"I am not like them..."

 10. How different is your modern culture from the sawi tenants?
When our English class first began reading this novel, Peace Child, and learning about the Sawi culture, almost everyone was shocked and disgusted. They simply could not understand how people could possibly think and act in this horrible manner.

However, I didn’t see much difference between the Sawi people and us. To me, these two groups of people are quite similar with very small differences. The Sawi people betray and kill others to gain status and fame and we betray and emotionally hurt others to gain advantage for ourselves. We do not care what happens to others as long as the ones we love, including ourselves, are safe and the Sawi deeply love and care for those in their community but are heartless to others. The Sawi hand over something that is a part of their body as an oath but are quick to break this promise; we often say “I swear on my right hand/on God/on my mother’s grave…” but these are just words for us. We think that we are better than everyone and shun those who are ‘uncivilized,’ while the Sawi also cannot see anything wrong with what THEY are doing and believe themselves to be superior to other tribes.

Aren’t we quite similar to the Sawi if we look at this topic in this point of view?




"Modern" people seem to wrap their

hideous parts of them with pretty

and fancy things to cover those ugliness



We should not say that the Sawi are people with disgusting thoughts and actions because we too have those thoughts and do those actions. The only difference is that we cover our ugliness with pretty smiles and fancy intelligence. Underneath all the elaborate exterior, the ugliness is still there and is no different from the Sawi people’s ugliness.

With all these similarities, can we, the so-called “modernized” people, be any different from the Sawi people?

We are very alike. We just don’t want to admit it.