Kwato’S Plans

Rice-Growing For NG Natives

INTERESTING information about rice growing, collected in the Southern States of USA and in Central America, was brought back to Papua- New Guinea by Mr, Cecil Abel, of the Kwato Mission, Samarai, who arrived in Sydney in March. Mr. Abel had been abroad, mainly in Europe and America, for 18 months, gathering data, and capital, for an important extension of the Kwato Mission.

Since Kwato was established many years ago by the late Mr. Charles Abel it has become one of the best-known in stitutions of the kind in the South Pacific. Apart from the duty of giving religious teaching, Kwato has specialised upon the work of imparting technical in struction to the Papuan natives. It has, for example, been known for a long time as the home of expert native boat builders; and one of the minor epics of the Pacific war was the manner in which Kwato-trained natives built boats for the Allied Forces, Before the war, at the request of the late Sir Hubert Murray, a branch of Kwato was established in the Abau region. The Abau natives were notoriously fierce and intractable, and a source of worry to the Administration. However, the Kwato Mission assisted to gradually bring them under control, and to-day they are a peaceable and industrious people. They grow there a good type of mountain rice for their own consumption.

Since the war, the Abel brothers have decided to extend the operations of their Mission and, during the absence abroad of Mr. Cecil Abel, Mr. Russell Abel has been engaged in the establishment of a branch of the Kwato Mission in the

highlands of New Guinea. The first move was made in November last, and the high lands Mission is now taking effective shape.

Mr. Cecil Abel, while in America, ob tained a good deal of information about agricultural productions deemed suitable for New Guinea—but he is particularly interested in rice. He has returned equipped with data which will assist in the growing of either mountain or padi rice, which he believes represents an in dustry well adapted to the New Guinea natives. In this enterprise he certainly will have the goodwill of the Adminis tration, and of all the private employers in Papua-New Guinea who now are pay ing the ridiculous price of nearly £7O per ton for imported rice.

Interview In Usa

A BREEZY article in the San Francisco “Chronicle” of March 14 describes an interview with Mr. Abel, who was just back from seeking the seed of corn and rice in lowa, Guatemala and other regions. The reporter persuaded him to discuss cannibals, etc., as follows: “I suppose you could say some of my dearest friends are cannibals,” he said. ‘A cannibal who doesn’t eat you is inex pressibly dear.”

Abel recalled a case of cannibalism in 1940 “back in the mountains.”

“Of course, I haven’t eaten any myself.

But I’ve eaten lots of sea cow.

“As for head hunters—a quick way to make a head hunter mad is to call him a cannibal. Head hunters don’t like human flesh. They only decapitate you.

“The cannibals are sort of looked down Upon by the head hunters.”

But the vast majority of New Guinea natives have sworn off human flesh. Abel is seeking to interest them in rice and corn. That is why he is in the United States.