Polio Farce In Samoa

What Travellers Have To Endure

THE quarantine farce associated with poliomyelitis (or infantile paralysis) has just about been played out in the Pacific Islands. The medical autho rities (who obviously were not authorita tive on the mystery of how the polio myelitis infection travels) have now acknowledged that, when the disease gets into circulation in the tropical islands, it loses its sting. All the earlier symp toms of polio are there; but there is little or no paralysis, and the patient soon makes a good recovery. This has been noticed especially in the Solomons.

Laymen suspected this a long time ago, and younger medical men—at any rate, those with elastic minds —were outspoken against the rigid quarantine that was en forced for so long against all persons who had been in poliomyelitis-ridden New Zealand. But the old medical bureau crats fought to the last ditch; the res trictions came off the Islands ports only recently.

But, right up until the end of August, at least, a ridiculous quarantine farce was being played out in Western Samoa.

Although travellers could move freely in Fiji, Tonga and Norfolk Island, they were clamped savagely into a primitive quaran tine station in Samoa, and kept there for varying periods. It was like that never to-be-forgotten period in Sydney after World War I, when a combination of old doctors, old women and old bureaucrats forced the whole population to go about heavily masked in February heat, as a precaution against the Black Flu.

Everyone in Samoa, in August, was blaming everyone else for the silliness.

But the real cause of the horror appeared

to be the Samoan chiefs, who have been given special powers under the new con stitution, and who—with rather cruel memories of flu and measles epidemics— had decided to keep polio out of Samoa at all costs.

THE following amusing account of what he experienced in Apia has been written by Mr. George Ashbridge, secretary of the New Zealand Educational Institute, who was an unhappy visitor to Samoa in August: Three miles a minute at 12,000 feet was our experience as we sped towards Apia. But we had another kind of ex perience when the plane touched down.

Apia at last—“A peer” to you. As Will Shakespeare once said, you can call it a rose, but it will still smell.

I had been looking forward to my visit to Apia. Apart from meeting old friends, I particularly wanted to see where Robert Louis Stevenson rested.

Some companions in my subsequent isolation consoled me with the statement that the tomb of RLS was now a great disappointment, having been defaced by the unwashed, whose only claim to literary fame seems to have been con fined to carving initials and names on the tomb. Some of us like doing that, of course. The greatest name in print is one’s own; and, besides, if we leave pos terity to judge, a different view might be taken of our greatness!

A schoolboy once said that the equator was a “menagarie lion roaring round the earth.” Arriving at Apia in restriction time is like that. An imaginary chalk line separates the newly-arrived from the officials—hospital, police, customs and others—who keep well away while we toe the mark. One step over the line, and jail; one step too close to us, and into the isolation compound with the visitors.

Can you blame anyone for keeping his distance?

NOTHING was passed from hand to hand. Papers, documents, loose letters, money—in fact, anything that had to go over the chalk line—was thrown on the ground with military pre cision.

Two boys in white advanced smartly with a bucket of disinfectant and a hand-pump with a long rubber tube. One boy pumped vigorously while the other directed the stream on to the objects on the ground—keeping at a safe distance, of

course. When everything was thoroughly sprinkled—saturated would be a better word—the articles were gingerly turned over, and the process repeated.

We were asked if we wanted any American cigarettes, at 15/- per carton, so I promptly ordered a carton. The old bucket routine again: I advanced with pound note, tossed it to the ground and retreated. The bucket brigade advanced, hosed note, turned over the note care fully between thumb and forefinger, hosed it again, and retreated. The enemy being now dead —or at least dealt with—the new owner of the note advanced, picked it up and, as far as I know, is still alive.

Meanwhile, all watched the proceedings, fascinated, as if witnessing for the first time a new fire-walking technique. Or did we all expect to see some big, naughty germs jump out and run for cover?

BUT there was no cover—only a covered waggon that rushed us about 20 miles to the barbed-wire compound where we spent the night.

The journey was a nightmare. The bus was old and dilapidated, with the ex haust fumes coming up through the floor boards, and the driver was going so reck lessly that one got the impression that he thought the faster he went the further he would get away from us.

For myself, when I had reached the state of thinking the limit of endurance had been reached, one of the crew from the plane cheerfully remarked, “Only five miles to go!"

Several friends were awaiting me at the compound—on the outside, at a safe dis tance. For an hour, we exchanged greet ings and official talk—across a 15 feet “no-man’s land,” protected on both sides by barbed-wire fences. Very trying, especially as there were others in the party who had the same idea. So we strung ourselves along the fence and shouted when there was a lull, or what appeared to be a lull, in the babble.

“We’ve brought you some cold beer,” said my friends. I heard that! And had it, too.

“Belsen Horror” was the name given to the isolation camp by the three ladies in the party; and, once the gate was closed on us, we were there until released. For those of us who were passing through, that was until early the next morning.

For those wishing to remain in Samoa it was a period of about ten days.

“Belsen Horror” comprises two build ings—women’s quarters and men’s quar ters. The men had a shower, and also a tap over a wooden sink; I don’t know how the ladies fared. Food was provided, too, but some of us don’t eat a great deal in the tropics.

We all took our fate philosophically, although some complained more or less.

But that rejoinder that “You didn’t have to come,” or “We don’t want you” is not a fair reply. Some of us are obliged to travel: and attention to the little points that add to one’s comfort costs very little in time and effort.

Speaking for myself I think that the authorities were quite right to take great precautions against contact with outside sources of possible infection. But we all have our own views as to whether that pantomime on arrival was a precaution or a performance.

Apia!—“Never more,” as the raven quoth.

A Niue Islander, Poimatagi, recently appealed in the New Zealand Courts be fore Mr. Justice Findlay, against a sentence imposed on him last March by the Cook Islands High Court. Poimatagi had been charged with attempted rape.

His counsel questioned the Court pro cedure at the original trial at Niue, when he alleged that the six assessors had acted as a jury. Mr. Justice Findlay reserved his decision.