Oct 3, 2004
He is an old man now, well into his sixties. He had a stroke about ten years ago which has left him rather gaunt, but he is still erect, tall even for a Samoan, and hhe tretains his alertness though his hair is at last beginning to grey at the temples. People ask him if he is Chinese, and it must be admitted he has a Chinese caste of features. But both his parents were Samoan, and he has known no other way of life, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was some surreptitious Chinese in his ancestry. He has their logical practicality, hardly masked at all by that dreamy optimism, that tendency to fall back on superstition, that characterises most other Samoans.
He came to our lab in 1957 from the two year course at the agricultural school at Avele, but he must have been eighteen or more at that time, for his name derives from latter part of the Great Depression, when copra was fetching only sixpence a hundred pounds, and the villagers were reduced to relying on coconut oil lamps for lighting. His mother and her friend who gave birth at about the same time, named their two children Moli and Kesi, as a sort of prayer for the return of the kerosene pressure lamps that they recalled from better economic times. “Moli kesi” simply means “gas lamp”.
He came to us with a good reputation from Avele, and Charlie, my aged assistant, general mentor and jeep driver, recognised him at once for the treasure that he was. Everything that you gave him to do, whether setting out the wings of a still soft insect so that it would display them when dried in the collection, or climbing a coconut palm for a few refreshing drinking nuts, or husking them on a sharp stick driven into the ground, he did with an earnest concentration and a dedication to a result as near perfect as he could make it. And if he saw something that needed doing he would do it without waiting to be asked. If the floor needed sweeping he would find a broom and sweep it. He said that at Avele “brooming the rooms” was one of his duties, (it was a live-in school). He sid he had also been taught to “obey first and complain after”. . You couldn’t have asked for anything better.
On the other hand he had a strong sense of principle and a bit of a temper, and fear would not swerve him from a course of action if he felt it was the right thing to do. Like most Samoans he wore only a lavalava skirt, with or without a belt, and a tee shirt or something similar, so they were generally devoid of pockets. A handkerchief, if they carried one, would be tucked into the waist of the lavalava, and such money as they carried was usually only a shilling or two for lunch money, and these could be conveniently fitted inside the ear. On one occasion, not long after he came to us, Kesi had a pound or two in notes, (perhaps he was in the process of buying a bike or something), and was afraid if he tucked into his lavalava it might fall out and be lost. Charlie told him to leave it with me, because “palangis” always carried money and were used to it. Perhaps with some trepidation, Kesi handed it to me for safe keeping and I put it away at the back of the drawer of my desk. When I got back from lunch, Kesi approached me with a sterner than usual manner and said “I think you know what I have come about.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t.”
“My money!” said Kesi, with his fury barely under control. “It’s not there.”
“Oh!” I said, somewhat mystified, and opened the drawer and took it out.
Charlie, who was smirking in the background, gave a chuckle and said “I told you so.”
Apparently Kesi had been worried about the safety of his treasure over the lunch hour, and had taken a look in the drawer to see if it was still there. I suppose, being somewhat furtive he hadn’t pulled the drawer right out, it was a deep drawer, and had found no money. Charlie must have told him it would be alright, but Kesi had probably heard a different story about the trustworthiness of palangis. We are not all angels, after all.
I thought afterwards how fortunate it was that I hadn’t put the money in my wallet for safekeeping when I went home for lunch. It wouldn’t have looked good if I’d rescued his notes from my hip pocket.
Anyhow, nothing like that ever happened again, and when a cylinder of acetylene at the fumigator inadvertently caught fire and ejected a long jet of flame, he took it in his arms to carry it outside . He might as well have been nursing a bomb. I had to run after him and turn the tap off on it. Courage he was never short of. On another occasion when a half drunken lout in Savai’i tried to run over me with his bicycle, Kesi was all set to “fist him” as he put it, and I had to explain to him that it was better for palangis not to get involved in punch-ups in outlying villages, or anywhere else for that matter. We were very much in a minority and previous New Zealand administrators had not always endeared us to the local people.
When, after three years, we left Samoa, I had a job lecturing at Massey University, and about 1967 Kesi got selected to do a diploma of horticulture course there. It was good to meet up with him again, for though I didn’t actually teach his group, we were living on the campus at the time, and he would often come over from the hostel for a bit of rest and relaxation, or to take our two kids for a walk in the surrounding countryside. They still remember him with affection. When, couple of Christmases ago we sent him a photo of our four year old grandson, he said he had wondered for a moment why we had sent him a picture of our eldest son Mark taken all those years ago.
Nowadays he holds a chiefly title, To’omata, in the village at Solosolo, and when we visited him last month he organised an old friend, now the Minister of Agriculture, to lend us a car and a driver for a tour around Savai’i. When I asked him how he handled his authority as a chief in his village, he replied “Humble and patience.” I hope it works. He has recently been trying to get the village elders to see that they should spend less on large banquets at funerals, and more on the welfare of children. Oddly enough, I find that the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius was giving us similar advice about two thousand years ago. Kesi’s wisdom, wherever he gets it from, is right up there with the best of them.
