People
pp. 40-41 · Read in the full issue
• Ponapean mother Antelise Shoniber intends to invade a Micro nesian-men-only sphere—politics—and run for a Ponape senate seat in the Congress of Micronesia election later this year. She thinks the men may be jealous, having to compete against a woman in a job which, hitherto, has been a man’s preserve, but she is sure she can do a better job. “The men in the congress are afraid to speak out when something is wrong,” she said.
“They always let the Americans, the bosses, have their way, even when they don’t agree with it and think it’s wrong. If I think I’m right, I’ll speak up and say what is good for my people.” She’s optimistic about suc cess. “When I go to the congress, the people must know what I’m going there for,” she said. “When I come back, the people must know what I did there.” Antelise isn’t impressed with the job congress has been doing.
“It isn’t giving the people the things they need and ask for. They need roads, electricity and water, the hos pitals are filthy and need in-service training and better nursing care.” • Controller of Prisons in Fiji since 1964, Major Walter Morgan retired at January’s end and the post has reverted to an expatriate officer, Mr. John Bradley, who was adviser on prison administration in Botswana and Nigeria before going to Fiji. Levuka bora Major Morgan was with the Prisons Service for 25 years after serving with the Fiji Military Forces in World War 11, He was in the Solo mons campaign from April, 1943 until August, 1944. He was awarded the Imperial Service Order in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 1971.
Mr. Bradley, aged 48, served with the King’s African Rifles in Burma in World War 11. • Mr. Kenneth Franzheim II is President Nixon’s choice as the first US Ambassador to Fiji. Mr. Franz heim is already Ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa and the additional chore is, as the White House announcement says, “without additional compensation”. In other words, he doesn’t get paid for being Ambassador to Fiji, but he’ll get a few trips a year from Wellington to Suva which, particularly in winter in Windy Wellington, is pay enough.
Mr. Bob Skiff, US Consul in Fiji, remains in his job with a name change. He becomes charge d’affaires. • Two new appointments have been made by the UN Development Programme to the Pacific. Mr. Henry Kaufman, who has held posts with the UN in Geneva, Congo, Tunisia and Laos, heads the new office of UNDP in Port Moresby, which as a branch of the Sydney office will help facilitate projects in Papua New Guinea.
Mr. N. C. Angus, formerly As sistant Commissioner with the NZ State Services Commission, has been appointed public administration ad viser in Suva. He has been employed by the UN in Turkey, Ethiopia, the Sudan and Jamaica, and has visited Malaysia, Western Samoa and Fiji in connection with the Colombo Plan and New Zealand Aid programme. • Elected members of the GEIC’s Legislative Assembly met in January at Tarawa and elected Naboua Ratieta as acting Leader of Govern ment Business. He will occupy the position during the absence through illness of Reuben K. Uatioa, MBE, the Leader of Government Business, who was elected to the position in
April last year. In the elections ihe previous month, Reuben Uatioa was the only one of the five Elected Mem bers of the old Governing Council to keep his seat. Naboua, who rep resents Marakei, was first elected to the House of Representatives in a by-election in 1968 and was returned unopposed last March. © American Samoans, in collision with the law and needing a champion, will find themselves being defended by a woman, Barbara Ann Sena, wife of Dr. Jorge Waite of the gov ernment’s computer centre. She suc ceeds Judge Arthur Morrow, who has retired after six years in the post, which he occupied on retiring as Chief Justice in 1965. Mrs. Waite obtained a bachelor of arts degree and a doctorate in jurisprudence at De Paul University and a master of laws degree at Berkeley School of Law in the University of California.
She has practised in California’s Supreme Court and has been an assistant public defender in Alameda, California. • Tongan Methodist minister the Rev. Mosese Latu has been appointed as minister in Sydney to Pacific Islanders living in the city. He was inducted at a service in Sydney con ducted by the Rev. Wesley Pidgeon, NSW secretary for Overseas Missions, and the Rev. S. G. Cowled, for many years chairman of the Methodist Church in Fiji. Mr. Latu, who was trained at Tupou College in Tonga and the Navuso Agricultural College in Fiji, has been working among Aborigines in Arnhem Land. • Professor M. G. A. Wilson has been appointed Head of the School of Social and Economic Development and Professor of Geography and Population studies at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. Cur rently Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Monash University, Victoria, he is expected to assume his post at the USP early in July, He will be on a 2J year second ment from Monash.
In another senior appointment to the USP, Professor H. R. Cushman has recently taken up the post of Professor of Agriculture. His ap pointment follows on from recom mendations made by the Report of the Agricultural Mission to the USP in 1970.
Formerly Professor of Agricultural Education at Cornell University, New York, Professor Cushman, is based in Western Samoa, at the South Pacific Regional College of Tropical
The pretty girl in the picture is, or was, Miss Margaret Krishnan. She left Suva to work in the South Pacific Commission's office in Sydney and found a husband — Mr. Malcolm Holmes, of Sydney. Mar garet's family lives on the Queen's Road at Vulagi, Lami, outside Suva.
Agriculture at Alafua. He will travel extensively in the region, particularly to the USP in Suva for consultations.
His major responsibility will be to carry out a detailed investigation into the need for training courses in agri culture at all levels in the region and to relate his findings to the resources already available in Western Samoa and Fiji. • Lauofo Meti, of Western Samoa, has been appointed a director of BP South-West Pacific Limited. Lauofo Meti has occupied a number of pro minent Government positions in Western Samoa as well as being the first Pacific Islander to chair a session of the South Pacific Commission. He is the senior commissioner for Samoa on the South Pacific Commission as well as being a director of a number of companies in Western Samoa. • Dr. Frank Mahony, who has 10 years in anthropology in Micro nesia and four years in Africa among his experiences, comes from teaching at the University of Hawaii to his new post of director of the social development programme of the South Pacific Commission. With a special interest in linguistics, he was in Sydney in February looking at the SPC’s growing resource material for teaching English as a second language.
Dr. Mahony’s personal hope is to see development take place primarily in terms of human resources develop ment, with economic considerations taking their place as part of the pat tern and not dictating the pattern as they so often have all over the world. • Dr. Roger Green, of Auckland University, is back in his hunting ground in the BSIP, scene of his archaeological discoveries last year when he unearthed the camp site of Mendana’s second expedition at Graciosa Bay on Santa Cruz. He is continuing excavations at Suiena village on the island of Ugi, and also plans to visit Duff islands. He is ac companied by Mr. Graeme Ward of Otago University, who had Ulawa on his calling list as a possible valuable site of prehistoric adze makers. Mr. Ward’s dig is expected o last three months. • Mr. Morrison Thompson, of .e New Hebrides, has graduated rom the University of Papua and sew Guinea with a Bachelor of Arts legree—but so have others! What is loteworthy in Mr. Thompson’s case s that he is the first New Hebridean o obtain a university degree. He’s
moved around a little to get it, start ing his education at the King George VI School in the Solomons, contin uing at Ipswich Grammar School in Queensland and spending five years at the university. He hopes to take up administrative work at Vila.
Twelve New Hebrideans are studying at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. ® Dr. Ram Narendra Dube, 27, of Nadi, who recently gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Auckland, has a number of “firsts” to his credit. He is believed to be the first Fiji student to gain a Master of Science degree with first class honours from Auckland University, the first Fiji student to be awarded a New Zealand Post Graduate Scholarship by the New Zealand University Grants Committee and the first to gain a Ph.D. degree from a New Zealand university. Dr. Dube originally went to New Zealand on a Fiji Government scholarship. He graduated with a B.Sc. degree in 1967 and obtained his M.Sc. with first class honours in 1968. • Father Patrick Finau SM, Vicar- General of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tonga, has been “named” by Pope Paul as coadjutor bishop, with right of succession, to the Bishop of Tonga, the Most Rev. J. H. M.
Rodgers. Following custom in giving coadjutor, or assistant bishops the titles of ancient sees now dormant in areas usually occupied by the Islamic faith. Father Finau has been given the titular bishopric of Aurusuliana.
After education at St. Patrick’s Col lege and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Greenmeadows, New Zealand, he was ordained priest in 1959 by Bishop Rodgers. He is director of Roman Catholic education in Tonga and regional superior of the Marist Order in Tonga and Niue. • Cook Islander Mrs. Marjorie Crocombe, BA, wife of professor Ronald Crocombe, Pacific Studies professor at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, has been back home on a working holiday. She has been digging out facts about six LMS missionaries who went from Rarotonga to Papua New Guinea in 1872. One of them was Ruatoka, of Mangaia, who worked with the Rev.
James Chalmers, who was murdered and eaten by New Guinea cannibals in 1901. Mrs. Crocombe, who ob tained her BA in sociology and hist-
ory last December at the USP, hopes to complete her researches in time for the centenary celebrations in November of the United Church of PNG and the Solomons.
Air Pacific's 21 pretty hostesses will be wearing this new relaxed-look uniform when the airline inaugurates its BAC 111 services on April 2, flying from Fiji to Papua New Guinea. The uniform, modelled here by Patricia Singh, replaces the sari worn by Indian hostesses and the full-length sulu which looks so charming on the Fijian girls. Incorporating the air line's colours of dark blue and turquoise, the uniform was unanimously approved at a directors' board meeting in January.