One night around midnight, while living in an Indonesia village, I was woken and asked if I would accompany a large party of men to a neighbouring village and asked to bring my camera. The headman’s brother-in-law had been murdered in a machete attack. The police were not going to come up from the coast, but they wanted crime scene photos and I was the only one with a camera, so I was the photographer. So we headed off along the trail through the forest by the light of the moon. I was asked to turn my torch off. My companions were carrying hurricane lamps not as yet lit, in order that everyone could see without ruining their eyes by lighting the lamps. It was a nightmare journey for me, stumbling along in the often obscured moonlight.
When we arrived at the village about 7 kms away, the victim was lying prone on his back with blood all over the front porch of a house on stilts. I was then asked to take photos of the body surrounded by lit hurricane pressure lamps. It was an eerie scene but everything was well lit up. Focusing the camera in the bright light in the midst of darkness I was seeing the crime scene in vivid detail. They insisted I take lots of photos. After taking the first series of the corpse and the surrounding verandah, they turned the body over and the head flopped forward. It was only attached by the voice box and the front section of trachea; the back of the neck had been chopped in a V formation like a tree trunk. I felt faint looking at the scene before me and then trying to refocus the camera. I stood for a moment to regain composure but still felt faint [pingsan]. I asked one of the young guys from our village to take the camera and gave him instructions on how to take a good photo. He took the first one and I checked, it was good. I then descended into the chocolate garden to regain my composure. After quite a while my companions made a bier out of bamboo and vines to carry the deceased back to our village.
When we arrived back to the village just before dawn, I was aware they were all storying about what had happened. As I listened to the story I kept hearing the words “ambe’na marissa this” and “ambe’na marissa that”. I came to realise the major thing they were storying about in the midst of this dramatic event was what happened to “Marissa’s dad”, me. They were incredulous that a minor bloody scene like that could make me faint to the point where I had to go down into the chocolate plantation by the house to regain my balance.
“Can you believe it? He was pingsan. Pingsan after just looking at a dead man. Amazing.”
“Surely he has seen a dead man before.” Surely he has seen killing and murder before, even decapitation.”
“We see it all time. It’s common place. Every kid in the village has seen this stuff.”
“What’s wrong with him? What kind of a man is he? Aduh!” [An expression of exasperation and incredulity].