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Ok. In the next two weeks I will visit them. [Harold
Temar emphasizes:] in the two weeks of the visit that Lin
Mal had announced, on the 13th December 1913, the
volcano came. Fire destroyed everything. [HOS 07]
In November 1913, the Ambrymais were agreed. The community
conflicts that were - from their point of view - the cause of the
settlers' arrival then ended. The conversion and sociocultural change
were perceived as too great a threat. Then, they sought, by all means,
to kick the intruders out of the island. Local history does not say if the
different misfortunes that had struck Fletcher previously - the fires,
the illnesses, the storm, the famine - were of magic or criminal origin.
But the Ambrymais claimed at least one of them. They did, they say
unanimously, “call upon the volcano”. They had recourse to the
strength of the sacred fire, to magic, to the power of the ancients to put
an end to the situation of profound cultural crisis.
Let us resume: in the first instance, the Ambrymais invited the
settlers to come to their island in order to resolve internal conflicts.
They were first delighted but then progressively disenchanted, seeing
their customs and their moral values disappearing with the
conversions. They suddenly saw that a catastrophe was under way,
which would lead to the end of what structured their world, that is to
say their traditions and rules of community life. They called on the
“fire of the volcano” and triggered its eruption to deal with the
situation. From a local perspective, the eruption of the volcano did not
constitute a catastrophe but, quite the contrary, an ancestral means of
defense, a magic wand for managing catastrophes.
7.3.3. The assymetry of the interpretations
The year 1913 at Ambrym was not experienced in the same
manner depending on who the protagonists were. Depending on
whether you look at it from the point of view of the settlers or the
Ambrymais, the accounts differ. For the settlers, what made the
catastrophe was the (volcanic) eruption , whereas for the natives it was
the irruption (of civilization in their traditions).
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