A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

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In contradiction to what I have said about native deficiency in money sense, I found the Tongan developing into a keen trader in a small way. The Tongafiti game wasn’t lacking in his deals, and many European traders were going bankrupt because the native was too sharp for them. The old Tongan was a babe unborn when it came to expenditures, and there are stories of primitive natives playing pitch-game with shipwrecked trade dollars. Not so today.

Salote and Tungi were studying finance methodically, patiently, to learn modern economics. Up and down the beaches their subjects were sometimes sharpening their wits in a very practical way.

Trader Algy Slocombe told me of the only times he ever got around a native in a deal. Living next door, a Tongan family let a couple of their trees hang over his fence and interfere with his tennis. He approached the native wife, who talked to her husband, and there was a long Tongan dicker. The husband admitted that he was grateful for the water he got from the Slocombe well; so that was something to bargain with. Algy said to the native’s wife, “If you’ll cut down those trees I’ll let you have all the coconuts that drop into your yard from the palms on my side.” The Tongans say, “Fa moli moli,” when they mean “Many thanks,” and there was a far-off look in the woman’s eyes when she said it. For years she had been gathering those same nuts, and no questions asked. But a trade was a trade.

A native from Vavau came to Algy’s office proposing to deposit some tobacco against a loan of one pound. He said he was mayor of his town, had a good plantation, dealt with Lever Brothers. Algy wanted a day before closing this big transaction; just for curiosity he wired Vavau and found that this man had never had credit there. The customer returned—without the tobacco, of course—and said he must have the money at once, as the boat was leaving for Vavau. Algy merely smiled, “Fa moli moli,” and his applicant departed without the slightest sign of ill-feeling. His five-dollar build-up had been as elaborate as that of the New York confidence man. But that was all right. He’d find a touch somewhere before the boat left.

Neither in Fiji nor Tonga did the natives have family names; though some of the better-educated were beginning to affect the European way. I ran across a Tongan named Joni Motocawiah. If you say it fast it sounds like “Johnnie Motor Car Wire”—just what it means. The day Joni was born his mother saw her first automobile, and a roll of barbed wire was washed up on their beach. There was also a baby named Atalosa, which sounded sweet. Before the baby came her mother had sniffed something they told her was attar of roses; “Atalosa” was the way she said it.

Remodeling the English language wasn’t confined to Tongans. Eloisa and I were quartered for a while at Bill Smith’s boarding house, where food was delicious and flies abundant. Bill Smith was the reigning Mr. Malaprop. Once when he cornered me in a learned medical discussion he referred to “A man’s tentacles and pinnace.” He knew more about the cookbook than the dictionary, and told me how to bake ham under a layer of mud so that it “brought out the intersticine juices.”

A Tongan’s own language served him well if he didn’t happen to like you. Needy aristocrats, beginning to learn the value of money and liquor, had perfected a little trick of giving a high title to visiting Europeans and making them “members of the family.” If the European was romantic snob enough for the game, he freely lent money and whisky to the noble donor of titles. When money and whisky played out the titles vanished also, and the once-honored one was unceremoniously removed from the family. This old army game was a bit of Tongafiti that was practised in Samoa as well as Tonga. The generous Polynesian was beginning to learn that you don’t give something for nothing in this wicked world. Chief Ulukalala, a pretender to the throne, had titles to give that sounded extremely noble. He gave one to an official, and another to a resident doctor’s wife. Between the two honored ones there was contention as to which should rank the other at native ceremonies. Her title was To’e Umu, literally “Scraps from the Oven.” His was Kuli Haapai, which in English is “Dog of Haapai.”

The relics of early missionary blue laws made it very easy to go to jail. It was forbidden to do any sort of work on Sunday, even on your own premises. When I was there Dr. Ruhen, a medical officer, was arrested for breaking the Sabbath by picking a bunch of bananas in his own yard. Despite his protest that he was only gathering food, he was duly fined. Sunday games were prohibited. Algy Slocombe’s tennis court got him into trouble with the puritans. We had some splendid Sunday games there, and Algy felt secure because his court was screened by a hedge. Some holy peeper caught him finally, and all his players were haled before a native magistrate and fined. Fortunately that happened after I went home.

All crimes lead to jail, or are supposed to. Going to jail in Tonga seemed to be quite a merry social affair. Back in the days of old George Tubou one of the royal relatives was a prisoner. Every afternoon the King’s carriage would wheel up, take the culprit for a drive and for tea in the Palace, then return him at six o’clock, the closing hour.