Maewo Murders

I briefly mentioned some brutal murders involving a village on the island of Maewo in my last blog posting. It is an interesting story, so I thought I would go into further detail.

The story has dominated local news coverage throughout the past several months and I was somewhat apprehensive about visiting this community after reading about what happened there.

It all started with the mysterious deaths of two headmasters at the village high school. One died of unexplained causes and then the replacement suffered the same fate within just a few months. They were relatively young and suffering from no diagnosed medical conditions. Of course it is possible that they died of a brain aneurism, stroke caused from a blocked artery or sudden severe illness- and that the timing of their deaths was merely a coincidence. But that is not what the community believes. Their village was positive that someone had performed black magic on the two teachers, out of jealousy or anger.

Specifically, they thought the two teachers had been poisoned. There are certain kastom rituals involving poison and black magic that thrive in Vanuatu today and have been practiced for thousands of years. While I may doubt these supernatural powers some may claim to have on the islands, a majority of the population is in total belief.

The village elders performed a kastom ritual to discover who was responsible for the black magic poisonings. The Maewo ritual is quite elaborate and I have never observed it- but apparently 10 meter long bamboo trees are cut down on top of a mountain and carried great distances, never being allowed to make contact with the ground, to a holy tabu place. The bamboo is then cut and filled with water and the village elders consult spirits which speak to them through the bamboo. Anyhow, the spirits evidently indicated that two men in the village were responsible for the deaths of the teachers.

There was a huge meeting in the village where the two men were accused. They denied any and all wrongdoing. One apparently gave an alibi for his location during the time of one of the deaths. The alibi turned out to be false though, the accused man later claimed to have confused the dates. But this was more than enough evidence for the village to assume the worst.

The village began to stone the two men, who immediately fled into the bush. Maewo has a plentiful supply of large, aerodynamic, volcanic stones- it is a wonder that the two escaped the meeting alive. A group of villagers swears that as they were about to stone one accused man to death, he vanished into thin air, further evidence of the use of black magic.

The two accused men hid in the dense bush and left the island in middle of the night. They took a boat to the island of Ambae, about a 90 minute trip away via motor boat or full night's effort in a canoe.

The village chief caught wind of the escape and ordered that a search party be dispatched to kill the two suspects. A boat carried the search party to Ambae the next day. They located one of the accused men rather quickly on the shore of the provincial capital. He was brutally cut into pieces with machetes and axes. I met a man from Ambae who witnessed the murder. He described the slaying in detail but said that the local Ambae men, including the police were afraid of interfering and inciting the wrath of the search party.

The second accused man had been admitted to the area hospital because of wounds inflicted during his stoning. He was tracked down and murdered in his hospital bed.

The search party returned to Maewo with the remains of accused men. The village tearlessly inspected their remains and initial preparations to bury the bodies were abandoned when it was suggested that the two could use black magic to resurrect themselves in the night and cause mischief. Thus, the two bodies were transported out to a deep place on the ocean and dumped overboard.

There are two Peace Corps volunteers, a young married couple named Justin and Sheridan, who work as teachers in this community. As you can imagine, it has been a stressful period of time for them, witnessing these events unfold. Justin described the unreal scene of viewing the remains of the slain men arrive back on Maewo. I asked for his opinion on the recent turmoil and why he and his wife remained in the village. He expressed his distaste for what had happened but thought that the villagers were well-intentioned nonetheless. They were just doing everything in their power to protect the school and make their community safer.

Anyhow, it is one hell of a story.

Certain search party members later turned themselves into police custody on the island of Ambae. It is unlikely that they will face harsh consequences.