Las Kad
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This morning I woke early — around 5:30 with the chickens and the next door neighbours’ kids — and dressed before my host, Dan, had emerged. Since I’d gotten a little sunburnt yesterday, today I chose to wear a real button-down shirt with a collar instead of the singlet that’s been my usual attire for the last few days. I’ve got a couple of proper shirts here, and this morning I was tossing up between the black and the white one. I went for white, since even though it’s a cool day here — 27C and cloudy — that’s still warm enough to prefer light colours.
Turns out I should’ve worn the black one. The women of Vanuatu request people to wear black each Thursday as a token of recognition of violence against women.
Like many places in the developing (and not so developing) world, violence against women, particularly domestic violence, is commonplace here in Vanuatu. Women are regularly beaten and occasionally killed by male members of their families.
A few months ago, Port Vila broke out in inter-island violence in the wake of the killing of a woman by her husband. Houses were burned, men were killed, and my friend Dan feared for the welfare of his adopted family. He posted about it here: Inter-islandism, and his followup status update.
Wan Smolbag Theatre is a community theatre company operating on the outskirts of town. Last night I attended a production, “Las Kad” (Last Card), presented in Bislama. “Las Kad” is a fictionalised account of a situation very much like that which occurred here back in March. Madeleine is a young woman unhappy in her marriage to Gordon, and leaves him. Her parents and their chief try to effect a reconciliation, and encourage her to go back. Unfortunately, Gordon is jealous of her relationship with another man, Robin, and kills her. Madeleine’s family ask the local magic man to determine who killed her. For reasons of his own, the magic man points the finger at Robin. Madeleine’s extended family all set out to kill Robin, and enormous trouble ensues.
It was a powerful and extremely professional performance by any standards; even with my tiny smattering of Bislama I followed most of the story and found it fascinating and horrifying by turns. Almost as interesting was watching the audience; most of them were ni-Vanuatu, and the women in particular laughed nervously and hid their faces behind their hands at some of the most difficult points in the story.
I didn’t follow the language well enough to understand what moral, if any, was drawn at the end of the story. I’m just left wishing that I’d known to wear my black shirt today.
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