Thursday, April 03, 2008

I don’t know if you remember, but a while back I wrote about a woman who was beaten to death by her husband and then found by the side of the road by a guy on a motorbike. Well, the husband is in police custody now. He had been having an affair with a woman who lives down the road a bit from us. Today I heard all kinds of hooting and hollering and I asked Rita what it was about. She told me that today the family and tribe members of the woman that was killed were going down to the house of the woman who was involved in the affair and they were going to collect a fine. Apparently they wanted 70 million rupiah! I asked Rita who in the world would have that kind of money. She said that the fine would be paid in pigs and probably not that much. If the husband hadn’t killed his wife, just had an affair, the people group of the woman would have had to pay 500,000 only. But because he murdered his wife, they have to pay a lot more. So the actions of one person can have a drastic effect on the tribe as a whole!

1 comment:

Pearl said...

Death is a new reality there which must be hard to handle at first since we rarely see death. Sounds like $ is their unofficial form of punishment for adultery?
Good to hear Hugo is working a bit now. Must be exciting to see the plane refitted & flying. Seeing your mission in action. Take care!