The Great Tank Mystery

Trader’s Tale: The Great Tank Mystery

By “Tukapa Koko"

“WATER, water everywhere, and not a * T drop to drink ...”

I often think, during a “dry period” here, how apt this quotation is.

Our only water supply on Mangaia is a wretched, muddy creek —grandiloquently called, locally, “the river”—that irrigates the natives’ taro-patches.

Our only natural supply, that is. Man, with his well-known taste for improve ments, has endeavoured to provide a bet ter and purer source, freer from dead leaves and deader crayfish, bits of soap (for the “river” is also the island’s pub lic laundry) and similar dubious flotsam.

A few of the island’s houses possess galvanised-iron roofs; but connecting their gutters to big cement water-tanks, erected from Government materials by the villagers, in a community effort, the rain that used to run to waste was con served for drinking.

As is to be expected, the tap of “the rain-tank” isn’t left unfastened, for vil lage children aren’t to be trusted. A heavy padlock holds that tap closed; and its key is in the care of the Mema.

Our Mema is, in native eyes, anyhow, a very important person. As his title implies, he is the local member of the Island Council. He’s a deacon; an ama teur physician; an authority on horses, pigs, and fishing-canoes; a tailor, too, for the Mema isn’t above earning five shil lings by sewing calico trousers for such as cannot successfully make their own).

Amid all these multiple pursuits, the Mema has to find time to open the vil lage water-tank for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, each day.

Every one of our native households possesses a bucket or a kerosene-tin. The “water-ration” is two buckets or tins daily, in rainy times, and one only, in dry; and, if the tank be nearly, or quite, exhausted, the ration is “suspended,” creating the situation commonly known as Just Too Bad.

It is then that the “river” crayfish find their muddy homes disturbed.

AS far as the local rain-tank is con cerned, there’s been “many a slip,” even during rainy weather! I recall one occasion when our then Mema kept the tank locked-up for several weeks, to create a reserve from the generous tropi cal showers that were then falling every day; for it was the “rainy season,” when spasmodic downpours supply the juice for hundreds of millions of growing oranges, by thoroughly wetting the plantation soil.

Everyone approved of the Mema’s can niness in conserving drinking-water; and cheerfully bathed, or washed clothes, in “the river” already-mentioned, while for thirst-slaking purposes they used green coconuts. (Water that runs off thatches during rain is NOT drinkable!) “Came the day,” as novels say, when this Mema announced that the release of the hoarded vai-maori (common water, as distinct from coconut-liquid) should be commenced.

By then, everyone was thoroughly tired of coconuts, for, it is necessary to make, known, these contain a saline substance that, after temporarily-quenching thirst, arouses it again. The news was hailed with acclamation, and when the Mema appeared, with his key, everyone rushed to get bucket or tin. The great man formed the long, clankipg procession up in a line, and, like a new, South Sea Joseph, began the distribution of long hoarded supplies; or, to be more accurate, he prepared to do so.

The Mema placed the first bucket under the tap; and, with the air of a conjuror about to pass a particularly large camel through the aperture of a particularly-small needle, turned the faucet on. The crowd waited, with ex pectant smiles.

Alas, nothing resulted. The tank that had been so religiously kept locked-up for six weeks of heavy tropical rain was as dry as the Sahara. Empty! rE water-queue was flabbergasted.

There they stood, in the warm sun shine of a renewed “dry”-period, with their useless containers! The Mema was, for once, deprived of his self-suffi ciency; and he looked upon the crowd, whose regard was now by no means friendly, with a very sickly grin. But it was necessary to make explanations, if not apologies! The Mema, therefore, dis solved into the Deacon. As Deacon, he read the .hostile crowd a little homily; blaming the absence of aqua-pura upon certain indiscretions,* well-known in Poly nesia, of which a great many of the crowd he addressed had been guilty (as Court records could also have shown). These “sins,” the Mema said, had caused an angered Deity to withhold from the pub lic reservoir its customary 10,000 gallons.

Polynesians of to-day, however, are not so willing to believe in miracles—benevo lent or otherwise—as they were in early mission-days. The Mema’s explanation was “received” —as Borough Councils say of angry letters from the taxpayer; but (as in the same case) receipt was not the sign of agreement with the sentiments expressed!

No voice from the assembly was raised in dissent, but a boy detached himself from the crowd, leaving his bucket and kerosene-tin in the care of friends, and was soon observed to swarm up the down pipe attached to the iron-roofed house that acted as water-shed.

The Mema hadn’t noticed this lad’s activity; taking the silence of the thwarted gathering for the interested attention he was wont to command at meetings of the Island Council.

The Member enlarged his theme, and traced the actual cause of the present

nexplicable drought within the village •ain-tank to Cain’s regrettable violence ;owards his brother Abel (for, said the Member, that act had made Cain the mcestor of those present).

This, no doubt, was fine theology, and rery instructive; but the crowd were more ntent on the climbing boy than “old, mhappy, far-off things and battles long igo.”

At the gutter’s edge, a detachable ;trainer-head, made out of a large mcket, soldered to a tin tube, acted as ;he conveyor of water into the tank-pipe, rhe lad took it off the down-pipe; and iescended to earth.

The Mema had just come to Moses itriking the rock, when this lad drew his ittention to the amenity aforesaid.

The article looked well enough in front; jut at its rear was a hole, caused by rust, is big as a teacup. Thus, totally unsus jected, had 10,000 gallons of precious ■ain-water run to waste.

Even then, the Mema-Deacon wasn’t )eaten. He triumphantly reminded his learers that water in plenty (e.g., the Deluge) isn’t always a blessing. Then he umed to on a new job—plumber! *ln the Cook Is. all moral slips are legally tunishable.