People

The Papua New Guinea Governor- General, Sir John Guise, always a keen fisherman, is joining the ranks of the storytellers. He attended a football game in Port Moresby limping and without a shoe on one foot because of an injury. He told Rugby League officials he had been reeling in a Spanish mackerel “it must have been close to 90 pounds” and it had bitten him on the foot.

The Head of State of Western Samoa, Malietoa Tanumafili 11, was upset by the lack of pomp accorded him when he arrived in Lon don in September. According to his son, Captain Laupepa Malietoa, he complained that no member of the British Royal family was at Heathrow Airport to meet him. He contrasted this with the reception he received in Peking on his way to Europe. There he was met by Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua.

The Foreign Office explained, however, that protocol had been respected. Tanumafili was in Britain on a private visit and was therefore

met by a lady-in-waiting of the Royal Household and a Foreign Ministry of ficial.

During his stay in Britain, he lunch ed with the Duke of Kent, He was also displeased with his reception in Paris, complaining that he was met by a junior official who murmured something about his being welcome to stay in France as a guest of the government when he ended a coming visit to West Germany.

Mr T. H. Layng, Queen’s Com missioner in Tuvalu, no longer has to wear two hats. Following recent resumption of duty after leave in the UK, he relinquished the post of Depu ty Governor of the Gilbert Islands. He has taken up permanent residence in Funafuti. While he held both posts he had to travel frequently between Funafuti and Tarawa.

The Rev Daniel Mustapha, 46, will become the first Fiji-Indian president of the Methodist Church in Fiji in January when he succeeds the Rev Setareki Tuilovoni for a three-year term. Mr Tuilovoni, after Mr Mustapha was elected by 200 delegates at the Methodist Church Conference, remarked, “It is a mark of true unity that the conference was able to elect the best person to the post, regardless of social distinc tions.” Mr Mustapha, who was born at Levuka, was ordained in 1959, and later went to Leonard College, Jubulpur, India, from where he graduated in 1965 with the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. He is married and has four children. He speaks the Fijian language fluently.

Miss Maris King, Australia’s Deputy High Commissioner to Western Samoa and Tonga, has com pleted three years in the Pacific and has returned to Australia. One of her last official “chores” was a visit to Western Samoa, which coincided with a goodwill visit to Apia, from September 29 to October 3, of the RAN submarine HMAS Ovens. She was quick to deny that the visit of the submarine had anything to do with re cent Russian and Chinese advances to Western Samoa, saying it had been planned well before the connection between Russia and Western Samoa and Tonga came to the surface.