Tropicalites

Another

canoe voyage

Fourteen Polynesian descendants of royal lineage from around Tahiti are preparing to set sail in July in an outrigger canoe, following ancient custom in an effort to simulate early Polynesian migrations across the Pacific, including Japan.

The outrigger will sail from Tahiti to Hawaii and on to Japan and the Marianas, then via the New Hebrides and New Caledonia to New Zealand.

The voyage by 11 men and three women is expected to take eight months. Preparations were under way by December when timber for the pirogue was being shipped from the New Hebrides to Papeete.

Huge trees of at least five metres in diameter are required to reproduce the dimensions of the original royal Polynesian vessels. The plans for the pirogue were made after consultation with British Admiralty documents relating to observations of the craft made by Captain Cook. Traditional Polynesian carpenters have been recruited for the task.

One of the leaders of the operation is Teriiteanuanua (Charles) Manu- Tahi, an associate of the Punaruu Museum. He supervised the cutting and choice of timber from the island of Efate in the New Hebrides, and ex plained that the whole project is being organised by men of royal Polynesian descent from Tahiti, Raiatea and Bora Bora.

By including Japan on their circuit, the navigators aim to emphasise that the early Polynesians did in fact sail as far as Nippon. They state that in one particular district the Japanese know about the traditional Polynesian oven and use the same name for fish and fruits as in Tahiti.

The 20th century Polynesian sailors plan to use only ancient traditional means of boat construction, navigational aids and foodstuffs on board. This will include sails of pan danus fibre sewn together by woven

coconut fibre. Bamboo segments will contain the traditional forms of medicinal plants, while fish hooks will be mother of pearl attached to vegetable thread. Fish will be the main diet on this voyage for which special preparation will be required of the 14 members aboard.

Navigation aids will similarly be restricted to ancient materials such as a compass made of a coconut pierced in precise spots so that the sound blowing through will indicate any movement off course. Similarly, the weathercock will include red feathers, and as a sextant there will be a piece of bamboo, pierced in appropriate spots in relation to the stars.

Fund-raising to finance the sailing venture will include Polynesian folkloric displays scheduled for Noumea in March.

Rsad this and

bs warnsd . . .

At one time there was a European trader living on an island in the Cooks many miles from the administrative centre of the island territory that had become his home.

As the years passed, he became in creasingly given to fits of frustration and to the feeling that those in authority were in some kind of unholy league against him.

For many years he wrote letters of increasing ire to the hierarchy of in fluence. His epistles went to resident agents, the resident commissioner, to the Secretary of the Department con trolling the territory, and, if the mood moved him, to the Minister himself. It is even said of our friend that he had received acknowledgments from a certain personage in Buckingham Palace itself.

Well, as might have been expected, no ordinary typewriter was capable of withstanding this onslaught upon its keyboard. Eventually the “e” fell from the machine never to be replac ed. But this did not daunt our man.

For some time letters arrived at the administrative headquarters which bore the inscription “In this letter

read e for s except where s is applicable”. Words like “sex” became “ssx” well, that was not too difficult to cope with. But it was when this correspondent launched into diatribes about the ‘‘obssssions of ssvsral ssrvants of ths sovsrsign to sssk succour in csrtain ssxual and drunksn sscapadss” that the long suffering clerks and public servants decided that the time had come for all incoming mail from this source to be placed in a “pending” file.

'lnstant' kava

upsets senator

Fiji’s Ratu Senator Livai Volavola, in a recent plea for a revival of Fijian culture, said people who did not help to preserve it, should leave the coun try. Senator Volavola, who is Vice- President of the Senate, attacked a decision by a local company to sell pre-packed “instant” yaqona (kava).

He said such sales were against Fijian tradition and culture.

He was also critical of film showings on Sundays, saying they were turning the Fijian people away from church. When he was a Suva city councillor some years ago (in fact he acted as mayor for three months, the first Fijian to be Mayor of Suva), he had raised the question of films being screened on Sundays. He was told then they were Indian films and were shown on Sundays so that people from rural areas, unable to get to the city on any other day of the week, could see them. But now the theatre owners were showing English films, and Fijians were going to them in stead of to church.

Air Niugini misses

conversion bonanza

Air Niugini could have saved itself more than $A500,000 if it had waited two extra days before paying Australia for a Boeing 707 jet.

The airline paid 5A4.2 million to Qantas on Friday, November 26,

1976. But currency revaluations in both countries over the ensuing weekend raised the value of the Papua New Guinea kina by 12.5% against the Australian dollar.

The airline’s manager, Mr Bryan Grey, said: “It made no difference to Qantas one way or the other they still received the agreed price in Australian dollars.

“And in terms of our own money, we still paid exactly what we had agreed to pay, but we would have had a conversion windfall if we had been a few days later.”

Mr Grey said that in any event, November 26 was the day on which payment had become due under the

agreement of sale, and Air Niugini had met its commitment.

NZ moves on

offending immigrants

The New Zealand Government moved in December to implement its election promise to deport offending immigrants.

The Minister of Immigration, Mr Gill, introduced into Parliament an Immigration Amendment Bill which provides that: • An immigrant will be deported if he commits an offence within two years of his arrival

• No deportation order can be made more than six months after the offender has been released from detention, or if the sentence imposed for an offence did not involve deten tion • It will not be a defence to a charge if the defendant proves that he did not know that his temporary per mit had expired • If the holder of a temporary per mit leaves New Zealand at any time during its currency, the permit expires on his departure.

The Labour Opposition spokesman on immigration, MrColman, strongly attacked the measure. He said: “At a time when we were seeing some compassion as regards overstayers, we see this repressive measure being introduced.”

A person who had committed an offence carrying a prison term of as little as one day or one week could face deportation under the bill, he said.

Mr M. Rata (Labour, Northern Maori) said the bill represented a further attack on the Island com munity.

An Opposition move to have the bill referred to a select committee for study during the parliamentary recess was defeated 25-41.

Highland highway

robbery in PNG

Highway robbery was one of the themes touched on by Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner, Pious Kerepia, at a press conference late last year.

Just back from a highland tour, Mr Kerepia admitted that the increasing incidence of thefts from the backs of trucks using PNG mountain highways was worrying police.

He told the press: “I deliberately chose to travel from Mt Hagen to Kundiawa in the evening rather than in daylight. We left Mt Hagen for Kundiawa at 6.30 pm. On the way I noticed up to half a dozen loaded trucks parked unattended at the side of the highway. This must be one of the factors negligence by the drivers themselves.

“Another factor is the winding of the highway. There are too many sharp bends, and when the driver slows down to get around them, it’s easy for people to jump aboard and steal what they like.

“It’s the same thing with the hills and slopes. Either going up or down

them, drivers have to reduce speed, again making it easy for thieves to jump aboard.

“I also noticed that the highway was sometimes blocked by big stones lying in the middle. I don’t know whether this is deliberate or not, but I was told that some drivers, when they pull up to have a rest or chat to their mates, place stones behind the wheels of their trucks. When they take off again, they forget about the stones, and the next truck that comes along has to stop and the driver has to get out to move them. Another oppor tunity for the thieves.

“Between Kundiawa and Chuave the government is straightening part of the Highlands Highway so that instead of winding here and there we cut right across those bends and meet up with other sections of straight road. The straighter the road, the more consistent the speed, and the smaller the chance thieves will have of clambering aboard passing trucks

Palau: ’7os’ hottest

environmental issue”

Palau, a magnificent coral reef paradise in the Trust Territory of Micronesia, could become a junk fouled port for the world’s largest super-tankers bringing black crude to Japan, a conservation group was told late last year.

Micronesian News Service, quoting United Press International, said the warning came from Dr Sylvia A.

Earle in remarks prepared for the Fourth International Congress of the World Wildlife Fund. The Congress was attended by delegates from 35 nations.

“Imagine the world’s largest super port, five times larger than the largest now known,” said Dr Earle.

“Imagine 14,000 native Palauans, with a lifestyle, economy and cultural history tied to the land and surroun ding sea. Imagine billions of dollars of oil money and a consortium of in dustrial interests from the US, Japan and Iran. Imagine one of the world’s most magnificent and fragile coral reef formations.

“Put them all together and you have one of the hottest environmental issues of the decade. Call it Port Pacific.”

Palau as a superport is “a throwaway container, a package for oil, a temporary place where ships as large as the Empire State Building can come and go,” she said. “When

they finally go forever, the dead husk that was once Palau will remain.”

Japan wants a place such as Palau to build a superport because of pressure from Japanese fishermen against the present use of Japan’s har bours and storage facilities, said Dr Earle, leader of the first team of women aquanauts in the world, a research botanist at the California Academy of Sciences and a faculty member of the University of Califor nia, Berkeley.

“Port Pacific will enable Japan to export pollution not wanted at home.

Yet Palau is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” she said.

PNG’s kina is

going underground

Papua New Guinea is concerned that a “significant” proportion of its currency is being hoarded or used in closed-currency situations.

Money hoarding has long been popular in the PNG Highlands where villagers bury it in holes in the ground instead of putting it into the banking systems.

The practice is part of an attitude which places status value rather than practical value on the possession of coins. Much of the money circulates only in closed family groups as part of tribal ceremonies.

Meanwhile, the second major con signment of coins since PNG in troduced its own currency 19 months ago has been received in Port Moresby from the Royal Mint in Bri tain.

A new denomination of note, K2O, will also be introduced early in 1977. It will be PNG’s highest denomination note.

France returns

PNG artifacts

In a move unpublicised at the time, France last November handed back more than 70 tribal carvings and weapons which had been smuggled out of Papua New Guinea. Many of the pieces are classified as national cultural property.

Secrecy surrounds the full story of how the French authorities traced the artifacts and seized them. The PNG National Museum and Art Gallery merely confirmed in December that the French naval escort ship Com mandant Riviere had delivered the ar tifacts during a courtesy call to Port Moresby the previous month.

There had been no announcement at the time ‘Tor diplomatic reasons”.

Earlier in the year a company direc tor from New Caledonia, John Gueroull, and a Frenchwoman, Jocelyn Knezevic, formerly of Paris, had eluded a harbour watch in Port Moresby and taken their yacht Thetis to sea. They had been awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy involving the purchase of tribal artifacts from village communities in the Gulf of Papua.

An earlier search of their yacht and other searches failed to locate ar tifacts which were known to be miss ing from villages.

The Thetis later berthed in Darwin from where the couple attempted to obtain new passports to replace those they had left behind in Port Moresby.

Despite a warrant for their arrest the couple were not extradited to PNG, and they later sailed from Darwin, still without passports.

PNG authorities said at the time their main concern was to get back “valuable cultural property which is missing from our villages”.

Govt men charged

on Pago Pago bombing

Two employees of the Government of American Samoa face charges arising out of the bombing of a motor car belonging to the publisher of Pago Pago’s major newspaper, Samoa News.

The men are To’a Etimani Fonoti, Assistant Tax Manager, and Wally Utu, assistant clerk of the American Samoa House of Representatives.

The publisher, Jake King, who is described by a colleague as “possibly the most vitriolic a-nd colourful publisher in the business”, stood unsuccessfully for the Fono in the last election. Utu was also an unsuccessful candidate in the election.

Count 8 of the 10-count government charge against Utu says that he “did . . . wilfully and unlawfully threaten and intimidate . . .

King in the free exercise or enjoyment of his rights and privileges secured to him by both the constitutions of the US and American Samoa, to wit, his right of free association with guests at his home, and his right to seek political office . . .”

The car exploded while parked outside King’s home in the Pago Pago suburb of Auasi on May 6, 1976, but the two officials were not charged until late November.

It looks like being a long-winded

affair all round: a PIM correspondent in Pago Pago writes that “the trial has been delayed now to a time uncertain, due to the absence of the principals . .

Western Samoans’

double trouble

Troubles have not come singly for a Western Samoan brother and sister in Auckland on visitor’s permits.

The girl, Aloiafi Satiu, 16, had not long been in New Zealand when, ac cording to relatives, she became possessed by evil spirits. As the spirits had possessed her in that country, they believe, they can only be exor cised there. Aloiafi has been successfully treated on about 10 oc casions by a Western Samoan “witch doctor”, but relief is only temporary and the coma-like attacks keep recurring.

As well as the spirits, Aloiafi has to reckon with the NZ immigration authorities who in September gave her till the end of the month to leave the country. Her family believes that if she has to leave NZ and miss the cures effected by the witch doctor she could die.

Aloiafi’s six-year-old brother, Misilagi, has rheumatic fever, which has affected his heart. As Western Samoa has no reciprocal social welfare agreement with NZ, his parents, who are now back home, face bills totalling $NZ4,280 for the treat ment received by the boy in the Princess Mary Ward of Auckland Hospital, and some dental care. Like his sister’s, Misilagi’s visitor’s permit has also expired.

Two new plays on PNG.

past and present

Two significant plays by Papua New Guinean authors were presented in Port Moresby late last year by PNG’s National Dance and Drama Company.

They were “Oli-Kam Na Paulim Yumi”, by John Bili Tokome, and “Which Way Big Man”, by Nora Vagi Brash.

The plays dealt with aspects of past and present realities of PNG society.

The first reflected the confusion of Papua New Guineans at their first contact with Europeans. The teaching methods of various Christian denominations, and the instrusion on traditional societies and cultures, were clearly illustrated in the play.

The second play dealt with symp toms of conflict between educated and uneducated in contemporary PNG society.