If you didn’t laugh,

see your doctor...

Tales of the Tikongs. By Epeli Hau’ofa. Published by Long man Paul, Auckland, in their Pacific Paperbacks Series. 93pp, ISBN 0 582 71789 2.

Price SNZB.9S.

A country is generally consi dered to have reached maturity when its citizens can take and enjoy a good-natured skit on their national foibles and eccen tricities. It usually takes genera tions before this stage is reached, but the process of maturation must have speeded up, like everything else, for a genuine comic author has appeared on the island book stalls even before the last of the Pacific territories has achieved independence.

As one would expect, the stories are about Tonga (though the locale is never mentioned) for almost alone in the Pacific the Tongans, never having known dependency, can swallow a dose of ribbing with aplomb and even delight, knowing intuitively that they are in fact the salt of the earth, or at least of the South Seas.

To me Epeli Hau’ofa’s Tales of the Tikongs were a sheer delight from cover to cover, though admittedly some of the more Rabelaisian would have made my Victorian grand mother’s hair stand on end.

But island humor is not for vestal- virgins and Hau’ofa is never malicious but writes, like James Thurber, as one to whom his fellow men, being human, are all more than somewhat barmy on the crum pet but that our oddities de serve recording with sympathy.

Hau’ofa’s banter is not forced but seems to flow, or rather bubble over with a natu ral effervescence, from story to story, as a kaleidoscope of islanders live, love and laugh happily unencumbered by su perfluous material possessions and unimpressed by the motley horde of expatriate experts an xious to develop them, though willing enough to appropriate any of the goodies they seem so anxious to part with.

Sione and his wife Satusi,

Hiti George VI, Noel M’a, Tevi ta Poto, Pulu, Ole Pasifikiwei and His Holiness Bopeep Dr Toki Tumu are only a few of the colorful characters who attempt to walk the narrow path that leads to salvation on Tiko, with more than occasional lapses due to Temptation, particularly when it appears in the guise of a member of the opposite sex.

The visiting experts are equally well drawn: Mr Merv Dolittle with his project to make the Tikongs work on weekdays; Mr Charles Higginbotham, the director from England; Alvin (Sharky) Lowe, the Fisheries Grassroots Development Advis er; and Mr Eric Hobsworth- Smith and his Bureau for the Preservation of Traditional Cul ture and Essential Indigenous Personality are some of the international worthies who de scend on the Tikongs to do them good, eventually to de part in despair or else them selves become converts to the South Sea Way.

Surveying all but still aloof is the puckish figure of Manu; the great unbeliever, particularly in anything savoring of Deve lopment, observing the frailties of his fellow islanders with a sardonic grin and infinite under standing.

Looking back on my own life in the islands I felt that many of the incidents could have hap pened easily enough in real life.

There came to mind the Great Peanut Development Scheme which would no doubt have brought prosperity to the entire Kingdom of Tonga had not the Very Important Persons selected to distribute the over sized and succulent seed peanuts imported from some far-off land scoffed the lot with nary a one surviving to be planted.

Then there was the Vavau gold-rush, so secret that even now I dare not tell the story; and in another land the Rat Eradication Campaign, which was a tremendous success in my report, but a resounding failure in practice once the islanders learnt to cut the tails

off the rats for the penny I offered, and then breed them in cages till I ran out of money and there were many times the original rat population running around, though mostly without tails.

The Korokainga Community Development Project was an other great success on paper, happily employing many fertile brains at Colony headquarters in devising schemes for village betterment; and in the end reducing the villagers to near destitution through having to

entertain the constant round of visiting VIPs. Results did not always match expectations in the days of the Running Dogs of Imperialism, and I surmise from the Tales of the Tikongs that they are as unpredictable in the era of the highly-paid In ternational Expert.

But the Tikong saga is emphatically not a book to read about, but one to buy and read for yourself; if you are dis appointed, there is something wrong with your risible facul ties, and you had better see a

doctor.

Harry Maude

Epeli Hau’ofa ... “a genuine comic author.”