Out among the Sepik's

Book Reviews

Out among the Sepik's mothers and babies

As an author, Sister Elizabeth Burchill is a deceiver.

She gives you the impression she is no writer and has nothing of interest to impart, but by the time you’ve finished reading what she’s had to say you’re glad you didn’t miss her.

She did it once before in Inna mincka, and she’s done it again in New Guinea Nurse. She proves that the simple narrative style can be deceptively fascinating if the narrator herself is interested in what she has to tell you.

New Guinea Nurse is based on Sister Burchill’s experiences as an infant welfare sister at Maprik, in New Guinea’s Sepik. She had never heard of Maprik until she went there from Thursday Island in 1961, and in the first two chapters of her slim book she really does have noth ing much to say as she sets the scene.

But when Sister Burchill gets on to the job of nursing, out among the Sepik mothers and babies, you find yourself following her narrative with out pause although she had no special adventures.

Many another New Guinea welfare nurse with longer experience in the territory than Sister Burchill would have more incidents to relate, but the difference is that they haven’t related them, and should they ever do so perhaps they won’t be as straightforward about it as Sister Burchill.

Little things

The little things, the little thoughts, give this story its character. These are the things that the sister likes to record. She writes: “In retrospect one remembers the simplest clinic happenings with nostalgia. The human emotion ex pressed in little incidents of pathos, trust and helpfulness that occurred every day. Who could forget the abrupt interruption of an unabashed small boy suddenly breaking away from his mother’s side in the long queue, and rushing towards me at the table as if hypnotised, mouth wide open for inspection.

“Or the appeal of the tiny, pixie faced girl standing mute before the table, solemnly lifting one grubby garment above the knees to draw attention to a little skin sore I had previously missed, complete trust in her large, brown eyes?

“The sharp perception, quick understanding, and swift reaction of native women in unforseen situations evoked my surprise and admiration,”

And again: “I remember seeing one day a tiny girl, barely out of the toddler stage, who seemed to symbolise the un changed pattern of village life. She stood aloof from a clinic crowd, naked and pot-bellied, with the most utterly solemn expression I have seen on the face of a child of such tender years. Already she wore the badge of womanhood. A miniature bilum filled with goods completely covered her tiny back. She looked so forlorn in that unguarded moment. What might the future hold for her in this backward area?”

Death

Sister Burchill manages to share her new experiences with the reader.

Here she talks of death.

“Death came in ways previously unknown to me. Perhaps saddest of all were the unheralded deaths of children through accidents or suicidal violence. One day the Aus tralian in charge of Wingei Mission Station came to the hospital to report

the death of a three-year-old native girl who had fallen into a wild pig trap. This is a deep pit lined with upright native spears and camouflaged with grass and twigs. The unfortunate child fell into the pit, was impaled on the spears, and was almost blood less when found.

“I had never previously heard of death by sago poisoning nor of the great danger hidden in a block of wild sago prepared for cooking. Eating bad sago was a deliberate way of ending life and the suicide of a little girl as the result of this ancient method was particularly poignant. The six year-old was an emotionally unstable child, and thwarted by parental re primand one day, deliberately ate a portion of sago that had become bad, suffered the distressing effects of bacterial poison, and died in hospital.”

This is a strangely illuminating

little volume.-

SI.

(New Guinea Nurse. Rigby Ltd.

$3.25.)