Solomons

A Guide To The

For the United States Marines

Writing in the “Chicago Daily News ” Mr. Robert J. Qasey, well known foreign correspondent, writes most amusingly under the title of “So you’re going to the Solomons!”

NOW that the soldiery is being given “Guides to Britain,” “Guides to Australia,” and the like, you begin to notice the absence of a suitable guide book to the Solomons.

How do you behave, for instance, on a golf course on a cannibal island?

How can you equip yourself to under stand a chief when he tells you that he's strictly on a fish diet?

It must be very complicated being a marine these days, and that’s why this compendium of information about these strange lands is being presented here with.

Social Customs

They will have very little to do with you so long as other edibles are available.

You needn’t worry about the hostesses at any local canteen. They won’t be there.

If you should cast an eye on any of the local belles—which seems hardly likely— her native relatives and boy friends will murder her and send you pieces of her for souvenirs.

Finance'

You can trade tobacco for many things such as copra, bananas and carved wooden totem poles and canoe prows of vil lainous appearance. If you don’t want the local produce you can keep the tobacco.

People

The people are Melanesians, dark skinned, kinkyhaired and not too bright.

They have a trick of enlarging their ear lobes so that they can carry little knots of tobacco or similar stuff in the loop.

Sometimes they stick bones through their nostrils which gives a strangely exotic and pleasing effect. They cover their hides, in some of the tribes at least, with symmetrical scars, much more or nate than civilised tattooing.

Amusements

They have some very fine ceremonial dances at which they cover themselves with blue dye just to lend an ethereal touch. They look like nothing else on earth. They also used to have banquets.

Those were the days.

Clothing.

Before the arrival of the Melanesian Mission in the late eighties, these poor benighted people didn’t know much about clothes. Now, thanks to much advice and the fine examples of some of their children who attended schools in the coast villages, most of the better class inlanders go about fully dressed.

Since the war they have cut the cuffs and lapels off their G-strings.

Language

And this is where you really get the information. Before the last war the German influence was strong throughout New Guinea; and it was the German trader, rather than the quiet missionary and educator, who spread the English language through these numerous islands.

At least it passed for English. If it isn’t English what is it?

It was obvious to the Germans, when they began to branch out from Rabaul, that they would have to have some means of communication with the natives. They had seen the commerce between the whites and Orientals in China, and they had been impressed by the simplicity of pidgin English as a language.

They may have made some attempts to develop a similar palaver based on their own tongue.

But pidgin German just didn’t seem to be logical. So they evolved that lovely language which you now hear all through Melanesia, a German laboratory pidgin English spoken with a German accent.

The results are wonderful, as, for instance, the first two lines of the Lord’s Prayer:— “Pava me belong on top, Speak good along him . . .” „ Tl _. L * , , , , Which, of course, anybody would recogu lS u aS ar £ m Heaven ’

Tnfhp nativedialects ‘there is no such thine l as “x” and the closest eauivalent vmf g eet in conversation is ‘ikis” and ”aL g and^okiV 7 Thus a box is “bokis ” an axe is “akis ” in ° ° ’

For that reason vou are not surprised to find out that a grand piano is fella bokis ’e got toof. You fight ’im ’e sing out.” (“Toof,” of course, is “tooth.’) In Melanesian as in other tongues of the Pacific the verb to eat is kaikai.

Wood is diwai. Which prepares you for the definition of a cross-cut saw: — “Akis ’e got kalaus (claws). You push ’im ’e go. You pull ’im ’e come. Bimeby ’im kaikai diwai.” .

A sausage is “Banana belong bullamakau.”

And that’s about all you need to know about the language.

Cultural Uplift

■There Is no recent report other than But* one* recalls ‘an* effort V a f°eT veTrsTgo to imbue the natives with a love for literature and the arte.

A missionary arrived in Malaita with a magic lantern and he showed to an enthusiastic group the adventure of one “Goldilocks” and the three bears.

The natives, who had never seen bears, got the idea at once. These were certainly superior creatures. And when

‘ Goldilocks” got away in the last slide, they howled, not with satisfaction, but with rage.

The marines oueiit to have a nice time in that neighbourhood.