So our yard man/guard came back to Sentani on the weekend. It turns out his brothers didn't really know the real reason why he went up to Pyramid. "Y" went up there to finalize his divorce from "M". When he married her, he paid her family 13 pigs. Now that they are divorcing, his family is supposed to pay back the dowry. However, they did have a son who died at 3 months of age so the family took off 5 pigs from the re-payment.... I assume Y left the pigs in the care of his relatives there. Currently, large pigs are worth (according to "I") 15 million rupiah ($1,500). They used to be worth 10 million rupiah but because the price of rice has gone up, the price of pigs has gone up by 50%.... seems a little extreme to me... Y said that his (ex) wife was crying and asking him to take her back but he refused... I wanted to say a lot to him, but it wasn't the time or the place as I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and had food cooking on the stove. He brought us a big bag of vegetables from Wamena. It's very touching that he does this. He told me that he really missed us while he was gone...
There was a widow with three young children living with I and her dad. This woman is quite the character and had basically chased away another widow with daughter who had also been living with them. This woman is addicted to beetle nut and seems to care not a whit about her children. A couple years ago I first saw her older son. He had a very large open wound on the back of his neck. I asked the mom if she was able to bring him to the doctor. She said yes she was, but a health worker had already given him a needle. She didn't bring the boy to a doctor. Eventually the wound healed up. However, a few months ago he began to swell up. She did not bring him to the doctor even though "I" encouraged her to do so. Finally, she brought him to the Catholic hospital in Waena. The most expensive hospital; and she has no money or insurance. I and her husband went there to visit and they brought rice and drinking water but all the mother could say was, "Do you have money for beetle nut?" and "I went to the witch doctor and he told me who made my son sick." When asked if the doctor had given her son medicine, she ignored the question and asked for money to buy beetle nut. When the hospital realized she was not going to pay, they took her cellphone and sent them to the public hospital in Jayapura. On Saturday night the boy passed away. The mother decided to bury him in Jayapura. A strange decision as his father is buried in the graveyard near our house and that is so much closer. A group of people from the community here went to Jayapura on Saturday. They wanted to talk to the mother about her decision and tell her not to come back to live here on Pos 7. The people here are sick of being used by her. But when they arrived, the body had not yet been buried and as long as there is a body, they cannot discuss anything. So I told me that tomorrow when they do the final funeral service (4 days following death) the people plan to tell her their decision. Throughtout this whole ordeal, the 5 year old twins were living with I... What a sad, sad situation...