This is a humorous and readable account of two years spent on the remote Polynesian
atoll of Vaitupu where John Chalkley, accompanied by his wife Sylvia, went in 1976
to teach art and craft at Motufoua, a former mission secondary school taken over by the
government when the Ellice Islands separated from the Gilbert Islands. Vaitupu is the
largest atoll in Tuvalu, as the country became at independence in 1978, but it is less than
three miles long, just over a mile across at its widest, with a lagoon taking up about a
fifth of the area contained within the reef, not much larger than Hyde Park and
Kensington Gardens. In the seventies it was accessible from Funafuti, the capital, only
by an eighteen hour journey on the government ship, Nivanga, which called four or five
times a year. Inspired at school by a superb geography teacher and with a youthful
ambition to join the merchant navy, the author not only had some idea of what to expect
but every intention of making the best possible use of his time in the limited
environment of a small atoll. He could not have chosen better for Vaitupu is famed for
its hospitality and the quality of its singing and dancing. John Chalkley writes frankly
and with perception about the problems, including his own spell of sickness, the demon
drink and the tension between church and state, as well as the pleasures of stepping
outside his own society and immersing himself in one so sharply in contrast to it. Despite
the inevitable frustrations and considerable privation by the standards of the late
Twentieth Century, he clearly enjoyed himself, learned much and recognises that he is the
better for his experience.
There can be few memoirs in the colonial genre so intensely focused on one very
small place, but these are written with the observant eye of the artist and the narrative
keeps the reader engaged, amused and often made to reflect. The text is liberally
scattered with the author’s own delightful and explanatory illustrations. For those who
have lived on an atoll or had the pleasure of knowing the Tuvalu people, both narrative
and illustrations will not only bring memories flooding back but sharpen the detail of
things which they may have never fully noticed. Both the Chalkleys obviously enjoyed
good rapport with their hosts, took part in island activities in which fishing, dancing and
singing play so large a role and accepted with ease the laid back approach to time and
the different order of priorities which are the Pacific way of life. When the long
Christmas holiday gave them a breather from Vaitupu, they went not to Australia or to
New Zealand but to Fiji to visit Kiao, an island purchased by the Vaitupu in 1947 to
provide space for overflow population.
The book is about Vaitupu, Tuvalu culture and their effect upon the author rather than
about the school and his teaching, although there is a vivid account of a strike protesting
against the martinet of a principal, and he writes warmly of colleagues and pupils, and
fishing and camping with them. Asked on his return to England what had made most
impression upon him, John Chalkley replied that it was his own insignificance in the
immensity of the universe and of time, a sentiment with which all have lived on an atoll
will understand and endorse.
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