Crazy Stories from Mas

This is Mas. And these are his stories. They are crazy.

He is a friend from another village who comes to help us with language sometimes. He is a great storyteller and he has some pretty amazing stories to tell.

He was recently being courted (sued for pigs and money) by our neighbor, Jo, for shooting Jo in the leg with an arrow many years ago. It goes something like this:

JM- "Why was Jo courting (suing) you?"

Mas- "My wife was married before to Jo's uncle. But Jo's uncle never paid his bride price, so my wife's brother's hung him from a tree and he died. Then she was a widow so I married her.

One day Jo's uncle's mother secretly fed my wife some of her dead son's flesh*, so my wife became a witch. Once she got a taste of flesh she has to eat more so she eats people's insides and they die. Then some people came and killed her with bows and arrows.

Later, I shot Jo in the leg for the revenge of my wife, and now he is courting (suing) me."

*At this point from what we have understood from our coworkers is that in reality no one actually secretly feeds these women with human flesh, but that is the belief of how they become witches, and people sometimes just take a guess as to who supposedly fed human flesh to them. In this case what probably actually happened is that Mas's wife was marked as a witch because someone got sick and died. Then they just said, "I bet it was her old mother-in-law who fed her human flesh because she was angry that the family killed her son." We don't know for sure exactly, but this is our best guess.

The End.


Story number two:

We were all hanging outside Fato's house (Fato is one of our village and church leaders. You can watch a video of his story here. You can also see it in the background of the picture of Mas, and a lot of other pictures we have. We hang out there a lot). Fato comes walking up from administering medicine to a little boy with a very infected tooth. We were telling him how sorry we felt for the little boy because mouth pain is really bad. Fato said, "Yeah, when your tooth is in pain it shoots straight up to your head and makes you feel like your head is breaking open."

Mas said, "One time, my head was broken open and it hurt a lot."

JM, "What happened?"

Mas answered, "In nineteen ninety....(Mas is thinking long and hard)...EIGHT, there was this big fight in Pasife over a bride price" (can you tell that bride price is really important?) Someone hit me in the head with their ax. My eyes were going around and around and my brains were coming out and then I died (fainted). Then I woke up and got to the house and some men tried to get the ax out but they couldn't. Finally, one man put both his feet on my shoulders and pulled with both hands and got it out. After that, I grabbed my bow and arrows. I came out to shoot but my head was really hurting so instead I got shot in the chest with an arrow (points to huge circular scar in the middle of his chest). I have a big scar in my head too. Here, feel (takes my husband's hand to feel the long thick scar on his head). So...yeah it really hurts when your head is breaking open.

The End.

This has been crazy stories from Mas.

So do you remember what you were doing in 1998?