the men really been at this all night? I squinted, trying to see through the mosquito net to look at the clock. 5:30 A.M.
No need for the alarm today, I sighed as I reached over to hit the button.
This was the third day of continuous practice up in the men's house for the Foke. Up and down the narrow center hallway they tramped in unison as the caller hoarsely sang out the verse. Replying as if in agreement, the warriors' Ya! ya! ya! slowly faded before a pause and the next call. I hated to think what the real thing would be like if this was just the rehearsal. Everyone in the village seemed excited about the coming feast they called Foke. As far as Neil and I could tell, it was the only big occasion of its kind.
Hardly anyone could remember for sure when the last Foke had taken place. The oldest man in the village said it was before government patrols came regularly into the Folopa area. That would make it more than twenty years before, in the early 1960s.
"It's like your Christmas," said Hariso Hama, who, as our nearest neighbor, had seen us celebrate Christmas. "Everyone gives gifts to everyone else." She glowed with anticipation and excitement.
All kinds of gifts had to be given year-round for births, deaths and maintaining family peace and tranquility. Everyone would kill a pig and share the meat around to fulfill their obligations, which were many. For every marriage there had to be gifts going both ways to the extended families. For every child gifts were required for the mother's brother and his children. Men from each clan married women from all the other twelve clans, so the process was complicated.
Even so, everyone knew exactly to whom he or she was indebted. Those who gave large or extra portions were well thought of in the community. Generous and greedy were two concepts well understood by the Folopa people. So Foke gave everybody an opportunity to square up on their social indebtedness.
We kept asking when Foke would actually take place, but no one could say for sure. Later we learned that it would come after the current crop of vegetables was harvested, when the garden season ended and during the period of time before the new gardens were planted, when little was required in the way of labor. It would be months before that time came, so there was plenty of time for preparation.
And prepare they did. The chanting and marching went on and on, casting an aura of dull exhaustion over the men, who now had little time for sleep.
Little had we known that we were partly responsible for this event. Pigs were the main dish at a feast, and killing pigs was a central event. We were told that unless there were a great number of pigs alive, there could be no Foke. It just happened that two years before, Neil and a visiting doctor had inoculated every swine they could find against anthrax, a common killer of pigs. Our desire had been to help make a better supply of protein available to the villagers. But instead of killing the pigs a few at a time for special meals, they were being saved for a feast, and now a record number were alive and kicking. In fact, the pig population was getting out of hand. High-pitched squeals punctuated the airwaves all hours of the day and night. The time to kill the pigs had definitely arrived.
We got the impression that because it had been so many years since there were enough pigs to have a Foke, people had forgotten how to prepare for the feast properly. This apparently was being remedied with training and disciplined drill. The sergeants of this informal army were the old men who had fought and killed enemies in battles of yesteryear. They alone remembered how to paint the body and decorate it with feathers, shells and fur. The older women looked on with pride as their sons and grandsons now learned the ancient skills.
In the dark of the men's house, they secretly painted each other's faces, placed the old fur- and feather-trimmed headpieces on heads, wrapped their chests in ancient bark belts covered with tiny shells, pulled on more recently woven leg and armbands and hung pig tusk necklaces around their necks. With ax in one hand and bow and arrows in the other, the outfit was complete.
During the daytime hours the marching took place in the be bela, or open area in front of the men's communal house, called the dape. From inside the dape they came two by two, in a long line, their faces looking fiercely straight ahead. Fifty yards beyond the dape was the temake be--unusual as the only round building in the village. The marchers would circle around the temake be, then head back to the long, narrow building from which they had emerged.
"What is that round house, the temake be?" we had asked a number of times over the years since we had arrived to take up this work in the language group. We had hoped to get more clues as to its use, but until now no one had been willing to talk about it.
"In times past," we were told, "when men were injured in battle, they would recuperate in there, where no one could see their wounds or their shame at being weak and injured. Inside a man would grow strong again. If anyone was critically ill, he was laid in the temake be to be healed."
Another said, "During the feast the men would bury small stone carvings of yams and other garden vegetables in the dirt floor of the house. They would chant over the stones and then sleep on them, thereby making the gardens good."
Still another man had said, "The dape house is man and the temake be is woman."
This was very interesting, but what was the connection with all this information?
"What does that chanting mean?" we asked the old head man.
He looked as if that were too difficult a question to answer. "The words are about mountains, streams, animals, birds, the sky. But that is not what the chanting means. The words are hidden talk for other things. They are about fighting .... " He paused. "It's too hard to tell you."
It must have been like trying to explain Shakespeare to someone who barely knew English. We asked others about the meaning of the doware fo, or chanting.
"You don't want to know that," they said. "The doware fo is not for Christians to think about. It's bad."
Now this was a mystery. Why did they not want to tell us what the words were?

I tried listening carefully, with no success. The voice quality of the caller made the words almost impossible to make out. Still, Neil and I continued to ask, even though it seemed as if we were getting nowhere.
Several weeks later the feast still had not happened. It was our scheduled time to leave the village and return to Ukarumpa. Sadly we left, only to find out a few days after our departure that the feast was finally taking place. It was very disappointing to miss the grand finale. When would there be another event like this one? We did not understand the full meaning behind this important episode in Fukutao village's life, and now it looked as if we would never find out.

Several years went by and the mystery was no closer to being solved. Since my children were getting older, my role had changed and I had more time to work directly with the language. I began to take over study of the grammar and dictionary from Neil so he would have more time to spend on translation.
Solving language problems turned out to be a challenging and enjoyable task. There were still a number of unsolved mysteries waiting for me to analyze, to make our understanding of the grammar more complete.
As I worked painstakingly on my latest problem, that of settling on a final form for the Folopa alphabet, I began to find some startling features that we had missed. Most of the verbs that began with the letter d, for instance, represented important activities--strong action producing significant results. Interesting. Would it have any impact on our translation efforts?
I focused on some of the words that began with d to see how important they really were. The word dowa (grow) was a puzzle because it seemed to be one of the few verbs that did not have the impact of other words like dae (kill) or diri (to be hard).
Something clicked in my brain. Doware fo from the Foke feast meant something about growing--the doware (growth) fo (talk). Could it mean that the chanting from the feast preparations was about trying to get something to grow? And how important was it to do that? It was time to check this out with an expert.
"You see, it all happens like this," began Baro Ali after he agreed to sit down with Neil and me and answer our questions. "The men speak the doware fo over and over. Then the women are enabled to become pregnant. Pigs have large litters of young. The gardens produce greater amounts of food. The chanting continues until the gardens and pigs are full grown. That's why it takes so long to get ready for the feast. It's the talk that makes everything produce and grow."
I thought about the word Foke. It looked as if it came from the words fo (talk) and ke (something good). In this case the whole feast was about celebrating the people's success at bringing about new life and growth. To put it in a Folopa expression, they "caused everything to become good." If done properly, the effect would last for many years.
At last I could see what I had not seen before-some clues as to the purpose of the feast. The chanting made sense now, even though we never did learn the actual words. We knew what it was intended to do. The doware fo, it turned out, was a source of life.
Then it struck me that Neil and I had a parallel purpose in being in this village-to bring the message of life, eternal life. This message came in the form of words-the Word of God. The whole concept of substitutionary sacrifice and a greater life than the one we know now was already well established in the hearts of the Folopa people. Suddenly I thought, I'm in the right business, bringing the talk that brings new life and growth
to a people who might otherwise never have heard it. I was grateful that we were about halfway through working toward the completion of the Scriptures for these people.
Reflecting on the Papua New Guinean culture, I thought about how all of us as humans try so hard to establish a ritual, make our own rules, then believe we will be rewarded for following them. How vital it is for us to follow the divine pattern in which God gives us life through His Word freely without our having to work for or earn our salvation. No rituals or additional sacrifices are required for us to find life in Jesus Christ. He has already done it all.

Our next trip out of the village was by small airplane. During the years in which we had labored to complete the translation of the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, the Folopa people had been working on their own long-term project, an airstrip. In 1991 it was completed, dedicated and opened amid great celebration. What a thrill it was to take off and fly out over the area and look down at the landscape that had changed little over the years.
The church was in temporary quarters, waiting for a new and much larger building to be built. The three long, narrow men's houses looked just the same. The women were still living, for the most part, in separate little dwellings lined up on either side of the open area, in front of each of the long houses. The space once occupied by the temake be, where many of the Foke rituals had been performed, was empty now. The building had been torn down some time back when it was too weak to stand any longer. Then, of course, there were our buildings--our home, the Bible house where some men now helped Neil do the work of Bible translation, and the literacy building. As we flew over, I thought about the Foke feast and what I had been finding out about words that bring life. Once again it was as if my eyes refocused and I saw something I had never noticed before.
The position of the buildings, particularly the long house and the round temake be, could likely have been symbols in themselves of sexual reproduction. The names of the buildings even suggested that this was true. The men had told us that the one house was man and the other, woman. I had had no idea what he was talking about, but now I understood.
Not only were the words of chanting bringing life, but other activities as well symbolized the union between the two sexes. The final result of that union was a new birth. In the seclusion of the round temake be, the small, buried stones would symbolically grow and be born into the environment. Out in the gardens, plants were bearing fruit in reality.
Looking down, I saw that the men's house no longer pointed to the female temake be, as it was gone. Now the long building pointed to the opposite end, to our buildings. It was probably a coincidence that the old symbol was gone and, in a strange way, a new symbol was there-the place where the Word of God was being translated. Did this mean there was still a significant pattern in the village layout?
As this new information sank in, another even greater thought surfaced. God had been using the Folopa people's symbolic religious system to reveal His own much greater truth-the truth about real life. It had been in plain sight all these years, even during my days of struggle and depression. The symbolism was obvious.
On the ground, the modern-day people had somehow lost the deeper meaning of the symbolism, much like those in my American culture who no longer understood our Thanksgiving celebration. Our generation observed the traditions without knowing fully why it was important or where it had come from. But regardless of the Folopa people's or my abilities to perceive what had been happening over eons of time, God had been at work and had left a sign of His presence. It waited only for us to focus our vision and see what was before us.
God seemed to be saying to me (shades of Martha), Carol, Carol, you worry about so many things. I have been here working long before you came. I saw what they were doing, trying to find life without Me. I have a plan and I am achieving it. The Folopa people will find life. And just to show you how much I love you, I'm letting you help make it happen.
Tears streamed down my face as I acknowledged that God had indeed proven to be everything He had said in His Word. I was the one who had worried constantly that I was not worthy of His love. I remembered my anger at Him after my near-death illness when I had turned around and wondered if He was worthy of my love. How foolish I had been ever to doubt, and how foolish to feel angry at Him for letting me down! His ways were not my ways. I would have managed things to make them more comfortable for me and mine. But God had chosen another path-one that led through the storms and fires of life.
He had said through the prophet Isaiah:
"I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say: My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please ....
What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do."
Isaiah 46:9-11
Nothing changes an attitude like a view of the big picture! I knew that the really big picture was even more exciting than this. But just a little view from above was enough to expand my vision.

Chapter 20 >