Bloodsuckers …? At this moment three weeks ago, I was beginning to settle-in to a warm Malawian nightfall, albeit springtime: the sounds of crickets, the yipping of watchdogs, and the occasional cluck of hens mixed with the scent of smoke and bougainvillea. I was also beginning to re-acclimate myself to a culture, which places great stress upon honor, position and achievement. From my previous visits, I knew that Malawians are far more comfortable addressing me as “Abusa,” or “Reverend Johnson”; but to address me as “Stan” is not at all easy or normative. (In fact, upon this fourth visit, I realized that many Malawians do not know the birth or first names of those with whom they have personally related. Oh, to be sure, they know the first names of those who are family friends; but beyond these first names often remain unknown.)
However, as much as I was willing to adjust to a honor-based culture, while in flight to Lilongwe I had read a slender volume entitled: Honor & Shame: Unlocking the Door, which had nudged me to rethink the basis of Malawian culture. Using the Biblical account of Adam and Eve’s “fall from the grace,” Roland Muller, the author of Honor & Shame, has suggested that the Garden-dwellers’ responses indicate three distinct, cultural tendencies: the guilt-based, the honor-based, or the fear-based culture. In his view, although all cultures reflect each of these tendencies, one of these three predominates. The focus of his volume is upon honor-based cultures as typified by the vast, complex world of Islam; but he also has given thought to the fear-based culture as manifest in Africa.
For a fourth time, as I was beginning to settle-in to Malawian culture, I heard of a hysteria, which was seizing the country’s southern portion. At night village vigilantes were killing neighbors, whom they suspected were murdering others, in order to suck the blood from their victims’ bodies. For these vigilantes, bloodsuckers were the cause of “inexplicable deaths.” In our Western, guilt-based culture, which constantly thinks and acts in terms of guilt, rights and wrongs, we will determine that a “reasonable” explanation exists for “inexplicable deaths”; but in a fear-based culture, which assumes a priori that forces and powers exist beyond our ken, vampires are a “reasonable” explanation. Therefore, we must fight fire with fire; we must seize power to overcome a feared power.
With Roland Muller, I agree that the Gospel addresses human guilt and human fear, as well as human honor.
Still rambling,
Stan