GILBERTIAN EXPERIENCES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 224, 8 October 1943, Page 4

GILBERTIAN EXPERIENCES

(Written for "The Listener"

by

MURIEL

RICHARDS

> ne name T was an all-out U.S. Navy attack on the Gilbert Islands on February 1, 1942, that stopped the Japanese drive south to Fiji. Recently the fleet has been attacking the Gilberts again. And since, in order to pincer Rabaul, some at least of these islands must be secured, we take this chance of getting advance information about them from a one-time resident.

"FIHE very earliest period of my life was passed on Ocean Island. Consequently, every mention of the Gilberts in the news-and these references become more and more frequent, and will continue to-evokes long-hidden memories of the ceaseless ubiquitous roar of the surf (Ocean Island is only a large cricket oval, two miles by one and a-half, set in a blinding white frame of tempestuous foam); nightmares of the army of crabs, thousands of crabs, millions of crabs, that. closed in all round as each night fell, sidling across the sand to scuttle up the coconut trees; recollections of Barnaban ‘girls (Ocean Island is Barnaba in Kanaka dialect), in grass Javalavas, peering in through the lattice of our

veranda with chortles of admiration for the white skins of the two blonde children; a picture of mother’s "girl," Terewhit,’ "bathing" her own baby by squirting him with precious mouthfuls of water, then scraphim downfwith a banana leaf.... Well, I have these pictures clear and vivid, and others, toothe jigger "railway" round the island . joining the only two settlements; the Japanese doctor attending my father; our copper-and-tub "washhouse" out on the open sward among the trees; the queer, gaunt shapes of the phosphate excavations -I see these things but (so my parents assure me), family talk constantly recreating a scene so very different from that of succeeding years out in the NeverNever, must be far more their basis than my own juvenile

observations. Sewing Machines, Not Missionaries Ocean Island was, till Japanese occupation, the administrative centre of the Gilberts, because (I. suppose), it gave the Governor and Civil Service of 20-odd persons such European society and luxuries as the Phosphate Company’s staff of overseers, clerks, and repair tradesmen provided. Luxuries? Well, refrigerators and shower-baths have been lifting the White Man’s Burden for some time, I believe, but my own "recollections" of 30 years ago can think up only hand sewing-machines proudly acquired by each Barnaban family at enormous expenditure of labour to earn their inflated price. Incidentally, I suspect that these machines (and not the missionaries as usually asserted), were responsible for introducing clothes to the Gilbertese. And with clothes came perpetual dampness in the wet season, and with dampness came raging tuberculosis. Certainly

missionaries had been in the other islands for half a century before the women changed over about my time from grass skirts to the voluminous cotton frocks from which no amount of health taik will wean them to-day. Fish, Coconuts-And Bottles Geographically, Ocean Island is no centre at all, being about 250 miles west of the 16 "other islands," which themselves are scattered over 400 miles of sea. Ocean Island proudly rises to a grand height, approaching 300 feet above sea level. None of the rest gets above 15 feet. Ocean Island, like Nauru, is volcanic and compact, and in great part just solid phosphate rock. The others are atolls that run up to 50 miles in a circle, with never more than 1000 yards from beach to beach, and with white coral sand in place of soil. Hence the inhabitants would never have had any variation in "diet from fish and coconut (except, of course, coconut and

fish), had they not learned, by laborously composting fish refuse, to make grow a local arti-choke-like. tuber. Even water is . scarce-in fact, entirely unobtainable when every five or seven years the October-March Dry Season turns out 100 per cent dry. How the Gilbertese existed even in normal years before civilisation brought them its greatest gift of bottles, is hard to imagine. To-day, everyone owns several score, and assiduously fills them up while the going is good in the six months’ Wet Season. The Barnabans are better off. Again I rememberthough whether in person or from photos I é¢annot say-the mouth of the volcanic caverns they enter to get supplies. But I have vet to meet any European

who has crawled through their allegedly interminable labyrinth as far as the underground pools themselves. The dry six months of the NorthEast trade wind was, I had better add, a delightful season. "A superb ocean climate, days of blinding sun and bracing wind, and nights of heavenly splendour," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, who was used to more. luxuriant but steamier islands. However, the other half of the year when wet gales from the west perpetually threatened to pile up the phosphate freighters, was as sticky as they make climates. But "the Dry" kills the mosquitoes. There is no malaria in the Gilberts. A Simple People The Barnabans themselves I remember as a simple people (with a passion for sewing-machines-I wonder what it is to-day). For example the Terewhit’ I have mentioned, cn being told to light the copper’ with -kerosene, remained squatting before its grate squirting in (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) long mouthfuls of flame and intoxicated’ by her aura of fire. They are the true and original Kanakas-that is, neither Melanesians nor Polynesians, but the last immigrants into the Pacific, big, copper men from Ceram and Celebes, who arrived about the third century of our era (it is calculated), and then passed south to live in Samoa alongside the Polynesians for a whole millennium of warfare, until about 1200 A.D., the latter at last drove them out. Some came south to New Zealand with The Canoes, where their descendants form a visible strain in the Maori race. Others went to Raratonga, others to Espiritu Santo, others back to their original Gilbertian starting-points astride the Equator. 3 In the/last century, missionariés and administrators have done a very good best for them, and "blackbirders" a very bad worst. Indeed, only the fact that they were of greater toughness than neighbouring islanders saved them from near extinction. ("Recruiting" by blackbirders for Central American plantations reduced the Ellice people from 20,000 to 2000!). The complete coconut-matting suit of armour of a typical Gilbertese warrior stands erect by its own strength in the Auckland Museum, head hidden. in visored helmet, and arm waving a sharks’-teeth club. These days they are getting a taste of our more modern methods.