I asked about the family of the man who had died, and whether he was known in the community. She said, yes, he was known and his family is known. “But,” she explained, “he may have brought pain and disgrace on his family so they do not want to be coming here to take the body.” I told her Dave’s comment from yesterday (which he attributes to his mother) that “Every bad guy has a mother that loves him,” and she laughed.

Dave has posted some additional thoughts on his blog, which should be read: http://afriquiescence.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/cameroon-bamenda-theres-a-body-in-front-of-our-house/

Most important among his messages, please don’t worry for us. We are safe and well cared for, learning about life in a very different world. For example, in a beautifully honest conversation last week, two of the women we live with were as shocked that polygamy is illegal and prosecutable (rather than just frowned upon) in the U.S. as they were that open homosexual relationships are common and (becoming) acceptable to society at large.

Jared Diamond had an article in last week’s New Yorker about vigilante justice in tribal socities. Here’s a little snippet:

We regularly ignore the fact that the thirst for vengeance is among the strongest of human emotions. It ranks with love, anger, grief, and fear, about which we talk incessantly. Modern state societies permit and encourage us to express our love, anger, grief, and fear, but not our thirst for vengeance. We grow up being taught that such feelings are primitive, something to be ashamed of and to transcend.

There is no doubt that state acceptance of every individual’s right to exact personal vengeance would make it impossible for us to coexist peacefully as fellow-citizens of the same state. Otherwise, we, too, would be living under the conditions of constant warfare prevailing in non-state societies like those of the New Guinea Highlands. In that sense, Jozef was right to leave punishment of his mother’s killer to the Polish state, and it was tragic that the Polish state failed him so shamefully. Yet, even if the killer had been properly punished, Jozef would still have been deprived of the personal satisfaction that Daniel enjoyed.

My conversations with Daniel made me understand what we have given up by leaving justice to the state. In order to induce us to do so, state societies and their associated religions and moral codes teach us that seeking revenge is bad. But, while acting on vengeful feelings clearly needs to be discouraged, acknowledging them should be not merely permitted but encouraged. To a close relative or friend of someone who has been killed or seriously wronged, and to the victims of harm themselves, those feelings are natural and powerful.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond

Sorry if this article rubs you the wrong way right now. I’m sorry you both had to go through that.

-Natasha