People

• Milton de Mello has been named American Samoa’s new direc tor of education following the con troversial “release” of Richard Balch in June. Former deputy district superintendent for the Windward District of the Hawaii State Depart ment of Education, Mr. de Mello has been under a 19 month contract with the University of Hawaii which calls for extensive university participation in improving the education system of American Samoa. He is 42 and married with four children. • Bwebwetake Areieta, 26, as sistant broadcasting officer for Radio Tarawa, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, has returned to Tarawa after success fully completing a BBC overseas pro ducers’ course in the UK. Originally from Maiana, Bwebwetake and his wife, Matereti, of Onotoa and the Redfern-Kwong family, live on Bairiki but he commutes to Betio Islet by ferry each day as the station is based on Betio. He spent a period in Suva, Fiji, in 1966, work ing for the Fiji Government’s Public Relations Office. • Bert Bolt, secretary of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Copra Board and assistant registrar of the GEIC Co-operatives Societies since February, 1966, left Tarawa in August with his wife, Susan, for retirement at Albany, Western Aus tralia. Bert is originally from London and when in the GEIC he was based at Betio, Tarawa; in Tarawa, Mrs.

Bolt put in a lot of her time fund raising for the local Red Cross. • New Zealander Keith Singleton, during his two-year stint as electrical supervisor on Tarawa to the GEIC’s Public Works Department, was, in his own words, “driven to poetry”, so he became the popular “Zob the Slob” correspondent to the colony’s newsheet, CIN. He returns to NZ,

Blonde Monica Penfeunteun (opposite) is a beautiful arrival from France to Vila. She’s just opened up a small boutique in the Hebridean capital—and it looks as though she’s her own best model: Photo by Sheree

Lipton.

via Australia, in October, but the tip is it isn’t the last the Islands will see of the wiry, grey-haired Kiwi (a return, in some capacity to Funa futi or Aitutaki, Cooks?).

From 1963 to 1966 Keith was based in Nadi as electrical overseer for the then NZ Civil Aviation, and he travelled widely, including Raro tonga, Funafuti, Aitutaki, Pago Pago and Apia. • Mr. Ted Shaw arrived in Vila on July 26 to take a job as chief pilot with New Hebrides Airways, replacing Mr. Gary Ogg who has joined Qantas. Mr. Shaw served in the RAAF during World War II and for the past 20 years has worked as a test pilot, most recently for Hawker de Havilland of Australia. • Three Fijian couples have been picked to work among the aborigines of Australia’s Northern Territory as missionary agriculturists for the Methodist Church. Due to leave Suva at the end of July for four years in the Territory were Samuela Saurara Vateitei, Taione Peraki Leweniqila and Joviisi N. Ragata. They were to take their wives. • Mr. Peter Creevey, managing editor of the Samoa Times resigned at the end of July, following major divisions on policy and management, particularly in regard to the Ameri can Samoa branch of the company.

Mr. Creevey went to Samoa in 1963 as managing editor of the old Samoa Bulletin. In 1966 he shifted to the young Samoa Times and guided the newspaper through a merger with the Bulletin to become a Samoa-wide publication.

• Dr. G. Lindsay Lockley took over on July 1 as secretary in Australia and New Zealand of the Congregational Council for World Mission, successor body to the old London Missionary Society. He takes the place of the Rev. Norman Cocks who has retired after 25 years in the position, and during whose term many of the Island congregations under his care have emerged as independent churches or become engaged in wider church unions.

Dr. Lockley was ordained in 1932, and for the past 20 years has been principal of Cromwell College in the University of Queensland. For much of that time he was principal of the Congregational Theological College.

An active member of LMS boards and committees. Dr. Lockley brings to the office of mission secretary a wide knowledge of and love for Pacific peoples. • Commonwealth Scout Travelling Commissioner, Mr. George F. Wit chell, arrived in Vila on August 7 to visit scout groups in the New Hebrides; he was also to assist scout leaders in advanced training courses.

Later in the month he was due to visit Fiji, Tonga, the BSIP, Papua- New Guinea and New Zealand. • Mr. Walter O. Cernohorsky, expert on marine shells and author of Marine Shells of the Pacific, was to visit the New Hebrides at the end of August looking for unusual specimens for scientific study. • Mr. Fred J. Muhleman Jr. of the International Labour Organisa tion arrived in Apia recently to begin a 12 month assignment as Vocational Training Adviser for the South Pacific. Mr. Muhleman, Deputy Director of Education for the US Trust Territory for the last six years, will be based in Western Samoa, and will travel to the other territories of the region as and when requested.

The main purpose of the mission is to advise and assist the various governments in developing their vocational training programmes. • The South Pacific Commission health section’s Dr. Archie Guinea and his wife, Kura, left Noumea recently to return to work in the New Zealand Health Department at Hutt City. Far from his native Scotland, Archie had spent four years in the Cooks and New Caledonia. Noumea cocktail-goers used to be amused at his attending social functions in his tartan kilt.

“This old Caledonian dress” Archie would tell the locals, “is not so different from your New Caledonian (native style) manou”.

Dr. G. Lindsay Lockley.