Rarotonga

The "Tere"

Care-free Days in Rarotonga

By William S. Bond

“fIIERE” days are here again!

J. The “tere” is a complicated affair not too easy to describe in brief.

Presumably, it is a modern motorised hang-over from the days when a jolly crowd set out in a fleet of sailing canoes to visit a distant community, who would give them a warm welcome and a rip roaring time, the visitors thereby incur ring the liability to provide a return fiesta any time the visited should visit them. (There are, I believe, a few cases

on record where the hosts have decided that the visitors have out-stayed their welcome and popped them in the “umu” to replace the sadly depleted stock of roast pork.) During the war period, “teres” have been banned, owing to gasoline conserva tion, but a slight relaxation recently caused a hurricane of “teres” to sweep the island and our ears are singing yet.

A “tere” goes something like this. A crowd of people of both sexes and all ages get together and dress up in their gayest attire, finished off with lots of flowers r and fern-leaves. They confiscate all available guitars and ukuleles and .pile on—yes, literally pile on—a string of trucks numbering anything up to ten.

One truck is the “band truck.” The “band” consists of a collection of shark skin drums, goat-skin drums, hollow-log drums, battered kerosene tins, and pos sibly an obsolete wash-basin, played by a gang of muscular huskies who render a stirring reproduction of the Battle of , Trafalgar.

On the leading truck is a “pu tane” (talking man), and a “pu vaine” (talking woman). The “pu vaine” is always very fat. I don’t know why.

AT last we are ready to start. The “pu tane” makes a short speech and climbs aboard. The “pu vaine” makes a short speech and we put our shoulders to her and get her aboard. She leans out and yells “Aere!” which means “let all hell loose and get under way!”

The drummers spit on their hands, tense their muscles, cross their eyes and let fly a broadside that shakes all the loose nuts off the surrounding coconut trees. Everybody starts to sing a differ ent tune at the top of their voices and scream their heads off at the same time (don’t ask ME how they do it!).

The girls all wiggle their hips—they are packed so close together they have to try to wiggle in unison to avoid bruises.

Engines roar. Hooters toot. The passen gers tumble into shrieking heaps as the drivers release their clutches.

We’re off! The heavens tremble as we proceed in a cloud of dust and din as far as the next settlement, which may be a matter of a few hundred yards or a mile or two, as we get out into more open country. At each settlement, the resi dents gather in the road to “stop the tere’ ’’ with short speeches of greeting and with gifts, either to the “tere” as a whole, or to individual friends on the trucks.

The gifts consist of cash, flowers and artificial garlands, and lots of food of all kinds, both inanimate and on the hoof Fowls, ducks, pigs of all sizes, goats ranging from dainty kids to evil-smelling billy-goats, are tossed up among us to join in the general fun.

The artillery truck opens fire, and some of us leap into the road to ioin the vil lagers in a few minutes of wild hula Aere!” and on we go to the next stop ping-place. .on o P roceed slowly round the island (20 miles) a journey which takes all day.

NOW comes the tricky part of the story. Every present received by the “tere,” or by individual members of the party, places the receiver under an obligation of honour to make a return fift to the donor whenever that person is passing on a “tere.” As many gifts may be received by one person the circuit of the island it is often neces sary to keep a notebook of obligations, for it is very bad manners to forget one The system is further complicated by the fact that “teres” do not necessarily go by definite settlements or groups.

Anyone can go on any “tere.” It is an extraordinary game of tit-for-tat, and goes on indefinitely, like a puppy chasing its tail.

So the only way to try to catch up on “tere” obligations, but without finishing up on the losing side oneself, is to keep right on making “teres”! Anyway, it is lots of fun.

CONSUMING intoxicating liquor on “teres” is strictly forbidden, but in spite of the vigilance of the Flying Squad, many male members become noticeably jollier during the circuit.

By the way, when you come to Raro tonga you must not miss the Flying Squads It is one of our “unforgettable sights” to see four very big, stern police men miraculously fitted into one very small, black-painted, early-vintage Austin Seven, like a four-headed centaur with a sunshade. Attached upright to one running-board, in a handy position, is a long stick—not, as you city folk might suppose, a wireless antennae, but merely a handy weapon with which to whack sarcastic dogs which are a pest in Rarotonga.

Should you be unable to locate them at once, just stagger a bit in the middle of the main road, pretending you have been foolish enough to consume too much 3% New Zealand beer (obtainable only for medical purposes) and they will pick up your scent in no time. Hop out of the way when you see them coming, or you may get into worse trouble for turning the whole outfit over.

Well, the sun has set; we are back home. We scramble off the trucks and kick up the dust, wiggle our hips and waggle our knees in a last grand-slam hula as the battle-waggon fires off the last shots of Trafalgar. The next “tere” will be on Wednesday. BANG! BANG!

Bang! Wah-Hoo-Oo!!

P.S.: Relax. Since the above was writ ten, we have heard that gasoline restric tions have been re-tighteped and none will be available for further “teres.” On second thoughts, we still have plenty of horse-buggies. Unrelax.

On Christmas Day, the 5,000 assorted savages decked themselves for the dance and, from the terrace above, the Euro peans could look down on a sea of wav ing plumes—black of the cassowary and golden of the bird-of-paradise.

Bare bodies, surmounted by enormous head-dresses, eddied and twirled like the breaking of an angry sea on a rocky shoreline. Each little group, after the entry parade, danced alone, “kundus” beating, as they acted out a story from their legends or trod a traditional but savage measure. No civilised jitterbug cavorted more madly than they, or so tirelessly . . . And after the dance, the apportioning of food, and the feast and the chanting far into the night—and, at last, blessed peace.

Behind the scenes, the two young men who had organised this first of the dis trict’s social occasions, directed and worked and somehow remained calm.

Ellis had only one comment to make on the sing-sing: “We told them, on pain of death, that not one item of European manufacture was to be worn—and then that damned old Tul-tul from down the road a piece!

Did you see him? When the whole shooting match moved on to the ’drome in the opening parade, he was leading it —prancing like a fool — and twirling a blue trade umbrella!”

IT was after the sing-sing and the European party had receded from Maprik that I made my real bow to it. Coming in over the range on the for ward journey I had worn a piece of skin from my heel and, when it was time to go home, it was so inflamed that my boot would not go on and I was, with New Guinea casualness, left behind to recover at will. My bedsail was detached from the now deserted house on the terrace and installed instead in one of the many large rooms of the Ellis establishment, and I began to learn at first-hand how an out-post of Empire really worked.

At sun-up a detachment of native police ran up the flag and one of them tootled on a trumpet; at sundown, the reverse procedure took place. A police boy died, and, his body, draped in a giant Union Jack, was buried. The Ellis cook boy, instructed to supply the missus with tea and biscuits at frequent intervals, and apparently not until then having had much to do with the female of the white species, proceeded to do just that, when ever he caught a glimpse of me.

On New Year’s Eve, Tom Ellis, the Patrol Officer and I ate together—oyster soup among other things.

The night was dull, and, as usual, warm. We played the Patrol Officer’s gramophone and drank more cocktails, but the evening remained non-New Yearish.

But a few minutes to midnight, the detachment of native police, a dozen strong, in charge of a sergeant, were

marched up and took up a position in front of the steps. Their faces were as emotionless as 13 pieces of disciplined brown dough. On the hour, the Patrol Officer gave the order and a fusillade of shots rang out into the tropical night.

The dogs in Maprik village barked; the slit-drums of Maprik village stopped throbbing. The squad was about-turned and marched off, still disciplined brown dough. It was 1938.

IN that year Kevin Parer already had his Wewak air service established.

As the Patrol Officer and Tom Ellis and I sometimes sat on the verandah looking down on the ’drome, we could see the Parer plane come in over the mountains and land near the small goods-shed. And the feeling then was of peace, not war.

The most realistic fighting was down in the kunai, where the natives savvied fight and frequently made it. We talked about Hitler, and, of course, the Japs and the things they might do. But it was merely to frighten ourselves pleasantly out of the easy tropical lethargy and not because, in our hearts, we believed it, or with our brains could imagine it. If Tom Ellis ever saw himself chasing Japs, then it must have been just as a youthful day-dream.

Yet to-day our forces are only a few miles away from enemy-occupied Maprik, with its sprawling river flats. The man

who flew in that small plane while we watched from the verandah has been

three years dead —killed in the first Jap raid on Salamaua; and Tom Ellis, who gave injections for tropical ulcers, and ladled out quinine and aspirin and went off on patrol with the Patrol Officer to

help quell native “stouches” in the kunai is chasing Japs in a Beaufighter These things are mildly surprising to those who knew Maprik when it did nothing but slumber in the heat and

provide a jumping-off place for the civi lised world. But they are surprises we have learned to accept in these days when everything is made possible by nothing more than the whirligig of time and war.