In 1926 when I was going from the New Hebrides to Sydney on the Makambo, Captain Tom Brown moved Malakai from second class to the captain’s table, a gesture of respect. On my return to the Cook Islands in 1932, the natives asked only two questions: Where was Malakai and what had I done with my big camera? I had been the fifth wheel in the wagon. For three years Malakai ran our yaws unit in Fiji. A European doctor couldn’t have done the work as well with four times the money. Malakai’s unit was a model.
A European Medical Officer on the Ellice group went alcoholic, so I sent Malakai down for six months. After we had to call him home the local District Officer almost challenged me to a duel; he was going half-crazy, he said, because deputations from surrounding islands were pouring in, clamoring for Malakai’s services.
My young doctor’s addiction to silk neckties, silk shirts, silk lavalavas, fine coats, wrist watches, mandolins and guitars, once ran him afoul of a Fijian custom called kere kere. The clans are communistic, and if you happen to be a clansman anything you have is theirs by divine right. That’s why he returned from his home town looking like a cat that had been dipped into the sea. His family had trimmed him down to a ragged shirt and a cotton lavalava. The highest-born Fijian may get this rummage sale welcome if he ventures into the land of his birth. It quells ambition.
That, of course, belonged to the private life of Malakai. So did his marriage to a handsome wife, who used to accompany him on his trips. When he started sailing alone I was afraid of trouble; Malakai, temperamentally, would have made an ideal guardian for a very old Turk with a very large harem—no outside assistant would have been necessary. Then there was the matter of his savings. Like all Pacific Islanders he had no idea of a money economy. Why save for a rainy day? The sun will come out; it always does.
Love came to Malakai’s life and money flew out of the window. I had badgered him into putting £119 in a savings account; but Malakai got hold of the book. He was having wife-trouble. The first Mrs. Malakai was barren, and the Fijian who hasn’t fathered a child is jeered at as something less than a proper man; sterility is grounds for divorce. Malakai had gone courting a native nurse, and the romance had dug deep into his £119. He blew his whole remaining balance on a party to proclaim an approaching heir—on the sinister side. His fiancée was far from sterile—but how to give an honest name to the unborn Malakai, Junior?
Well, I talked to Magistrate Burrowes, who obligingly called two divorce hearings—and dismissed them both because neither Malakai nor his friends, for inscrutable Fijian reasons, would testify to the fact. At a third hearing Burrowes was in a sour temper. Bari and Rafaeli, Malakai’s friends, remained mum, but Malakai loosened up a little. Annoyed, the magistrate penalized him three pounds a month out of his N.M.P. salary of nine pounds—probably the first alimony ever paid by a Fijian. On the first of every month the retired Mrs. Malakai showed up to collect. She bled her ex-husband white as a Swede; then came to me for six months’ payment in advance to take her on a holiday trip. I argued that three months’ cash in hand is worth a lifetime of installments in the bush. She fancied the idea, and finally for fifteen pounds spot-on-the-counter surrendered Malakai for life. Now she could buy presents, buy clothes, go home, save her face. And, quite naturally, pick out a husband. Honor was satisfied. Another instance of native money psychology.
In 1936 Malakai went to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands as Senior Medical Practitioner. When he left there, it required two Europeans to fill his post. He came back to Fiji in 1939, a few days before I retired.
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In his ability and in his foibles Malakai was all Fijian. He settled my determination on higher education for such men. Dr. Montague was in the mood for it. If we could have taken that bull by the horns in 1922-1923 our enthusiasm might have swept in the political consent and money backing of at least eight great island groups. All we needed was the partnership of the Rockefeller Foundation. That, I guessed, was merely a matter of asking.
My guess was wrong. I wrote a detailed letter to Dr. Victor Heiser and outlined our plan. Just a little school with forty undergraduates, to start with. It could be an adjunct to the new hospital in Suva, but need not be an expensive set of buildings. Dr. Montague’s plans were modest in price and extremely practical. Governor Sir Eyre Hutson was enthusiastic. Administrators on distant island groups were begging for it. Now was the time.