To The Point

With

Percy

Chatterton

Half-a-century ago the welfare of Papuan babies was ensured by tying round their necks a small charm, consisting of a tiny chip of a particular kind of wood attached to a length of string. This charm was called tone by the Motu people living around Port Moresby, but the prac tice was not confined to them, being common among many other tribes.

THESE little charms protected their small wearers from the malign influences of spirits—from ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night.

In the 19205, a tall, rugged mission nurse from Switzerland established an Infant Welfare Clinic on the L.M.S. Station at Hanuabada. The local indigenes, with their usual genius in inventing their own names for things, called this institution “Baby-weigh”, and there is no doubt that the ritual of placing baby on the scales and having his or her weight recorded on a card was the “draw” which brought the mothers of Hanuabada in such large numbers to the clinic.

New Magic And Old

Many of the mothers probably thought that the mere act of being weighed did the babies good in some mysterious way; just as many years later, when I had to do some amateur doctoring myself, a patient whose temperature I had taken in the morning assured me when I saw him again in the afternoon that he had felt better ever since I had put “that glass thing” in his mounth.

However, most mothers played for safety by invoking both the new magic and old—as indeed many still do.

This is not to say, of course, that the mothers of pre-war Hanuabada did not benefit by the good advice on the care and feeding of their babies which was handed out to them, in Motu spoken with a strong German accent, by Sister Trudi Schinz. I’m sure that they did.

Since the war, the Department of Public Health has entered this field in a big way, and “Baby-weigh” has blossomed into “Infant, Child and Maternal Welfare”. Nowadays mothers don’t wait till baby is weighable; they

No Wonder They Think We're Mad . . .

start attending the clinics as soon as baby is on the way.

Much of the staffing of these clinics is indigenous, and Papuan and New Guinean girls trained for this work are doing a first-rate job.

But success can be as embarassing as failure is disappointing; and of late the accent has been moving from “Infant Welfare” to “Family Planning”.

For many years the call has gone out to Papuan and New Guinean women: “Too many of your children are dying; come to our clinics and we will teach you how to keep them alive”.

Now it looks as if the cry of the future is going to be: “Too many of your children are living; come to our clinics and we will teach you how not to have them”.

No wonder they think we’re mad.

YES, no wonder they think we’re mad.

For nearly a century, dedicated missionaries have been saying to the people of Papua and New Guinea; “Put your trust in God the Father Almighty, not in the spirits of the ancestors”.

For a decade or more, earnest young teachers have been saying to the territory’s children: “Pin your faith to science, not to sorcery”.

For years we have all been trying to wean muddled minds from the cul-de-sac of cargo cult.

But if the children, or those of their parents who can read English, pick up almost any Australian magazine, or even the Friday issue of our local newspaper, they will

find, under some such title as “Your Stars”, a column which seeks to convince them that their road to wealth, health and happiness is governed by the conjunctions of Venus, Mars and Jupiter, and the influence of the stars which twinkled down upon their birth.

Is it any wonder if they exclaim, “What do these white men really believe?”

WHICH brings me to magic.

Lately there have come into the hands of Papuans and New Guineans certain mail-order advertise ments which emanate from that land to which the people of this territory look not only for material benefits but also for enlightenment and sound teaching—Australia.

To the people of this land of magic these mail-orders offer, believe it or not, magic!

Lucky charms, lucky rings, lucky necklaces, from “Egypt”, “India” and “China”; lucky purses too, and even lucky T shirts, lucky writing sets, and lucky shop toiletries (“All the girls will admire you!”) Prices range from $1,50 to $lO, and you get your money back if you don’t have good luck.

But I suppose that short of actually dying it would be difficult to prove that you wouldn’t have had even worse luck if you hadn’t bought these items.

I am told that this odd trade is perfectly lawful, and that there is nothing we can do about it. If that is so, I think that we should turn the tables on the magic merchants by exporting our magic to the astrology-addicts of Australia, (over)

Wisdom of

The Last Unknown

With a three-to-one adverse trade balance, and a plentiful supply of local magic for both home and export markets, we should not be importing the magic of Egypt, India and China via the lucky shops of Australia.

We might start off with that simple little tone charm. These charms could be turned out for less than a cent each and sold for, let us say, a couple of dollars. Our advertisement would begin like this:

Protect Your Baby

With The Age-Old Magic Of

Primitive Papua

Of course, we may run into a bit of trouble with the Australian Customs owing to the fact that the tone is of vegetable origin. However, I hope that by the time they catch up with us we shall have made so much money that we shall be able to run a full-page advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald, depicting a tightlipped Australian mother demanding her democratic right to protect her child with the ancient wisdom of the Last Unknown,

Magic Stones

At the worst, we can switch to magic stones.

We tend to think that Papuan and New Guinean people coming into town from the villages will shed their addiction to magic in the more sophisticated atmosphere of the town.

Dr. Ron Crocombe, of the New Guinea Research Unit of the Aus tralian National University, has recently suggested that the reverse may be the case, and that sense of insecurity engendered in trying to adapt to a new way of life amidst strange surroundings among strange people speaking strange languages may lead to a greater rather than a less reliance on the protection of magic.

This may well be so.

I remember once reading a letter written by a Papuan woman who had lived for some years in Port Moresby to a relative back in her home village. She enclosed several pound notes, and asked her relative to give them to the village sorcerer as payment for magic to cure one of her children who was sick, and whose sickness she thought to be due to the animosity of town neighbours belonging to another tribe.

Ironically enough, she lived a few minutes walk from the Port Moresby General Hospital, where all the

resources of modern medical science were available to her free of charge.

Perhaps this explains why more and more people in the “civilized” world are turning to astrology, lucky charms and other forms of mumbo jumbo.

In an era which has largely turned its back on religion, and in a world which at any moment may be turned into a desert of radio-active dust, they are bedevilled by much the same feeling of insecurity as besets the detribalised Papuans and New Guineans of the territory’s towns.

But it certainly does seem odd when you find a man who regards the beliefs of Christianity as an out moded superstition walking around with a lucky charm on his key-ring.

T WOULD like to express my appre ciation of the generous comments which a number of readers have made on my first column in the October issue. I have been corrected on one point, though, I wrote, “Captain John Moresby’s account of the voyage during which he discovered the great land-locked harbour now named after him”.

Mr. Hobart Spiller, of Port Moresby, has pointed out to me that in fact the naming was done by

Captain Moresby himself, and that he named both the outer and inner harbours in honour of his father, Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby, Hence our present names—“ Port Moresby” for the outer harbour, and “Fairfax Harbour” for the inner one.

Mr. Spiller is quite right. My apologies to him and to the memory of the gallant admiral. Nevertheless, I suspect that most of us will con tinue in our minds to connect the name of the place with its dis coverer.

Incidentally, I wonder how many of the capital’s present inhabitants know that the name Port Moresby was originally given only to the

harbour, and that the town which was established on its shores was designated “Granville”. The Depart ment of Lands still uses this name, Nowadays, both common and official usage applies the name Port Moresby to the whole complex of suburbs, settlements, villages, shanty hamlets, and business and industrial areas which lie within the town boundary, a complex which would probably cause considerable surprise, if they could see it, to the founders of Granville.

With so many suburbs bearing Papuan names springing up—Boroko, Korobosea, Hohola and so on—and with the seat of Administration,

To The Point, with

Percy Chattertqn

Konedobu, bearing a Papuan name, there is much to be said for the old town being accorded its Papuan name of “Ela”. But please let it be pro nounced to rhyme with “letter”, not with “peeler”.

BY the time you read these words Christmas will be upon us.

Even as I write them, in mid- November, the fire-crackers are beginning to explode. The stores are full of Christmas goods. Invitations to school “Speech Days” are begin ning to come in. In many schools examinations are over, and from classroom windows come the sounds of children’s voices practising Christ mas carols.

On a hill opposite my house there is a shanty settlement occupied by people from the river-delta country of the Gulf of Papua, where the villages are built on mud-banks and the diet consists mainly of sago and crabs.

Yellow Submarine

Most of those who come to town have little education and no skills.

They eke out a precarious existence from unskilled and often casual jobs, with not infrequent periods of un employment.

Their shanties are built of every conceivable sort of scrap material— with old corrugated iron predominat ing. Sanitation is primitive, and water has to be fetched from a stand-pipe some distance away.

Yet even from these sordid sur roundings comes the sound of children singing.

It doesn’t sound quite like Away in a Manger or The First Noel. It isn’t a Papuan tune, either.

The sound swells as the young singers reach the chorus, and now the words come through clearly.

We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

To all of you who read this column I offer seasonal greetings.

Whether you intend to celebrate the season with the angels and the wise men, or in a Holden sedan, or on a reindeer sleigh, or in a yellow sub marine with the Beatles, I wish you a very happy Christmas.