At Home on the Equator: Letters From the South Seas

LESU, NEW IRELAND
MANDATED TERRITORY OF NEW GUINEA
End of April, 1929 DEAR FRIENDS, —
Finally I have arrived at Lesu, the village where I am to begin my field work. The government anthropologist and another who is working in this area brought me down. We were surrounded by natives as soon as we appeared. I smiled at them and they smiled back. Ongus, the chief, seemed to be a man of intelligence and importance.
There is a well-made ‘house-kiop’ — pidgin English for the kind of house reserved for government officials when they are patrolling the island. It is raised from the ground, in contrast to the native houses in which the floors are merely the hard-packed earth; has two rooms, a good-sized verandah, and a thatched roof, together with various outhouses for cooking and so forth. It is quite substantial, and much better than I had expected. The government anthropologist had picked up a native servant for me, a woman named Taiti, who will stay until I can engage a couple later.
We spent the first day or two unpacking all the boxes and bales, continuously surrounded by the smiling and curious natives, and the work created several sensations. A ring of safety pins from my sewing kit quite fascinated some of the old men, and most of the natives saw books for the first time. I showed them the pictures in the anthropological volumes, and they were astounded that there were so many brown-skinned peoples in the world. I told them that when I left their place I was going to write a similar book to describe their customs. They seemed to catch the idea.
The island itself is beautiful beyond words. There is a lovely light on the palm trees at night, and the only sound is the murmuring of the sea. The climate is pleasant enough. My general feeling is that the natives are friendly.
The two anthropologists helped me greatly in establishing my first relationships with the natives, as well as in setting up my household, but after a few days they left me for their own areas. The first evening following their departure I admit that I felt very lonely, and could not help wondering why I had come to the end of the world all by myself. While I was eating dinner, however, Ongus (who knows some pidgin English) brought me a baked taro, and later his wife, Pulong, and daughter, Batu, joined him, and they spent the evening on my porch. They are genuinely fine people, and were so friendly that my sense of loneliness soon left me. But I still feel very much the stranger, and watch my step carefully.

May 11
Here I have been for almost four weeks. My first feelings, I must confess, were decidedly not anthropological. The natives seemed so happy and contented without me that I wondered why on earth I should pester them with questions about what they call their father’s sister’s son and why they observe this custom and that. Why should I be so impertinent? Why not leave them in peace? These doubts, however, did not last long. I have now only one aim: to find out and record everything I possibly can about this society. So I carry pencil and notebook with me wherever I go.
Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the number of things there are to do. If only I knew the language it would be much simpler. At present I am sweating blood over it. I spend long hours taking down native texts and then translating them with the aid of one of the few natives who understand pidgin English. (Not a soul knows any real English.) I have to dig the grammar out for myself, and there are the most confusing prefixes and suffixes imaginable. At the end of an afternoon of such steady work I am utterly exhausted.
Then, too, I am impatient. I want to know so much. Last week I must have conveyed something of this to Ongus, the chief, who is very intelligent and seems to understand why I am here. He looked at me quizzically and asked if I expected to know everything in less than one moon. At the end of two moons, he added encouragingly, he was sure I should know a great deal.
In my personal relations with the natives I am still feeling my way. I am not quite such a curious phenomenon as I was at first, and I think I am gradually being accepted. I hope later to be taken completely for granted.

May 17
You would have been amused had you been here last night. I had joined the natives around a fire in front of a house close to the beach. They had been telling me about their kin, and wanted in turn to know about mine. Thank God for the family! Being a fundamental unit of society, it always provides a topic of conversation. The natives asked for the names of my relatives, and as I spoke they repeated the sounds after me in unison. The scene was really too funny: with the South Seas pounding at my feet, there I sat under the fire-lit coconut trees while the circle of my black friends solemnly intoned, ‘ Min-nie . . . Lou-is . . . Flo-rence . . . !’

May 18
They say this is the dry season, but it has been raining all day, as well as most of yesterday and the day before. Ever since I have been here rain has fallen sometime during the night or early morning, but until now not often in the daytime. I am wondering what the rainy season will be like. Fortunately, when the sun comes out there is rapid evaporation and everything dries quickly.
Here’s the latest news of social life: I have been going to a dance every night. As you may imagine, the dances of Lesu are quite different from those of New York and London. Only the women take part, and they are practising the rites which will be performed when the moon is full and the young boys are initiated. The men keep far away during the rehearsals. The first few nights I sat by and watched. The moon was new and delicate, the sea dark and noisy, and as the women moved slowly about the fire, singing, I got the ‘feel’ of the place and the beauty of it. I wanted to join in, but was too self-conscious to attempt it.
Then, a few nights ago, I screwed up all my courage and participated in the rehearsal. There was some gay, goodnatured laughter at my mistakes, but soon all was seriousness and I caught on to the step. I rather enjoyed the rhythm of it, and in a matter of this kind it is better to take part than just to look on. The women seem pleased that I have entered into their life. They show themselves very much more at ease with me than before, and I have lost my self-consciousness. I am no longer a complete stranger of another race, color, and culture who dropped into their village from no one knew where.

May 25
I am developing a passionate fondness for the little details of native life as they recur from day to day. Life here, life everywhere, seems to me to consist mainly in the eternal repetition of infinite details. Climaxes are important only to accent the normal routine.
As I ate my dinner, I was reading some short stories which dealt with special episodes and moments of high tension, and they seemed all lopsided. Novels like Jew Suss and Ulysses may be boring with their surfeit of details, and most of us find it difficult to get through them, but at the moment I think they are the only kind of novel which approaches the reality of life.
It is this recording of detail after detail, day after day, that now engages me. Nothing is too small to jot down in my ever-present notebook — how a woman holds her baby, how much taro a man ate for breakfast, and so on.

June 7
Do you know that I have been married and divorced? And, what’s more, that I ‘ rausched ’ (pidgin English for ‘dismissed’) my husband because he would not work and was just a lazy good-for-nothing?
This sudden change in my social status was quite necessary, I found, in native society. Here there are no unmarried women. Girls take husbands as soon as they reach puberty, and the very concept of an unmarried woman is quite incomprehensible to these people. So I had to concoct a story to account for myself. I had recently learned that laziness is the principal cause of divorce among the natives, and, by giving that reason, I gained considerable prestige.
‘Ah,’ remarked my native friends, ‘just like us!’

July 1
The place has been in a turmoil the last few days. Sinbanimous, my cookboy, went out hunting and shot a totemic bird — a terrible crime. He had admired its feathers, which he thought would make a nice headdress for dancing, so he shot it, not knowing that it was a totemic bird. (He comes from another linguistic district, at the northern end of the island.) An old man who is much looked up to as a stickler for the conventions saw the dead bird and flew into a most terrible rage, whereupon Sinbanimous dropped his booty and fled into the bush.
The first I knew about it was when the old man led a large crowd of excited natives to my door. Everybody was talking and shouting at once, and there was such a hubbub that it was some time before I could make out what the trouble was. I was in a delicate position. It was with my gun that the bird had been killed, and I did not like to desert my servant. On the other hand, if I took too much responsibility for the act I might lose the good will of the natives. So I said very little, merely pointing out that Sinbanimous had shot the bird in ignorance, not knowing what he was doing. Fortunately, Sinbanimous is popular, and many of the people accepted my explanation, particularly the younger men, but the old man who had stirred up the excitement was not easily pacified. At length, however, after he had vented his feelings in loud talking, he subsided.
Meanwhile, Sinbanimous had sense enough to stay away. Where he was I do not know, but he turned up again after three days. He told me that the old man had threatened to kill him and that he had been very scared. By that time the whole affair had evidently been forgotten and Sinbanimous was allowed to go about his work as if nothing had happened. It is once more calm, and I am glad.

July 25
You would be amused at my extensive medical practice. It consists mostly of treating sores (yaws, terrible things sometimes), which I wash with a solution of either corrosive sublimate or potassium permanganate. Some of them heal after this treatment. For other ills I give purgatives in large quantities, on the theory that it can do no harm. And I administer quinine for fever and paint bruises with iodine. That’s about all.
There are many ailments about which I frankly tell the natives I know nothing. It would certainly be dangerous to prescribe something out of my medicine kit when I can’t diagnose. I never give anything to an old person or to one who is seriously ill and likely to die. I cannot afford to have any deaths laid at my door. At first I was afraid even to treat a sore, but after several successes I took more courage and even developed a kind of professional pride.
Of course the natives have their own medicine, too. It consists mostly of leaves, roots, and magical spells. The native doctor is paid quite liberally in shell currency if his patient gets better; if he does not recover, there is no payment.

July 31
To-day a native man told me in a perfectly matter-of-fact way that he had killed his father and mother. They were both very old and ill, and, wanting to live no longer, had asked their son to strangle them, which he dutifully did. As I looked at the kindly face of the man I felt very queer.
I have been asked what my totem is, and have had to admit that I have none. How queer the natives must think I am!

August 1
You ask me what I eat. To begin the other way round, what I don’t eat is green vegetables and milk. There are no cows. I have some canned milk, but I dislike it so much that I don’t use it even in coffee. I have no butter either, except the tinned variety, and I don’t like that. But I fare quite well. I have lots of fruit, and this makes up for a lack of green vegetables. Here is my usual menu: —
Breakfast
Pawpaws, a very delicious fruit Bacon. I have a whole side of bacon with me.
Fried sweet potatoes sometimes, and occasionally an egg if I am lucky. Chickens have been introduced here, although not many natives have them.
Coffee
Bread and marmalade. I brought with me loads of my favorite marmalade, and as long as one has that, life can’t be too bad!
Lunch
If I am working away from the house at noon, I have just the milk of a coconut.
If I am at home, I have tea and bread, or taro, with tinned cheese.
Dinner
Fish or a bird. My boy shoots a bird whenever I want one, and sometimes soup is made from it; at other times it is roasted. Fish I usually have grilled right over the fire, and they are delicious, being very fresh — right out of the sea.
Occasionally a tinned vegetable Fruit — the inevitable pawpaw or a pineapple
I have an excellent brand of tinned prunes and raisins which I eat in place of candy. I also brought some milk chocolate with me, carefully packed in tins, but it became wormy.
I miss not having good water. Mine comes from a little spring which bubbles up through the sand on the beach and is very brackish to the taste. I can only drink it disguised as strong tea or coffee. And I have no stove, all the cooking being done over an open fire. My equipment leaves much to be desired, but I get along.
So much for the culinary aspects of my establishment. You see, I am in no danger of starving. But I should enjoy a leaf of green lettuce more than anything.

August 9
It is really most unnatural to live in a culture not your own. One feels all wrong at a time of crisis. There is one now, and I don’t know what to do.
During the night, or rather in the very early morning before daybreak, the chief’s wife, Pulong, gave birth prematurely to a dead child. And now all day no one has known whether she will live or die. I have been able to do nothing but stand around like a helpless idiot. I am truly fond of her, for she is my best friend among the native women. Also, she is my most helpful female informant, so my personal sorrow is mingled with a fear of scientific loss.
All the women have been attending her, giving her native medicine and performing magic, but I have done nothing, not even offering a stimulant because I don’t know how her heart is. With my appalling ignorance on medical subjects, I am afraid to attempt anything in a case like this. Of course the natives do not expect me to do anything, but that does not rid me of my feeling of helplessness.
Aside from all this, the crisis has had a psychological effect on me which is far from pleasant. I am neither fish nor fowl. All the women of the group are busy doing those things for Pulong which their culture prescribes in such an emergency, and my function of note taking does not satisfy me. (I suppose the perfect anthropologist would never grow so fond of natives as to be disturbed by their illnesses.)
And then her husband is such a lonely and tragic figure. He sits on a log in front of the house in which his wife lies. His back is to the house, his shoulders are bowed — and there he sits hour after hour. The women do not talk to him, and the men leave him alone also. If Pulong were suffering from an ordinary illness, he could go into the house, but at a time of birth a husband does not go near his wife, so it is taboo for him to enter and see her now.
I remarked inanely to him that I hoped Pulong would soon be better. He replied that he did not know. My remark was just an expression of the silly sentimentalism of my culture. Of course I don’t know, either. These people are realists and are not interested in pious hopes.
I wander around restlessly all day. I go to the house where Pulong is, stay awhile, come back to my own house, then go again to Pulong. I sit with a group of women around her silent bed (she is unconscious), and they seem to be glad to have my company, but that is all. They do not look to me to take a hand. I may be getting good anthropological data, but the knowledge of that does not take away my feeling that I do not ‘ belong.’
It is somewhat the same at funerals. Then I feel that the whole society is drawn into itself and that I am alone on the outside. During the normal round of daily life I do not have this feeling, but I do not deceive myself about the real state of affairs. Every crisis makes me realize anew how impossible it is for a person from our culture ever to become really a part of life here. It amuses me when some of my anthropologist friends speak of ‘going native’ and of studying an alien culture from the inside. It cannot be done. One can enter an alien culture to some degree by sympathy and understanding, but one is never truly a part of it.

Later, August 23
I am glad to add this postscript. My friend Pulong did not die. Though still far from well, she is now gradually recovering her strength.

August 29
I am feeling very good because I recently got the rain magic. The spells were the secret of one feeble old man and he was rather loath to give them to me. I had been trying to get them from him ever since I arrived, making him a few small gifts (mostly tobacco) at discreet intervals, but with no results until last week, when he sent his son to fetch me. I went to his house, spent the day there, and now I can make it rain!
I can also make the sun shine, but for that I need the bone of a dead man. And I have magic to catch a wild pig, to woo a maiden or a man, and to bring a good garden crop. The essence of it all lies in the muttered spell. The natives believe in it absolutely. It would be a most convenient faith. Any faith is, I suppose, if it is accepted without question.

September 8
This morning Ongus was talking to a man from a rather distant village who happened to be passing through. The two were standing fairly close to my house and the wind carried their voices to me. I could not help overhearing part of the conversation, which happened to be about me. I give you a free translation. Ongus was saying: ‘You know, when she first came here she was awfully dumb. She did n’t even know how to speak. In fact, she was just like an infant. But now — ah, all that is changed. She speaks and understands us, she knows the magic, she can dance with the women, she has learned our folk tales — ah, she knows much. And who is responsible? I am. We all are.’

September 13
The faith of my natives passeth understanding.
I have just returned from a village five miles away where a great ceremony of ritual dancing was performed. It was an important occasion and people came from all the villages round about. In Lesu, excitement had run high in preparation for the event. Yesterday, however, it rained very hard, and the natives were worried that it might rain again to-day and spoil everything.
Now it happens that the people in the next village were slightly aggrieved because ’my’ village had contributed only four pigs to the feast instead of six, so the word got about in Lesu that the magician in the next village had made the rain to annoy us. The matter was gravely discussed, and it was finally decided that if it did rain our village would not dance at all. This was delivered as an ultimatum.
To-day dawned clear, and remained so until after dark. The result was happiness all round, and everything came off as smoothly as a five-ring circus. And now the people of Lesu say that the magician held off the rain for fear they would not come. (Footnote to faith: It usually rains at least once in every twenty-four hours!)

September 17
I am a bit wobbly at the moment, for I am recovering from an attack of colic. At least that is what I think my trouble was, after reading all the books on tropical medicine I have with me.
Yesterday a certain bird’s call was heard which is supposed to be the omen of an approaching death. Since I was the only person in the village who was unwell, the news of my death was cheerfully brought to me. Ongus, the chief, came to cheer me up. I was not to worry, he said; since my family was far away, he would take the responsibility of providing the pigs and everything else for the mortuary rites.
The offer was a proof of the chief’s esteem and affection. Mortuary rites count for a great deal in the native scheme of things. For a person not to have a large funeral would mean that he was unimportant in life.

November 28
Thanks for the papers and magazines which arrived recently. In one of them there was a picture of New York with its skyscrapers, and I showed it to a native. He looked at it quite intently for several minutes, then turned away, remarking laconically that it had no trees. It was the inevitable comment of a Melanesian, the trees here being the most prominent feature of the landscape. The village is composed of little huts squatting low under tall trees. I also showed him the picture of Epstein’s new figures, and he gave it as his opinion that they were not real people.
It is difficult for me to realize that most of my middle-aged natives were cannibals in their youth. The other day a man was telling me how much he used to enjoy human flesh. They ate only their enemies taken in warfare, never people of their own community. Fighting was fairly frequent, but on a small scale. One old man said that if I had come in those days I might have been killed. Lesu would have liked me all right, he added, but if another village had come to fight Lesu, I should have had to take my chance with the others.
Such wars are now prohibited by the mandated government, so I am in no danger of being speared.

December 7
Last night I achieved my record for going to bed early by turning in at seven-thirty. It was raining, and my verandah was swarming with millions of tiny insects that had been attracted by my lamp. They do not sting or bite, but are terrible pests, swarming everywhere. If I open my mouth, they fly into it; they crawl down my back; at supper many drowned themselves in my teacup, and it was impossible to eat. There was only one escape — to go to bed under the mosquito canopy. I am growing tired of the rainy reason, and begin to think that the Sahara Desert might be a pleasant place to live.
For local news, a wild pig was caught to-day. It is being baked now, and later there will be a feast in honor of somebody’s relative who died over a year ago. Only the men cat at these feasts, held in the cemetery, and they bring out the left-overs to the women. Tliere are no feminists to object to this procedure.

Days later, Christmas Eve
I had to stop at this point for some reason or other, and there has been no chance to continue until now. I sit huddled in my raincoat while it pours. Why Noah made so much fuss over the flood — a mere matter of forty days — is quite beyond me; he should have spent a rainy season in New Ireland.
My servant, Kuserek, thinks I am responsible for this particular ‘shower.’ I had been working with a magician, getting more magical spells to produce rain, when the deluge came. The storm is heavier than any we have had for some time. But, say Kuserek and others, what can I expect if I will spend the day going over rain spells?
To-day is my birthday, and tomorrow that of Jesus. I shall open a bottle of stuffed olives!

January 12,1930
Yesterday saw the final act of a little drama.
Some months ago I spent several weeks at Logagon, a village about twenty-five miles away, to witness some special rites. At the time, an epidemic of infantile paralysis was sweeping the island, and adult natives were dying by the score after being ill only a day or two. Fortunately Lesu had not yet had any of the ‘ big sickness,’ but a village only six miles off had had many cases and many deaths.
I had been at Logagon only a short time when two boys from Lesu came up for the rites and stopped in at my house to chat. They mentioned that one of the young girls at Lesu had contracted the ‘big sickness’ since I left. Naturally I was worried about the spread of the disease, and just then who should pass by but the medical patrol from Kavieng, the capital of the island. I dashed out, yelling at the top of my voice, and they finally heard me and stopped. They were on their way to pick up the dead from the epidemic, and I told them about the case of the young girl at Lesu. They promised that they would stop on their way back, and that if she was alive they would take her to the hospital at Kavieng.
A large group of natives gathered while this conversation took place, and some of them understood enough English to catch the gist of it. I went back to my house thinking how lucky it was that the patrol had passed and that I had been able to summon help for the sick girl.
Later in the day I was out in the compound where the rites were to begin, and I noticed that all the natives were very cool toward me. They were polite, but absolutely frigid; all the old friendliness was gone. I was alarmed. I tried to think of something I might have done to offend them, but could think of nothing. The more I racked my memory, the more puzzled and worried I became.
Finally, that night, Kuserek told me the reason. She said that my Lesu friends (a large group of whom were at Logagon) did not like my giving the information about the sick girl to the medical patrol. They felt that I had betrayed their confidence. They were accustomed to tell me everything, with the understanding that it was to go no further, and here I had reported something to white officials which they did not want them to know. They regarded the hospital at Kavieng only as a place in which to die, and if they were going to die they preferred to have death come upon them in their own homes surrounded by their relatives. By reporting the case to the medical patrol, I had sent the girl to Kavieng to die far away from her family.
This version of the affair stunned me, and I rushed out to a group of old and middle-aged men, some of them trusted friends and informants, and began to explain. They listened in silence, but said nothing, and then very pointedly turned the conversation to another subject. They had politely refused to discuss the matter with me, and I was left feeling very helpless. I decided that the best thing to do was to say no more about it for a day or two.
Meanwhile everyone was busy with the rites, and I went about taking notes as usual and wondering when I ought to try to open the subject again. At last, one day, I was talking to a few people who I knew had formerly trusted me, and I put my case before them as straight and as simply as I could, repeating the same few facts over and over again. I told them about the horrors of the ‘ big sickness,’ which they already knew. I mentioned the deaths in the near-by village, which they also knew. I said I was concerned for the people of Lesu, and did not want them to die in the same manner. I said that I did not know whether Mimis, the sick girl, would live or die in Kavieng, but that her going there would help prevent the rest of the Lesu people from dying; and I explained how one person caught the disease from another who had it.
All this I went over many times — and in the end it registered. The coolness vanished, and the old friendliness was restored. I was greatly relieved.
And yesterday — months later — came the climax. Mimis returned from the Kavieng hospital, well except for a slight limp. A feast was held in honor of her home-coming and speeches were made, several of them stressing the fact that it was I who had saved her life. I sat quietly remembering the Logagon incident, and smiled inwardly.

January 27
I have announced my imminent departure and am quite flattered at the many regrets that are being expressed. The form of expressing regret is peculiar. They say that after I am gone my house will be no good, that it will be empty and lonely. I have explained that I am going because I want to see my family and friends, and that they want to see me. This the natives readily understand. They dislike very much to leave their own village, and, should they have to do it for any reason, they always want to return.
As a matter of fact, I have often spoken to my dark-skinned friends about all of you. I have told them that the reason I wanted to learn about their customs was in order that I might tell my relatives and friends about them. This, too, the natives can understand. They have taken me quite seriously on the point, and sometimes one of them will say I must be sure to tell my family that such and such is the custom, and not something else.
In the beginning of my stay they were puzzled by my checking one informant against another and asking the same question of many people. One woman wanted to know if I thought they had twenty different customs for the same thing. Later this was accepted as my way of doing things.

Next day
The occasional domestic quarrels between my two servants are interesting, although rather disruptive to the running of my establishment. They had a big fight several months ago when we were all at Logagon. As is her custom, Kuserek ran away to some of her relatives near by, and when we were ready to return to Lesu she did not show up. So we went back without her, and I announced to the world at large that I was grieved that she should run away. A short time afterward a boy came to Lesu with the message from her that her ‘cross’ had not been with me, but with her husband, Sinbanimous; but that now her ‘cross’ was finished and she would return if he would come and get her. He seemed willing enough to go, and did so right away. A few days later they returned in a most sorry state. They had started before daybreak and had walked twenty-five miles in the rain, arriving after dark, wet, tired, and very miserable. Since they seemed feverish, I gave them quinine and sent them to bed.
And there was peace after that — until yesterday. I was just thinking how pleasant it was that these domestic quarrels had come to an end when Kuserek dashed up to my house saying that Sinbanimous was going to beat her. I strolled over to their house, and there was Sinbanimous breathing fire and brimstone against his spouse. Now wife beating is quite good form here, and I could not tell a man to refrain from exercising his conjugal rights. But I chatted with Sinbanimous, recalling the incidents of the last quarrel, mentioning how upset the household had been and what a long journey he had had to make to get Kuserek back, and I ended with the remark that this time she would probably run even farther away. He muttered to himself, but made no reply.
I went back to my house. Kuserek was sitting on the steps, and she announced that she would sleep at my house instead of her own that night. I said all right. Night came, and I asked her if she had brought up her blanket. She giggled a little and said that she was going to sleep at her own house, that the ‘cross’ was over.
So all is calm once more. As a rule it is Kuserek who provokes the quarrels with her nagging — and a Melanesian can nag as well as any lady in our society!

S.S. Montoro, EN ROUTE TO SYDNEY
Beginning of March
As you see by the stationery, I have left Lesu. My leave-taking was rather sad. About a week before I left, the village had a big feast in my honor, and long speeches were made expressing sorrow at my departure. And when the time actually came it was terrible. My native friends just stood around in a circle and wept silently. The tears rolled down their cheeks, and they said not a word. I felt rather badly, particularly because of the silly habit of not showing the emotion I felt. If I could have wept too, it would have been better. I told them I would n’t forget them, and got off hurriedly.
I felt truly sorry to part with my native friends, although my emotion was not as unalloyed as theirs seemed to be. I have a true fondness, affection, and friendship for them, but at the same time I was desperately eager to leave the island and come home. The last month in Lesu I had to force myself to work. I had used up all my energy.
When I first came on board I was very tired and depressed, but now that I have been on the boat a week my spirits are reviving. I have consumed quantities of celery, lettuce, and tomatoes, and gallons of water, and slept a lot.
I am slightly doubtful that we shall ever reach Sydney, for the boat stops every time it sights a coconut tree and loads copra. But eventually we may get there, and then — who knows? — I may even be arriving home one of these days.