Stolen Copra
p. 37 · Read in the full issue
Cook Is. Mystery
Solved
School-children Breakfast On Stolen Copra
From Our Own Correspondent.
RAROTONGA, October 6. gradual disappearance of a quan tity of copra stored on the wharf here has for some time puzzled officials of the Union Steamship Co. Last week the mystery was solved, and what had been thought to be the work of rats turned out to be entirely due to the depredations of Avarua school-children.
Now something is radically wrong somewhere when school-children eat up wards of 16 bags of copra, and enquiry revealed the distressing fact that the majority of the youngsters leave home in the morning without breakfast, sub stituting a few scraps of stolen copra hastily washed at a nearby tap. Many of them have to walk a considerable dis tance and since school —for some extra ordinary reason—commences at 7 a.m. a number, even in normal times, start the day with only a few cold kumuras or taro to see them through until 1 or 2 p.m.
But, to-day, even the cold tuber is often absent.
This is particularly the case in Avarua, where a big proportion of the population is made up of natives from other islands of the group, and who, being locally land less, depend for their living on wages, fishing, the making of curios, the charity of relatives, etc. The hurricane of last February, temporarily washed out or materially reduced these sources and to aggravate matters further many people have gambled on the chance of a good return from tomatoes and accordingly neglected the planting of their own food orops.
Another six months and the situation will adjust itself, but in the interval it seems a pity that the children should have to suffer when at the outside £l5 or £2O a month would provide them with a bowl of hot coffee and a half-loaf each every morning. Admittedly the Admini stration is already carrying a heavy load of expense, but as part of this is “top hamper” in the form of not wholly in dispensable supernumerary officials, per haps something could be done.