Yes, farming in Papua, even at its best, offered many problems never dreamed of in the philosophy of a Secretary of Agriculture. The old hands were far from hookworm-free, although vastly improved in general health. New recruits were coming in with fresh loads of parasites to be hatched from the filth they scattered in spite of managerial watchfulness. Green laborers regarded the well-built privies as queer traps set by the white man for their undoing ... pretty, but look out!
That night I lectured by the light of hurricane lanterns swung from the beams of a great, empty warehouse. The audience sat cross-legged in a wide crescent, their oily faces gleaming up at us. The front row was solid Goaribari with natives of gentler tribes behind. These, being more nearly civilized, understood Motu, which was so much Greek to the Delta savages. Therefore it had been up to Ahuia to fetch the local constable, a very ugly man in a G-string and a policeman’s cap.
Such occasions were Ahuia’s hour to shine. Out on the trail he went stripped to the waist, but at lectures the gaudy yellow H on his bright blue jumper stretched with every expansion of his chest. And he hadn’t forgotten to put lilies in his hair. He had set the stage with our regulation International Health Board chart, loosely bound pages with simple illustrations of the hookworm’s course to the intestines; there were drawings, greatly enlarged, of the male and female parasite and the egg their mutual love produced. There were big photographs of a sick boy and a well boy—something like the patent-medicine man’s “Before and After Treatment.”
Ahuia quelled the Goaribaris with his pirate’s scowl, and in impressive silence brought out our prize number, a large bottle of adult hookworms, pickled in alcohol. This was a stage property which we carried for purposes of demonstration. Cannibal eyes popped as the collection was passed from hand to hand.
Ahuia was getting his lesson by heart, but I still felt it safer to prompt him. “Tell them first,” I said, “that they must look carefully at what is in the bottle.” He spoke Motu, straight into the mouth of the interpreter: “Tatau bona, memero, umui iboumuiai inai gaigai ba itaia....” The native constable was saying it after him, in the queer lingo of the Goaribaris: “Men and boys, all of you look at these little snakes.”
Education strained through three languages. The row of man-eaters sat very still; their long noses, pointed up, were like the muzzles of wistful hounds. Ahuia was telling them how the lady snake laid very bad eggs that fell out of the black boy and the black “mary”; how the eggs hatched tiny baby snakes that nipped the black boy’s foot and crawled back into his belly. Now see the picture of the sick boy and the well boy—they are both the same boy. The well boy took the medicine the taubada brings, and the snakes came out of his belly. Now he will keep well, because he is a wise boy. He goes to the clean privy the white man built him, so that the snake cannot come out and crawl into him again.
Patiently drumming simple words into woolly heads, we tried to make simple men understand cause, cure and prevention of a disease they might have brought from Africa, ages ago; a disease so wasting that the mills, rivers, the plantations were calling upon half-invalids to furnish brawn for Europe’s driving ambition.
Sometimes in my early lectures as I looked over the stooped dark figures I would have moments of weakening. I would wonder if it was worth while to save these curious beings, so out of touch with anything our Northern civilization knew.
As time went on, I came to realize how very much worth while it was.
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