Fieldnote _0412_Naluwan_MOLLY

Also this week we spent time with the elderly in the community. Me and Charles had a conversation with a man in a wheelchair that Charles also talked to last time.

He said that the reason he was in a wheelchair was that he had been involved in an accident in February last year. He and his family are Amise but come from Kaohsiung. Due to the back injury and the high cost of getting help with rehabilitation and life, the family chose for him to move to Hsinchu during his rehabilitation period. When he moved here, his son also came along. The son now lives in house 13 in the Community and works as a carpenter and builds houses. He hopes to move back to Kaohsiung when the injury is better. He told me that his children are very busy. They don't have time to take care of him and last year his wife died.

He talked about his life as a fisherman. He was the one who had the biggest responsibility on a big fishing boat. A responsibility that his eldest son has taken over. During a period of 2-3 years he lived and worked as a fisherman also in Hawaii. Then, on one occasion, the family was allowed to come and visit. As he talks about this, he smiles and I think this is a memory he holds dear.

40-45 years ago the Amise tribe was still active in Kaohsiung. They lived together. Most of them worked in  the fishing industry together but as soon as families had saved enough money to move to another house, they left the community in Kaohsiung. Many already looked for better work in order to be able to get a higher salary, better working conditions and create a better life for themselves. Many retired and now the community in Kaohsiung no longer exists. Many of those who wanted to continue working in the fishery moved up to the northern part of Taiwan and settled in Keelung. I wanted to ask if he thought that the same thing could happen to the Naluwan tribe. He wasn’t sure. He told me he had not been living here long enough to determine.

Comparing the tribe in Kaohsiung to Naluwan, he says he feels like a visitor. However, he says that there are similarities in the traditions. The main traditions are the same as he is used to from Kaohsiung. He tells us that the music is a way of communicating between the tribes. The songs that are sung can tell what religion or what is considered holy within the different tribes.

The songs sung during today's meeting were happy, with a sense of hope. I didn't have time to ask anyone about the message and the meaning of the texts before it was time to leave, but maybe someone else will mention it in their Field Note, I'll have to keep an eye out!!

As for the feeling I felt when listening to the songs, tt is as if each note and every melody was bright and infuses me with optimism. The rhythm of the music carries me along and I feel as if I'm being swept up into a world of possibility and potential.