for the Highlander?

How many worlds are there for the Highlander?

The end of World War II brought to Papua New Guinea an acceleration of the process in which its people until then were being more or less gradually drawn into the web of world culture.

In 1946 it became a trot which grew into a gallop in the fifties and sixties, and has reached a pace in the seven ties where many are afraid the rider may not be able to stay on the horse.

The Highlands missed the gradual phase altogether, and its people have largely been projected from a paleo lithic pattern into parliamentary democracy in a little over two decades. No wonder they want the world to wait a minute while they get ready for a full share in national independence. Perhaps, on the other hand, it’s no wonder, that with the evident vitality of the Highlands, some other members of the proposed new nation are happy to have in dependence come before the High landers are equipped to dominate the show.

But change the Highlanders cer tainly have done. The old sequence in which the first sustained contact with white men and their ways was with missionaries while government with its authority was unobtrusive, was superseded in the Highlands by a simultaneous, often competitive ap proach by both missions and adminis tration.

In her book Torn Between Two Worlds, Margaret Reeson sets out to tell the story of change in the life of two Highlands men from their first meeting with white men in 1950 until 1971, during which time they were first baffled and then pro foundly influenced by the message of the missionaries.

The story, she says, is incomplete.

It is a continuing one. The men are real. Their behaviour is recognisably that of men everywhere. They react, despite their unique situation of late emergence from the Stone Age, like men similarly confronted in other ages and other places.

The tensions resulting from rapid change have created, says the preface, a complicated pull in the lives of the two men between the ways of their clan and the ways of the white man . . . between animism and Chris tianity. “They have found it impos sible to abandon one world in favour of the other.”

When the missionaries began living their extraordinary lives and pro claiming their incomprehensible mes-

After a five year appren ticeship in the electrical trade, Rex Matthews went to Papua New Guinea as a Cadet Patrol Officer in 1950. In turn draughtsman, prison welfare worker and ordained minister, he was three years with the Nauru Congrega tional Church, and is currently pastor of two small churches in Sydney and staff journalist with PIM.

sage in the mountains of Mendi they were faced with limitations imposed by languages that had to be learned, and cultural differences that might well be considered insuperable. But in fact, their words had a surprising relevance, once a minimal standard of communication was established.

Spirit-dominated people could accept, once it was demonstrated, the idea of a benevolent master spirit. It worked, many of them pragmatically decided.

Which brings me to the point of my reaction to this book. Are the men of whom it speaks “tom between two worlds” or between three? Is there a greater gap between pre contact Highlander and either the missionary or the secular man of modern Western society than there is between the Christian believer and the man who has “progressed” beyond any belief in the supernatural?

Certainly, the secular man finds it harder to understand the missionary and his motives than he does the primitive man and his.

The Highlander has been torn from his violent but stable world, and he has to achieve a balance with the world of commerce and communica tions. Besides feeling the tension be tween his past and the big world that now unfolds, he enters into the greater tension between the elements of the vast society that mankind is becoming.

This is not denied by the author, but the fact is that the Christian faith is only imparted as part of a package-deal, in which the whole range of Western values are included.

One of the men visits Adelaide. He learns the importance of money and of the need (for Australians) of regular hours of hard work. Was he

discovering the rightness of Aus tralia’s way of life?

It is notoriously difficult to get right inside another person’s mind.

Differences of language and back ground make it more so. It would therefore be easier to have composed a work of fiction to convey the ideas that this book encompasses, but Mrs.

Reeson has no doubt aimed for authenticity.

Long hours of question and answer, of sifting and analysing thoughts, have gone into the dialogue, but nevertheless, the impression does not emerge that the writer has really got inside her subjects.

For instance, the modern mission ary accepts the notion that it is not simply his task to uproot and sup plant cultures, but to sit down with his friend and share his understand ing. This means feeling the pull of the other man’s beliefs before you can express yours to him without arrogance.

Margaret Reeson obviously has a great deal of sympathy with the Highlands mind, but some of the thoughts attributed to it at times bear a large stamp of the Methodist mind of the writer. There is nothing in the thoughts of the young theological student sitting in chapel that a warm young convert might not have thought, but he is credited with think ing them in highly orthodox and rather academic terms.

Perhaps this is for the benefit of orthodox and academic readers but it does reduce the authentic impact.

The book is a little let down by a weakness of editing. A number of infelicitous expressions like “had had” twice in two lines have been allowed to remain (p. 101), and the names of sundry European mission aries who are often peripheral to the story are spread liberally across its pages. Uncorrected spellings are “started” for “startled” on p. 101 and “independant” on p. 199.

The rest of the story is yet to be lived, the book jacket concludes. It is indeed. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the book is printed and published by the Lutheran Kristen Pres of Madang in Papua New Guinea. It is bound in hard covers of mediocre quality, and is firmly priced at $4.95. —Rex Matthews.

(Torn Between Two Worlds. By

Margaret Reeson. Kristen Pres Inc. $4.95.)