I'm back in Sentani eh...

After more than 35 hours of travel I arrived safely back in Sentani. The trip was long but fairly uneventful. While on the plane from Makasar to Biak there was an announcement asking if there were any medical people on board who could assist a passenger in dire need of medical assistance. I looked up ahead and saw a group of people clustered around one of the seats. Not sure if any of them was a medical professional. However, there was a gentlemen across the aisle from me, wearing a Kim Jong Il type suite with gold framed glasses, who, without examining the patient, told one of the flight attendants to give the person a pill which he just happened to have on him... okaaaayyy.... Gotta love this place...
This morning as we were eating our pancake breakfast, we saw many people begin running past our house and up the road; some of them carrying machetes or sticks. A police vehicle also raced up the road. Ritha went outside and asked one of them what was going on. Turns out that the daughter of the local RW (head of a bunch of subdivisions) was found dead by the side of the road. Not our road, but a road that meets up with our road. She had been missing since last night and was found this morning by her uncle as he went up to work in his garden. When a member of the Dani tribe dies in a car accident it is a big deal. They don't view accidents like accidents and will demand 100's of million rupiah from the tribe of the person that was involved. They are still rooted in the old customs of an eye for an eye. Traditionally, before the modern world entered their world, when someone from another tribe killed one of their own, they would reply by killing one from the offending tribe. Now they just ask for money...
Later on we saw the mobil jenazah (literally=dead body car) go by on its way to the hospital where an autopsy was to be performed. It seems that this girl was beaten to death. Very sad. As people came down the hill later some of the women were calling out loudly. Ritha explained that close family members of the mother of the person who died call out like that.
Let's pray that the people will remain calm and not go out an attempt to exact vengeance for this death. Let's pray that they will remember God's word and act accordingly.