Why is it raining now?
The mom screamed frantically into George and Ginny Olson’s window.
“Nuutnuut is shaking and he is stiff! He is trying to eat us! He just returned from the downriver market and he is really sick! Quick we need medicine! He saw the giant bat person and it is trying to steal his soul!”
Perhaps it is a result of drinking from downriver, or it could be cerebral malaria.
“There are many cases of malaria right now because of the incessant rain bringing lots of mosquitoes,” George and Ginny wrote. “We gave him some medicine for malaria and will continue to monitor things to see how they go.”
In fact, for the Brooke’s Point Palawanos, rain is the big news.
“We live in an area where time might seem like it stands still,” George and Ginny wrote. The Olsons recently returned from a trip to town, and asked people if they had heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. They had not. They had not heard about any radiation leak – and didn’t know what radiation is.
“To the Palawanos, the biggest thing that is happening right now is that it is raining during dry season,” the Olsons wrote. And the biggest impact of that is that they will not be able to grow rice this year. They cannot burn the fields, and the few who try to plant will find their crop overwhelmed with weeds. Instead, they will grow cassava and sweet potato.
And the talk is about what is causing the rain.
“According to the teachings of the ancestors, … somebody has committed incest,” the Olsons wrote. “Right now people are looking around for who committed incest. If they find the guilty parties, the tribal elders will first talk to them to convince them to split up.
“If the offenders commit the sin again a second time, they are both killed and their bodies split in half and left to dry in the sun to appease the wrath of the gods. However, it has been a long time, they say, since someone has had to be killed because of this particular sin.”
Please pray for the day the Brooke’s Point Palawanos have the opportunity to live in the light of Christ, and not in fear.