A Despised Diet

Argument In the Solomon Islands

By “Overseer.”

THE conservatism of natives, particu larly in relation to anything they imagine is being forced upon them, is al most beyond belief.

Last year, a mysterious and rather fatal malady broke out on two or three plana tions in the Solomons. Every effort was made by the medical staff of the employing company, and by the Government medical officers, to deal with the outbreak, which they were able to confine to one or two plantations.

It was decided that the disease was probably caused through a deficient, or in sufficiently varied diet, although the natives were issued the usual and legal ration, as standardised on practically all estates.

While the sickness was on, every form of food, regardless of expense, was issued to the natives of affected estates; the firm concerned has a world-wide reputation for model conditions, and considerate treat ment of employees.

In the hope of improving the health of the natives, and with the approval of and a certain amount of moral support from the Administration, an attempt was made to add maize meal to the ration issue.

Immediately the conservatism and sus picion of the natives was aroused. Despite every effort of the European staff to popu larise the new food, the labour would have none of it. Many tons of excellent food were cooked daily (on the whole of the plantations owned by the company), only to be thrown away.

Various reasons were given by natives as to why, allegedly, they could not or at any rate would not, eat the meal: the em ployers were foisting onto them some cheap rubbish; it was food for horses, not for men; it had been used on certain estates where boys had died —this, although the meal was issued late in the epidemic, and the sickness ceased after the new food was given. To the native mind such de tails did not count: there had been new food on certain estates, and there had been sickness—that was enough. Labourers even vomited their issue in certain cases when induced to eat it, although all em ployers, to popularise it, were using it in their own kitchens—and the managers were not vomiting it.

The plea that it was a cheap substitute could be argued by a comparison of in

voices. They said it was not food for men —yet every native eats corn from his own garden. The attempt to improve the ration issue looks like being defeated by the native himself.

The logic by which they reason that the food caused deaths at the time of the sick ness is imperfect, but native logic on the subject is not always so. A boy came to me for a ration of rice.

“Why don’t you eat corn?”

“I can’t!”

“It is good—I eat it. See, the cook is washing the saucepan from breakfast. You can eat it —you try! ”

“Master, do you eat alligator!”

“No!”

“It is good—I eat it —you try!”

He got his issue of rice, as a reward for his native wit.

A unique family reunion was celebrated in Sydney recently, when six sisters of the well-known Mackay clan, of North Queensland, foregathered from the vari ous parts of the South Seas for the first time in thirty-six years. They were Mrs.

Basil Burstal and Mrs. G. Biddel, of Bur wood, Sydney; Mrs. H. J. Atkinson, of “Greenvale” Station, North Queensland; Mrs. Allan MacDonald, of Townsville; Miss E. Mackay, of Brisbane; and Mrs.

H. Norton Smith, of Vila, New Hebrides.

The latter, whose husband is manager of the Burns, Philp branch in Vila, will return to the New Hebrides on the next outgoing boat, leaving her son and daughter at school in Sydney, All six sisters have taken a bungalow together at Burwood.