A Story about the Stars

by Laura

During our village stay, we visited another village where Sara's adoptive uncle Paul lives. Yaya (Uncle) Paul's village is called Psakmanduk, and it is in a beautiful location on top of a mountain, with views of the ocean. While we were there, Yaya Paul told us a traditional story from their people. The following is my written version of his story.

Yaya Paul, Laura, Forrest, and Marian

"This is a story about an old lady and the stars. It happened right over there, in that valley. It really happened - it is a true story.

A view from the village of Psakmanduk

One day, some children's parents left to go to the gardens, so the children went down to the ocean and caught fish and crabs. They brought their catch back to their grandmother, so she could cook them. When the grandmother saw the tasty fish and crabs, she wanted to eat them herself. She ate the food and then found some thorns and poked herself all over. When the children returned, she told them that dogs had attacked her and had stolen all the fish and crabs. The children were sad because they wanted the food. They didn't know that their grandmother had eaten their food.

A fresh fish cooking on the fire - delicious!

She wanted to console the children, so she sent them to the garden to cut some sugarcane. They found a stalk of sugarcane and asked if they should cut that one, but the grandmother said no. They found another stalk, but she also said no. They finally found a third, very tall sugarcane stalk and she told them to cut it and bring it back to the village.

Chewing the juice out of short pieces of sugarcane

When they returned to the village, the grandmother told the children that their parents were planning to cook and eat them when they came back from the gardens. She would help them escape to a safe place. She stood the tall, tall sugarcane up into the sky and the children began to climb, the boy first and girl second.

Part way up, the boy dropped his comb. He asked the girl to climb down to retrieve it for him, but she wouldn't. He jumped down to get it and then had to climb up below her. (This is why men should go first - to not look up the girls' skirts! It is also why girls grow taller than boys, because the girl climbed up first.)

When the children reached the top, they were in the sky. The grandmother took down the tall sugar cane and chopped it into small pieces. She hit it under the limbum (a piece of bark used as an umbrella.)

A scene from the village of Psakmanduk

The parents soon returned and asked the grandmother where the children were. The grandmother told them she didn't know, so the parents began to search. Soon, they found the sugarcane pieces under the bark umbrella and figured out what had happened. They could hear their children crying from the sky, 'Ada! Nan! Ada! Nan!' (Daddy! Mommy!) but they could not get their children down because the long sugarcane was cut into pieces.

So the parents smashed the grandmother into the ground and killed her. (You can still see the spot to this day where she was killed.) The children are now stars in the sky, twinkling as they cry for their Ada and Nan. They cry at night and their tears fall on the grass. You can see the tears there in the morning when you go outside. The children's tears are the dew."