ISLAND NATIVES
OFFICERS’ EXPERIENCE SOPHISTICATED YOUNGSTER GUADALCANAR. Driving a bucking jeep through undergrowth that partly covers the one road running into the wilder northwestern part of Guadalcanal’, a party of New Zealand officers came across some Solomon Islanders, men, women and children. Courtesies were exchanged in a mixture of pidgin English and sign language, and the visitors were astonished to see that even the youngest of the natives, children of five or six years, carried wellsmoked pipes in their belts.
After much parleying, a youngster was singled out to be photographed. The officers, smiling ingratiatingly and making vagues promises of cigarettes and other appropriate gifts, finally persuaded the child away from his parents, assuring him that he would not be hurt. One of the visitors, trying to clinch the point, asked the boy: “You like have picture taken?”
Blowing smoke from his nostrils, the
lad took his pipe from his mouth.
frammed down the tobacco with a meditative thumb, . and answered: I “0.K.” 1 And before the visitors had recovered, he added: “You sendum pictures one day?” The officers left before the boy offered to drive their jeep I
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Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32300, 16 August 1943, Page 3
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189ISLAND NATIVES Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32300, 16 August 1943, Page 3
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