A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

I asked Beach what was the matter with him. He said, “Back from the war, living on booze. He’s really quite a nice guy.”

That night the guy shot himself, but his aim was ineffective. I took care of him long enough to tell him that liquor is a poor substitute for quinine. I heard later that he sobered up and married some little girl who was a nice little girl. I like to record one story with a happy ending. But Billy Carson, who sang bass for us, had a grimmer finish. He had married a wealthy half-caste, and when he sent his children to Australia to be educated he had found that they were being set aside as “blackfellows.” One morning on Samarai wharf a loiterer found a neat bundle of clothes. Billy was always methodical.

In our tidy Port Moresby bungalow, comforted by my dear wife, whom I had seen too little during my restless months in Papua, I told my senior, Dr. Sawyer of the Foundation, that I would undertake a year’s survey of what some still called German New Guinea. Sawyer said, “Lambert, you’re certainly a hard man to kill!”

My farewell to Ahuia may supply a good finishing scene. Eloisa, like the perfect housekeeper she is, always packed and unpacked my boxes in his presence. She would give him the keys; when we returned from the field he would hand them over to her for inspection. On this day of parting the boy was proud as a chancellor, delivering the keys. How could anything be missing? Hadn’t he served the best doctors in Papua and acted as the Governor’s orderly? And when he started out on his expeditions with me hadn’t he stopped his ears against the wail of his friends, howling that he’d never come back alive?

Counting the wash, Eloisa giggled. Mine was all there, plus many unidentified shirts, socks, shorts and singlets. It was hardly worth while asking him the names of various hosts he had borrowed them from. Ahuia had conveniently forgotten.

When he was about to depart with my bonus of cash and tobacco he maintained his fierce expression, but there were tears in his eyes. Melanesians weep rather easily. Could he serve the taubada again? He would so like to serve the taubada if he came back....

I was a little rough, pushing him out of the place. I didn’t want him to see that white men can also weep. I would miss Ahuia.

******

So ended the Papuan chapter, with a few hard figures. I had covered 2,284 miles on foot and horse, in motor cars, canoes, whaleboats, sailing boats, motor launches and steamers. Fourteen miles of it I had done in the quaint vehicles they call “track cars,” iron-wheeled bone-breakers pushed by cannibal labor. With my inspectors we had covered 8,461 miles. Nor did my official report include the few miles we swam when our canoes heeled over. In villages and plantations we had examined people by tens of thousands. We had marked down a grand total of 59.2 per cent infection. We had upset an old theory that hookworm is carried from the plantations into the villages; our survey had gone to prove that quite the reverse was true.

The Papuan people by the Government’s reckoning of 1920-21 had been roughly estimated at 300,000. More likely, in the light of what a few explorers had found among the lost mountains, the population figures should have run nearer 500,000. The estimate of 166,721 for New Guinea Territory was ridiculously low; it was more reasonable to put it around the half million mark. The immense Dutch end of the island held something like a million more; but Dutch New Guinea was outside my itinerary.