Sister Susies From

Fiji

By Dorothy Weaver

SOUTH Sea Susies knit socks for South Sea soldiers! Sounds fantastic, but these brown-skinned, fuzzy-haired lasses from Fiji and their achievement are far removed from fantasy. In 13 short weeks a small band of European ladies, resident in Suva, taught over 230 native women—all but five of whom had never held knitting needles in their hands before —to knit.

These native women, many widely acclaimed for their fine needlework and embroidery, took quickly to the art of purling 2 plaining 2. Needles and wool were purchased for them and instructions were translated into the Fijian language.

To them, to knit is “talitali”; plain becomes “peleni,” and a row is “yatu.”

They then went ahead to disprove the statement, made when it was first sug gested that the native women could be taught to knit, that it would be a “waste of wool.” Turning the heel pre sented a problem for many, but with the aid of Circle sympathisers, dropped stitches were recovered, heels turned and toes cast off. What one Fijian girl learned she was only too eager to pass on to two or three of her friends—and the knitting craze was on!

Nurse-girls kept one eye on the baby and one eye on the ribbing; cooks cast on while the pie browned; cronies squat ted on curbstones mingling their chit chat with the cheerv click, click, click of busy needles.

The idea quickly spread and women in the outlying districts of Suva became members of the unique Knitting Circle.

Many of them have relatives and friends serving with the Fiji Infantry Battalions and Commando Forces in the Solomon Islands area. The husband of one was recently killed in action. One old lady is 60. Another is blind in one eye. They are an ordinary small-town community of wives, sisters and friends, and they know that many of the Fijian boys, the majority of whom have been accustomed to go bare-footed, are finding those Army boots a trial—even for world-renowned jungle fighters!

WITHIN 13 weeks from the commence ment of the Circle’s activities, they gave a display of their work—2lo pairs of socks, and four long-sleeved pullovers. Several women continued to knit as they sat crosslegged on the floor listening to the speech of congratulation given by a senior chief at this display.

This first consignment of socks will now be sent on to the native troops in a forward area, each native woman supply ing the name and address of a soldier to whom she wished her socks to be sent.

And so these native women have become members of the “Sisterhood of Susies who knit socks for soldiers,” and until their boys come marching home from the war-blasted jungles of the tropical battle-fronts, they intend to keep up the good work of “peleni 4, peleni vata 2, peleni 1, saumaka.”

Ratu Dovi Komaisava, a member of one of the special contingents of RAF trainees from Fiji and the only Fijian in the RAF. has been seriously ill in hospital in England for several months. Admitted originally with an attack of pleurisy which the doctors expected to clear up within a few days, complications devel oped which have put Ratu Dovi on the ‘seriously ill” list for a considerable time.

Latest advice is that he is improving.