El caso, la teoría, la apología y la crítica

witchcraft attack.

Rules one to four relate to physical states believed to endanger the growth of living things or regarded as debilitating to individuals.

Just as garden produce and pigs could be endangered after intercourse, during menstruation, or from indirect contact with a corpse's flesh, so too, Kafaina savings must be protected from any polluting or contaminating influences. While for most Kafaina women rule four requires exclusion from Kafaina savings for approximately one week,

the bosmeri - who not only comes into contact with money but also

enters the Kafaina bed - must not participate in meetings for up to one month.

I would also argue that the existence of a separate and special space, the Kafaina bed within the Kafaina house, is the creation of a potent and efficacious environment for the coins that women

contribute. The appearance of the 'bed' itself, resembles the enclosed space for a girl's isolation at first menstruation, and restrictions on entering this area, I believe, affirm the belief that the money itself is endowed with special qualities which are dangerous to both humans and other animate objects. The construction of new Kafaina houses, likewise, occasionally takes place on sites associated with

traditional welfare magic that ensured the continued growth of garden produce and pigs. These are places where men stored or buried

ancestral boards and ritually treated pig killing sticks. Again, Kafaina women insisted that they chose these sites for convenience sake, but equally suitable sites were available, and some people who were not Kafaina members saw a relationship between the 'growth' of Kafaina wealth and traditional beliefs.

As I have noted in chapter four, people take great care when displaying cash in inter-group exchanges; money should not be folded and men frequently obtain mint-condition bills for prestations. Similarly men and women say that coins and paper money should not be taken into gardens though they are unable to state the reason for this modern prohibition. The prohibition against eating pork within the Kafaina house affirms the belief that the savings themselves are potent. The only traditional corollary of this prohibition is the restriction against eating pork inside houses that store 'strong' or powerful substances used in sorcery or love magic. People thought that the presence of pork (specifically pork fat) contaminated these

materials and reduced their efficacy. Pork was also believed to decrease people's strength. Thus, as men were prohibited from eating

pork prior to battle least they be susceptible to enemy attacks, women were prohibited from entering a new garden after consuming pork for fear that their power as producers be decreased and crops be damaged or fail to grow. Rule seven thus restates the relationship between women as producers and protectors of modern wealth within the Kafaina setting, and rule six elaborates on this theme and that concerning the potency of Kafaina wealth by forcing women who have received a major Kafaina payment to abstain from gardening activities.

The final prohibition is clearly meant to protect Kafaina women and savings from witchcraft attack. Women clearly regard their wealth as an obvious target for jealous witches - and for theft by young raskols. Men or women always watch over the Kafaina house when

members are away from the village. It is ironic, therefore, that while Kafaina women fear witchcraft attacks, others suspect them of being witches because they hoard wealth and conceal Kafaina activities.

In addition to these prohibitions, other Kafaina 'laws’ more regularly known by outsiders, reinforce the solidarity of Kafaina groups. Kafaina women, led by their bosmeri, hold courts (called 'making a fire') to enforce these regulations.-^ Men who laugh or joke about Kafaina dances or decorations are fined up to ten kina for their insults. Physical assault against Kafaina women also results in compensation; attacks against a bosmeri result in an immediate ten kina fine. Non-Kafaina women who wear the kiruwa headdress

associated with the movement are similarly fined. A bosmeri can prohibit Kafaina women who argue with her or fail to obey her

instructions from attending Kafaina meetings for one week. Would-be mother groups may also demand compensation when men object to their wives' plans to start a daughter group. In one such instance a village court magistrate who rejected the idea of a Kafaina group paid K20 compensation for the women's labour in travelling to his village.

After receiving this money the Kafaina women returned twice more, only to be rejected and receive compensation - until their fourth attempt to form a daughter group proved successful.

Men may ignore Kafaina women's demands for compensation, and in court, magistrates refuse to uphold the right of Kafaina women to fine

offenders of Kafaina law. But as in the above example, most men submit to Kafaina demands for compensation, stating that Kafaina women are

'strong’ or that they do not wish to be on bad terms with particular Kafaina groups. Several times I saw Kafaina women join together for real or mock attacks on men who had mistreated their wives. Once, a Kafaina woman complained to her group that her husband had killed 'her' pig for a classificatory sister's feast even though he had received no part of the brideprice. The group waited for the husband to return from gathering firewood and set upon him, beating him, though not too strenuously, with fists and sticks. The attack ended with the women cautioning their member's husband not to be as foolish with his pigs in future and admonishing him to consult his wife over future

transactions.

Inter-group ceremonies

Most inter-group visitation and exchanges take place during the coffee flush when groups of 20 or more Kafaina women sing and dance along major roads as they travel to Kafaina meetings. I will discuss first those meetings which take place between mother and daughter

groups, and second those involving formal exchanges between non-related groups.

Mother-daughter visits last as long as three days during which time the hosts provide garden and store foods, freezer meat, and occasionally beer and cooked pork for their guests. Such reciprocal visits - as many as ten per year - provide women with the opportunity to travel to other villages and allow them respite from gardening and other household chores. Husbands of Kafaina women often complain that they are forced to harvest food, prepare their own meals (or rely on the generosity of other women), and care for children during their wives' absences from the village. When their wives act as hosts, furthermore, men must collect firewood, butcher and prepare pigs for cooking, or parry - often unsuccessfully - their wives' demands for men's crops such as sugar cane and bananas. Kafaina women from other groups in the village may also attend, and make small contributions to visits by mother or daughter groups, and as these informal meetings expand in size, Kafaina women may appropriate the use of the men's house for dawn-to-dusk singing sessions thereby forcing men to sleep

in other dwellings.

Small exchanges of money regularly take place at these meetings. All involve 'new' money (that which is not already a part of Kafaina savings); the receiving group divides any payment among its members and places this money in the Kafaina bed. Rough equivalence in payments exists over time, but with daughter groups providing some profit money to their mothers. Many women say that it is only by

’giving birth’ to daughter groups that their own group will become successful and obtain profit. But the real strength of Kafaina as an economic organization results from the capital accumulated upon each transaction with the mother and other Kafaina groups (see below). After groups disperse, they may use this capital while continuing to repay any outstanding debts with ’new' money.

Exchanges between mother and daughter groups are couched in

idiomatic reference to the Kafaina ’child’ or 'daughter', a specially decorated payment given from the mother to daughter group. In Chuave this major payment generally occurs twice: the first, six months to a year after a group begins operation, and again after about two years

(some daughter groups receive these when they have saved K1,000 and K2,000). Prior to these payments mothers say they are 'straightening the road' for the child, and following the transfer of the child, say they are giving money to care for, feed, or clothe the child. In contrast, daughter groups describe payments to their mother as brideprice and later as 'head' pay (child payments). The Kafaina daughter group, therefore, is regarded as wife-receiver to its mother group who is perceived as wife-giver. Sexton provides an analysis of exchanges initiated in Kafaina and actual marriages (1980: 276-277, n. 3, 307). Unlike Chuave women, Daulo women describe both major payments as brideprice and make no reference to 'head' pays. Despite idiomatic references there are clear differences between Kafaina and real marriage exchanges because the 'child' is itself a payment or loan given from mother (wife-giver) to daughter (wife-receiver); that is, a payment that reverses the flow of wealth occurring in actual

marriages.

The 'child' itself exists for only a few weeks during and after the transfer of these payments (which range from K200 to K400). The

girl-child, a netbag in which the money is hidden, is decorated with a woman's pubic string skirt and other ornaments. A match box, containing a one or ten toea coin is also attached to the child. Informants interpret this as a symbol that the daughter, too, saves and hides money and brings wealth to her new clan. As in Daulo (Sexton 1979: 177-179) where some Christians believed Kafaina women prayed to these 'dolls,' members of fundamentalist missions in Chuave told me that the 'child' was a false idol or samting bilong Satan and that women prayed to it to help their money grow.

As Sexton (ibid.) has noted, the netbag is an important symbol of female productivity and nurturance, and she has interpreted the link between the netbag-child and coins as a symbolic statement concerning the importance of women as creators of wealth and

reproducers of society. In Daulo, the netbag, called o w o > meaning 'womb' is displayed on a wooden post following menarche as a symbol of the girl's future marriage and her ability to bring brideprice to her natal clan and also at betrothal in the bride's new village. In Chuave the words for netbag and womb are different, and netbags are not displayed at marriage. Brides, however, often carry newly made netbags, laced with two kina notes which constitute their personal wealth, when they travel to their new villages. In the Gai-Onakari

region and in Siane, furthermore, netbags are sometimes displayed on a wooden frame - precisely as Kafaina women display them - following a girl's first menstruation. Another Kafaina practice explicitly

demonstrates a young girl's ability to bring wealth to her natal group; some groups hide the netbag-child in the Kafaina bed for a period of two to three weeks after its arrival in the daughter group's village. During this time, when Kafaina women are also restricted from entering gardens, the receiving group may not open the netbag or see the actual payment.

Sexton notes that in Daulo the ritual departure of the 'child' from the mother group's house and village recapitulates all the impor­ tant events in a woman's lifecycle, with the exception of menarche. Daulo women themselves, however, describe the ritual strictly as symbolic marriage of the 'child'. For example, the symbolic daughter is instructed in her duties as a wife, the raothers/wife-givers 'sob and cry out in sorrow at the girl's departure', and the daughter group

is urged to ’look after’ the bride who, it is said, will be homesick for her family (Sexton 1982: 177-180). I witnessed only two departures of the ’child ’ and neither followed the pattern reported for Daulo.

In Chuave, when the bosmeri carried the doll from the Kafaina house she proceeded along a path lined with coffee leaves and flowers, called the rot bilong moni - a practice analogous once again to a young

g i r l ’s emergence from menstrual isolation. Women then publicly