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This project was part of the strategy designed by the District Commissioner of the Central District of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, Mr James L.O. Tedder, to reconcile with and manage the growing Moro Movement of the northern (or Weather Coast) of Guadalcanal, an offshoot of the New Guinea Cargo Cult. Adherents of the various cargo cults that arose in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), following the War in the Pacific (1941-1945), believed that only a reversion to traditional ways and beliefs would bring again the great ‘wealth’ in the form of war materiel which appeared on their shores but was actually an outcome of military operations in the Islands. The government’s rural development plan, the initiative of Mr. Tedder, included for this remote area of the Solomons, an airstrip, a school, and a coastal road. The building of the airstrip was completed under the supervision of a British volunteer with ‘Voluntary Service Overseas’ (VSO) in the year before I, the author of this memoir, arrived by government boat on the Weather Coast.
Mr James Tedder, from Sydney, Australia, based in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, arranged with the VSO organization in Hanover Square, London, for the present writer, then aged 18 years, a school-leaver from an ancient English grammar school near Saffron Walden, Essex, and John M. Lowen, 19 years, a London-based company management trainee, to establish as a part of the project, an informal school in Makaruka village on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal, in which basic numeracy and literacy instruction would be imparted and an understanding of basic Solomon Islands’ economics. The school was provided as an integral part of the rural development project and also in compensation to the people for the annual ten shillings’ poll tax on working-age men for which payment the men could see no benefit but nevertheless had to leave their homes, where they practised traditional subsistence farming, to work in a distant copra plantation or in Honiara.
10 November 1966
Before leaving for the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal where we will be for three months, we made a number of preparations including ordering stores and collecting educational material from the Education Department in the capital, Honiara. Most of this was sent by government ship about two weeks before we ourselves left Honiara. Fortunately most of our stores were landed safely even though the sea was particularly rough. Although Makaruka is only forty miles by air from Honiara, it is completely cut off by mountain and bush with a mountain footpath, only, linking the north and south.
Until recently only boats could reach the Weather Coast, but now an airstrip has been cleared (it was finished last [academic] year by a VSO1) near the village of Haimarao not too far from the Catholic mission station at Avu Avu, about eight hours walk from Makaruka. Soon planes will be more frequent—about one a week—and so the Weather Coast will be opened up a little more to the outside world.
A schoolroom was built by the villagers shortly before we arrived in which the men sit on the grey gravel sand. We lived here too until a simple house was built. It is a leaf house strongly built with poles and thirty yards from the beach. It has a pebble floor, the stones being changed occasionally.
Most houses in the village are some ten yards long by ten feet wide with low sidewalls and steep roofs, rather like a large tent. The door is raised from the ground to keep out unwanted animals. The cooking fires are maintained centrally inside the houses.
When we arrived there was great activity as the village was having a feast day. Ten pigs were slaughtered using a crude method of strangulation. They were then butchered and baked in earth ovens known as oomas. There was also a large ocean turtle, captured near the coral reef, floundering on its back preparatory to being slaughtered for the feast. While the preparation was being done, there was dancing by the women of the local villages. This was followed by an amusing play, put on by the men, showing the arrival of the first Christian missionary to this part of Guadalcanal. Many of the men coated themselves from head to foot in green mud and wore only large leaves. I joined in the men’s dance that began later. It consisted mainly of walking in a certain way in a circle while raising and lowering a wooden spear.
The feast day was completed by the sharing of the food, which was done with much ceremony, first by village and then for individual families. There was another feast two weeks later. It was very similar. The play performed that time showed the exorcism of devils.
The Moro Movement is named after its founder, Pelize Moro, who continues to live in the village. It was started ten years ago after Moro (as he is usually known), following an illness, had a vision. It is on the same lines as the old ‘Marching Rule’ (‘Ma’ asina Rura, an early post-war independence movement) which believed that cargo-laden ships would arrive for the movements’ adherents: this emanating from a memory of the recent war in the Pacific. The Marching Rule was anti-government whereas the Moro Movement is not. 2
The Moro Movement is also known as the ‘Moro Custom Company.’ The ‘Custom House’ (or ‘House of Antiquities’) is right behind ours. It is a museum of artefacts and relics of the old days in the Solomons and includes war clubs, shields, bark dresses and many other items and, also, it is rumoured, the dreadful relics of the olden days’ inter-village warfare. Unfortunately we are not allowed inside due to the superstition that has grown up about it—there is much magic and superstition attached to the movement but essentially the Movement seeks peaceful social change.
Many of the ideas of the Company are about development including that of establishing village cooperatives such as the proposed piggery, but sadly have not succeeded, possibly due to Moro’s poor leadership—he is not the ‘great leader’ type—a breeding bull, for example, gifted by the government, was permitted to be slaughtered for its meat.
We have been treating many people for cuts and boils. Some of the cuts have been quite deep as it was tree-felling time when we arrived in Makaruka in preparation for yam planting. One boy, just before we arrived, fell from a tree on to a stick. Another time I had to dry bandage a baby with burns on the back of his head due to him having fallen backwards into his house’s unguarded fire (a not uncommon occurrence here).
Another bad case is that of the man with the rotten finger. It was badly infected and so he opened it with a knife. Now the whole finger has swollen up and is completely rotten. I think he will have to have an amputation in Honiara although it is unlikely he will go there. Hospitals are seen here as places where people go to die.
Yesterday there was a gale, the first of its kind for five years. Many coconut palms were blown down and a number of older houses ruined. The Alualu River is so high it may be impossible to get this letter to Avu Avu for the next plane.
10 December 1966
The hurricane did a great deal of damage on the weather coast. In Malaita a great many places were flooded and there was widespread damage. The government gave £10,000 for the people. It was difficult going to Avu Avu (usually eight hours by foot). The mouths of the rivers had to be crossed by canoe. Usually the rivers are only waist deep. Sometimes there is a great danger of being swept out to sea—this is not uncommon and many people have drowned in that way.
The school is going on well. It is conducted in their local pidgin English. Three days a week and in the evenings the men come and sit in the classroom. They enjoy arithmetic. At the moment they are trying to understand the decimal currency. They are very interested in world geography and world events. They enjoy talking about the war and about the part they played in it. One man, Kosi, is proud of having, according to him, dispatched by machete, a number of enemy soldiers. Most of those old enough acted as carriers, and in other roles, for the Americans. On the whole they liked the Americans and disliked the British. The British it seems did not want to ‘spoil’ the people, for example, after the war the discarded property of the Americans, collected by the people, was taken from them by the British.
The Solomon Islanders had never seen so much ‘cargo’ as when the troops came—they never knew such things existed. This gave rise to the Marching Rule or ‘cargo cult’ which I have mentioned. The people’s opinion of the ‘Europeans’ is quite low. They see them in Honiara in office jobs and cannot understand how they are so ‘rich’. Once, I was told, two men of the Moro Movement went to Honiara in order to buy ‘the white man’s secret’ with £2000. (This may have been an example of the Solomons’ humour—which includes gentle teasing—but in the context of the cargo cult beliefs, it seems likely to have represented the ongoing bewilderment of the cult members.)
To return to the school: we often explain the news heard on the radio, even putting the pidgin English news into simpler pidgin. We also hold discussions in the evenings, using a wide variety of the educational material from the Education Office.
We will spend Christmas in Makaruka. Everyone intends going spear fishing that day. Yesterday we fished in the Alualu River, starting about three miles upriver and swimming down, spearing fish on the way. We are not able to fish in the sea very often as it is usually very rough.
There, the best place is from a rock about thirty yards out. It is usually more interesting in the sea though—one just has to keep a look out for sharks—however, people say that on this part of the Weather Coast no one has been taken by a shark as, they say, sharks form part of their pre-Christian (and present) religious system—they worship the spirit of the shark in other words. Nevertheless, a boy last year lost his foot—apparently a shark mistook the flash of the white sole of his foot for a fish. Some of the men can dive to a depth of sixty feet, though these are few.
A man from Naho village, two hours walk away, has said that he will take us crocodile shooting. They are shot at night from a canoe; a light is first shone in their eyes. They have to be skinned immediately and the skin put into salt water, otherwise they will rot. The skins are sold to the Chinese traders who come occasionally by ship to Avu Avu. Unfortunately, the man at present does not have any cartridges.
26 December 1966
On Christmas morning, the women wore their best calico and looked very smart. Many men and children dyed their hair white according to the custom of the village. A paste made from coral lime is used which serves the double purpose of bleaching hair and destroying vermin.
After swimming, we greeted the people; many gave us presents of delicious tapioca and coconut pudding wrapped in banana leaves. In the afternoon every man in the village left to go and fight the men of the next district along the coast. Not one man was left, including the old men. The excuse for this was that a man from Talisa, the ‘enemy’ district married a girl from Mali within Makaruka district and there was a problem with the dowry.
There has always been inter-village fighting, at least until the missionaries came. The difference now is that several villages have united against several others. Also of course they don’t use clubs or spears now. They do use, however, a kind of knuckle-duster, known as the ‘scouse’, made of bone. The idea was to ‘beat up’ the Talisa men but not to kill them. Not killing enemies in a fight they say is not something they think is right—it is just obeying the wishes of the government. However, on Christmas Day the Talisa men were nowhere to be found, probably because they were outnumbered. If the fight had taken place there would have been about 200 men taking part. Now it has been fixed for Wednesday in a bush village called Pichihila. We are in fact going there tomorrow as a feast is taking place. So, one day the men will be singing and dancing together and the next fighting. We intend to be present at the fight as the First Aid men.
To get back to Christmas Day—everyone was disappointed when the battle didn’t take place and came back to Makaruka. At first it was arranged to take place today but Moro, the leader, heard that a government official was spending the Christmas holiday at Avu Avu and Moro didn’t want the Central District officer to hear about it.3 We had our Christmas dinner at 7 p.m., first chasing our chicken all over the village. We boiled it in coconut milk and soup and it tasted delicious. Our dinner included yam and kumera [sweet potato]. We were unable to spearfish, as the sea was so rough.
11 February 1967
The Community Education Project is moved to Balo Village
We sent our equipment to Balo on the Kwai, a government ship that came around the island picking up the Council members.
All the Makaruka and Bokesugu people came to see us off including Moro himself and consequently the boat was much delayed. Moro conducted a small ceremony in which he presented me with a well-made shell necklace. In this mainly moneyless society, the shells were formerly used for the purchase of pigs and wives, I was told. It was in any case a rare honour. 4
We are now installed in Balo and have begun the project in the same way as in Makaruka—with the exception of not having school in the afternoons. Probably due to initial enthusiasm, the men in Makaruka insisted on afternoon school but invariably went to sleep, which is the custom of the village in the afternoons. Nevertheless they would not give up this afternoon school routine. Here school is held under the shade of the palms, the men sitting on the stones on the ground. Everything discussed is related to events in their own lives and many visual aids are used.
The people in Balo are just as keen on having their ailments ‘doctored’ as were the people in Makaruka—the hypochondriacs are also becoming well known to us. When we left Makaruka we assured the people we would be back to see them and would stop in their village again, but we didn’t realize how soon it would be before going back. About a week ago we were just setting off for the village of Sukiki, about forty minutes away, when a letter was brought from Makaruka saying that a man was very sick and may have broken his back. We therefore set off at once to the village at a rather fast pace in order to see the man and get back to Balo before it got dark. We arrived there in about two hours but the man, far from having a broken back, seemed to have just an acute attack of flu. He did not have even a strained back; it was just that whenever he coughed he felt as if his back was broken. As there were very few people in Makaruka and as we wanted to get back to Balo before it was dark, we set off at once, though we stopped in two villages on the way.
20 March 1967
In Balo, teaching has been going well as usual. The people are always very keen to have classes. Yesterday I discussed how other people adapt to their environments (other than in the Solomon Islands that is). They are interested in the European history of the Solomons; the elections and the electoral process; decimal currency; the Europeans themselves and their history, particularly with regard to their various methods of fighting.
Many people come for additional lessons in arithmetic and in reading and writing. Much time is spent in talking to the people, which helps in achieving our aims, the best time being when the men are chewing betel nut in the evenings. To my regret, as it gave me swollen and painful lips and red teeth, I tried the betel nut in the traditional way—the betel nut goes under the tongue; a leaf is inserted in the cheek and chewed and raw limestone, taken on a thin stick inserted into a small pot carried for the purpose at the waist, is sucked off the stick.
Just recently a lot of bonito fish came offshore. When they are seen leaping out of the water while feeding, the men immediately leave the school and fly off in their canoes perhaps for a mile or two out to sea. Sometimes they are too late and come back with nothing; at other times they are luckier and may come back with about twenty. Fish make up a far greater part of the diet of Balo than it does at Makaruka. Apart from just boiling the bonito it is also made into a kind of soup with pounded yam and coconut milk. It is delicious.
28 March 1967
Here on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal we have had a lot of sun of course and have had also a fair amount of rain, this falling for quite short periods and in heavy quantities at regular times in the afternoons. We are now, in actual fact, just approaching the Solomon Islands ‘winter’ when the temperatures are lower and there is more rain. For about five months of the year, November to March, the sea on this side of the island is usually fairly calm, and then, for the rest of the year, the sea is very rough and fishing and canoeing, on most days, impossible. The name ‘Weather Coast’ for this southern side of the island is taken as a result of the changing condition of the sea.
Since February I have been in the village of Balo, where I am at the moment. John Lowen is at a village further along the coast. Balo, though only two hours walk from Makaruka, is a very different village in a variety of ways. Makaruka and beyond is a rather cut off area of the Solomons with the people rather more anti-European and isolated than elsewhere. 5
Balo, however, has more contact with the outside world and the people are more sophisticated and wealthier. This is probably due to the fact that they have been more influenced by the mission station at Avu Avu, and that more government ships stop at Balo. Anyway, the men certainly move about a lot more, many working in Honiara for about six months of the year, and the funds brought back have made change in the standard of living. In Makaruka only the old original style of house exists—which is rather low, steep-roofed, windproof and windowless with the cooking fire inside. The door is two feet from the ground to prevent pigs and chickens straying in. Balo houses, on the other hand, are more European in design with verandas and the occasional window. They are also supported on piles about four feet off the ground.
In Balo I spend two days a week teaching in class or, rather, a class, in the shade of the coconut palms and with the aid of a blackboard. At other times I teach individual men whatever it is they wish to do—which is usually arithmetic or the Australian decimal currency that has recently been introduced and has confused every Solomon Islander. I also give picture shows with the projector—these are always very popular and the whole village turns out to see them. At other times the aims of the project are advanced by just talking and answering questions as most people have very little idea of the way of life of people in a Western civilization. Misunderstanding is partly caused by the fact that the Islanders’ economy is not based on money. The people, after all, do not use money in their daily lives, do not pay rent, and get their food from their gardens; also very little barter is practised here.
The lessons I teach in school vary considerably; the main aim is to help the villagers to understand the ways of the European. I have taught them about trade and industry, government, local government, and so on, although on quite an elementary level, of course. They are also very interested in the Second World War which they call the ‘Big Fight’. They believed, before this was taught in class, that that war affected only the Solomon Islands. In fact, its impact in the Solomons was considerable, the people never before having seen great quantities of arms, equipment, and war-materiel in general. Even today they like the Americans more than the British partly for this reason. The men show an interest in a wide range of subjects including the history of the European people and are amazed at the fact that the Europeans used to fight each other with spears and bows and arrows in the same way that the fathers and grandfathers of the village people once did.
As I mentioned before, the fishing season will shortly be coming to an end as the sea begins to get rougher. At the moment though, a great deal of bonito fish are being caught. They are somewhat similar to salmon, though usually larger. They are seen from the village sometimes up to a mile out to sea when they leap out of the water while feeding. As soon as they are spotted, three or four canoes immediately leave the shore in pursuit of the fish. Sometimes up to twenty are caught in one morning. Fishing is also done from the shore using bamboo fishing rods twelve feet in length in some cases. I have caught a number of fish myself using the rod. Crayfish are used as bait and ground bait of ants is also thrown in the sea. Apart from these two methods, and fishing from a canoe at night, there is also spear fishing. The spear fishing in Balo is better than that in Makaruka as a shelf of coral rock extends a fairly long way down the coast. The fish caught here are a great variety of coloured tropical fish some of which are quite large in size. When fishing, we eat nothing from sunrise to sundown and so the fish and yam feast at the end of the day is always enormously welcome.
I have been on the Weather Coast now for five months though at the end of four or five weeks I go to Honiara for a few days to order stores and do other necessary things. Honiara is the capital of the Solomons and as such has a large European population. Most of the Europeans are employed in government work on a two-year contract. Permanent and pensionable contracts have now been stopped as the Solomons are due for independence within, it is rumoured, the next twelve years. This is not to say that the Solomons are ready or even want independence, very few educated people want it and none at any other level. The people in Honiara have now lost the “custom", or the tradition, that used to rule their lives in the villages and have not yet acquired the European way of living which is, I suppose, just a stage in the development of a country.
In order to get to Honiara from Balo, I can go to Avu Avu airstrip and take a plane or else I can go to Marau and get a boat. Either way is a day’s walk. A group of village men accompany me, one of whom on the last walk from Balo stepped on a large thorn which was driven deep into the sole of his foot. He hardly made any complaint, however. When I go to Marau or Avu Avu, I always stay with the Dutch catholic priests at the missions who are very hospitable and good company. They are also very hard working: Father Cornelius is at present engaged in building a new church to his own design. Next Saturday, in fact, I shall be going to Morai to see him before I go on to Honiara.
This project on the Weather Coast is due to finish on 15 April when a government ship will be coming round the island to Balo to pick up the gear. After this date I will be working in the Legislative Council elections as a village presiding officer. Though, before this, after first learning how to do this work myself, I, along with the other government-attached VSOs, will be teaching the clerks in the wards. This should be very interesting work, involving much travelling by government boat.
Postscript
I concluded VSO service in the Central District of the Solomon Islands by extending my tenure an additional month and departed, as the sun rose a brilliant yellow and red, on a Cessna aircraft from Honiara to Lae on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, in October 1967.
From Lae I travelled in a smaller aircraft so low over the Owen Stanley mountain range to Port Moresby that the rain forest trees, between clouds of swirling mist, could be clearly seen in detail. From Port Moresby I flew to Sydney, Australia, where my first priority, with the vast Australian continent laid out before me, was to savour hot English breakfast tea in a china cup from a china teapot.
I visited New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, and Northern Territory, and worked in Cooma, New South Wales, with the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority where its sixteen major dams and the irrigation scheme had been under construction from 1949. They were completed in 1974. I travelled from Alice Springs, in the centre of Australia, across the Northern Territory, high up beside the driver of a car transporter with two trailers (known as a road train) there being, then, no railway across the Northern Territory. From Darwin I returned on a BOAC Boeing 707 country hopping, as was necessary in those days, to London Airport (now London Heathrow).
In Makaruka, the centre of the Guadalcanal cargo cult, in 1968 a government primary school was constructed and government-trained teachers appointed. The Avu Avu School established by the Dutch Marist missionary Fathers was nationalized after independence and is today the ‘Avu Avu Secondary Boarding School’. The school includes amongst its challenges as noted in its Facebook account: ‘. . . remoteness, isolation, expensive and unreliable transportation and problems in ensuring a sufficiently healthy diet’. Their challenges are exacerbated by the fact that the coastal road was never built and the Avu Avu airstrip has not been operational for many years due in part to the Weather Coast’s often dangerous flying weather. The Avu Avu Teacher adds: ‘But the Weather Coast is beautiful in its own rugged ways. Avu Avu School could be a great place of learning because of its isolation.’
The British Solomon Islands Protectorate changed its name to Solomon Islands in 1975 and celebrated its independence in 1978.
Pelize Moro, the gentle visionary and the founder of the Moro Movement with a mission to make better the lives of his people, died in 2006.
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