ABSTRACT
I slipped on the wet stones by the house and broke three of the eggs I had brought from the neighbour. The house was unusually quiet. I took the eggs to the back store and then found Kāhili. She started moaning as soon as I went near her. She seemed in agony. She said both her back and stomach ached. She moaned so much I was worried. Then she started writhing in pain, clutching her belly. She said she had no diarrhoea, no sickness, no headache. She seemed to be suffering so much, I eventually gave her a painkiller, but it didn’t make any difference. I sat with her for hours listening to her and wondering what it could be. I thought of appendicitis, flu, cholera, but she had no fever. She was totally absorbed in her affliction, and her cries of pain, ‘ai, aia, aiyaiya’ never stopped. As time went on, I became really worried. From what I could see she was in agony; I saw no way to stop her torment and I thought she must at least rest: I gave her a sleeping pill. It had absolutely no effect on her. She went on groaning, and she was even worse if I went away. I remembered what she had said about Hem’s wife’s illness. She had simply said, ‘women whose husbands have been away are ill for some time when their husbands return’. She said it as though the two simply went together, like I might say, ‘people who go out in the rain come back wet’. I wondered if her pain had for her an equally simple explanation. It was hard for me at the time to dismiss the psychological. She said it came on as I was leaving for market - my first absence since I arrived - and she was insistent on my presence just as the previous day she wouldn’t let me leave her side. So I simply sat by her, fanning her. I remember when everyone else came back from the fields they were annoyingly noisy and apparently uninterested. They certainly didn’t seem to think it important for her to try to sleep. It was obvious to me she was in great pain and yet no one did anything for her.
