Birth Announcement!

March 9, 2010

The other day I was sitting on the “beranta”, porch, with my host father Simion, and we heard some people from another village chanting. Simion stopped talking to me and listened intently to the chanting. All of a sudden he told me that a baby was born in the village next to us! Then he focused and listened again to the chanting and said “and it’s a boy!” He could tell by how long they chanted weather it was a girl or a boy. If it was a girl they would have sung only three verses, but since it was a boy they just kept on singing.
I thought it was such a neat way to spread the word of a birth! Since there are no phones, and there are definitely no birth announcements sent out, chanting to the whole island is a fantastic way to let everyone know the news! The island is small enough that maybe about 2/3 of the people heard the announcement and I know these people LOVE to talk, so everyone else probably found out through each other. I was reminded that I am in a very remote and in some ways primitive part of the world. I am cut off from all modes of communication that I am used to and am experiencing ways that people probably communicated before all of this modern communication technology! It is a beautiful thing to hear about the birth of a child through songs of celebration! Just imagine if we could have a community in the United States that was so close both in relationships and location, in which all you had to do was gather a group of people and sing to make announcements! What a joyful place that would be!