Spokesman For Islanders

Islanders

One of the chief spokesmen for the Banabans on Rabi Island is the Rev. Tebuke Rotan {pictured), who is Methodist minister to the predominantly Methodist community on Rabi.

Tebuke, who is 35, is also respected by his fellow islanders because he has an education, although Tebuke himself doesn’t agree that he has. In the years when he should have been re ceiving a secondary education, he was being ill-treated by the Japanese on Ocean Island, or at Kusaie, in the Carolines, to which the Banabans were deported during the war.

When the Ocean Islanders were moved to Rabi soon after the war, Tebuke was sent by his father, Rotan Tito, to various Fiji schools and finally to King’s College, Brisbane, for theological training. He came back to Rabi as a lay preacher in 1960 and was ordained in 1963, but he complains he knows little of anything “except some verses in the Bible”.

He appears a dedicated, sincere man, and his Gilbertese sense of humour is seldom below the surface—so long as phos phate royalties are not being

discussed.

Stuart Inder.