Down there they call every male native a “boy”; Ahuia was my chief boy. Splendid in his new uniform, he had the look of a Malay pirate coming over the side with a big knife in his teeth. He wore more hair than I had ever seen on anything, living or dead. On special occasions he loved to decorate it with lilies. To the natives he was an oppressor, to me a tender guardian. He could wash clothes, hookworm specimens, camp dishes. He could cook and sew. He could put the fear of devils into the gang of carriers who bore our equipment. He spoke Motu fluently when he interpreted. Motu is the lingua franca along the dry belt. In remoter villages they didn’t understand Motu. But in every settlement under government control Ahuia would engage the services of the village constable, usually a murderer who had graduated with honors from Port Moresby jail. Jail was the native’s university, where he could learn more in three years than the home folks could teach him in a lifetime. The authorities always had a job waiting for a good jailbird. Ahuia, who was a great traveler, knew that any constable with a Port Moresby jail degree could speak Motu. A handy boy was Ahuia, and, like most natives, as afraid of ghosts and magic as a rabbit of a hound-dog.
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At the big hemp plantation, field hands thronged around our lorry to help us with our load—queer fellows with sloping foreheads crowned with tight Negro wool. Long beaked noses gave them an ironic look; they had the appealing eyes of beaten hunting dogs, and were not healthy men. Some of them showed the dreadful ulcers of that false syphilis we call “yaws.” Others were too pallid for brown men—hookworm infection and malaria.
“What name dis fellow?” I asked Ahuia.
“Him Goaribari.” Ahuia spat contemptuously.
Goaribaris! I had heard bloodcurdling stories of these savages. It must have been a long haul for them—seven hundred miles or so from the Delta country which they terrorized. Here they labored along with downcast eyes, or looked up almost fawningly.
The plantation manager arrived and invited me to his comfortable, balconied house. These planters have the generous hearts of all good Australians. “And it’s a God’s blessing that you Yankees are jogging the Government up a bit. Half a million natives, maybe, and not half of ’em fit to lift a bloody hand.” When I asked about the Goaribaris who had so sedately helped us with our gear, the manager said: “Cannibals? Well, just a bit. When they’re home they’ll eat anything, from maggots to raw eels.”
I inquired into hygienic conditions. He said, “When the recruiters bring these boys in they’re lousy with the diseases they’ve caught in their blighted villages. The ones you saw are newcomers. Six months on a good plantation and they’ll pick up.”
He looked at me studiously. “The plantation’s a bit seedy now, but we have two sanitary features we’re proud of.”
Back of the cabins he led me into one of those latrines designed by Dr. Strong, the Papuan Chief Medical Officer, who strove so well for the people and never got a breath of credit. It was built with a rough wooden rail and the pit was some twenty-five feet deep. Darkness below was unattractive to the dysentery-carrying fly, the sides too steep and high for the hookworm larvae to climb.