Delena District Teachers.
Motumotu Man.
Each question was typically native. They cannot understand a walk for a walk’s sake. Amongst the first Government Officials to settle at Port Moresby was one who took a long walk every afternoon, and as there were few good tracks, went nearly always in one direction. So puzzled were the boys that one day they followed him, and upon their return, told with the greatest wonder that he went half way to Pari (a village eight miles from Port Moresby) and then turned back. “There was not even a bit of tobacco as the reason for the long walk.”
The native not only wants to know where you are going, or why you are going, but what you paid for anything you may have to get, so the teacher at Kopuana was only helping the boys and girls to express their desires in English instead of native speech.
A few couples went through the lesson without a stumble, and pronounced the words correctly, but others failed, and the whole incident was an illustration of the difficulty of one man teaching English when the children hear nothing but their own language around them.
At the third village the teacher is a Papuan who for ten years has tried hard to influence for good a people who do not want to be so influenced. They prefer their old ways though it was at their own request that a teacher was sent to live with them. At times they have not only been indifferent, but violent towards Aihi, and on one occasion would have probably killed him but for the help of his son who is one of the strongest young men in the neighbourhood. As it was he was nearly blind for some weeks owing to one of his assailants trying to gouge out his eyes. After this I offered to remove him to another village, but he declined, saying that in time the people would hear his message and learn what he had to teach.