Anthropological Approach to Vulnerability and Major Hazards - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 269

structured). Depending on the societies and the domains of expertise,
attention is diverted as a priority to material or symbolic hazards (risks
or dangers), to the blows struck at the continuity of meaning (an
event) or on the deregulation phenomena (process). We will have
recourse to these categories in the two case studies that follow.

7.3. Ambrym 1913

In the autumn of 1892, Robert Lamb, a doctor who qualified at
Edinburgh and had just been ordained a priest by the clergy at
Auckland was sent by the Presbyterian church to establish a religious,
medical and industrial center at Ambrym. The island communities
then consisted only of 5,000 natives known for their intensive use of
magic and abelyep sorcery. Previous missionnaries (1862, 1883 and
1885) named the island “the Mother of obscurity”. Lamb saw a
challenge there that was even greater. It was a question, he noted, of
“succouring dusty peoples” [LAM 05].

Medical care is only one dimension of a sanitary enterprise of a
biological, moral and economic nature where it is a question of
civilizing “savagery” in all its forms.

[ and ] illuminating [ these ]

The reverend made his home in the west of the island, at Dip Point,
“exactly along the passage of the boats and with ten surrounding
villages within range of gunshot” [LAM 05, pp. 43-44]. He thus
planned to enlighten the whole of the archipelago. However, only a
few months after his arrival, in March 1893, a hurricane destroyed the
crops and forests, as well as the buildings that Doctor Lamb, his wife
Mary Manson Reiach and his companions had established. A famine
followed. Their twins, born there three months previously, suffered
from malnutrition and then succumbed two weeks later to an intense
fever.

A year later, Lamb rebuilt the hospital. It burned down the same
year. Having no more funds, he returned to New Zealand to enquire at
the Presbyterian church, returned in 1896 and refounded a hospital in
the same area. That year, it succeeded. He was pleased since, he noted,
26 patients went there each day on average. The following year,
however, Doctor Lamb contracted tuberculosis, which eventually