A cross-eyed Samoan named Tongamau, one of our brightest and best, married a native nurse. Both he and his young wife had specialized on infant feeding, so after the baby was born and had attained a few months’ growth Tongamau took him off breast-feeding and decided to bring him up entirely on native food. On that basis the Tongamaus worked out a whole formula of infant diet and composed careful instructions for preparing the ingredients, the change and weight of meals from week to week, and so on. Tongamau’s account of this successful experiment was first printed in our school publication The Native Medical Practitioner and was widely reviewed in standard medical journals.
N.M.P. Okeseni also married a native nurse, and his article in the same publication reveals another Practitioner’s cleverness in the use of materials at hand. (Okeseni, by the way, is the Samoan pronunciation of “oxygen.”) Okeseni’s essay is entitled “Coconut Fiber Used in Ligatures,” and says, “... I was thinking ... that the fibers of the husk could be used instead of silkworm gut; for they are protected from any outside contamination....” He employed them successfully in many operations.
Any copy of the Practitioner is worth looking over for interesting articles, written in businesslike professional English. “General Practice in Native Villages of Fiji,” by N.M.P. Ieni; “Foodstuffs in the Gilbert Islands,” by Third-Year Student Arobati Hicking; and there’s one called “Medical Work on Rennell Island” by N.M.P. Hughie Wheatley which I especially remember. He is the half-caste son of Norman Wheatley, the yacht-collector; and Hughie’s article tells how he adopted a four-months-old Rennellese baby whose mother was too feeble to nurse it; he saved the child with a diet of native food, somewhat after Tongamau’s formula.
I have watched the lives of all my boys, going out into the world. There was Tau Cowan, a half-British Cook Islander who married out of his profession. The girl he picked was a daughter of the King of Rarotonga; she had been beautifully educated in New Zealand, and has made him a good wife; Tau has become one of our outstanding graduates.
John Numa, on the other hand, found his wife in an insane asylum. She was far from crazy; in fact she was the native warder’s daughter. It was the warder’s reason that was endangered, for John’s courtship was so hot and heavy that I was called in, and a minister was immediately summoned. Some of the whites wanted to make a scandal out of John’s behavior—which was not scandalous according to the native code—but the couple went to the Cooks, where Mrs. Numa was a great social hit and became the successful rival of a lady who had long ruled the roost, a half-caste official wife. John Numa made an outstanding survey of the leper situation on Penrhyn.
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We went in for athletics, of course, and a school band. Ielu Kuresa, a Samoan, organized the band, and as he conducted the popular tunes his pale scholar’s face was filled with the spiritual earnestness that finally led him to his death. Mesalume, the husky Fijian, was a Lau boy, and a contrast in character. We taught him to box, and when he was matched with Helu, a Tongan about twice his size, Mesalume put him out in the third round with a stiff one on the chin. This Fijian was a natural athlete, and the mainstay of our football team.
Ielu and Mesalume—contrasting types of contrasting races, they met the same end in the line of duty.
I have a sort of father’s affection for the natives of all the groups, but my admiration always turns back to the Fijian, a tower of strength, who never lets you down when you need him. I have seen so many of them go out into the field and do far more than their share, far better than their competitors,—dignified, ethical medical men.
Mesalume had great force of character, and an intellectual independence. Once I had to intervene when he got into an argument with an Australian nurse in the War Memorial. The delicate point was that Mesalume was right, but a colored boy was not supposed to have an opinion of his own. It took diplomacy to get him out of that mess. His reaction was very Scottish. “I still think so,” he told me in confidence.