May 19, 2008
The people of the Tokelaus provide a tidy example of how mankind can exist in perpetuity within a minimal environment. They exist on three atolls about 500 kms north of Samoa, and a few degrees south of the equator. The atolls are about 100 kms apart, well out of sight of one another.
When I went there in 1957, there was scarcely anything in their lifestyle which could not have been operating at the time of the Pharaohs. Yet they inhabit a strip of coral rubble only two or three metres above sea level, without soil except where they artificially compost it, and without a source of fresh water other than the rain. True, there is a so called lens of water which the rain accumulates under the coral, and which can be accessed by shallow wells, but it is too salty for drinking. It is however suitable for washing, and it supports a cover of coconut palms as well as a few other hardy plants including breadfruit and pandanus. The strip of coral rests on the crater rim of a sunken volcano, whose crater now forms a lagoon with an abundant supply of fish.
The Samoans, who are a condescending race, believe that this diet of coconuts and fish is inadequate for the full development of the adult brain, so the Tokelauans retain a certain childlike quality. I have my doubts about this explanation. The group of Tokelauans that worked for me in Samoa were not unintelligent, though they were certainly more trusting than the average Samoan, and they put in a solid day’s work as a matter of course. Perhaps these are childlike qualities, but I am inclined to put them down to the hard and simple life they had led at home, rather than to the limitations of their diet. In the Tokelaus, until a boy can climb a coconut palm he is a dependant child, and when he is too old to climb a coconut palm, he becomes a dependant elder, a pensioner in fact. The men are consequently spare and active. The women on the other hand, who have nowhere to exercise, and who occupy themselves with cooking and weaving in a seated position, are very broad in the beam, but with thin legs.
Socially they tend to be egalitarian, and Charlie, my Samoan mentor, was amused when the village headman asked a younger man to help him with a sack of copra, and was told to lift it himself. However, by the same token, they share the daily catch of fish or shellfish or the breadfruit harvest, strictly according to the needs of each family, and regardless of its actual contribution. Karl Marx would have been proud of them.
The ring of rubble that forms each atoll has been broken through in many places by the sea, so it forms a chain of short islands separated by a strip of tidal reef surrounding the lagoon. The outside of the volcano must drop away almost vertically, for the water there is at least 1500 feet deep. There was nowhere for the Kurimarau to anchor, so it simply lay off, drifting, and starting its motor every few hours to move back nearer to the landing place. Within the lagoon the depth of the water varies and in places columns of coral rise almost to the surface.
In those days the New Zealand Air Force operated a flight of Sunderland flying boats from a base at Laucala Bay near Suva, and they would make occasional official trips to the Tokelaus, landing on a strip of the lagoon from which the coral heads had been blasted, and whose limits were marked by tripod beacons, erected on other coral heads. One of the purposes of our trip was to bring a Public Works man from Apia to resurrect these beacons which had been knocked down in a storm.
We set out onto the lagoon, about seven of us, in a large outrigger canoe. Their canoes are a work of art. No tree on their island is big enough to hollow out for a vessel big enough to be stable in the open ocean, so they have to be assembled out of whatever bits of suitable driftwood happen to wash ashore over the years. A long log is formed to make the keel and as much of the sides as it can, and then the rest of the hull is constructed jigsaw fashion out of shaped fragments. These days the shaping is done with a steel adze, but in the old days it must have been done with fire and stone tools. Holes are burnt around the margins of each fragment, and they are tied together with coconut husk twine. The holes are then caulked with putty made from a mixture of lime, made by burning coral, and coconut oil. The hull is surprisingly elegant, for it must be light enough to be lifted out of the water when not in use, to prolong the life of the coconut lashings.
Our canoe was equipped with a canvas sail, and a style of rigging that must have been around for a thousand years. The mast dropped into a hole in a forward thwart, where it was supported by a rope to the stern and a long pole across to the outrigger. The helmsman sat near the rear of the boat with an oar thrust through the crook of his right knee to operate as a rudder. (The Vikings must have used a similar technique, so that the right side of the boat came to be known as the “steerboard” or “starboard” side.) I learned that the outrigger on these craft must always be to windward, so when working upwind, which it did reluctantly, it was necessary at the end of each run, to lift the mast and carry it to the other end of the boat which then became the bow. The helmsman meanwhile ran to the other end and took up his position at the new stern. The process, which is similar to tacking in a conventional yacht, is known as "shunting". I suppose with the whole of the Pacific to manoeuvre in this was a satisfactory arrangement, but it wouldn’t get you far if you were match racing against Black Magic.
When we reached the coral head where the tripod had collapsed we could see it hanging over the side of the coral head in the see-through water. It must have had one leg wired to the coral in anticipation of occasional storms and collapses.. One of the Tokelau boys jumped over the side and threshed the water with his legs, then jumped back into the canoe and thrust his head into the water. Charlie snorted appreciation, and explained to me that the threshing was supposed to attract any sharks that were in the vicinity, and he was now looking for the result. It must have been satisfactory, for he then dived down and brought back a piece of rope attached to the beacon, and we all disembarked onto the coral head and hauled the tripod back into its proper position. Then we sailed on to the next one. I think we did three of them altogether. Perhaps there were others that had not collapsed.
Anyway the plane came in later in the day, and landed safely. We were in one of their thatched houses when it roared overhead on its approach. The Tokelauans looked up at the sound, but seeing only the roof of the hut, looked down again and went on with what they had been doing. No one went outside to see it land, though the lagoon edge was no more than twenty metres away. So much for the wonders of the twentieth century. Perhaps a people who can make an ocean-going canoe out of bits of firewood tied together with string, have no need to feel amazed by our technology.
A passenger on the flying boat was none other than Marshal Laird, a New Zealand entomologist who was at that time working for the World Health Organisation on control of the mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever in the Pacific. He had come to check the mosquito larvae in the water in pandanus leaf axils, to look for evidence of diseases that might help to control them, but he also brought some insecticidal “bricks” that could be put in water containers to trap and kill visiting mosquitoes. They were very effective, but you wouldn’t get away with it today.
I got to appreciate Marshal Laird more and more over the years. He had been in the Air Force in the Pacific during the war, and had been instrumental in establishing the risks associated with mosquitoes carried in aircraft, and in techniques for dealing with them. His work, published in 1951, was later to be the starting point for my work on updated techniques for the same purpose. What goes around comes around.