I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 1 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Contents

Foreward

1 Early Days

2 Teaching at Nailaga in Ba, Fiji

3 Davuilevu, the head mission station

4 More about Davuilevu

5 Dilkusha

6 The "Southern Cross" crossed the Pacific, and some Meditations on Money

7 A Hurricane

8 Inland Journeys

9 Two Centenaries

10 Various Holidays

11 Life in Kadavu

12 Matavelo Girls' School

13 New Zealand Interlude

14 Back to Fiji

15 Last Teaching Years

16 Independent Fiji

Appendices

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 2 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

FOREWORD The first "marama sisita" I met on arriving in Fiji in 1938, was "Miss Ames" - her father had met me at the boat in Suva, and I spent my first few days at Davuilevu in her cottage. I recall being somewhat overwhelmed by her effortless identification with the Fijian people, her knowledge of their way of life, and her fluency in the language. After eighteen years' service, Miss Hames had already made a substantial contribution in the field of education. Those years were, however, but a beginning - the thirty which followed were to be a period of far-reaching change for the peoples of Fiji, and were to bring to the fore one of Miss Hames' most endearing qualities - her readiness to accept new ways and ideas. Not for her the backward looking nostalgia for the "old days". She finds the present exciting, is delighted to see so many of her former pupils realising their full potential as leaders in the community, and must surely rejoice in the knowledge that she has contributed so much towards this. These memoirs are fascinating. They are completely lacking in sentimentality, and, spiced with her delightfully astringent sense of humour, they reveal her great affection for Fiji and its people. This is indeed Volunteer Service Abroad writ large. May McIntosh Lower Hutt 22 May 1972

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Chapter 1 Early Days There was no telephone in the house where I was born in 1892 in Paparoa, ninety miles north of Auckland. Nor of course were there motor cars. My father took a bridle from the saddle shed, and walked out into the fields, or paddocks, as we call them in New Zealand, and, catching one of his horses, led it to the front gate, saddled it, and rode six miles on unmetalled roads to get a doctor for me. This was in 1893. I had a bad cold, and there was heavy breathing. When Dr Montaigne came, he diagnosed congestion of the lungs, and nothing could be done. The child would last a few hours. To the young couple with their first child this seemed intolerable. My father had heard that there was a man visiting the district who used homoeopathic cures, and that he would be riding that day on horseback from Paparoa to Maungaturoto. So he rode out across his farm a mile and a half to the government road. He reached the road, and, dismounting, saw hoof-marks going to Maungaturoto. He followed, overtook Mr Rimmer, explained his trouble, and they returned together to our home, where my mother was anxiously watching over me. Hot and cold wet pack treatment was the remedy. Firewood was burnt in the kitchen stove all night. Kettle after kettle of hot water kept blankets hot as fomentations. A crisis passed, and I recovered. This incident shows the utter isolation of early settlers in North Auckland. To me, growing up in beautiful Paparoa valley, it all seemed so normal that, even now, in the 1970s, I find it quite an effort to realise how far from normal it was. We led pleasant lives. There was an abundance of eggs, and milk and butter; mutton when a sheep was killed; bacon and pork of our own curing; more than abundance of fruit; vegetables from our own garden. There were acres of beautiful playing grounds; in winter long evenings by big log fires, and plenty of well-selected books. There were horses to ride, when we went to church or to visit friends. What did it matter to a child that there was a serious economic depression, and that the farm income was very small? I was well into my teens before I tasted an ice cream. Occasionally my father brought home a few boiled lollies. He had built up his library by foregoing mid-day meals on holidays in Auckland and purchasing from second-hand book shops. Our mother made our bread. We made butter in a treadle-barrel churn. My father ran sheep on his 500 acre farm and kept cows for home use. Life was free. We could ride out visiting and come home when we liked. The few cows could wait for milking. But indeed the whole story of the Albertland settlement is so far from normal as to seem, when considered now, fantastically unusual. We must picture England, where, halfway through the nineteenth century, the non-established churches were unfairly treated. In Herefordshire Lord Somers, disturbed that daughters only were born to him, was seriously advised that God might be punishing him for allowing Methodists to live on his estate. Consequently he ejected them all. A Methodist church committee,

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 4 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) with my Great-grandfather Maddox as convenor, arranged refuge for them. My Grandparents were married in Ledbury Anglican church. Their own 'chapel' and minister were prevented by law from providing marriage facilities. Village schools were Anglican institutions. Land also was closely held by the gentry. Enterprising people in the beginning and middle of the nineteenth century wished it were possible to improve their lot. Socialist laws were far away in the future. It was not until 1834 that there were government education grants, not until 1836 that a law was passed allowing civil marriage. The Wakefield settlements in Wellington and Nelson districts in New Zealand had catered for both moneyed people and labourers. Canterbury had been settled by Church of England, Otago by Scottish people. When the idea of a Nonconformist settlement in North Auckland reached the chapels in England, many people received the suggestion with joy. Rev. William Gittos, missionary to Kaipara Maoris, heard about it, and suggested his district for the project. Decent, moral, industrious people would be good for the Kaipara. So it was arranged. These people, who called themselves Albertlanders, full of hope, were allotted sections of land in the forest. Their hardships were severe. Isolation in the heavy, unroaded forest, brought its perils. My Grandfather, a brainy, delicate schoolteacher, with a brave, severely practical wife, because he was suddenly afflicted with deafness, took his wife and four little boys to Paparoa Valley, miles from neighbours, in the midst of forest. Fierce wild pigs of the stock originally left by Captain Cook roamed among the totara, kahikatea, kauri, tree ferns and supplejacks. One day the parents, their eleven year old son and little five year old went out to work or reconnoitre, leaving little Rowland, two years old, in the care of eight year old Luther. A great pig came in looking for food. Luther picked Baby Rowland up and climbed with him on to a table, no doubt saving him from being eaten by the pig. They were not really suitable people for pioneering. Not physically, and not at all quick at seizing opportunities of gaining money. Later, others in Paparoa learnt to fell great Kauri trees and raft them down the flooded Manganui to the Northern Wairoa River to timber mills. But in other ways the Hames family were very suited to pioneering. My Grandfather came from a line of gardeners, and he and my grandmother, and later children and daughters-in-law created a lovely atmosphere of trees, flowers, fruit and vegetables. They were intensely religious. I remember grace in my grandparents' home both before and after meals. I remember kneeling by my chair after breakfast, listening to my grandfather's long prayers. And the Bible teaching given to me sitting on my grandmother's knee with an illustrated Bible has never been forgotten. Its influence has remained with me all my life. They were too far from a school to travel bush tracks for education, but their now severely deaf father taught the children, his wife supplying the hearing part of the schooling. Their brains were keen. They could have competed with credit anywhere at all. But for years they lived lonely lives. My Uncle Luther took up school-teaching Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 5 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) and went to Auckland. My two aunts, who had been born in the Paparoa Valley home, became nurses. The others remained farmers. But my father saw to it that his children had every possible chance of education. My mother, a pretty, artistic woman of Baptist stock, reared in Melbourne, fell in with his wishes. One day, when my aunt Priscilla was a child, my grandmother promised her that if she memorised the whole Wesleyan Methodist hymn book, she would give her €1. Priscilla memorised it and received her pound. Rowland, who was later my father, and Priscilla in their young days had been in the habit of reciting 'Paradise Lost' to each other, as they rode horses along the ridge tracks home from church meetings in Paparoa township. They would get to the last line of one book when they reached the gate of the home paddock and lifted the twisted wire or piece of chain that fastened gate to post, rode through, and turned to replace it; or, if to avoid a deep bog of mud they followed an alternative track, one of them dismounted to let down the slip-rails. In his early twenties my father became a lay preacher, or local preacher in Methodist phraseology. All the travelling was done on horseback. On some Saturday afternoons he would set out for Mangawai or Hakaru or Waikiekie, twenty miles away. When I was a school girl, it was my privilege sometimes to go with him to nearer places. We would ride straight from morning service at Paparoa, eating our sandwiches as we rode along to Ararua or Mareretu. I see in memory a small, ugly, bare building at the side of the road, set in the midst of manuka scrub, and a handful of friendly people arriving on horseback or on foot. Battered Sankey hymn books would be passed round, and we sang the hymns very badly. My father always preached well.

My parent’s Clara and Rowland Hames – Wedding 1891 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 6 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

In winter in those days of unmetalled roads, we would perhaps avoid riding through mud that almost reached the horses' bellies, and take a short-cut from Ararua to Paparoa. Down a steep incline the horses would slide, almost on their haunches, perhaps seventy feet, to a valley; then toil up to another ridge, where the downward sliding would begin again. Our Sabbath observance could not be called humdrum. But there should be a place in heaven for those church workers, our horses! Then as children how we loved those occasional Sundays when Father did not have a preaching appointment. He would let Mother go out for the day for church and visiting, and he would look after us. He would perhaps take us for a walk, he carrying baby Edgar, or whoever was the youngest of us. He would show us the old pitsaw, where he and a teenage boy had sawn all the timber for our home. When in 1890 my father became engaged to be married, he cut down one of his kauri trees, dug a pit under the great trunk, and he and Willie Gibbs, one at the top and the other below, sawed the whole thing into boards. Then they built the house in which my brother Edgar still lives. Heart of kauri is very sound. I was born in 1892, and Eva in 1894. She was prettier and cleverer than I was. "It is better to be good than clever," said Grandma Hames to us two one day. "It's better to be both," said sharp-witted Eva. She lived up to this rule, as will be seen as the tale continues. In 1899 and 1900 my brothers Viv and Edgar were born. I could not attend Wairere School until I was nearly seven years old, because my parents were afraid I might be attacked by wild pigs in the bush. But in 1898 my youthful aunt, Amy Hutchinson, came from Whangarei to live with us, attend school too, and protect me on the bush track. But I had learned to read at home before this. In 1901 we commenced attending Huarau School in the building which Father and Mr Andrew Rintoul had to finance, and build with their own hands. Great changes took place in New Zealand. Refrigeration transformed farming. Butter factories sprang up in Taranaki, the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and North Auckland. Ended was the pleasant life of shearing sheep once a year and milking a few house cows. People rose at 4 a.m. and toiled at fourteen hand-milkings a week. Money became a real force in farmers' lives. New rooms were built onto homes, water taps were installed in kitchens, wash-tubs, sinks and baths with plugs and down-pipes to drains were added to home comforts. Linoleum replaced white-scrubbed board floors and home-dressed sheepskin mats. Chests of drawers replaced the usual three packing cases with a starched vallance edged with deep crochet. Farm machinery was bought; wire fences supplemented or replaced hawthorn hedges. New kinds of manure were used. Better stock was introduced. My father sent Viv and Edgar to Lincoln Agricultural College in Canterbury. They returned home and have farmed in Paparoa Valley until now. I took my privileges and duties as big sister rather too seriously. We have always been bound closely in sentiment and mutual loyalty. When I was eleven, Bernard was born, Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 7 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) and was my especial pet, they all said. Then in five more years there were two lovely girls, Mildred and Stella. I had gone to school in Auckland on a scholarship soon after Mildred came to us. In these days we can travel from Paparoa to Auckland by car in three hours, but to go there to school in 1906 was a very different matter. At 4 a.m. my father caught two horses. A wood fire lit in the range cooked our breakfast. My belongings had been packed in a straw hamper. A rolled-up sack strapped on the front of Father's saddle provided a rest for the hamper. We mounted and set off. Eight miles to Whakapirau or Pahi to catch the harbour steamer. Father returned home with the two horses, and the little steamboat went down the Arapaua River to Batley, through the "funnel", past Tinopai, then only a Maori village, and out across the Kaipara Heads, past Shelley Beach, and up the winding Kaipara River to Helensville, where the passengers boarded the Auckland train, reaching that city at 4 p.m. I found very serious rivals in Auckland Grammar School in Symonds Street. I never topped my class. Girls, used to quick city ways, were more alert than I was. I made friendships that have lasted till now. Mr J.W. Tibbs was headmaster of both sides of the school. A high wall separated us from the boys. The communicating door was always locked. In 1908 Miss Annie Whitelaw became our head, and in 1909 we moved to Howe Street. I matriculated in 1908. By this time I felt that I was not clever, and I decided against a University education. It was a wrong decision. In Fiji, for fifty years I have been repeatedly at a disadvantage because of the lack of a degree. Auckland was a homely little city then. It was compact. It must have been about as large as Suva is now. I thought Pitt Street Methodist Church a most wonderful place. Starved for music as we were then in Paparoa, practising for Sunday School anniversary under young Tom Garland, later Uncle Tom of 1ZB, was a sheer delight. I am not the slightest bit musical, but I loved it all. There were good preachers there - C.H. Garland, James Luxford, William Ready, and they influenced me. Eva joined me at school, and did very well. She never again lived in Paparoa. Winning a John Tinline scholarship, she attended Auckland University College. She had Father's retentive memory, and could quote whole pages of the textbooks to illustrate anwers to examination questions. She gained her B.A. degree, and later became a Student Christian Movement secretary, then married Ronald Sinclair Watson, Presbyterian minister. They led full and useful lives and have both passed on, leaving behind two sons and six grandchildren. Dr Malcom Hames Watson of Lower Hutt is one son. Dr Nigel Mott Watson, professor at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, is another. There will be more about the family in a later chapter. After two years at home, helping Mother with the children, I entered Auckland Training College in Wellesley Street East. In 1914 I was appointed to Maromaku School in the Bay of Islands; then in 1915 to Woodhill, near Helensville; and in 1917 to Huarau, which I had attended as a child. The Public Works Department was putting the railway through the north. World War I delayed the work, and engineers and labourers were camped for several years on our farm. Huarau School served their Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 8 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) children. Both ends of the tunnel near Paparoa Station were on my father's property. Through increased road transport in these days, Paparoa Station is very unimportant, and my brother Viv, a grazier of cattle and sheep, lives in and owns what was originally the stationmaster's house, the site for which he has now bought back for himself. Edgar has a considerable dairy farm, and he and his wife, Rita, have a lovely family of three girls and six grandchildren, and have made a gracious home of the house Father and Willie Gibbs built in 1891. Betty Jarvis, a schoolteacher has three sons. Audrey Arnold with her husband teaching in Canada has two daughters and a son. Jennifer, a daughter, is in the New Zealand department of Foreign Affairs In 1920, feeling an overpowering urge to extend the Kingdom of God overseas, I offered as a missionary schoolteacher for Fiji.

My Mother about 1930 My Father about 1923

Inez with family. Back Row: Inez (standing), Eva, Vivian, Mildred shortly before going to Fiji Front Row: Bernard, Stella, Edgar, grandfather Hutchinson.

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Our home in Paparoa about 1928

Paparoa Methodist Church about 1928

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Chapter 2. Teaching at Nailaga in Ba in Fiji "Don't let's leave this second chair in my office," said the expatriate minister. "Some Fijian might sit on it. Lelean's a fool; he's put seats in his office for his students. He'll make them cheeky.” "You'd better be careful what you say to Miss A," said Mrs W. "She's telling people you'll be a dangerous influence, because you told about your mother's Maori girl sitting in the evening by your fire with you all." "Don't bother to do what the Government Superintendent of Schools tells you to do," said the minister. "Yes, we now take a government grant, but don't bother, if he is not pleased. There's too much English in the syllabus. It makes Fijians cheeky to learn English. Now, my boys in my preacher- Inez’ first day in Fiji – July 1920 training school are fine fellows, and know no English at all. The best of them will be ministers later on. They won't need English. That boy, Jo, is a fine lad. My wife says he brings the best firewood she's ever had. And our houseboy, Joni, scrubs a floor beautifully clean. He is always so respectful. Your boys that you are teaching? The best of them might pass an examination, that would admit them to Davuilevu for teacher-training or to a medical course at Suva. Yes, they would need English for that." Only my pride and a certain stubborness kept me from returning to New Zealand. And yet, apart from this aloof benevolence to the Fijians, I felt I had everything in common with these Australian Methodists. I admired their tireless devotion to duty and their self-sacrificing work. I appreciated their kindness to me, and envied them their knowledge of language and customs. But I redoubled my efforts to teach English to my boys at Vunitivi in Nailaga. I did my best to make them cheeky, if it would make them so. Happily, I met other Australian Methodists, who did not have that fear of too great friendliness.

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Boys came to the school from as far afield as Ra Province, Nadi and Yasaiva. Circuit boundaries have since been altered. The Ra-Ba circuit was claimed to be numerically the largest in the world.

Vunitivi School boys, Ba, 1918 Girls also came from the same districts to Matavelo, which had been the first girls' boarding-school to be established. I lived at Matavelo with the ladies in charge. One afternoon each week my boys brought firewood for the girls and us. "This is because you live here," it was explained to me. "But tell the boys to leave it at the gate. No boy may come into these grounds. No, nothing could happen with us watching, but the boys might look lustfully at the girls." The eighty boys and my Fijian man assistant seemed to me to be models of decorum. Saimoni Tuai, Etuate Naueukidi and Ropate Varo passed into Davuilevu Teacher Training Institution, and Peni Bubuta and Joeli Tikolevu into the medical school. On Friday evenings the Fijian teacher ran a fun night in the school buildings for the bigger boys, and I played "Drop the handkerchief" out-side with the little fellows. One of them was the late Rev. Osea Neisau, another Joni Bubuta, school agricultural adviser. One of the senior girls at Matavelo is now the mother of Mrs Taufa Bole, B.A. The pupils wrote on slates. They frequently lost their pencils pulled off the wooden frames, broke off a corner and used that for a pencil. The slates became smaller and smaller '. Equipment was meagre. The annual fee at Vunitivi Boys' School was £4 for boarders, but at Matavelo Girls' School no fees were charged. This was for the simple reason that no Fijian parent would consider it worthwhile to pay fees for girls. "What is the use of educating girls?" they asked. Each girl arrived at Matavelo with sleeping mats, a pillow, a slate, a Bible, a hymn book, a bottle of coconut oil, a large wooden hair comb, a piece of laundry soap, a white dress for church at least two other dresses, and a mosquito net if possible. As school equipment we had blackboards, chalk and perhaps a few easy readers we had

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 12 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) bought ourselves, or managed to acquire by some means. A large map of Fiji was a useful asset. Spades, grass knives and gardening forks were quite necessary. Both girls and boys grew all their food. To supplement the monotonous diet of starchy root vegetables, 'bele' leaves cooked in coconut cream were popular, as were shell-fish from the river. If tides were unsuited to out-of-school hours, then on those days some pupils had to miss school. Boarders had only two meals a day; indeed at that time most Fijians had only one meal per day, though left-over food could often be eaten without ceremony, just as the opportunity occurred. Schoolgirls became proficient at washing and ironing and at hand-sewing and crochet. Some were accepted for nursing training in Suva. Tutoring in the nursing school was given in the Fijian language. Orderly, sheltered, disciplined life had a tremendous influence for good. They learnt much of hygienic living. Indeed, a set written examination paper including the question, "What are three things necessary for the body?" brought from one girl the startling answer, "Pants, petticoat and dress." A few years previously a Fijian Minister's daughter had been sent from Matavelo to Sydney, where she took a course with credit in Kindergarten teaching. In 1920 she had been back in Fiji only a few years and was teaching in Davuilevu. Her name is famous now; Lolohea Ratu, later Wagairawal. She lived an outstandingly useful life, and was loved and honoured by everyone. A few years before her death she attended a Pan- Pacific Conference in Tokyo and quite stole the show and was the most popular delegate there. Her deep spiritual qualities were what impressed people most. Mary Ballantine had died in 1918 after eighteen years in Fiji, most of the years at Matavelo. The mission house for the superintendent minister of Ba-Ra Fijian circuit was then in Nailaga. It was later moved to Lautoka. It was in that mission house, just across the Colonial Sugar Refining Company's railway line that Rev. C.O. Lelean had drawn up Miss Ballantine's famous will, by which she left almost all her savings, just £100 "for Fijian girls' education." This became the nucleus of the fund with which Ballantine Memorial School in Suva was made possible. We attended church in the village of Nailaga. Singing was not in the least like it is now. One man led it, singing the soprano notes. He started, then everybody else took it up on the second syllable, women an octave higher than his soprano, the other men harmonising with him. The result could be appalling. A flagellator with a long stock stood behind the children. He would poke at them even at prayer-time, and quite often move a whole school of eighty people several inches up the floor. There were only two long seats in the church. We sat on them facing the people who sat on the floor. A chief sat in a chair. Mothers used to quieten small children by telling them we would get them, if they were restless. How mercifully our relations with small Fijian children have changed. And how good it is that, though Fijian churches are still now, as in 1920, the people's own for them to decide their own details of methods of worship, unseemly aspects have quite gone. Women class leaders still intone the catechism before church, but it is dignified, reverent and melodious. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 13 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

I enjoyed making friends of Australian and New Zealand mission staff on Indian mission stations. There were two distinct branches of the Methodist Mission, Fijian and Indian. "You, at Vunitivi, can't expect to get the scholastic results that we get with Indians," some said. I had somehow a strangely protective, possessive attitude to the Fijian people. I expect that it was a good thing that I had. It made me try harder and harder to help them. "You'll see something this afternoon that you don't see in your Fijian mission station at Nailaga," said Rev. J.L. "We'll ask some Indian people in to afternoon tea, as we did in India." At that time, except for the work of Roman Catholic and Methodist missionaries, Indians had had very little done to help them. Sixty two thousand of them had been brought to work in Fiji. In 1879, when the first four hundred and eighty one had been brought on the 'Leonidas', they were sent to cotton, coconut and sugar plantations. Fiji's first governor. Sir Arthur Gordon, in his determination to preserve Fijian chiefly organisation, custom, discipline and control, but harassed by demands of Europeans for labourers, devised this plan to solve the difficulty. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company, commencing work in Fiji so soon after Cession, liked the Indians for their diligence. Indenture conditions were hard, but in 1918, when indenture ended, not many wanted to return to India. Through hard work and thrift the people have progressed amazingly to their present state of prosperity. In 1920 there were very few schools for Indian children, and as for girls, just small groups were being taught in Methodist schools at Suva, Lautoka, Navua, Dilkusha, and Ba, and some in Catholic schools. It was considered necessary for their safety to escort girls along the roads to school. A few had become Christian, but most Indian pupils remained true to the religion to which they had been born. In 1919 an agitator had come from India to stir the people up against the Europeans, and there were riots. In 1920 there was a little aftermath of unrest, and a strike of Colonial Sugar Refining Company workers. We were alerted with packed suitcases at hand, and arrangements were made for our protection, but nothing happened. The powerful Colonial Sugar Refining Company soon settled the strike. We in Ba at that time did not often visit Suva. It took several days to get there. This is a contrast to the forty five minutes it now takes to travel by Air Pacific from Nadi to Nausori. The procedure was this: First we enquired about the probable day on which the SS Adi Keva would arrive, and we consulted tides. Packed and ready, we awaited a steamer whistle, and a runner from the riverbank. "The Keva is on her way up to Rarawai," we were told. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 14 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Quickly the horse was caught and harnessed into the gig, and we went three miles to Rarawai to enquire from the captain whether he would be going out on the same tide or the next. Sometimes he had already been to Lautoka, sometimes had still to go there. At Tavua Bay there was always a wait of several hours, while mail, passengers and goods were rowed to Tavua landing, and the dinghy returned. We always tied up for the night at Ellington wharf. The following evening at Levuka was more interesting. If we had friends ashore we could spend the evening with them, but sleep aboard to get away for Suva with dawning light. Sometimes, depending on the tide, it was necessary to spend the next night anchored off shore not far from Cautata. Going through the river past Wainibokasi to avoid rough seas off the shore reef of Naselai, was dramatic. Two river bends were too sharp for the 'Keva' to get round in her own steam. A man swam ashore with a rope, threw a loop over a post, waited while the boat, on the pull of the rope rounded the point, released it, then plunged into the river, catching up with the boat round the bend. The present road from Suva to the western side was completed ten years later. To get away sometimes from hot, flat Nailaga amongst its mango trees was a thrill to me. In 1922 a party of us went with a committee of local European ministers and members of the Australian Mission Board to Nadarivatu, while they chose the site for the Robert Beckett Memorial Rest House. The journey to Nadarivatu was very different from the present short car ride. We went by motor car to Waikubukubu at the foot of the range. Then we hired horses and rode five miles up the zigzag road with its hairpin bends - 2700 feet up to cool air. After the Rest House was built, and we had frequent holidays there, for some years we still used horses to ride up the hill, and our goods were taken up by mule cart. While at Nailaga I had occasional other horseback rides, and, using a village horse, I unwittingly collected my first legend. Suna was greedy, and kept stopping to eat grass. I was told the legend of Suna, the greedy giant. I thought it quaint, and little dreamt that it would become one of the most popular of my published legends.

In 1923 my father came for a holiday to Ba, and was most interested in all Inez with staff at Vunitivi Boys’ School, Nailaga, Ba. that he saw. About 1924 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 15 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Chapter 3 Davuilevu, the head mission station In 1926, when Olive Morrissey left her work in Davuilevu to marry Benjamin Meek, principal of Navuso Agricultural School, I was appointed to take her place. I became head of Davuilevu Primary School, which served all the children who lived in that school town. It was one of five schools under the principalship of Rev. C.O. Lelean. The others were theological, pastor training and technical schools, and a Teacher Training Institution. When in 1835, five years after Tahitian missionaries arrived at Oneata, the first Wesleyan Methodist missionaries came to Fiji, landing at Lakeba in Lau, as soon as they had reduced Lau dialect to writing and made a few converts, they begun to gather a few young men together and teach them the art of writing and reading. They then sent some of them out as teachers to villages needing instruction. When in 1838 more reinforcements arrived from England and Tongans came too to help them, they extended their work to Rewa, Viwa, Somosomo and later to other places. By 1862, six years after Cakobau's conversion and five years after the battle of Kaba had made Christianity the official religion, it was realised that more efficient training of Fijians was necessary. Hundreds of villages were asking for teachers. So a Central Training Institution for the whole of Fiji and Rotuma was established at Richmond in Kadavu. In 1864 it was transferred to Navuloa and in 1908 to Davuilevu. Pastor-trainees were selected from small circuit pastor-training schools. Of these some, when older, returned to take a theological course. Davuilevu is a property of 950 acres of freehold land on the western bank of the Rewa, opposite Nausori. Since 1926 many changes have taken place. Theological training is now given in the English language. Men become Licentiates of Theology. From them some are chosen to go on to more advanced training in the interdenominational Pacific Theological College at Veiuto. The largest part of Davuilevu at this time is the LeLean Memorial School, a secondary school of good standard. Within the Davuilevu grounds there are also a Bible School and a Leadership Training Centre. In 1926 there were greater numbers, and living conditions approximated more to village life. All the six to seven hundred people - Fijian staff, their wives and families, students and their wives and families, over a period of many years, used to walk for their daily bath all the way to the Rewa River across the King's Road. Gardens were extensive. Many hours were spent in planting. Technical School boys and unmarried pastor students lived in dormitories, but each circuit of Fiji and Rotuma had its own area. A married theological student was in charge of each section with oversight of married pastor trainees, their wives and families, and also other children who had crowded into their houses in order to attend the Primary School.

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Houses had thatch walls and corrugated iron roofs. These areas extended back on the property to a ridge wall behind the present limits of the town. Grass was cut with cane-knives. There were no motor-mowers, but the standard of neatness and beauty of surroundings was high. The Primary School, including girls up to about the age of fourteen, provided the main practising school for teacher-trainees. Others were Nausori district primary school, and, for Indian trainees, Dilkusha Boys' and Girls' Schools. I was privileged to live in the home of Rev. C.O. LeLean. Because I lived there, the children every Tuesday afternoon worked for him, cutting his grass, and carrying his firewood up the hill. They used to sing lustily as they worked, parodying a hymn: "Na koro ni Kalou, Koro savasava, Sega na duka, Sega na duka, Sa curu kikea." "No unclean can enter." But they sang: "Sega na nuka, Sega na nuka, "No firewood can enter." Then some wag sang: "Sega na luka, Sega na luka." "No mucous can enter." Davuilevu had an official school song; "Davuilevu, na koro dredre," "Davuilevu, the different town." Miss Morrissey thought they meant that lessons were advanced. But I thought it meant that conditions were hard. "Davuilevu, na koro dredre, Ti drau ni moli, kaua tavioka." "Lemon leaf tea and casava." Only the teachers in training had bread or meat and onions. They received a government grant and therefore had funds. It was small wonder that there was jealousy. "Cheeky young fellows," the others said. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 17 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

But of course they were nothing of the sort. They were especially bright adolescent boys from all parts of Fiji and Rotuma. They had entered by passing our Qualifying Examination. In those days birth certificates were not required. I remember the consternation when they were first needed. One boy was assured in the Department of Vital Statistics that he had never been born. There was no record of him. A Lomaiviti boy wrote to Levuka for his birth certificate. As it was slow in coming, he wrote again. Then a reply came to his first letter, then the second request was answered. But they were different. "Which shall I use?" he asked me. "Let's look at them," I said, "and see which one will suit you best." I quote from a paper read in 1964 by Rev. A.G. Adamson at the inaugural celebrations of the Methodist Church in Fiji: "At the beginning of the T.T.I, the government gave grants on the principle that these would be paid according to the number of successful students who, passing examinations, qualified for certificates. This was very soon changed to a fairer system - namely, giving an annual grant for each year's training. The candidates, Fijian and Indian, were selected by the mission. The government planned for five grades of certificates." When Nasinu Training College was opened in 1946, the old T.T.I. ceased to function. I knew all the T.T.I, students so well, not only because they did their teaching practice in my school, nor because I planned all their catechism lessons, but also because I was one of a small band of teachers who, after teaching another school from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., tutored them daily in classes in Baker Hall from 2.30 to 4.30p.m. Of that time, Chrissie Weston of Dilkusha, now in New Zealand, shares many memories. Other teachers came and went, but we remained for fifteen years. There were no secondary schools for brighter students, nor in all Fiji, except Cawaci for Roman Catholics, any other teacher training. Students came to my office for preparation of day and Sunday school lessons, and for talk on many subjects. Some went with me on Sundays to Tonga Island in the Rewa River. We found that the children there could neither read nor write, and we gave both secular and religious instruction. Before birth certificates were required, one very clever, attractive little fourteen-year old slipped into the Teacher Training Institution. The nineteen year olds teased him, and he was sometimes lonely, so he often came to my office to talk. Those nineteen year olds are not now as likely to tease him as they then were. I am sure Semesa Sikivou, formerly Assistant-Director of Education for Fiji and Rotuma, now Fiji's representative to the United Nations, will pardon my being personal. He told me about his mother, who, having been taught by Miss Hammatt at Rewa Mission School, never

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 18 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) let her children stay away from school without good reason. He talked to me, too, of superstition. "You don't believe in devils. Miss Hames? If you lived in my village you would." From Lau came a tall, serious, well-mannered youth. Setareki Tuilovoni became in 1964 the first president of the independent Methodist Church of Fiji. Now he is secretary of the Pacific Council of Churches, and he has been acceptable as Pacific representative at conferences in United States of America, Europe, Africa and Australia. Another student was George Nakaora. He followed Setareki as president, but has now passed on. There was Josua Rabukawaqa, now High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, who, until his last week in Fiji, in his busy life, spared time to help with great distinction in the musical life of the church he loves. There is Senator Livai Volavola, ex-Deputy Mayor of Suva, but also Methodist local preacher. There are Ram Harakh and Eliki Seru in the Education Department, Mahendra Vinod, principal of Fiji school of Agriculture, and Rev Mikaele Driu of Nabua. Indeed, very many of today's prominent citizens are our old teacher-trainees. "Is it interesting to you. Miss Hames, to see us in important positions?" they ask me. "It certainly is," I say. "We never in our wildest dreams imagined such things. All we hoped for was that you would become good teachers to help us in the schools, of which we were head." So much for our arrogance. But how good it is that we have now to go to them for permission for this and that. Not all remained teachers. Lawyers, secretaries, and administrators are among their number. Many are principals and headmasters of schools. Several are education officers. They treat me kindly when they pay inspectorial visits to the schools in which I am teaching. Women students from Ballantine Memorial School at Muanikau were admitted for training from 1939. There was at first some opposition to this from some Fijian members of synod. "In my time no girls past childhood were allowed inside the gate," said a senior Fijian minister, "and Davuilevu was a clean town." I have appended at the back of this book a few names of Fijian and Indian men and women students in Davuilevu, some in teacher-training, others in both Primary School and T.T.I., others in Primary School only. Those I have omitted must please forgive me.

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Chapter 4. More About Davuilevu I quote from R.A. Derrick's book, "Vocational Training in The South Pacific:" "All of the Pacific Island peoples have, or have had, a long tradition of individual craftmanship. Some of their most primitive implements were fashioned in a manner that might well bring shame to the modern workman." At Davuilevu I enjoyed the friendship of Ron and Ruby Derrick. The latter had been a missionary sister. She came younger to the mission field than I did, and, though we are about the same age, she had had longer service. She had worked as a teacher first in Tonga, then Fiji at Suva, Tavuini, Matavelo, Dilkusha, Davuilevu and Bau. She married Ron Derrick, who had been sent from Victoria to be head of Davuilevu Boys' High School. Though she had an exceptionally busy life with her family of seven children, she longed to do more to help the women of Fiji. With the help of her husband and of Lolohea Waqairawai and Sera Matam, a Fiji-wide women's organisation was established, which did a tremendous amount towards raising the status of village women. It was called the Qele ni Ruve, but is now known as the Soqosoqo Vaka-Marama. Its excellent handcraft centre at Nabua is well known. Both Mr and Mrs Derrick were very strongly convinced that the way of development and uplift for the Fijian race lay largely through training in skills with their hands. Almost no technical training was being given in Fijian schools. With the arrogance of the English, we have imposed on these Pacific peoples a system of education devised for British people in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand. We teach them poems about daffodils and snow in winter, though we live in a country rich in beauty of nature, in folklore and in handicrafts. This peculiar bias was anathema to Ronald Derrick. He refused to use the word "High" in the name of his school. It was not 'high'; it was elementary. So he cut out the word 'high'. Davuilevu Boys' School was situated where LeLean Memorial School now stands. Right down on the road frontage, where there is now a lawn and a flower-bed, there stood a two-storey building, in which indeed there had some years earlier commenced technical training for a few. Before Davuilevu students had moved up from Navuloa, and while hill-tops were still being levelled, roads made and buildings erected. Rev J.W. Burton at Dilkusha and Rev W. Chambers of Rewa had oversight of Davuilevu Industrial Institute for Fijians and Indians. Mr Whau, who built Baker Memorial Hall before he commenced his own business in Suva, together with Mr Ben Sutherland of New Zealand, trained a few young Fijian men. The Indian students soon dropped out. After Davuilevu was officially opened in 1908, the workshop became part of the mission station or school town under Rev W.E. Bennett, principal of Davuilevu. A few Fijian men became proficient under Mr Sutherland's guidance at making furniture of various kinds. But Mr Derrick asked that his schoolboys might also receive some Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 20 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) woodwork training. Eventually the Davuilevu Industrial Institute lost its identity, and the Boys' School became Davuilevu Technical School. To all the Fijians living in Davuilevu at that time it was 'Na sukulu'. Again I quote from "Vocational Training in the South Pacific:" "A technical school was in operation at Davuilevu during the pre-war period. The focus round which the course was built was the building industry, although sections of the school were concerned also with commercial work and engineering. The liberal element was provided by English, social studies (related to Fiji and the Pacific region), art and singing (taught as a regular subject, with attention to sight-reading). Training for citizenship permeated the whole course; ethical standards and personal hygiene were dealt with in daily talks at assembly. Practical subjects occupied a high place and included workshop training in woodwork and metalwork and handcrafts such as weaving on looms (built in the school), lino block cutting and its application to the production of text-books printed in the school, and book-binding. All other subjects were specifically related to the central theme.” For each year's work a type of building needed and used by the Fijian people, was selected, progressing from the simple to the complex. Classes in technical drawing prepared the plans and details; those in geometry worked out the problems involved in setting out walls, roof and architectural features. Others combined technical English with the theory of building construction, the pupils learning the scientific basis of established practice and construction. The senior year studied applied mechanics in relation to structures. Classes in mathematics analysed the plans, prepared bills of quantities, worked out costs, and calculated wages. In the workshop basic training led to the making of useful articles and the construction of furniture and buildings, and when there was no actual construction work in hand, pupils built their own houses to scale, working from their own plans and applying at the bench the geometry and theory they had learnt in the class. It is significant that, although many of the pupils of this school did in fact later enter the building trade, where many occupied posts of responsibility as foremen and even as contractors, others entered administrative work as magistrates or officials, others again became technical teachers, while many returned to their villages to apply what they had learnt. In two cases villages were re-built under their influence and leadership." Mr Derrick's work was so good that the Education Department asked him to establish their technical education scheme, which he did. Technical work in Davuilevu languished, but it had played its part, and was no longer so desperately needed. Though no needlewoman, I did what I could for women and girls, and added sewing classes to my other duties. I taught beginners' work, that was within my scope, and Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 21 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) enlisted help of others for more difficult work. Mrs Sharp, Mrs LeLean and Mrs Sutherland all helped in this way. We had both girls' and women's classes in Davuilevu and in Nausori. Miss Maud Griffin, then of Dudley Memorial School, a great educationist who after retirement died in Auckland, was not skilled at sewing, but she and Miss Elsabe Smith, at that time matron of Dilkusha Girls' Home, and I, often talked together of the need for homecraft and needlework to be regarded as school subjects with syllabus, time-table and examination status. After years of struggle, we at last got our voices really heard on the matter in synod. We had a course in our mission schools in these subjects, with instruction and examination in Hindi and Fijian. It served its purpose as a forerunner of the fine homecraft and needlework scheme of the Education Department today. Mr Derrick was the first authoritative historian of Fiji, and, after his retirement from the Education Department, he established the Fiji Museum in its present building. When, after his death, the president of the Fijian Teachers' Association, Sokiasi Sovanivolu, suggested that the new government technical college be named the Derrick Technical Institute, the idea met with universal approval. Just as Primary and T.T.I, boys of former days do, the old boys of Davuilevu Boys' School, and of course the old theologues, give me handshakes and kind smiles whenever I meet them in Suva streets, buses, or in villages.

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Chapter 5. Dilkusha Dilkusha, adjacent to Davuilevu, has been for more than half a century like a second home to me. Friendships formed there have been deep and lasting. In 1921, on holiday from Nailaga in Ba, I was a guest of that grand woman, Hester Clark, who explained many things about the Indian mission, took me walking miles visiting Indian homes, and revealed to me her great love and concern for the Indian people. She brought help to them when they were ill, or in distress. Her dispensary at Dalkusha and her maternity ward in her home were needed then. Now the government health centre at Nausori has quite altered the situation. She loved all the boys she had mothered in Dilkusha Boys' Orphanage. I am told that to this day in the 1970s there are Indian homes where only one Christian missionary name is known; that to some the name "Miss Clark" and "Christianity" are almost synonymous terms. Christian work amongst the Indian people had been begun by Miss Hannah Dudley, who had been a missionary in India, and there heard of Indians in Fiji and their need. She came to Fiji in 1897, and began work in Toorak in Suva. She began a little school there. She lived in an unpretentious house on a hill, where Dudley School biology room and library now stand. She walked the tracks of Toorak, giving help where it was so sorely needed. She took waifs into her home and nurtured them. She paid weekly visits to the gaol to see Indian prisoners, and preached to them. Some of the missionaries to the Fijians had been alarmed at the increasing numbers of Indian people in Fiji with no one working amongst them, and made representatives to the mission board. The first missionary appointed was Rev J.W. Burton of New Zealand. He was stationed at Dilkusha. One end of Davuilevu property was marked off for an Indian mission station. That end of the property had not been used since 1867, when after the murder of Rev Thomas Baker, the station was abandoned. There will be more about this in a later chapter. Dilkusha was the name given to the station. Mr Burton's house was built on the site of Mr Baker's thatch house so many years before. This was on the top of the hill above the western end of Rewa Bridge. He and his wife took orphans into their own home. In 1900 conditions in the coolie "lines" were appalling. These were quarters provided for workers in the mill. Nausori mill was across the river from Dilkusha. Sometimes Indian mothers died, and children were left with no .one properly to care for them. It was such children that Mr Burton rescued and took home. In 1901 Miss Alice Watson came from Australia, and was appointed as district worker near the lines. She gathered women and girls around her, and taught them. When Miss Austin arrived in 1906 she took charge of the orphans. In 1910 Miss May Graham of

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New Zealand came and did district work, and taught school. Miss Watson then lived in Dilkusha, and for awhile had charge of the orphanage. Rev C. Bavin succeeded Rev J.W. Burton. Pitiful stories are told of the evils of indenture. Women tied to trees and flogged; women two days after childbirth kicked by overseers and told to work harder; girls in India waylaid by agents on city streets and forced on to the 'Leonidas' and other ships, and taken to Fiji, having no idea where they were going and unable to contact their relatives again. Some of these came from good homes in India, but were forced to work in Fiji cane-fields. Rev J.W. Burton by his books and Rev C.F. Andrews from India brought such pressure to bear on the governments of Britain, Fiji and India that indenture ended in 1918. In 1926, when I was transferred from Ba to Davuilevu, with Dilkusha only fifteen minutes walk away, I found frequent, rest, refreshment, companionship and inspiration in the homes of my friends there. Maud Griffin was there. It was later that noble woman went to Suva, and threw the whole force of her cleverness, devotion and energy into building up Dudley School. In 1926 she was in charge of Dilkusha Boys' Orphanage, and also taught the T.T.I, in Davuilevu. She had formerly been head of Dilkusha Indian Boys' School. We were fellow New Zealanders. Our fathers had been friends.

Indian Girls Bible Camp, 1930.

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Then in 1929 Chrissie Weston, another New Zealander, who had taught in Indian mission schools in Suva and Ba, came to Dilkusha Girls' School, and also taught every afternoon in the T.T.I, in Davuilevu. We had been friends from 1920, and after fifteen more years of close association in the Teacher Training Institution, she is one of my dearest friends. She now graces her retirement in Raumati South, Wellington, so happy amongst her relations. But what a work she did for forty years. In 1929 Dilkusha Girls' School roll was thirty five girls. They were almost all girls of the "Home". Only four others attended, daughters of members of the mission station staff. When she left Dilkusha and Fiji in 1959, there were over four hundred in the school, most being day pupils from the immediate surrounding Teachers at Dilkusha Girls’ School, 1954 district.

Dilkusha Methodist Indian Girls School Elsabe Smith, another whom I count among my few very greatest friends, commenced her missionary career at Dilkusha in 1927. With experience of deaconess and orphanage work in Melbourne, she brought her outstanding abilities to work at Dilkusha Girls' Home, transforming it. So many needy little girls have been nurtured in Dilkusha Girls'Home, guided through their formative years, until their feet were firmly established in ways of good, happy and useful living. In 1946 Gwen Davey carried it on and is still there, giving love and the peace of orderly living to her big "family". Elsabe Smith transferred to deaconess work in that circuit, then retired to her Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 25 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) mountain home in Colo in Suva, where she continued her ministry of hospitality, friendship and help to us all - to Fijian, Indian and European friends. In 1926 there was a hostel for the male Indian students attending Teacher Training classes in Davuilevu. Rev L.M. Thompson was superintendent minister. Some of the T.T.I, students accepted Christianity. In those early years those who did so, did it with great opposition from their relatives and friends, and were sometimes persecuted for years; but many were very loyal to their new faith which they had accepted after deep spiritual experience, and have become preachers, pastors, and ministers, and have brought up their children in the Christian faith. Miss Weston, who devotedly guided old pupils in their difficulties, and kept in touch with them over the years, told me that sometimes a man, who was the only Christian in his family would be the one on whom parents and brothers and sisters would rely in time of trouble or difficulty, and whose advice would be sought and followed. Though perhaps even after years no other member of the family would become Christian, he would have a tremendous influence on their way of living. Though even today only a comparatively few Indians have accepted Christianity, their influence extends far beyond their numbers in all walks of life in Fiji. Christian thought and practice is permeating the whole Indian community. * Appended at the back of the book are some names of people, well known in Fiji, who have become Christian through the influence of Indian mission stations.

Teachers at Dilkusha Girls’ School, 1954 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 26 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Chapter 6. The 'Southern Cross' crossed the Pacific, and some meditations on money All our journeys to and fro from Australia or New Zealand to Fiji were by ship. Our mails, too, were all surface mails. There were sometimes one a month, sometimes two. But news came one morning into Davuilevu by telephone that a man named Charles Kingsford Smith was attempting a flight across the wide stretches of the Pacific, in an FVLI Fokker aeroplane. He planned one hop from California to Hawaii, one from Hawaii to Fiji, then the last hop across to Queensland. He was hoping to arrive at Suva at 2 p.m. that day. So we obtained permission to close all Davuilevu and Dilkusha schools at 12 noon. It was explained to students what the reason was. Four of us hired a Nausori taxi. "Do you think any students will try to get to Suva?" we asked one another. "They might be able to walk it in two hours," we said. We knew they couldn't afford taxis. About halfway to Suva we saw one energetic youth walking steadily along. Suva in 1928 was much smaller then than it is now. Indeed the whole population of Fiji was one third of what it is now. We saw a small crowd of people in Albert Park, and others coming along Victoria Parade. Christopher Sharp, principal of the Teachers' Training Institution said, "I'm going to ask permission for us to go on the roof of the Grand Pacific Hotel. There'd be a good view there." So there we were, sitting on the roof. "Doesn't this seem mad?" I said. "Sitting here watching for an aeroplane to come down out of the skies. It's like a fairy tale." "There it is.'" someone shouted. And sure enough there it was, a tiny speck up in the clouds. It came nearer and nearer. Suva birds were alarmed; they really panicked. The 'Southern Cross', the little Fokker FVII, hovered just over the entrance to Albert Park. It alighted. Would the park be long enough? That is what the four men, Kingsford Smith, Lieutenant Ulm, Warner and Lyon, were all wondering. They steered successfully round a weeping-fig or 'baka' tree, and came to a stop. We left our vantage point on the roof to join the cheering crowd. In the foyer we came face to face with four tired men. "Shake hands," said Mr Sharp.

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We all followed suit and shook hands with all four men. We then went to look at the plane. A Fijian policeman had been put on guard. "Don't let anyone touch it," Kingsford Smith had said to him. We heard later that after a refreshing sleep Kingsford Smith had waked about midnight and, feeling like a stroll, walked into the park to see how his plane looked. "Keep away," said the policeman. "No one is allowed to touch it." So Kingsford Smith went back to the hotel to get some more sleep. The next day he consulted with prominent Suva citizens on how he was going to take off from a short runway. It couldn't be done with a load of fuel adequate in quantity for a flight to Queensland. The problem was solved this way. At Naselai at low tide the beach would provide a good runway. Benzine could be taken there by launch. So there were two take-offs; one from Albert Park with a light load; another from Naselai with a full load. And the 'Southern Cross' reached its destination on the Australian coast. A flight across the wide Pacific! It could be done! I think back to that one Davuilevu student who walked that day into Suva, then home again. Never mind about money. Just do things. In 1928 Fijians had very little money. In villages, if they worked in their gardens, they had food to eat. If they fished, they had some good protein. If they had no money for kerosene, they went to bed at sunset. Soap was a necessary expenditure. Money for annual taxes and for annual church gift (Vakamisaneri) had to be found. Clothes, too, had to be bought. Lemon leaf tea was drunk. No wonder they thought us so wealthy. They should not be blamed or criticised for thinking so. But it used to hurt, and it still does even today. We were all alike in their eyes. We had unlimited financial resources. Observe how we just whipped cheque books out and wrote in them. In 1920 we mission sisters received £7.10.0d a month. By 1949 my salary had risen to £15 a month. It seemed and still seems to the Fijians incredible that anyone would do such a silly thing as to live voluntarily on such a salary. I think they still think we are lying when we tell them that highly qualified principals of large schools, working ten hours or more a day, receive about half the salary that some of their staff receive. "Why do you travel on a bus. Miss Hames? Why don't you hire a taxi? You're rich. You're a European." But how could the Fijians understand, when they had so little cash, and when we held our own separate meetings about church money derived from Australia? They did not know what we discussed behind those closed doors.

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"Another man gone home to Australia with his pockets full", they said about some Australian minister, counting out his coins to see if he and his family could live until he got his stipend from an Australian church. Of course the solution to the problem of resentment by the have-nots, is to enable them to have more. Then there will be no resentment. Rev C.O. LeLean , for many years principal of Davuilevu, loving the people, concerned about their lack of thrift, preached one Sunday morning about the feeding of the five thousand. "They gathered up seven baskets full. They didn't throw away what was left," he said. He said this because a Fijian boast about a successful feast was that, after all were satisfied, so much had been thrown away. In 'modern' times in 1930 the leftovers, thrown into the sea, might have been large tins of biscuits. Then, pride satisfied, the people would go hungry for days. It was a powerful sermon. But next day an honoured, senior, Fijian minister said to Mr LeLean , "Your sermon really touched me, sir; it spoke to my conscience. Would you please lend me £10 to pay my bill at the Chinese store?" Mr LeLean told me about another knock-back that he got in his younger days, round the turn of the century. It was before the days of trained Fijian doctors. Young and zealous, Mr LeLean was distressed at a man's blood-shot eyes. "Come to my house every morning, and I will treat your eyes," he said. So the man came daily for a week or so, and the eyes were cured. "You need not come any more," said young Charlie LeLean . "What about payment?" said the man. "No, no. I don't want any payment. I am just pleased you are better." "I don't mean that," said the man. "What are you going to pay me? You told me to come every day, and I have done so. Where are my wages?" Mr LeLean told me that he dejectedly gave him a piece of soap and the man went away quite satisfied. Years later, when Mr LeLean had given a Bible as a present, "Thank you," said the recipient. "But where is the hymn book to go with it?" Even today there is a tendency in Fijian institutions to ask a European staff member to provide an envelope, if one is needed. And in these days all wage-earning Fijians meet exactly this same problem. Their relations continually expect monetary help. Land, not bank accounts, is the Fijians' wealth. If only they could make more use of their land!

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Chapter 7. A Hurricane "I'll leave a lighted lantern in the mosquito room window all night," said Bob Meek to his wife. Olive. "You'll be able to see that from the Commissioner's house, and you'll know we are still here and safe. The boys are ready now with the boat to take you and the children across the river." It was 1931. A hurricane was travelling southward across the middle of Viti Levu. Nine feet of rain had been measured in one day In the District Commissioner's rain- guage at Nadarivatu. Rain fell and wind blew at hurricane force for days over all Viti Levu. In Davuilevu we moved all furniture, books and clothing from rooms on the north-east side of our houses. Rain came horizontally, penetrating under window-sashes and doors. Rooms were awash. Telephone wires were down. Shutters and boards were nailed over all windows and doors except one door on the lee-ward side of the house. From our hilltop house we watched the angry Rewa River rising. "I wonder how they're getting on at Navuso," we said. Enquiries or communication of any kind were impossible. All trees that we could see were waving like mad things. Coconut palms were bending their heads to the ground without snapping, and coming up again. This was before the days of transistors and radios. Somehow we heard the news that the centre of the hurricane was passing through the inland country of Viti Levu. We were on the outer edge of it. Navuso Agricultural School, three miles up the river, was a mission property, and we at Davuilevu were closely associated with the principal, Ben Meek, and his wife, formerly Miss Morrissey, whom I had succeeded in the work at Davuilevu. At Navuso, then recently established, an attempt was being made to help young men to learn to use their land to advantage. Sugarcane was grown for crushing at Nausori mill. Subsistence crops were grown to feed the students. Poultry-farming and milking of cows was included in the course. The whole project was severely hampered for want of funds. All buildings were on the flat near the river, just opposite Naduruloulou government station, where the District Commissioner then lived. When a cloud-burst fell on the hill country, all Viti Levu rivers suddenly rose. The Sigatoka, Ba, Wainimala and Wainibuka all rampaged down the valleys. In Ba several people of Rarawai sugar town were drowned. At Vunidawa the raging Wainimala and Wainihuka met, and they rushed on joined by Waidina flood waters. As the rivers passed Navuso, all there realised that, with such rapid increase in force and volume of water, the whole flat area of Navuso, on a bend Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 30 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) in the river, would soon be part of the river bed. The width of the river would go right over them. So Mr Meek put his wife and two small children into a boat with boys to row, and told the boys to take them across for refuge in the Commissioner's house. When night came on, he put the promised lantern in his front window. Mrs Meek had a terrifying trip across the river. The rowers fought the current, and in one and a half hours reached the other bank. All night she was comforted by the sight of the lantern in the window. There was a tree just above Mr Meek's house. Fortunately it divided the current into two streams, one on each side of the house. All night relays of students stood on the roof poling debris away from the house, thus reducing the pressure. The students spent the night in Mr Meek's house, as their dormitories were near the point of land opposite Drekenikelo, where there was more danger. Ram Sunda, Mrs Meek's house-boy, cooked pumpkin all night to succour them all. Pumpkin was the only food in the house in any quantity. Water was two feet deep all through the house. Dozens of boys sat on the floor to keep it from bursting up from the force of the wind. In the morning the swollen river a mile wide was still roaring over the flat part of Navuso property. Mr Meek told his students to try to get to any land anywhere they could, so with suitcases and clothing they had salvaged, they swam to the higher ground where the present buildings stand. It was undeveloped and covered in trees. The second night these boys slept resting on branches of trees, with rain still falling and a gale still blowing. But the wind had turned round, first to the south, then to the south-west. In Davuilevu we moved furniture from rooms on the south-west to the north-west side of the house. Previously the front verandah, lounge and two corner rooms had been awash. Now it was another corner room and the dining-room. We wondered very much how other people were getting on. Then, to our surprise, twenty Navuso boys appeared at the kitchen door, the one we had kept unbearded and unshuttered all the time. These were the students who had slept up trees the previous night. At that time there was no approach to Navuso on the western bank of the river, no pontoon as at present over the Waimanu tributary. The only access to Navuso was along the King's Road through Nausori, past Verata and Kasavu, then across the river just below Drekenikelo. So it seemed strange to us that these students had been able to escape the flood waters by following the western bank of the river. We got the news of how Navuso had fared through them. The rain had now ceased and the wind dropped. We watched from our windows as dead cows, trees, islands, houses, shops, swept past us to be washed right out to sea. The river came right into Davuilevu. Baker Hall was one island. Primary School (now Bible School) another island. We were able to go by boat to the Technical School (now LeLean ) ridge. We saw luggage of a passenger on the 'Monterey' in one such boat. The 'Monterey' had gone through the Fiji group days previously. Colonial Sugar Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 31 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Refining Company's barges were stranded as far as two miles inland from the river. Tonga Island people had all been evac-uated to Davuilevu, and were camped in Baker Hall and then in the Primary School. There was a goat tied to the pulpit in Baker Hall. About four acres of land was added to Navuso by the flood, but none taken away. There have been many other changes in Navuso Agricultural School. They didn't happen just at first. When World War II came, there was both staff and student shortage. Funds were very low. It was even considered that it might be a good idea to sell the property. But wise counsels prevailed, and it was retained. Then God sent young Douglas Walkden-Brown to be its Principal and in the course of time, by good management and business acumen, he gained suxstantial government support. When he left to run a farm of his own at Lakena, Mr G. Bamford took charge, and developed the project also with brilliant leadership. The work done there in training young Fijians to crop, run cows, pigs and fowls, and manage small holdings, is magnificent. There has of course been no sugar-cane since in the early sixties the Nausori mill was closed, but there is other cropping. When I visited my friends there, ghosts walk for me, especially on the old sites on the lower ground. I spent many holidays there in the years after 1926. The plan for the students to return home and farm their own land was not as obviously successful as was first hoped for. Fijian traditional ideas and procedures caused many difficulties. But many overcame these difficulties. Others became useful citizens in various walks of life. One former student whose father was one of the first students, did a course at Gatton College in Queensland and is now Vice-principal of Navuso School. His old father is very proud of his son, Tanlela. He sometimes comes from Bua to stay with his son, in the Vice-principal's home. His daughter-in-law invited Mrs Bamford and me to morning tea. When he saw me, he gazed solemnly at me, and did not speak. "Don't you remember me?" I asked. "I used often to visit here in the days of Mr and Mrs Meek." "I thought you were dead," he said.

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Chapter 8. Inland Journeys In these days Indians and Fijians are urged to limit their families. In the 1920s such a thing was never mentioned. But we were worried, when we heard of families of ten, only one of whom lived past the age of two years; or when we found from statistics that one out of five Fijian babies born, died before it reached the end of its first year. The Medical Department was very disturbed about it, but found it difficult to prevent this sad waste of life. The Methodist Mission was pleased to be asked to co-operate with the Medical Department in an effort to right the matter. Rural Indians kept goats and used milk for their children at the dangerous weaning age. Indians also had a greater tenacity of life. Therefore the Indian population was increasing more rapidly than the Fijian. Diarrhoea was slaughtering the Fijian children, who went straight from mother's milk to solid taro. Clearly the Fijian mothers needed to be taught. We have become so used to the present efficiency of Fijian Health sisters and the capability of the great team of uniformed women and good Fijian doctors who look after us when we are ill, that it is hard to imagine, or even to remember, the pitiful ignorance of earlier times. Mrs Suckling, Miss Brewer, Miss Mabel Ricketts and Miss Geeves, enlisted through the Mission but supported by the Medical Department, tackled the problem. Dr Roberts, wife of an American Consul, gave honorary service. Suva-trained obstetric Fijian nurses accompanied them, helping where they could. I sometimes spent school holidays with one or another of these brave people. Miss Ricketts took Miss Frances Tolley, principal of Ballantine Memorial School, and me with her up the Waidina on a two-week visit of inspection. We used a boat with an outboard motor, but had to walk while the boat went up the rapids; then we left the boat and walked the last few miles to Namosi. We saw every baby, even the very sick, that the people tried to hide from us. I remember babies covered in sores from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet. I remember seeing babies with hundreds of flies sitting on them. There were lighter moments. One evening when we were sitting relaxed on the mats in a house, the women felt relaxed too. "What is that gold tooth you have?" one asked Frances Tolley. "It replaces one that was knocked out," she said; but, before she had finished her sentence she wondered how she would explain hockey to them. But quick as a flash the woman was ready with her next question: "Did your husband knock it out?" Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 33 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

At another time on a holiday tramp across Viti Levu, five of us were resting in the village of Nubumakita, and, as the women were too shy, two senior men were politely entertaining us with conversation. Several topics seeming to be exhausted, one of the men sat up straight on the floor mats and said for our interest, "They are trying something new now in this village, I don't know how it will work. It's completely new. They are bathing the babies every day." "Good," we answered. "Where did the idea come from? From Mrs Suckling or Miss Ricketts on the Suva side, or from the western side?" They didn't know, but we later found that the new idea had come in from Nadarivatu, where Lolohea and her husband Timoci Waqairawai, then young, were teaching school. She was teaching mothercraft to women in her spare time. Four years later, again on the overland journey, we paused for a mid-day meal at Nubumakita. A women's committee told us of their work with the children, and showed us a shelf of medicines and first-aid equipment. Fijian women are still advancing at a very rapid rate. Rev C.O. LeLean , with his long experience and sympathetic knowledge of Fijian village life, was able and ready to help us plan holiday trips and enlist students to carry our loads. I have lovely memories of holidays with Chrissie Weston, Maud Griffin and Frances Tolley on the Wainimala and the Wainibuka and down the Sigatoka valley from Nadarivatu to Nadrau and Nabatautau. Mr LeLean got in touch with a retired Fijian minister, who had once been his student, and asked him to show us round his own village of Nadrau, and to take us on to Nabutautau to the place where Rev. Thomas Baker was killed in 1867. Two popular stories about Mr Baker's murder were not believed by Mr LeLean . I trust his account. He worked that area only thirty or so years after the tragedy, he was painstaking and meticulously thorough, and he knew his people. Thomas Baker was stationed at Davuilevu, opposite Nausori. The property was in jungle, but the part now known as Dilkusha near the end of the large bridge of today was cleared, and native-type buildings were constructed - a house right on the hill-top for Mr Baker and his family; a church, a schoolroom, a young men's dormitory, and a house for a Fijian assistant minister and his family. Quite near, further up the river, were unevangelised villages. This was despite the fact that it was thirteen years after Cakobau's conversion, and twelve after the battle of Kaba, when Cakobau ordered all Rewa territory to forsake paganism. In the course of his village visitation, he incurred the resentment of Navuso's chief, who felt slighted at what he considered an affront to his dignity. A lesser man had been honoured more, he thought. So he planned revenge. The Fijian assistant minister, Setareki Seileka, heard rumours of this. He warned Mr Baker.

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"There's danger ahead," he said, "if you go that proposed trip across Viti Levu." "If you're too frightened to go, I'll go without you," said Mr Baker. "No," said the Fijian, "I'll go, too." They took eight students with them. Two days later Jiutasa was sent home, because he had a sore foot. Unknown to them, the Navuso chief's messenger with whales' teeth for diplomatic use, preceded them along the track. His message to chiefs, as they travelled, was "Kill the white man who follows." Chief after chief declined the whales' teeth, thereby refusing. Up the Rewa, the Wainimala, over the range, down into the Sigatoka Valley near where Nabutautau now stands. Chief Wawabalavu did not know much about white men. News travelled slowly. He was conservative. He accepted the tooth. Mr Baker and his party came tired to Wawabalavu's village. "What have you come for?" said Wawabalavu. "To bring the lotu," said Setareki. "Lotu. What's Lotu?" said Wawabalavu. "Do you see that salt?" It was brown sea-evaporated salt neatly parcelled in fibre. "That's the salt we're going to eat with you tomorrow." Mr Baker wrote a letter to his wife, telling her they planned to finish their journey to Ba the next day. "Go back the way we have come," he said to Aisea, "and give the marama this letter." They rose early. But this is where one of the discredited parts of the account comes in. That the chief used Mr Baker's hair comb, and that Mr Baker, disgusted, irritably snatched it -an unpardonable offence to touch hair. It seems unlikely that Mr Baker would take such a risk. The party set off on the track from the village. The villagers followed. "Ai valu," they shouted. "War." And struck Thomas Baker, Setareki and five young men on their heads with clubs, killing them outright. Aisea, with the letter for Mrs Baker, hid in the long grass and reeds, and undetected wriggled his way down to the coast, and reached Davuilevu and gave the letter to Mrs Baker. "But he's dead, the Vatusila people killed him," he said. Another young man escaped in a different direction, reaching Ba to the westward. In 1927, just sixty years later, we five mission sisters traversed the track from Nadarivatu to Nabutautau through Koroboya and Nadrau. Miss Brokenshire also was with us four New Zealand sisters mentioned earlier in this chapter. We were most

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 35 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) kindly and courteously shown round by Ratu Josefa. When he had been a student under Mr LeLean , other students teased him with the other popular story about the tragedy. "Your people tried to cook Mr Baker's boots," they said. "They thought they were his feet." But Josefa, patient until then, could stand no more. "They did no such thing," he said. "It's true they were dark-minded, but they were not as dark-minded as that." When in 1867 Wawabalavu and his helpers had killed their victims, they began to worry, lest they be blamed, discredited or punished, and they decided to let Nadrau district, eight miles up the Sigatoka valley, share the loss or gain from the happening. They carried the bodies up a rocky track and paid a visit to Nadrau. There the flesh was cooked and eaten. On our trip in 1927, Ratu Josefa told us that he could remember the occasion. He had been a small child and had been carried to the feast on his mother's back. He showed us a flat stone amongst boulders on the river bank. It was the stone on which the bodies had been prepared for cooking. He showed us also the spot nearby, where the earth oven had been dug. As we sat and rested in Tui Nadrau's clean hospitable home, the two chiefs explained to us that we would not be able to use horses the next day. The stony track to Nabutautau would not be possible for our horses. The next day we walked the eight miles along which the human bodies had been carried sixty years earlier. Wawabalavu's grandson received us most courteously. Nabutautau on a hill has replaced Cagadelavatu as the chiefly village of Vatusila. We were shown the site of Cagadelavatu just above the river, and a few chains from it "the grave". Of course it is no grave. No bones lie in it. But they call it "the grave" (nai bulubulu), and it looks just like one. We took a photo of it. Croton shrubs grow on it, and stones border its edges. When Rev. A.J. Small had done his pastoral visitation to Vatusila, before the days of Mr LeLean , not long after Cakobau's punitive visit to Nadrau, he was given one arm bone of Mr Baker. It had been left in the fork of a tree. Mr Small took it home and later gave it to Mr LeLean , who lodged it after a quiet funeral ceremony under the floor of the pulpit platform in Baker Memorial Hall in Davuilevu. After the Vatusila and Nadrau chiefs had shown us round, and we had eaten a nice meal in the Vatusila chief's house and rested awhile on his clean mats, we walked back the eight miles to Nadrau, rested there that night, and set off on the return journey to Nadarivatum crossing the turbulent Signatoka over slippery boulders and climbing a steep hill to Old Nadrau, and returning to Nadarivatu by following a Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 36 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) different route through beautiful indigenous forest down the Navai tributary of the Sigatoka River. I remember that Buli Nadrau did us the honour of going all the way back with us to Nadarivatu, explaining everything of interest to us on the way, answering my questions as to the names of the trees, very different from coastal tropical vegetation. I wish I could remember them all.

Buli Nadrau’s house, 1928. Misses Brokenshire, Tolley, Griffin, Wallace

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Chapter 9 Two Centenaries In 1930 a small centenary celebration was held. I did not go. I was too busy with school. But Chairman of the District R.L. McDonald, Rev L.N. Deller, Fijian ministers, and Rev A.W. McMillan, a former London Missionary Society missionary in India, a Congregationalist, serving Fiji as a school inspector, attended the centenary celebrations of the arrival of the first Christian missionaries to Fiji. These were three native Tahitians. In the far-off days of 1796 the London Missionary Society sent the first missionaries to the Pacific, and a few brave young English people, on the ship "Duff", were landed in Tahiti, Tonga and the Marquesas. Only in Tahiti were they at all successful, tragedy befalling the others. But in Tahiti the success was outstanding. In course of time they did what all Pacific Island groups have been doing during the last nearly two hundred years. They sent some of their number westward to help others who were less enlightened than themselves. This westward movement still goes on in the 1970s. Fijians go to Papua to teach agriculture; Solomon Islanders go to New Guinea Highlands. In 1830 Arue, Atai and Jacaro went to Tonga to convert the Tongans, but when they arrived there they were unwelcome. In 1826 Wesleyan Methodist missionaries, also based on London, had come there. "We don't need you to teach us to be Christian," said the Tongans. "It's finished. We are all Christian." At that same time there was another visitor at Nukualofa. He was a Fijian named Takai. For centuries they had been coming and going between Fiji and Tonga. Great outrigger canoes plied between the Lau Archipelago in Fiji and the Tongan group of islands. Some of the voyages were intended, others not. Tonga needed Fiji's large trees for canoe-building. Sometimes gales carried fishing-boats to the north-west, and the south-east trade winds led straight to Lakeba and other places in the Fiji group. There are traces of Tongan physique, language, customs, genealogies and legends in several districts of Fiji, but most particularly in Lau. Many did not return home, but some did, tacking in their outrigger canoes against the trade winds; and some Fijian also went to Tonga. In 1830 Takai of Oneata in Fiji, in talking at Nukualofa in Tonga to the Tahitian strangers, learned their reason for being there, and their dilemma. "Come back to Fiji with me," he said, "My people need you. They would benefit greatly by Christianity." So they went with Takai to Lakeba, the home of the paramount chief. But Tui Nayau was in 1830 not at all pleased to see them. Fearing for their safety Takai took them to Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 38 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) his own island. He knew his own authority would protect them there. On Oneata they lived worthy lives and remained there till they died. They could not pronounce Fijian correctly, and never preached a sermon in Fijian. Their Christian services were conducted at first in their home or in Takai's home in Tongan or Tahitian; later in a coral lime church they taught the people to construct. When Wesleyan Methodist missionaries, stationed in Lakeba, a few years later visited Oneata, they were interested and pleased to find Oneata's little Christian community. They had memorised the ten commandments and some Tahitian hymns. The Tahitians had lost their Bibles and hymn books in shipwreck, but words they carried in their memory they had passed on. The visitors from Suva in 1930 saw the graves of the three men, and the disintegrated coral lime church. They unveiled a monument to the three missionaries of 1830. Mr McMillan, returning to Suva, named his home in Holland Street, "Oneata". The Oneata Christian community had become part of the Wesleyan Methodist mission. When Mr Cross and Mr Cargill of Lakeba had in the 1830s reported to their London headquarters that they had found this small outpost of Congregationalism, it was amicably decided between the two missionary societies that the small Oneata church should be Wesleyan Methodist. Those small centenary celebrations at Oneata in 1930 did not create much stir. But our second centenary in 1935 was much larger. We were all involved. Plans were made months ahead. A ship full of Australian Methodists came from Sydney. Fiji had long ceased to belong to the British Methodist Missionary Society. We were part of the Methodist Mission of Australasia. A souvenir booklet was prepared. Spoons with appropriate wording and design were made ready for sale. School children's displays and choir singing were rehearsed for months. Viseisei of Vuda, on the western side of Viti Levu, was to open a new church. Vuda is historical, because it is the legendary place of the arrival of Lutunasobasoba two thousand years ago from some place to the westward of Fiji. The 'Katoomba' anchored first at Lautoka, and the four hundred Methodists from Australia went to Vuda to all the dignified, colourful ceremonies there. The new church was opened. Next port of call was Suva, then away to Lakeba in Lau. What an event for Lau. They held a service on the beach at the spot where in 1835 James Cross and Mrs Cross, David Cargill and Mrs Cargill had landed. Queen Salote of Tonga honoured the occasion with her presence. The late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, Rev Robert Green and Mrs Green, and the Late Rev Mataiasi Vave were the principal organisers of the celebrations at Lakeba. A new church was opened; choirs sang; mekes were performed; Fijian handicrafts were demonstrated. All four hundred people slept ashore

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 39 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) in temporary erections. It is a long journey in small boats from the anchorage to Lakeba shores. As a fairly senior missionary sister, I had been invited to attend Lakeba celebrations. But I couldn't think of going. 'Davuilevu' was to be the next day, after they returned to Suva. Mr McDonald had asked us to let them see mission schools at work. A difficult thing to do. Schools at work with four hundred visitors! On Dilkusha station, adjacent to Davuilevu, visitors saw 'home' (orphanage) girls cooking Indian food, and performing other home duties. In the schools they were entertained with schoolwork and Indian dances. They saw the historic sites of the homes from which Thomas Baker and his Fijian colleagues left in 186 on their fatal prilgrimage. In 1935 Rev A.H. Blackett was superintendent minister of Dilkusha Indian Mission station. Rev Harold Chambers was principal of Davuilevu. He prepared an historical drama to be shown in Baker Memorial Hall. It depicted a scene in 1875 at Navuloa, the former location of the pastor and minister-train school later at Davuilevu. The combined schools at that time had numbered one hundred men. Dr George Brown, intrepid pioneer missionary to New Britain (now New Guinea) had come to recruit helpers. He put his appeal to the assembled congregation. Who would volunteer? All the one hundred men stood to their feet. They all wished to go. Best ones were selected. They had to run the gauntlet of government opposition. Authorities tried to protect them from the zeal of these white men. But, permission reluctantly granted, they left for dangerous, savage New Britain. Some suffered martyrs deaths there. This story was dramatised for the 'Katoomba' visitors in Baker Hall on the afternoon of 'Davuilevu day'. In the morning they came to see our Primary school and Mr Derrick's Technical School. It was quite impossible to have lessons as usual. During the morning relays of visitors were coming in and out. In the Primary School we put on two 'shows one in each room. We repeated these over and over. The lower classes sang a few hymns, and then did some handwork. They ma small canoes of coconut leaves; then gave them to some of the visitors. The senior classes sang hymns, then drew maps of Fiji which also were given away. But when Miss Baker, daughter of Rev Thomas Baker, an old lady from Sydney, came in, the senior classes sang the old dirge for Mr Baker. She was very appreciative. At about 5 p.m. most of the visitors returned to their ship but there were quite a number of ex-missionaries who had come from Australia on the 'Katoomba'. In the evening we had a special meeting in Baker Memorial Hall, at which they spoke to us.

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The next day I felt very carefree. 'Davuilevu day' was successfully over. Next day was 'Bau day'. Rev and Mrs C.O.LeLean were among the cruise passengers, and they had brought Miss Baker with them as their guest. But as on Bau day Mr LeLean was ill, they did me the honour of entrusting Miss Baker to me for the day. It was a great pleasure taking her to Bau. She told me that she remembered the day when Aisea brought the news to her mother that their father had been killed. All day the three little girls watched from the window for the boat that would take them down to Rewa mission house, to wait there for a ship to Australia. Bau put on an excellent show. Village schools were then under mission control. It was a little later that Fiji Education Department undertook care of general primary education. Children of Cautata and other villages with the Bau pupils put on a display with the figures "1835" of living children dressed in leaves and fibre 'meke' clothes; then in a twinkling of an eye changed to "1935", all dressed in spotless white. It was well done. Suva had a day, too. Rewa circuit contributed some of the items. In Albert Park mission scholars were a living map of Viti Levu with India's outline inside it. One ex-missionary who had been absent fifty years, said he considered as much progress had been made in those fifty years as in the years from 1835 to 1885. But how long ago 1935 seems now.

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Chapter 10 Various Holidays I had many lovely holidays. Five times I walked the track between Nadarivatu and Vunidawa. It was the same track that the carrier of the weekly overland mail from Ba to Suva used. I was made welcome in the home of Adi Litiama Maopa and Ratu Apenisa of Waimaro on the Waidiha. Visiting the mission house at Bau, I enjoyed the gracious friendship of Adi Cakobau, Adi Maopa, Adi Litia her sister, and Adi Torika, Ratu George Cakobau's mother. The Davuilevu launch, the 'Davui', captained by Jeremaia, Sam Domoni's father, threaded its way through the river from Walnibokasi to Bau. In 1930 Daisy Lucas and I spent three weeks as guests of Miss Geeves and Miss Montier, child welfare nursing sisters in Bua province. At a picnic for our entertainment, the local headmaster, Eapi Nabou, and his wife brought their baby, Lusiana, and the commissioner, Ratu George Toganivalu and Adi Walesi brought Tom and Will. I was at Tom's funeral at Nailaga a quarter of a century later. Julian, Josua, Maraia, and David were born at Bau. In 1942, at the end of a holiday in Jiona in Naoeva in Kadavu, a fishing picnic was held as a farewell to me. Ten outrigger canoes took us down a small river and out to a sandbank. There I was left, with two women to look after me. We rested in a small hut on clean mats, while all the men of Jioma village went to the reef and caught hundreds of fish. This is the reef, that twenty years later Tongan Tevita Fifita had to negotiate when he came to Fiji for help for his companions, wrecked on Minerva Reef four hundred miles to the south-east. When my kind hosts returned from the reef, all the fish were formally presented to me. There were red fish, black fish, spotted fish - all kinds imaginable. The canoes then raced home, by courtesy the canoe I was in winning. One canoe submerged for a few minutes. On the previous day I had asked what I should do in return for the picnic, and was told that if I bought some flour, baking powder and tea, honour would be satisfied. Messengers had walked miles to Soso to a store to purchase these articles, and a team of women worked all night making scones in the village's one camp oven. A camp oven is a round vessel with a lid. Embers both under and on it provide the heat necessary for baking. Three small stones are placed under the enamel plate, which serves as oven shelf. This prevents burning the bottom of the scones. In these modern days (sixties and seventies) Fijian women have become so skilful that they can use large saucepans in the same way, and I have eaten scones, buns and excellent sponge cakes baked in saucepans.

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In Jioma that evening the whole village had fish to eat at 6 or 7 or 8 p.m. Then at about 9 p.m. all the men came refreshed and in spotless clothes to the house where my hosts looked after me so exceedingly kindly. They entered and sat in correct order on the mats. In a village every man knows his place to the inch. Yaqona was brought in. Because native ministers spoke against yaqona so strongly in synods, in those days, rightly or wrongly, I always refused it, and they accepted my refusal with courtesy. It was easy to refuse because I was a woman, and because a Fijian member of my party would accept the first cup offered, thus deputising for me. Now days I would accept it. It is so much better for Fijians to drink yaqona than alcoholic drinks. Conversation was as much as possible an effort to interest and I was asked to contribute my share. "Who do you think will win the war?" "Tell us stories of your country." "Tell us what you know of the Japanese." It was in that village that an old man asked me if I could explain to him why Rev A.T. had requested church authorities to permit him to devote all his time to educational work. "Why would he do that?" he asked. "Why would he choose the hard work of schoolteaching, when he could be a minister and have a really easy time? Would it be for more money?" How we teachers later teased the minister about that story! "You are to travel to Vunisea by outrigger canoe," my hosts said to me one day. "We've put a small sail on the canoe, because we thought you might be frightened with a big sail. It would be quicker with the big sail, but the canoe would be under the surface of the water more." So I sat on an empty banana case close against the mast and was told not to move. It was a pleasant experience on a calm sea in the lagoon. In Jioma I collected five of the legends I later published. An old man of Niudua village could not speak Bauan, but in Kadavan dialect he told these stories to Isikeli Daveta, who passed them on to me. These stories, "The Octopus and the Shark", "The Vine That Stooped over Tonga", "The Flood that Carried a Feast," "Tanovo and Molau", and "Bulai" are among the most popular of my collections of old legends. But the best holidays of all were to New Zealand. Over the years many changes had taken place in our family. I got to know new nieces and nephews. Bernard went to Australia, taught at Swinburne College of Technology, became its director, and remained in the position till his retirement in 1970.

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Mildred and her husband, Harold Dare, schoolteacher and distinguished sportsman, have four children. Harold has passed on. How we miss him. Their children are Anne Holden, teacher, novelist, and mother of four; Patricia Watkins, teacher, and mother of three; Peter, of the Forest Research Institute; and Priscilla, hospital sister. Stella Fenwick, also now a widow, has a daughter and three sons - Judith Brown, teacher and mother of five children; Charles, bridge-building contractor, with four children; John who fishes with profit over all the waters of the Kaipara Harbour; and Graham, farm advisor in the Agricultural Department. How kind and generous they and wives and husbands are to me, welcoming me into their homes, driving me in their cars and piloting me by aeroplane about New Zealand. In 1937 and 1938 my mother and father spent two years with me in Davuilevu, fitting in very well to local conditions and helping in many ways. Numbers of my relations have visited Fiji to see me. It is a great pleasure to show them places of interest.

Mother and father at Danilevu - 1937 I remained fifteen years in Davuilevu. Nearly all my work was with boys and young men. There were always some little girls in the Primary School, and I had sewing classes for them, also for Nausori girls and women from other villages and for Davuilevu women. I had charge too for two years of the girls' hostel of the Teacher Training Institution. But most of my work had been with boys. I began to feel that I should like to do more for girls. All my mission sister contemporaries in Fijian work were in girls' schools.

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There were big changes looming. The Education Department was probably going to establish a training college at Nasinu, and take their grants away from other teacher training. In 1939 World War II commenced, and just what that might mean to us, we did not know. The training school for nurses was demanding a higher standard of English for its trainees. Miss Foulcher had asked to be moved from Richmond in Kadavu. It was a challenge. I asked synod to appoint me there. My colleagues were old friends: Rev and Mrs A.C. Cato, Isikeli Daveta and Torika Toroca of Bau and Muanikau. The scenery was in world class. The climate was cooler than Suva. Support and encouragement from Kadavan people was cheering. I loved the children. Vasiti Nawadradra (now Raiwalue) was my brightest pupil. Mereseini (now Vulaca), Vasemaca Robarobalevu and Ravucake were clever girls too,and many others. There was charm and interest in living in an entirely Fijian community; 1941 was a very happy year. Travelling to and fro from Suva was not so delightful. The little cutters were very crude. The little cabin was too evil-smelling for use. It was usually full of goods. Latrines were non-existent. Most of the passengers lay about on their mats on any available space. I was always given one of two bunks in the stern, one on each side of the steering-wheel. It was quite convenient for being sea-sick. One just sat up on an elbow and vomited over the side of the boat. It was not so convenient for other activities. "Could I have the stern of the boat, please?" one asked the man at the steering- wheel. He promptly dealt with the situation. "You people on the stern get forward. Drop the tarpaulin down for a screen. You (naming any woman passenger) help Miss Hames. She wants the back of the boat. Hold her. I say hold her. She might fall off. Hold her." Fijians are very clean-minded people. One learnt by necessity not to be embarrassed. The journey sometimes took three or four days. We anchored every night off shore at Kadavu coastal villages, and were treated ashore with the utmost kindness. I would be taken to the house of a pastor, minister or catechist, or to a chief's house. In one village one evening the local Chinese store-keeper brought in my evening meal. This was because I taught his little daughter. She lives in Suva now, happily married to a Chinese, but herself a loyal member of Wesley Church. On the maternal side of her ancestry she is Methodist and Fijian. I remember the Chinese man coming into the Fijian catechist's house, crouching at the eating-mat, and unpacking numerous delicacies from his shop. I ate leg of chicken, yam, tomato sauce, tea with condensed milk, biscuits and bananas. The progress up the coast would be slow, because we would almost always be a banana boat. First the cutter would go down the coast dropping empty cases. The

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 45 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) amount the growers sold depended on the number of cases dropped. Very disappointed growers would be left with hundreds of bunches on the beach. On the return journey up the coast of Kadavu, filled cases were picked up. Some villages were near the cutter's anchorage. Others were reached by rowing boat. The buyers' agent had a suitcase full of silver coins. Into the rowing boat he would go with the rowers, pay for the bananas with silver coins, and return to the anchored cutter with more and more full cases to stack in the bow, stern, midships - everywhere a case could be placed. I remember being given permission, just for fun, to help pack a case at one village where I had spent a night. I remember that in that village on the previous evening my kind hostess, the catechist's wife, had listened to my chatter, that I was going home to New Zealand to see my father, who was getting old, and felt the cold of Auckland's winter. "Is there no one else there to carry his firewood in from the bush, that you have to go all that way to carry it?" she asked. It was always imperative that bananas must be picked at just the right stage of maturity, so that they would ripen after arrival in New Zealand, and that the cutter reach Suva before the 'Matua' left Suva for Auckland. I remember the anxiety of the buyer on one trip, a European that time. The cutter's engine had broken down, and there was no wind for sailing. But the wind came up, and all was well. The journey across to Suva could be very quick with a following wind. I remember another time a wind blowing us quickly across from Nakasaleka to Suva. In the early hours just before dawn we reached the channel through the reef at the entrance to Suva Harbour. The man at the steering-wheel found he could not move the wheel. I was lying on one of the two bunks on each side of him. He called out to the captain, who was watching for the channel. In a moment the cutter would have crashed on to the reef. He called for a hammer and a light. I handed down my electric torch. In a flash crew, banana buyer and passengers were lifting cases of bananas off the floor on to the other bunk, further out on to the stern - anywhere except on me. With the hammer the steersman lifted floor-boards. There was the bilge water with little bits of rubbish in it, odd floating green bananas and a wedge of wood clogging the steering chain. Quickly he threw it out, stood with his feet on the joists among the bilge water, and set the steering wheel going again. Then the men said, "Well, that was a near go." "I thought we were going to be punished for someone's sins," "I thought it was for my sins," one crew member said. We had reached the gap or channel, and were steered safely through it into Suva Harbour.

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Holiday at Tovu Island 1947

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Chapter 11. Life in Kadavu It was war-time all the three years I was at Richmond in Kadavu. My father visited me there after my mother's death. It was a very brave thing for a man of seventy-nine years to do.

In front of house at Richmond Mission Station, Kadavu, 1942 1941 was a pleasant year. 1942 was grimmer. Rev and Mrs Cato had to leave to work in Davuilevu. For awhile I was the only European in Richmond. Then Mrs Cowled, whose husband was at that time a chaplain to the Fijian troops in the Solomons, stayed with me; then Miss Knight and Miss Tall came for awhile. Japan was in the war. Shipping was erratic. Cutters were needed to carry food to the seventy thousand American soldiers camped in Samabula, Toorak, Nausori, Nadi and Sabeto. For six weeks no boat came to Richmond - no mail, newspapers, groceries; nor news other than that heard on our mission station battery-run radio, which my father had presented. One morning we saw a Japanese submarine in our bay, just anchored for the night. On our radio we heard of Singapore's fall, of Tarawa's occupation by Japanese, of Mr Sadd's execution at Tarawa because he had refused to trample on the British Flag. We heard that native Gilbertise had been treated well, and that Chinese and Europeans were dealt with severely.

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We teased our Rotuman teacher. "When the time comes, they will think you are a Chinese," we said. "As for Miss Hames," the students said, "What can we do to help her?" They came to see me about it. "If you darken your skin with coco-tinted oil, we'd still have to do something to your hair. Let us frizz it for you. It would look so nice." They were disappointed that I declined the offer. We had our difficulties, but my friends on Viti Levu were having worse times. Whole boarding-schools and teachers' living quarters were evacuated at a few hours' notice to make room for troops. Pupils were disbanded and sent home; or a few sitting for important examinations were taught in private homes, church vestibules or sheds. A heavy programme of entertaining was embarked on to help American and New Zealand young men so far from home. The home of the Chairman of the Methodist Mission, Rev W. Green, was altered to provide a large room for a weekly happy sing- song, devotional and social gathering. A few romances occurred. Thousands of New Zealand soldiers had been moved out of Fiji to make room for 70,000 Americans. En route for the scene of battle at Guadalcanal, they had had one night together with Americans in Papakura Military Camp, and spent their hours together telling them what a fearful place Fiji was. Cannibals and snakes were terrible, they said. When the Americans arrived in Fiji they kept very watchful eyes, ready to shoot the cannibals. Those who were camped on Davuilevu mission station, when invited to attend church, walked in apprehensively. Another New Zealand humourist camped on the western side of Viti Levu, travelling with other soldiers on the Colonial Sugar Refining Company train, noticed at a stop that the Indian engine-driver had gone to his home to get his lunch. He was an engine- driver himself in New Zealand. He boarded the engine and drove the train up and down, backwards and forwards, while the Indian driver ran frantically after it, trying to catch it. But New Zealand soldiers did other things besides playing jokes. Len Dennison of Auckland showed his sympathy for us at remote Richmond by arranging with a pilot to drop a parcel for me. So that they would not be frightened, I told the boarders a letter for me might be dropped. One afternoon after school a girl came to my house. "There's a plane circling round and round us," she said "It's gone over Tavuki, but it keeps going round over us and round to Yawe." With the girls I watched it, and we saw it drop something down the hill below us. Teacher Ruth Vunakece ran to get it.

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"Your letter," she said laughing, hugging a large parcel and a parachute. The girls were squealing, shouting, hugging one another, jumping up and down, and laughing. In the parcel were lollies, Fiji Times copies. New Zealand Herald papers, letters, and fresh bread. My contemporary mission sisters in Dilkusha and Suva, like me sedate and middle- aged, did their entertainment of soldiers so well that some wives in New Zealand were a little uneasy about so much mention of them in letters. "I'd like you to see my wife in Christchurch," said one of the soldiers to me, when I was on my way to New Zealand for furlough. "If she saw you, she'd stop being worried about my letters about mission sisters." In Richmond, with infrequent and uncertain contact with Suva, it was quite a problem keeping our radio batteries charged. But, when the sea was not too rough, our little outboard motor could take our flat-bottomed boat, the 'Leslie', out through the reef into the open ocean, then along the coast to a village from which the battery could be carried to Nabukelevu lighthouse; two New Zealand men were stationed there with orders that, if the enemy came, they were to keep communications going as long as possible; then destroy the wireless apparatus. These men charged our battery for us. When there was no soap in our Chinese stores, we made some for a school project. "Grate one hundred coconuts," our recipe said. We did that, and made household soap, toilet soap and sandsoap. "Uci" flowers from the bush near Yawe scented the toilet soap, and an art class drew drawings on the wrappers. Then we boiled up some of the sea and got salt. We put the boat out of the boat shed, filled a laundry copper with sea-water, kept relays stoking up with firewood and coconut husks for three days and two nights, refilling the copper when necessary, We finally dried it out in pie-dishes in my range. It was lovely white salt, not brown like that made in iron cooking pots, which other people in Kadavu were making. "You taught me to sew," said Homecraft teacher Mereseini to me one day in Suva in 1969. "Don't be silly, Mereseini," I said. "I hardly know how to sew." "Oh yes, you did," she said. "You made me unpick the seams in a petticoat every time I did them wrongly." I have memory of charging up and down a class of sixty pupils, insisting on double seams in hand-sewn garments. But my biggest battle was with V.R. over multiplication tables. I was puzzled why she could not answer oral arithmetic questions, though her written work was always correct. Until I found that a girl of no chiefly rank, sitting behind her, did all her sums for her. I caned chiefly V.R. and caned the obliging little girl, and made V.R. sit on the

Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 50 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) floor for a week, until she knew every table. I know her well now in Suva in the sixties and seventies and we are great friends. When our European arrogant confidence clashed with an equally determined resistance, we Europeans used to employ a cliche: "Fijians always get their way in the end." There was an example of it with Christian Endeavour classes at Richmond. Mr Cato had both senior and junior classes. One Sunday he announced in church that the senior class would meet, not on an evening as usual, but after school on a certain day, and the theme would be thanks to God for beautiful scenery and for His lovely world; that we would walk along the beach to a rocky point, hold the service of worship there, then return; that it was not a picnic, but a service of worship. No food might be taken. He asked me to conduct the service. It was easy to do so in such surroundings. But the audience was clearly disappointed that we had not been allowed to include a little eating in the outing. Fijians are extremely clever at pre-paring and distributing very good food for a large number. The following week the Junior Christian Endeavour invited us to a picnic on the beach. The leaders were some of the same people who had attended our service of thanksgiving. Several pupils missed school, as they were sent to their own villages to get fowls for the picnic. We graciously sat down to the eating-mat spread with an elaborate meal, and enjoyed it. It was necessary to keep very steadily at our school-work. Standards of entrance to nursing training and teacher training and therefore also to Ballantine Memorial School were rising, but some of our pupils passed examinations and went to schools in Veti Levu and into useful careers. Richmond station has an interesting history. It was the first Central Training School for pastors and ministers, the forerunner of Navuloa and Davuilevu, and there have been schools there all the time from 1862 till now. In 1963, one year late, they celebrated its centennial. I was a guest. I very much enjoyed myself, both at Tavuki and at Richmond. That very friendly couple. Sir Kenneth and Lady Maddocks, Governor of Fiji and his lady, travelled by sea-plane to spend a day at Richmond, and Lady Maddocks opened their beautiful new church. We all admired the excellence of arrangements made by Fijian ministers, Fijian people, and particularly by Headmaster Watisoni Isaia. Everything was carried out with punctuality, and distinction. "You used to be thin, Watisoni," I said. "Otherwise you look just the same." "It's your fault. Miss Hames," he said. "You started my getting fatter by giving me a bottle of cod-liver oil when I had a cough in the old Davuilevu days."

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In 1944 the Mission Education Committee appointed me to Matavelo Girls' School, back again to Nailaga in Ba.

Centennial Group photo-1964

Rowland, Gene, Inez and Ben junior, February 1971

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Chapter 12. Matavelo Girls' School My eighteen years' absence from Nailaga and Matavelo had of course brought changes. Since I again left in 1949 there have also been changes. Now the school is called Ba Mission High School, and is a co-educational, multi-racial secondary school. In 1944 all the Nailaga boys and girls from Class one to Class eight were still attending it, except that boys over fourteen had to go elsewhere, usually to Ratu Kadavulevu School at London! in Tailevu. Ratu Rusiate Memorial School had not been established. Peceli and Mereseini Neisua were a tremendous help to me, because they were old friends. Girl boarders still came in from Nadi, Ra, Yasawa and Lautoka with low scholastic qualifications. While I was there we raised the entrance standard by joining the LeIean-Ballantine entrance examination arrangement. This was necessary, as standards of entrance to Ballantine Memorial, and to nursing and teacher training were continuing to rise. Ratu Penaia Dimuri was the Fijian minister; and his wife, Adi Alisi, gave us help with native handcraft teaching. Their daughters and son are well-known people in Fiji today. We joked that there were three Alices. Adi Walesi Toganivalu and Ratu George were doing a wonderful work as leaders of the province. And my first name is Alice. Adi Walesi had her handicraft school in the provincial compound, and we at Matavelo turned out good mats and baskets too. I found that it did not please my pupils to have mat or basket making as an alternative to needlework. Fingers moved slowly. I changed it to gardening time. The part of the school doing native craftwork, while others weeded cassava, accomplished a reasonable amount of work. "We can't understand why our parents say Miss Hames is a kind woman," they said one day. I had been charging up and down the grounds, insisting that every piece of white chewed-up cane fibre be picked up. Our good neighbour, Mr Victor Clark, used to say that he allowed for a hundredweight or so of loss of his sugar-cane off the trucks as they were taken between his estate and the Rarawai mill, because that amount was always stolen in Nailaga. He was a good friend. He advised Receli at every point about the cultivation of a patch of cane Matavelo grew each season. One year we cleared € 100 to help our school funds. His nephew. Bill, was another old friend, whom I had known from babyhood. It was later that he and Kathleen moved to Korolevu.

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In Rarawai I had old friends, Laurie and Lucy Wallace, and Ellen Montier at the C.S.R. dispensary and hospital. Also there were Les and Ethel Brown. The latter helped with Matavelo sewing classes for years. Nailaga people gave her a whale's tooth in gratitude. And an old Indian Mohammedan woman, with her cane-growing husband, who lived behind Matavelo was a loyal and true friend. Joyce James, my assistant, I knew well, as she had been in Suva and Rewa schools, and we worked very happily together. She was an accomplished pianist, and was competent in teaching, needlework, and housecraft. We introduced dressmaking and had mannequin parades. I wrote Fijian words to the hymn 'Angels from the realms of glory', and she taught the girls to sing it beautifully. When I was ill, she cared for me like a daughter. Rev and Mrs Harry Bock were in the old mission house just across the railway line. Mr Bock told me the story about a conversation he had had with one of his Fijian ministers. "You and I are two people who don't beat our wives," said the Fijian. "But our wives don't need beating," said Mr Bock. "Oh, you evidently don't know my wife very well," said the Fijian cleric. Rev and Mrs Wesley Pidgeon succeeded Mr and Mrs Bock, and had the gigantic task of getting the old mission house, built by the Rev W. Slade, pulled down and re- erected in more convenient form in Lautoka. So we were then left alone on the Nailaga mission station, with only visits from the head minister of Ba-Nadi-Yasawa Nadroga division, and with Rev Apisai Bavadra as minister in charge. He was another old friend of mine. I had known him well in Davuilevu. We loved his temperance addresses there, and the story of how he had been a drinker, and gave it all up, and reformed, after a night in a lock-up. We got him to give that address in Nailaga. It was needed; but not nearly as badly as such advice is needed now. Apisai was a very good minister, alive to the needs of young people, and vigorous and cheerful. Ruth Pook came to help me, and then for a short while Phoebe Mills. When Ruth Pook was there, we planned our co-operative effort in producing "Legends of Fiji and Rotuma". She did all the drawings. I remember her beautiful violin playing, which greatly improved the quality of the girls' singing. When Miss Mills was with me, we taught the girls to knit, and made scores of garments for European refugee relief, using wool supplied by the Suva branch of the Red Cross Society. The girls made all their knitting needles from bamboo. All we had to buy for the whole project was sandpaper to smooth the needles.

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We also ran a Band of Hope with meetings in the church, to try to do our little bit to stem the threatening dangers of alcohol. Rev Harlan and Dr Dorothy Delbridge and all the hospital staff at the Ba Methodist Hospital were my close friends. Dr Delbridge gave me medical treatment in illness too. I enjoyed their friendship very much. I commenced a 'model flat' unit in Matavelo, with two girls at a time housekeeping for a month, marks being given by a committee and a meal for staff and committee members. Miss Charlton of Adi Cakobau School came to Nailaga to observe Adi Walesi Toganivalu's handcraft school, and Matavelo too; and paid us the compliment of establishing a model flat unit at Adi Cakobau School. But she had more money than we had to spend on her 'model flat'. Being head of a school in the 1940s was difficult. Fees were charged, but it was not easy to decide on priorities for the use of money. I tried to improve the girls' diet, but it was impossible to improve it enough. This worried me very much. In 1972 it still worries me that Fijian children do not get enough protein in their diet.

Girls training as teachers, Danuilevu, 1940 Francis Tolley, who had been living in New Zealand for years, had a great interest still in the schools of which she had been head. She donated a silver cup for competition in performance of Fijian mekes. She was concerned that there was a trend among young people towards scorning them. The only schools within practicable reach of us were Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 55 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972) under provincial control. So I went to District Commissioner McAlpine, whom I had known well in Kadavu, and asked if I might circularise his schools. He was very pleased.

Part of Danuilevu Mission Station The annual meke competitions meant a lot of hard work in organising, but were a success. Their publicity seemed to achieve quite a change in public opinion amongst Fijian school girls. When I returned to Fiji in 1962 and we were viewing mekes at a function at Ballantine Memorial School, Miss Mills generously said to me, "See what" you accomplished." "What are you talking about?" I asked. "It was your meke competitions that changed the attitude," she said. "Before that, whenever I asked girls about mekes, they said they didn't know any." "Don't give me all the credit," I said. "Frankie Tolley gave the cup." Rev A.C. Cato succeeded Mr Pidgeon at Lautoka. We had been together before in both Davuilevu and Kadavu. He asked me to arrange Sunday School demonstrations to be shown at the church annual meetings. So we did this at Nailaga, Vuda and Cuvu. We had flannelgraph and drama, and it was great fun, playing to audiences of several hundreds on the village 'Raras' (marae to New Zealanders.)

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In 1945 when Germany surrendered I was holidaying at that favourite spot of mine, Nadarivatu, and we listened on the Commissioner's radio. Miss Reay was acting as Commissioner, and she sent a message to us to come to her office to listen. I remember that Matavelo girls I had with me had to gather firewood for us to make scones, as Tavua bakers celebrated by taking a holiday from baking.

With Mrs Andrews, wife of the President of the Fijian Methodist Church, and David, 1948 When Japan surrendered we were at school. I almost regretted telling the boarders that they could make as much noise as they liked. They beat an old empty tank with sticks for five hours. In 1947, when India gained her independence, I remember that in Ba all Indian bus drivers gave free rides all that day. In 1949 we celebrated the Jubilee of Matavelo School. I remember it included a marathon of a morning service in Nailaga church, that lasted from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Merewalesi, Lolohea's sister, came from Rakiraki to speak. The Chairman of the Methodist Mission, Rev. Maurice Wilmhurst, came from Suva to preside. It was a lovely occasion. One of the effects of the European superintendent minister's transferring to Lautoka, was that on ordinary Sundays, I was expected to pronounce the benediction. But the habit in Nailaga Church was for the points of the sermon to be gathered up in a prayer before the benediction. It certainly made me listen well to the sermon. "The 'marama sisita mat Matavelo' will now close our service."

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I would stand, pray, then remain standing while the choir led a glorious valedictory. At the right moment, as the singing stopped, I would pronounce the 'A loloma ni Kalou' (the love of God'). That is the only place where I have been expected to do that. I did it for some years, and I appreciated the honour. How different that choir and congregational singing was from the singing in that same building twenty years earlier. Today in hundreds of village congregations, up and down the land, on remote islands and in coastal and mountain districts, there is good, balanced, harmonious singing of hymns and anthems at every service when the people assemble for worship. In 1949 I was worried all the year. My father, aged eighty-seven, was not at all well. Receiving his weekly letters had always been such a pleasure to me. I began to put them away and keep them instead of destroying them. I have them by me now. In July 1947 he wrote, "I am still acting the invalid, or perhaps rather the valetudinarian. I am taking great care of myself. I don't want to make a worse nuisance of myself than I am at present". His sister, my Aunt Olive, was caring for him very expertly and devotedly. But when in 1949 he was too weak to write to me at all that year, and I received only normally infrequent letters from others, I decided to leave Fiji. It was not really to help him and Aunt Olive. It was more to help myself. I was tired, and I thought New Zealand would do me good. An Auckland headmaster friend, Charlie Shepherd, offered to get me relieving teaching appointments in Auckland. So I slipped quietly out of Fiji, and wrote back to Mr Wilmshurst that I would not return.

Inez and father - 1948

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Chapter 13. New Zealand Interlude My father was not at all pleased that I had decided to give up my work. He said he would have to die quickly, so that I could go back. But when he found that, after a short telephone conversation, a teaching appointment at Pakuranga Health Camp School was arranged, he was happier. I was really in need of a holiday, but I sent my aunt off on a holiday, and father and I stayed some weeks together. Then I commenced my new job. I had much to learn. I met 'social promotion' for the first time. "How is it that a boy is in Standard four and can't read?" I asked. "Oh, social promotion," was the answer. I was amazed. We had so carefully built up a promotion system in Fiji. We had so painstakingly worked at tests for merit. And over the thirty years I had kept on thinking and saying that New Zealand education system and standard was something for us to strive to emulate. I was shocked to find that there were neglected children, under-nourished children, problem children. During the twelve years from 1950 to 1961 I held fourteen relieving positions. Most of these were with afflicted children. The longest time was in the old temporary quarters at Titirangi, with deaf pupils. I learnt a great deal there. I learnt from the experts to coax and encourage the hesitant and timid. For two of the five years there I had a small group of doubly-handicapped children - blind and deaf, intellectually handicapped and deaf, spastic and deaf.

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Other short jobs were with intellectually handicapped, mal-adjusted and backward pupils. There were incredibly sad case histories. At Napier Street School I saw a hand-picked team sympathetically leading Maori and Island children through the mysteries of the English language. In Richmond Road I saw the care with which pupils were introduced to new vocabulary, and I realised how dreadfully we were tackling that problem in Fiji. I was envious of the affluence of the schools (by comparison with Fiji). The books, drawing materials, and above all, the free milk made me think of my little Fijian friends. Every time milk was deliberately thrown on the floor or carelessly spilt, I pictured protein-starved Fijian children. I learnt too about class participation and about group work in classes. One cold, wet day in July I arrived at a school to supply for the head infant mistress who had gone down with pneumonia. "This is the room," said the headmaster. I looked at the equipment, group placing of desks, wendy-house and all, and my heart quailed. "I am afraid I am very old-fashioned," I said. "That's good," he said. "So am I. I'm retiring next year." So there I was. I looked at the time-table. "Activities", it said. I had no idea what that might mean. The children came in. They were dear little five-year-olds. I saw a mat, and spread it on the floor, and we had a happy half-hour with counting, looking at flash cards of new words. "Aren't we going to have activities?" a child asked. "Yes," I said. "We'll have activities now." But I need not have worried. They knew what to do. Soon they were all happily busy - taking dolls temperatures, building the harbour bridge with blocks. I had a happy month with that class. Then I had a short job at Corran School for girls. This was something quite different. "Girls, put your gloves on before you leave the classrooms," said the head mistress. I hastily pulled mine out of my bag. In 1950 there were quite a large number of Islanders, as everyone called them, in Auckland schools. Numbers of them were also in some of the churches. Some of the Methodist people from Tonga, Samoa and Fiji worshipped in St John's church on Ponsonby Road, where I attended. People from the London Missionary Society 'fields' - Cook Islands, and a section of Samoa -went to Newton Congregational church. The late Harris Whitfield was always the Island people's friend.

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St John's people have been magnificent in the way they have welcomed these people into their midst, but at first the transition had some growing pains. "Why can't these people go to Newton Congregational church?" some asked. "Because they are Methodist," I would reply. It was not till fourteen years later, when I attended Pan-Pacific and South-east Asia Women's Association Conference in Tonga, that I found that in the case of some of the Tongans I had been mistaken. They were members of the Free Church of Tonga, which had seceded many years earlier from the Free Wesleyan church of Tonga. Queen Salote of Tonga, a loyal Wesleyan Methodist, when in residence at 'Atalaga' in Epsom, one morning attended a service in St John's. I believe every Tongan in Auckland was there that morning. They filled the left-hand block of seats, sang two Tongan hymns and the Tongan national anthem. The Samoan people were over on the right-hand side of the church, and I was in the middle block. A lady with me said to me, "Why are those over on the right-hand side?" Why don't they sit with those on the left side?" "Because they are not Tongans," I replied, "They're Samoans." "Don't they know one another?" she asked. To get away from Islanders, one family left St John's and joined up with St Stephen's Presbyterian in Jervois Road. I remember that my comment was "Good riddance." After my Aunt Olive and my Father died and I was left alone in our house in Rose Road in Grey Lynn, I did quite a good deal of church work. I taught Sunday School and then they made me one of the two circuit stewards. I seemed to be constantly explaining the 'Islanders' point of view. There was loud laughter in a church meeting when lists of Samoan names were read out. "I can't see the joke," I would say. Then in 1955 fourteen-year-old Litia Daveta, daughter of my friends Ratu Isikeli and Bulou Ema, came from Fiji to live with me, and attend Auckland Girls' Grammar School. She was a friendly, eager child, and everyone like her. She longed to learn to play a musical instrument, so I arranged for her to be taught piano - playing. In a few weeks she was able to play for St John's Sunday School. Two years later she was pianist at her school. Then came the day when St John's organist asked her to take the organ on Sunday evenings. Her seat was hidden from the congregation, but the choir members felt panicky when, during the singing of a hymn, Litia knocked the tune-book off its stand. But it did not matter at all. She continued the playing of the hymn without the book.

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Another panic they felt was when she lost the key of the book cupboard. All the voluntaries were in it. Litia improvised a very good voluntary. She used to go after school to the church to practise on the pipe organ. For some days she played pop music on the organ after her hymn practise was finished. It boomed along Ponsonby Road; but tolerant Rev Jack Penman only said, "That sounds very good." But when I heard about it, I gave a quite different verdict, and it stopped. After one term examination in Auckland Girls' Grammar School, the girls were told to practise for a singing competition. Litia was song-leader in Form Five Modern. She composed a song, and her Maori form-mates and others excelled themselves in the competition. She asked me if she could have it recorded. "After your school certificate examination is over," I said. So there I was, with a promise to be kept. She went to a well-known Tongan broadcaster. Bill Wolf gram, a member of St John's church, to ask his advice. When he heard the song, he realised that it was a remarkably good composition for a school- girl. So Astor Recording Company made a record of it, and it was on sale in shops for some years. Music became a very important thing in Litia's life. She was pianist for Methodist all- Auckland concerts and balls. She trained a band of young Samoan men. She obtained a very high mark in music for University Entrance examination. Her vocational training had to be decided upon. There was considerable correspondence with Fiji Education Department. No, they said, there was no opening for musical education for Fiji schools! They would give her a scholarship for homecraft training. She was a good girl, and, though very disappointed indeed, she applied herself to the homecraft course at Auckland Teachers' Training College, qualified, and was appointed to Ballantine Memorial School, her own old school. She loved New Zealand, and missed it very much. A short time after Litia returned to Fiji, Miss Mills, principal of Ballantine Memorial School, offered me a job there as part-time teacher of English. Though I had had very little experience in secondary schools, the Fiji Education Department said that "on account of my long experience and continued interest in Fijians", they would agree to the appointment. In February 1962 I commenced work at Ballantine Memorial School.

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Chapter 14. Back to Fiji. "What do you think of Form 3A?" Miss Mills asked me. "Well," I said, "they are no better than our old Primary Class eights used to be." "Mr Donnelly says they are worse," she said. "Well," I said, "that was what I really meant." They were making all those same errors in composition; 'used to' for frequentative present tense; 'every times' 'I live from Suva' 'one of my friend' 'I wanted to went' 'I thought I can did it' and so on. Very much more equipment was used than in the old days, and higher fees were charged. At the end of each lesson we had to count the books we had given out, or they would carelessly fall on the floor, or perhaps even go into the girls' bags. "Forty books, please" I said one day. "There are only thirty-nine here. No, I did not give out only thirty-nine Come on. Find the fortieth book. No recess until you do." I turned my work-book over on my table, and there was the fortieth book. "I'm sorry, girls," I said. But a girl in the front row stood up and turned round. "Don't laugh. Be Christians," she said. And no one laughed. There had been so many changes in the twelve years I had been absent. Many Fijians and Indians were in responsible positions. It was good to see that the races mixed more freely socially; that we could sit in church among the people, not as before always on a front seat; that we could comfortably live in their homes with them. "I expect you see a lot of changes," people said. I sometimes answered, "Yes, a change in the Europeans; they are behaving better." I liked Ballantine Memorial School. It educates. It does not only cram for examinations. I love the view of Korobaba Mountain; and the way breezes blow through the buildings all along the hilltop ridge. I like the range of activities and hobbies - the stress on Biblical knowledge; on devotional exercises; on sport; singing; games; drama; crochet; debates; native handicrafts; service to the community; cooking; needle-work; reading library books; flower gardening; life saving; swimming - many activities to occupy minds. The origin of the school has been touched on in Chapter Two, and in Chapter three mention has been made of Ballantine Memorial girls. Then again in Chapter eleven I have referred to rising educational standards there. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 63 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

March of Witness 1960 The bequest of £100, referred to in Chapter two, lay idle for years. Then Australian and Fijian Methodists responded to a plea to add to the fund. Still people were timorous about starting a school. There was always anxiety over church finances. Some thought it best to concentrate on existing schools rather than to divert enthusiasm and resources to a new project. The Fijians felt it should be started. I claim the honour of being the person who, in a Davuilevu circuit annual meeting, moved that Ballantine Memorial School be established. I remember that a Fijian seconded it, and that it was carried on the Fijians' votes, was remitted to synod, and again carried on the Fijians' votes. I claim the honour too of asking Frances Tolley to leave New Zealand to come to Fiji and help us. She did an outstanding job at Muanikau, the first location of Ballantine Memorial School. All her old girls love her. She has twice returned on holiday, and they treat her like a queen. Her humility, her friendliness, her deep spirituality and her love for her girls left a great mark on Fiji. In 1939 defence authorities said they needed Muanikau hill for a gun station. They could see the ocean in three directions. The girls were dispersed, all except Class eight, who would be sitting for "Qualifying." Miss Tolley and Miss Russell left respectively for New Zealand and Australia. Miss Mills took Class eight to Matavelo. The following year the Delainavesi property was given in exchange. I remember that I was one of a synod committee who went out in cars and a bus to view the site. "It's better than Muanikau," we said. "There's more room for expansion."

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We went back into committee in the old Butt Street Hall, and passed that B.M.S. be re-erected at Delainavesi. Miss Brokenshire became principal, and gave a very valuable contribution of integrity, dignity, diligence and ordered discipline. In 1942, when thousands of American soldiers had to be housed, at one day's notice the girls were again disbanded. "I'll lock this room," said Miss Brokenshire. "All important school records and papers are there." She went into Suva to stay in the home of friends, and the next day, trying to manage school correspondence and needing to look at some records, she went back to the school. The office door was wide open, and office papers flying about in the wind. She took Class eight to Matavelo, and taught them there. When the war ended. Miss Brokenshire managed to gather her school together again and continue. Soon after that, under Miss Mills, secondary work was commenced and homecraft classes were introduced. New buildings were erected. Some illustrious women are old Ballantine girls. Adi Losalini Dovi, member of Parliament; and the late Adi Laisa Ganilau are two I think of. For some years fourth forms were the highest forms. Some passed the Fiji Junior examination, and went to Teacher Training at Nasinu or to nursing training at Tamavua and Colonial War Memorial Hospital, or to Lautoka or Ba hospitals. Others went on to Form five in other schools. Those who were less skilled or lucky at examinations were encouraged to be good,useful village women. But many found work as "recognised teachers", or learnt to type, and became office girls. With increasing urbanisation there was more and more need for girls to obtain qualifications for employment. In 1966 a Form five was commenced, and the school still continues to hold its own academically. It takes a heavy toll of the health of its principals. Miss Mills, my dear friend Phoebe, having done, I should think, the work of ten or so normal people, asked to be transferred to an easier position. Miss Marke wore herself out, and went to Australia. Now, in 1972, a wonderful thing has happened. Emele Wiliame, a lotuman lady of many gifts, is principal of Ballantine Memorial School, presiding over a staff of fourteen teachers, half of them Europeans. We wish for her strength, courage and grace to keep going. While I was still a part-time teacher at Ballantine Memorial School, in 1964, the Fijian and Indian mission districts became an independent church. It is the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma.

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That outstanding man. Rev Setareki Tuilovoni, beloved by all Fiji, was elected as president. It was his idea that to ensure the enthusiasm and loyalty of Fijian Methodists, a week's celebration should be enjoyed immediately prior to the first conference. Some were surprised, even disapproving, but his advice was taken. Ninety per cent of the Fijians are Methodist, though there are some who are far from standards set by John Wesley. It is the national church and the loyalty is there. Fifty-two committees were formed. They asked me to be convenor of an historical exhibition committee. Then once a month they had a convenors' committee. I was so interested to be on it. There were about forty-five leading Fijian laymen with a few ministers, one Indian, and only two Europeans of whom I was one. Fifty-two of us reported what we had done in our committees and planned for future preparation. We decided to hire the Masonic Hall for eight days, and display things of historical interest. We obtained numerous old photographs from overseas; communion vessels used in Fiji a hundred years earlier; reports and correspondence of former times; old minute books; clothing of missionaries' children in the 1850s; needlework done by mission girls long ago; books published half a century ago and long out of print. We ransacked old cupboards, and found school records of the 1860s; and fragments from the Tahitians' church at Oneata. We collected old 'Davui' readers and technical school books, produced in Davuilevu in the 1920s. We showed needlework done by a Christian convert in the Suva prison. We asked the government archivist, Mr Diamond, and the museum curator, Mr Plainer, for help, and they each lent a very valuable showcase full of interesting exhibits. We arranged for good lectures, and Ballantine girls sang the dirge for Mr Baker. It was all exceedingly stimulating. All the committees were very busy, and everything went smoothly and well. Non-Methodist residents of Suva were very kind and accommodating. If house-girls could not do their work because of choir practices, or if office boys were absent from duty because they were taking part in dramas, people put up with it all good-humouredly. The police had an easy week. The public behaved well. In 1964 I attended the Pan-Pacific and South-east Asia Women's Association conference at Nukualofa in Tonga. I was a guest of Sa'ani Sione, whom I had taught in Sunday School in Auckland. It was a wonderful two-weeks' holiday.

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Fiji delegation to Pan-Pacific Conference, Nukua’lofa, 1964 In 1964 also I visited New Zealand, and was one of one hundred and fifty scions of the Hames family at a centennial held on my brother Edgar's farm at Paparoa. 1964 was a wonderful year.

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Chapter 15. Last Teaching Years I have answered to several names in Fiji. They used to say 'Sisita' a good deal in my early days; but I rather encouraged 'Miss Hames'. It became 'Misemesi'. I have often turned to respond to 'Semesa', addressed to a boy. It sounded just about the same. As pronounciation of English improved, I would more often hear 'Miss Ames'. But for years I was the 'marama sisita mai Vunitivi'; then the 'Marama sisita mai Davuilevu'; the 'marama sisita mai Rijimodi'; the 'marama sisita mai Matavelo'. When I returned to Fiji in 1962, some called me the 'marama sisita vakacegu' (retired mission sister), some 'va qase ni vuli mai Delainavesi' (a teacher at B.M.S.). Then I got the name 'Bubu', only the small children in two families called me that; then their mothers and aunts addressed me by that name (Grandma). But when in 1968 I joined the staff of Nausori Tutorial College, I was of course just Miss Hames. This school was established in 1958 by a committee of Indian men in Nausori to provide opportunity of secondary education for boys and girls who could not gain admittance to other schools. Many had failed secondary entrance; others had been over-age and not allowed to sit for it. In 1968, under Mr Gaya Prasad, the school had quadrupled in numbers. Most of the students were Fijians. Mr Prasad was a remarkable man. He had gained a University degree and served as efficient school-teacher, then able education officer, till the age of retirement. He then undertook to build up Nausori Tutorial College. I was happy to join his staff. I enjoyed working with him. He was a courteous gentleman. Sad to say, he became ill, and died. I continued in that work, and enjoyed also kind co-operation with Mr Vijay Krishna. It was hard work, because we tried to help the students to pass Fiji Junior, and with some it was hard work indeed. But we obtained improvement. In 1970 we gained thirty-four passes, and were very pleased.

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Nausori Tutorial, 1970

STAFF – NAUSORI TUTORIAL 1970 2 American Peace Corps teachers (Christian Scientists), 6 Methodists, 1 Mohammedan, 4 Hindu Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 69 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

In the Birthday Honours of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1967, my name was included. I received a Certificate of Honour "for long and faithful service to the community". This was indeed an honour. I was allowed to invite four guests to go with me to Government House for the investiture. I took Mrs Ruby Derrick, MBE, Miss Elsabe Smith, Miss Isobel Marke, and Mrs Litia Kotobalavu.

Governor Sir Derek Jakeway presents medal 1967 In April 1971 I received another honour. Rev Daniel Mustapha of Dilkusha organised a wonderful thanksgiving service for Miss May Graham, Miss Elsabe Smith and me. They held the service in Baker Memorial Hall in Davuilevu. Many kind things were said about us to a hall full of our friends. Mr Alexander Thakur ably recalled old days in the Teacher Training Institution. Such good addresses were given also by Rev R. Miller, Rev S.G. Andrews and by the president of conference, Rev Peter Davis. They made me feel humbled. I thought of many mistakes I had made. But most of all I liked what Mr Davis said. He said that just as women were the first to enter the empty tomb at Jerusalem, so women are able better than men to be received and accepted in the homes of the people. This thanksgiving service was a very great honour indeed. In July 1971, while standing in front of Form Four B at Nausori Tutorial during an English lesson, I fainted, and fractured a vertebra. So I ended my long teaching experience.

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When I reached the out-patients' department of the Colonial War Memorial Hospital, "It's Miss Hames," the nurse on duty said. "You taught me at Matavelo." "So it is," said the X-ray attendant. "You taught me at Matavelo." While we waited for the X-ray plate to be developed, the X-ray expert and I discussed Methodist conference. He was an office-bearer in Dudley Church. It's the spine," I heard someone say. When the stretcher went up in the lift to the ward, there the staff nurse who received me said, "Oh Miss Hames, do you remember me? You taught me at Ballantine." And so it went on all the eight weeks I was a patient there. The physiotherapist who taught me to walk again and the Matron had not been my pupils, but pupils of my friends, Rita Griffins, Pauline Campbell, and poor Phyllis Furnivall, later murdered in Davuilevu. "You don't like chewing-gum, do you. Miss Hames?" said a staff nurse. "Who told you?" I asked, because I had been having a blitz at Nausori Tutorial. "I know, because you taught me," she said Another day she said, "You hit me one day. Miss Hames." "Did I? How terrible of me: What for?" "For chewing gum." She is a splendid staff nurse. I admired them all at their work. They are all such efficient women. Everytime a change of duty brought in fresh faces, there were more of my old pupils, And they kept coming to see me from other parts of the hospital. Scores of ex-Ballantine Memorial School pupils. When I recovered my health, I was so happy to find that I was still a little useful. The Education Department, tackling the problem of suitable, easy reading matter for primary school children, matter relevant to their lives and interests, were kind enough to appreciate some lessons I prepared, and to value knowledge I have gained in my experiences in Fiji.

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Chapter 16. Independent Fiji Independence week was very happy. All seemed to rejoice together in October 1970. There was elation in the air. Fijians and Indians together were glad that this great time had come. I set an essay the week before independence: "What independence may mean to us." A nice smiling Fijian boy wrote, "All the Europeans and Indians will away, and we'll have all the money." I think he must have heard some of his elders make this startling prognostication. I fear many of the Fijian men believed that with independence they would be freer to follow their own wishes. And I fear that with many the wish was for greater ease and rest and sleep. It is hard to have to write this, because the Fijian people are to me like my own children. But in this last chapter of my book I shall write sternly. I implore Fijian men to be more responsible. Those who are irresponsible, I pray for them that they shoulder their duties. Those who drink all their pay-packet, leaving their wives to earn money for their children's food, I pray they may 'snap out of it' and learn more sense. Those who smash the furniture when they go home on pay-days, I pray they may behave themselves. And this whole question of alcbhol? Must moderate drinking Europeans continue to ignore the truth that many people are unable to be restrained moderate drinkers? Must the Fijian race deteriorate just because of this "good" old British custom of drinking alcohol? I thank God for so much progress in Fiji. But I feel, too, like John Hunt, that early missionary, did when he was dying at Viwa in 1848. He prayed, "Lord, bless Fiji. Lord, pity Fiji." Some Fijians reading this would laugh; others be angry; others shrug their shoulders. But I claim the privilege of an eighty-year old, and I suggest that they all 'acquit themselves like men, and be strong'. Soldiers of Christ arise, And put your armour on, Strong in the strength which God supplies, Through His eternal Son.

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Appendix A. Some old students of Primary School, Davuilevu: Semesa Robarobalevu Taniela Lotu Inoke Buadromo Wiliame Tila Mosese Vitukawalu (Waibuta) Jekope Panapasa Losalini Masavu Alfred Jack Marica Toma Aporosa Yaranamua Naomi Sikivou Kitione Yaranamua Alsake Vula These are only a few among many. I use school-names with no titles. Some went first through the Primary School, then to the Teacher Training Institution. Of these there were: Joni Ledua Peni Nasavu Jekope Fateaki Ilaisa Taito James Tipo Ilaisa Cavu Osea Neisau Aisake Wiliame On the Indian side of the Teacher Training Institution were;- Daniel Sharan Kunji Raman Tuisi Ram James Madhaven Abdul Lateef Ram Prasad Bechan Satyanand Bedesi Govind David Robert Narayan Prasad Savid Sharan Sukh Deo Tommy Williams Pallan Gutniel Sharan Alexander Thakur Faniel Sharan Indian girls, who were pupil teachers in Dilkusha Girls' School, and also attended T.T.I, classes, included: Katie Williams Sant Kumari Rosie Sharan Jumnabai Shanti Sharan Muliya Dhanraji Suraj Mati Daisy Sharan Mariam Other Fijian students in the T.T.I, were: Inoke Cakautini Inoke Ratukalou Inosi Vatucicila Peni Waqalevu Samisoni Vagakoto Fereti Dumaru Aea Tuigaloa Kaveni Gonewai Isikeli Daveta Ilimotama Misau Watisoni Isaia Jone Kurusiga Esala Delana Anare Raiwalui and many others Solomoni Naiduki Names are written, as they were on school registers, without titles. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #(27) 5 Page 73 I Remember .... by Inez Hames (1972)

Appendix B. Well known Indian Christians, who have become Christian through the influence of Indian mission station life: Most of these have not been my pupils. This is appendix to Chapter 5. Mr George Masih Prakash Mr Sanjeu Mr Samuel Bharat Mrs Sanjeu Mr A.V. Ram Narayan Miss E. Phulquar Mr Sewak Masih Mrs Hamilton Prasad Mr R.H. Ram Narayan Mrs Bhanmati Prasad Mr A.G. Prasad Mrs Charlotte Cheddy Mr Ram Padarath Miss Satya Ball Several of these have passed on.

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