(Escape)

Local Boy-Scout Makes Good

By Tui Navosa

THE people who inhabit the Lau Islands, which form the eastern fringe of the Fiji Group, are for the most part of Polynesian stock. They are noted seamen and often have a highly developed sense of individuality and enterprise.

Tomasi’s father was a Lauan, and a man of substance. He owned a small cutter and his lands produced copra; enough to make him comfortably off. He therefore thought that Tomasi should have a better education than could be obtained in the local school in Lau.

So Tomasi was packed off in a trading cutter to Suva, where arrangements had been made for him to live with an uncle and attend the Mission School for boys.

Here he quickly settled down; did well at his lessons; and joined a troop of Boy Scouts.

For three years he was quite happy: he was high up in his class at school and well up the ladder in his Scout troop.

And then it was time for him to leave school and return to Lau.

This he had no intention of doing if it could be avoided, for he knew well that it meant working on his father’s plan tation; or on his father’s cutter.

Fortunately for Tomasi, a notice ap peared one day in the window of Tommy Horne’s store to the effect that a lad was wanted. This Tomasi answered in per son, wearing his smart Scout uniform; in addition, he spoke good English. He got the job.

AT this time, too, the Education De partment was extending its con trol over the village schools in some of the more remote country districts, and a number of additional junior grade teachers were required for this purpose.

When Tomasi saw the notice in the Government “Gazette” calling for candi dates, he jumped at the idea. In due course he sat for the qualifying examina tion and, having little difficulty in passing it, obtained one of the vacancies as a Junior Grade Teacher on probation.

For a month or two he was attached to a Suva school, and then he was ap pointed to take charge of a village school in the district of Namosi.

Namosi is in the mountains of the interior of Viti Levu, and is very isolated.

Moreover, the people who live there are somewhat backward; at any rate, they are of a very different type to any that Tomasi had known.

But the Kai Wais (people of the sea) are inclined to look down on the Kai Tholos (people of the hills), and Tomasi had no doubt at all concerning his ability to manage the job.

The journey to Namosi from Suva is not an easy one. To begin with, you take the coast road, the westward, for some 15 miles, and then ipland up a steep, and probably wet, track for about the same distance.

This took Tomasi two days, even with the help he got on a lorry for the first part of the trip, and help in carrying his kit during the second part, and it was a very tired Tomasi who reached Namosi late in the evening.

HE took an immediate dislike to the small, round house which had been allotted to him. A fire was burning in a sand pit in the middle of it, to be sure, and of the warmth he was glad, for it was cold. There was no exit for the smoke, however, and the house was full of it. The people looked dirty, and

the food offered him was by no means what he had been used to.

On the other hand, he found himself well looked after, according to local standards, and the villagers were friendly.

There was a reasonably good school house in the village, which catered for the needs of several neighbouring villages as well. There were between 30 and 40 pupils in all.

The practice of the boys who came daily to school from outlying villages was to bring their mid-day meal with them. This was carried in a grass basket by each boy and, on arrival at the school in the morning, the baskets were put on a shelf at the back of the schoolroom.

One day Tomasi, out of curiosity, looked through these baskets and found, to his disgust, a cooked rat in one of them. He at once demanded the name of the owner and made him take it out and bury it. He then lectured the whole school on what he described as the “filthy habit of eating rats”; he said that should he ever find another boy who brought a rat to eat he would beat him.

About a week later he again inspected the mid-day dinners and found that, in spite of his order and warning, another boy had brought a rat for his meal.

This, then, was a deliberate case of dis obedience, and he gave the boy a good hiding.

THAT was that; or so Tomasi thought.

Unfortunately, he did not know that he was treading on very delicate ground; that the Namosi people habitually eat rats; that the habit is

partly due to the lack of both meat and fish in the district; and that it is a fruit eating bush-rat that is eaten.

The next day the boy who had been punished did not arrive at school; but, later in the day, an infuriated father, who turned out to be the Chief of a valley some five miles away, did so. He had an axe over his shoulder and, stand ing outside the school-house, shouted for Tomasi to come out and be killed.

At the time Tomasi was in the school room with his pupils and this invitation was heard by all. Excitement, if not actual pleasure, seemed to Tomasi to dawn on the faces of the boys, and he knew he had a matter of seconds to decide on his line of action.

He went outside the door and, facing the old Chief and holding his hand up, said “Wait: and in five minutes you can do what you like with me.” He then turned on his heels and walked to his house, which was close by. Here he put on his complete Scout uniform.

By this time the entire population of the village and the school boys had gathered. Then Tomasi marched from his house, straight towards the Chief and halted a few yards in front of him.

“Now kill me,” he cried, “and you will fight the whole British Empire!”

The old man stood stock still for a full half minute; then turned about and strode away, with his axe still on his shoulder.

Although Tomasi felt he was safe for the time being, he knew that his posi tion was no longer secure in the district.

That night a very frightened lad crept out of a hut in Namosi and took the path to the coast, and then to Suva.

TOMASI again became a store assistant, and settled down to a job which he found more to his taste than trying to educate the uncouth boys of Tholo.