Item details
Item ID
VKS2-148_8
Title FND102 Maewo Kastom Story
Description Intro: James Gwero, Jeffrey Uli, Oscar Leo

Kastom Story#1 by Jeffery Uli.

Story about rain, thunder and winds followed by a song at the place Rewo on Maewo Island. There was a man with his two sons and one day, the father went off to the gardens leaving his sons on their own.
They were playing then decided to walk off following a track that led them to a house they discovered in the bushlands. It belonged to a demon called Tongalulua.

They were already hungry for food so one of the sons went to check out the house and met the demon as asked for food. The demon then gave him firewood to light up to cook but the firewood could not light up the fire. The brothers complained to the demon, and he became angry and called on the rains, thunder and winds to the place. The brothers also have some powers to call on the rain and thunder too. The brothers rain calling was more effective and flooded the demon’s house that eventually drowned the demon. They returned home singing the rain song when flooding was happening from the rains, thunder and winds.

Kastom Story#2 by Oscar Leo.

Sarawai was a blind man. One day he was sweeping around his house with his broom when he felt a bird poop dropped from the tree branch above him. It smelled it was shit of the bird droppings onto his blind eye. Sarawai then tied a rope onto his broom and shot it up the tree in the direction where the droppings came from. The broom thrown was a direct hit on the bird and fell next to him with the rope intact. He then cleaned the bird of its feathers then placed it on heated stone on the open ground oven.

Sarawai then went to his place overlooking the sea where Tangaro and his friends were swimming and playing in the waves crashing to the beach. He began singing with the name Tangaro whilst facing the beach.

Tangaro heard the singing with his name in the song while Sarawai was waiting for his food in the open oven to be cooked. Tangaro heard the song then got they left the beach to the open oven where they got the cooked food and all ate it while Sarawai was still in his resting place and continued singing not knowing that the people had gone into his home. After the finished eating they piled their excreta onto the same stone in the open oven and covered up their shit.

They all returned to the beach and Tangaro began singing back to Sarawai that your food is there to be eaten. When Sarawai returned to his house he smelled excreta, so he then swept around with his broom, but the smell still did not go away. When he got to his open oven to get his food, he found that it was all the excreta and not the cooked food.

Sarawai then got a coconut and broke it used the two shells to open both his blind eyes. He then took his bow and arrow and was now chasing Tangaro. This was happening on Maewo and Tangaro then escaped and landed on Omba and eventually disappeared to Manaro.

(Steven Gagau, February 2025)
Origination date 1977-04-02
Origination date free form
Archive link https://catalog.paradisec.org.au/repository/VKS2/148_8
URL
Collector
Richard Shing
Countries To view related information on a country, click its name
Language as given Bislama
Subject language(s) To view related information on a language, click its name
Content language(s) To view related information on a language, click its name
Dialect
Region / village Maewo Island, Penama Province
Originating university University of Sydney
Operator
Data Categories historical reconstruction
Data Types Sound
Discourse type narrative
Roles James Gwero : recorder
Steven Gagau : data_inputter
Jeffrey Uli : speaker
Oscar Leo : speaker
DOI 10.26278/m49v-wt88
Cite as Richard Shing (collector), James Gwero (recorder), Steven Gagau (data_inputter), Jeffrey Uli (speaker), Oscar Leo (speaker), 1977. FND102 Maewo Kastom Story. JPEG/TIFF/MPEG/VND.WAV. VKS2-148_8 at catalog.paradisec.org.au. https://dx.doi.org/10.26278/m49v-wt88
Content Files (4)
Filename Type File size Duration File access
VKS2-148_8-1.jpg image/jpeg 4.78 MB
VKS2-148_8-1.tif image/tiff 155 MB
VKS2-148_8-A.mp3 audio/mpeg 14.5 MB 00:15:50.72
VKS2-148_8-A.wav audio/vnd.wav 522 MB 00:15:50.29
4 files -- 696 MB -- --

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Collection Information
Collection ID VKS2
Collection title Vanuatu Cultural Centre
Description This is a collection of recordings held by the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta. These files were digitised in 2018 by the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).
This work was funded by a Legacy Materials Grant from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP LMG0009) in the UK.
Countries To view related information on a country, click its name
Languages To view related information on a language, click its name
Access Information
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Data access conditions Open (subject to agreeing to PDSC access conditions)
Data access narrative
Metadata
RO-Crate Metadata
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