by Gus Langlands

1961-1962

My year with VSO was in 1960-61 which was the third year of VSO’s existence. As far as I know, I was the first Scot to serve with VSO. I had just left Madras College with rather ignominious results in my Highers and Lowers, so I was not well qualified to succeed in a job search. I had brought this failure upon myself, having done absolutely NO work at home and precious little in school. But the late Rev. Wilfred Hulbert of Hope Park Church, suggested that I should apply to be a volunteer with VSO and having been invited to London for an interview, I thought afterwards that it had gone quite well.

When the letter arrived, I can remember running through the house shouting, “Mum!!! They’re sending me to the Solomon Islands!!!” Then we had to find our atlas, so we could discover where the Islands are!! To be accepted for VSO, there is no religious requirement - only a desire to give service to those amongst whom the volunteer is to be working. The decision had been taken that I would be attached to the New Zealand Methodist Mission, which had been established there for very many years and I was to be working as a teacher at Bilua on Vella Lavella.  Several other volunteers were to be travelling with me. They were all to be working at various places throughout that far eastern area.

All the photos were taken using an extremely simple, very low-tech, “point and click” Kodak “Colour-Snap” camera. First you can see my mother (on the right) and her friend Ruth Jack who had come to drive me to the airport, from Gerrards Cross where Ruth lived.

In those days it was a much more challenging journey in a Boeing737, as we had to land at many places to refuel.

From London, we stopped at Frankfurt, Rome, Cairo, Karachi, Bangkok, Singapore, Darwin and finally Brisbane. Memories of tea made with chlorinated water at Cairo and photos of President Nasser hanging everywhere. The distinctive shape of the north end of the Red Sea is easily recognised.

Then after a night in Brisbane, we flew on by DC6 to Lae in New Guinea, where we stayed at the Hotel Cecil owned and run by a Mrs. McGregor. (These Scots are EVERYWHERE!!)

I was impressed by this war graveyard (one of many in New Guinea) where large numbers of British and USA dead are buried. This photo shows only a very small portion of the cemetery. It had an almost tangible atmosphere of peace.

Then after two nights there, we were able to catch a DC3, flying to Munda on New Georgia, Western Solomons. These small coral atolls are very common.

We landed at Munda, where at that time, the runway was the longest in the southern hemisphere. It had been created by the USA, to facilitate the fighting against the Japanese during the War in the Pacific and it had to be VERY long to enable bombers to land safely, if they had not dropped their bomb load, because in those circumstances, a considerable extra distance is necessary to bring a heavier than normal plane to a halt. The islands are all made of coral, so it was just a matter of scraping the surface with a bulldozer in order to make a flat and solid surface, ideal for aircraft landing and taking off.
 

This was the locals celebrating something by dancing, but I can’t remember what it was. That’s a small part of the school in the background.

The view over the Mission station at Munda, from a hill called Kokengolo, with the church at 3.00 o’clock and part of the school at the bottom left.

A view of part of  the school, with a rainbow. It rained more less every day, so consequently the humidity was very high. On one occasion, the local met. office told us that 12 inches had fallen in 11 hours!! When I was a boy at Madras, we received 25 - 30 inches in a year.

The view from the top of the mast, during a short local voyage.

A small group of locals with a Fijian guy, Joan Parkin who went to Choiseul and in the yellow dress, Sister Gladys Larkin who was the Mission midwife. She was a GREAT woman and being jolly and good fun came naturally to her. I still often think about her.

Me sitting on the bow of a dug-out canoe and showing the bandage which was intended to stop the flies from landing on and infecting my scratched mosquito bites.

I remember having 36 pieces of plaster on me, at one time. The danger was that such an infection could turn into a tropical ulcer, which would be much more difficult to deal with.

Leaving Munda for Vella Lavella, where I was to be teaching.

My class at Bilua sitting on the church steps.

In addition to teaching, I had to preach at religious services and one of these duties was on a small island, about 200 yards offshore, called Ozama. This was where the Mission ran their leper colony. As the Mission engineer John Gatman told me months later, “They won’t understand a word you’re saying. You could be telling them dirty stories for all the difference it makes. The important thing is that you went.” I had to paddle a dug-out canoe across the lagoon to the island and try to preach some sort of suitable sermon and conduct a service of worship. For an 18 year old, who had led a sheltered life in St. Andrews, this was a very demanding and unforgettable experience. Sister Joy said I should take a thorough shower when I returned and apparently that was the only precaution I was to take. Today there are much more advanced medicines, so this horror of a disease is much more easily treated. Looking at someone whose leprosy is quite far advanced, is NOT a pleasant experience. But I continued to remember our wise Scottish saying, “We’re a Jock Tamson’s bairns” and that helped quite a bit. If you have black or brown skin, the telltale sign that you probably have leprosy, is that you develop pale patches. The locals knew this and so they would take some charcoal from a fire and rub it on any pale patches which appeared, in an effort to avoid being sent to Ozama. The teaching (without any qualifications!!) seemed to be going quite well and Rev. Watson and his wife (with whom I was living) seemed to be pleased enough with my efforts.

The next significant event was the longboat trip. At Bilua there was a sizeable number of pupils who were “boarders”and many their homes were quite some distance away to the north west, even as far away as Kihili, in The Territory of Papua and New Guinea. When the Christmas holidays arrived, all these children had to be taken home to their villages and we all embarked on the Mission boat, the Ozama Towmey (attached) which made it quite crowded.

I was the only European on board. I remember sleeping on deck, as there was no proper sleeping space left unoccupied. It was too difficult to organise a mosquito net because there was nothing to hang it on and in retrospect, I think that was almost certainly one of the causes of my misfortune. At Kihili during the war, there had been especially heavy fighting between the USA troops and the Japanese, with the result that there was a very high number of bomb craters which were filled with stagnant rain water, providing the perfect conditions for the female anopheles mosquito to lay her eggs. She’s the one who carries the malaria. Consequently, the mosquitoes there were SO dense that I felt I was breathing them in. I remember sleeping there under my net and being woken up by a high pitched sound. This turned out to be probably many thousands of mosquitoes on the exterior surface of my net, all trying to reach me to take a meal of my blood. I remember thinking that there was at least one on every square half inch of the net. This was very alarming but my bladder was insisting on being emptied, so I had no real choice but to emerge from under the safety of my net and find the toilet. During that very short walk, I know I was seriously bitten FAR more times than I could count. I received a very large number of mosquito bites and the missionaries told me afterwards that being bitten by “unfamiliar” mosquitoes (those you might encounter on a journey away from your normal location) could often be the cause of suffering an attack of malaria. I have no idea if that is true or not, but that was what I experienced.

Choiseul was our last port of call before arriving home at Bilua, but by the time we reached there, I was very ill. From the jetty up to the house, was a stiff climb up a very steep hill and people had to half carry me, because I was so ill and could barely stand. I remember vomiting and feeling beyond ghastly. The Mission nurse, Sister Joy, arrived swiftly and with her local medical knowledge, she immediately diagnosed malaria. I then spent a horrible week being sick and hallucinating. It sounds silly I know, but I remember seeing a fly on the ceiling and suddenly being convinced that I was going to turn into a fly and spend the rest of my life like that. It seemed very real and I recall feeling terrified. I also remember being carried and immersed in a bath of water, which was to lower my body temperature. In “old money” I had a temperature of 102F at night and 103F during the day, for a week. Normal is 98.4F. During that week, I lost A LOT of weight.

After the episode of my malaria, there was a serious discussion about my future there, as I think the Mission considered that they were responsible for my health and safety. For this reason, they took the decision to transfer me back to Munda, where they had many more nursing staff, a hospital and a doctor!! So I began teaching there, following the same strategy of reading the book the night before and then teaching the contents the next day. This seemed to work and the official teaching staff seemed to be content with my efforts. Local girls dressed up for Sunday at Munda. The house in the background was normally occupied by John Gatman who was the Mission engineer, but I was able to live there when he was home in New Zealand on holiday. Local girls all dressed up for Sunday in the foreground.

One thing I had noticed was that the pupils in my class were all very keen on singing and were adept at inventing very simple harmonies. This is my class just outside the building we used as a classroom.

So I decided on a plan which I was fairly confident, would work well with my class. I wrote to Miss Affleck (the then music teacher at Madras College) and asked her to post out to me the sheet music for the two negro spirituals we had sung at the school Christmas concert in our final year. They were “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and “There is a balm in Gilead ”, but what made them extra special was that the arrangements were by Sir Hugh Roberton -the genius with voices, who made The Glasgow Orpheus Choir the greatest in the entire world when they were at the height of their powers. I recall that the sound we made during that Christmas concert was SO fabulous that people talked about it for weeks afterwards. That was all thanks to Sir Hugh Roberton’s genius.

The Solomon Islands locals were enthusiastic singers, but their experience of harmonies was confined to the ultra simple and unsophisticated sounds of Ira D Sankey and similar gospel songs. “We will gather at the river” and the like. So when the sheet music arrived, I divided my class into three sections (and sometimes four as and when the arrangement required it) and I set about teaching  them all their respective parts. Once I was satisfied that each section knew their part, I started by having them sing A with B, then B with C and of course C with A. When all of that was convincingly “in place”, I announced that we were going to put the whole lot together. They all started off perfectly and the memories of the school Christmas concert came flooding back to me. It sounded really EXCELLENT!! Then after they had been singing for roughly eight or ten bars, they all gradually stopped singing and began to chatter to each other VERY animatedly in Roviana, the local language, which I did not understand. I was both disappointed and mystified because it had sounded SO good. When order was as restored, I addressed Matthew the head boy, and asked him why they had all stopped singing. Matthew stood up and said, “Mr. Angus (they couldn’t get their tongues round Langlands) the reason we all stopped singing is because we have never heard anything so beautiful before.” This totally blew me away because these simple, very unsophisticated people, living almost Stone Age lives surrounded by the jungle, had just heard something which was entirely beyond their experience and imagination and they had made this superb sound themselves!! They were both very exhilarated and overcome with real joy. After a few minutes, I announced that we were going to sing the whole thing through without stopping - happy, excited faces!! Well it sounded BRILLIANT and as it progressed, I was able to watch their faces as they heard each new sophisticated harmony for the first time. They could hardly sing at all, because it is impossible to sing if you are smiling!! For all of my remaining time there, it was completely normal for small groups to gather all over the mission station and burst into singing these two spirituals. I often wonder if there are people there now, who are still singing these two songs in Roberton’s arrangements.

Once a year, when the tide is especially low, the Solomon Islanders at Munda employ a very special and fascinating system of fishing, which they called “Kurau fishing”. On a Friday, late afternoon, they go out into the jungle and collect copious quantities of a special vine. The next day this is put into several canoes and taken out on to the reef, where it was possible to stand with the water roughly up to one’s chest, because of the seasonal ultra low tide. Once out on the reef, everyone had to stand in a very big circle and then the vine (each length of which had already been tied together to make a VERY LONG continuous length of vine) was passed out to all those participating. So at that stage, there was a big circle of people standing on the reef, who were all playing their part by holding the BIG circle of vine about mid-way between the reef and the surface of the water. Then very slowly, the vine was cut at several places and the two ends which this produced, were each taken in opposite directions so this automatically caused “the vine circle” to become progressively smaller. This process was repeated several times until “the vine circle” was only about 15 or 20 yards in diameter. Whilst all this was going on, people had been building a circular wall, using rocks picked up from the reef, but this circular wall had a gap in it, which was positioned exactly where the thick length of vine was. Then, at a well understood signal, those people who were holding the vine, all moved forwards towards the centre of what was now a much smaller circle. The intentionally left gap in the rock circle, was then closed by using more stones from the reef and the VERY large quantity of vine which was now all jumbled up to form a more than adequate “plug” for the gap in the circular wall. By now you have probably guessed that all the fish which had been corralled inside the vine circle, were somehow extremely reluctant to pass under or over the vine, which resulted in all of them being trapped inside the rock circle.

Next came the key to concluding the whole fishing exercise. A special leaf from the jungle had been brought out on to the reef and this was now ground up into a powder, which was thrown on to the water inside the circular rock wall. The effect was virtually instantaneous. All the fish immediately floated to the surface and could very easily be picked up and put into all the canoes which were assembled. The natural narcotic in that jungle leaf, caused no harm to the eating quantity of fish and the number of fish which were collected was so large that not only was there sufficient for the whole Mission station, but the generous surplus could be distributed to nearby villages.

Wildlife.

Here are a few examples of the local fauna. Turtles, an iguana, a land crab (I was told it could take your toe off with the smaller sharp pincers) and a rhinoceros beetle and LOTS of fancy birds. HUGE numbers of invertebrates of all shapes and sizes and of course tropical fish of MANY species.

Turtles

Flowers.
 

Poinsettia

Bougainvillea

I don’t know the name of this flower but it is certainly very beautiful.

Iguana

Land crab.
I was told that with its sharp claw, it could almost take your toe off.

Whilst at Munda, I had a very humbling and memorable experience. On The Preaching Rota, my name was down to visit a remote tribe who lived deep in the jungle about a mile from the Mission station. I had to follow a path to the river, launch the canoe which I would find there, paddle upstream until I saw a HUGE tree on the right hand bank. I was to moor the canoe there and walk along the path I would see, until I reached the village. I was warned that these people were EXTREMELY IMPOVERISHED and were basically almost starving, but despite this, after I had conducted the service, I was told that they would have killed a chicken by for me, so I could have lunch, because the sacred rule of hospitality to the stranger was EXTREMELY important to them. BUT I was also informed that 1) it was essential that I eat some of the chicken, because otherwise, they would talk for generations to come, about the time when a white man came to their village and declined to accept their hospitality and 2) it was equally important that I ate VERY LITTLE of the chicken (a tiny morsel would be enough) because they needed the sustenance from that chicken FAR more than I did and furthermore, they would now have one fewer chicken to provide eggs. I did exactly as I had been told to do and ate a piece of chicken, much smaller than my thumb and then made very appreciative sounds to indicate how good it was. A HUGE example to me at 18 years old, and I have now had it confirmed to me several times since. Only those who are so poor that they are almost starving, REALLY understand poverty. People who are just a bit hard up, don’t understand it at all (although many of them think they do.)

The remainder of my time at Munda passed by quite uneventfully and the next significant moment was the occasion of the “Thank you and farewell party” which was thrown for me. About a dozen parents stood up and mentioned things which I had taught their children and how beneficial it had all been and then even more embarrassingly, further complimentary statements were made. I was then called upon to say something and I stood up with my mind a blank, struggling to think of what I should say. And it was then that I remembered an occasion about three weeks earlier, when I had been in office of the Mission chairman, George Carter and I had been thumbing through a book of prayers which was lying on his desk. One in particular had caused me to read it more than once and suddenly it came back to me, because I think it was exactly what I needed to say.

It is the Prayer of Abu Bekr (Father-in-law of Mohammed):

I thank Thee, Lord, for knowing me better than I know myself, and for letting me know myself better than others know me. Make me better than they suppose and forgive me for what they do not know.

That seemed to be well received and I was relieved when it was indicated that I could sit down because lunch was about to be served. Banana leaves were spread out on the floor and the food was placed on them as if they were a tablecloth. All the very generous quantities of food were placed on them. We all sat cross-legged on the floor surveying the feast which had been placed on the banana leaves tablecloth and of course I was able to recognise all the different things, having lived there for a year. However I was then (very quietly) advised by the missionaries that the very old man, beside whom I was sitting, had been a cannibal in his youth. Well unperturbed by this information, I began to look at the generous supply of food which was laid out and I recognised more or less everything, having been there for a year, but there was a small dish of dark coloured meat which had been placed right in front of me. I could see no other similar dishes, so I concluded that this must be something special for me. I had eaten hedgehog when I had been camping with the Scouts, so eating something unusual held no fears for me. Nevertheless, I decided to ask my neighbour, the very elderly ex-cannibal, what this dish of meat was. “It’s possum”, he replied. I thought, “No problem for me, I’ll soon be enjoying it.” But then I asked him, “What does it taste like?”. I was very unprepared for his reply. “It tastes like a cross between a pussy cat and a baby girl”, he informed me, with very solemn demeanour. Afterwards I told the missionaries about this, and asked if he could have been joking. “Absolutely NOT” they all responded. “That man doesn’t have any humour in his personality AT ALL. He doesn’t understand joking. If that’s what he told you, you can be certain he was telling you the exact truth.”

I managed to come down with malaria a second time when I was in Honiara attending an education conference and I have forgotten to mention that insane cost of war. This was one of a number of dumps. If the war was ever to come back that way, it was essential that nothing usable or of any value, would be left.

The journey back to the UK was also interesting. VSO was not a wealthy charity and had to find the cheapest way to move their volunteers from one place to another. We were to fly back as far as Sidney...

...and after an overnight there, we were to fly as far as Singapore, where we would stay with a British family for five days. During that period, I was able to explore Singapore just a bit as shown in the following images, which include The Tiger Balm Gardens.
 

Then we were to board the Clyde-built Nevasa which was being used as a troop ship and we were made honorary members of the Sergeants’ Mess. Leaving Singapore, we proceeded through the Mallaca Straits out into the Indian Ocean and headed for Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was in those days. We were able to go ashore at Colombo, where we did a very quick bit of the “tourist thing”. Despite it being the monsoon season, we set off for Aden, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. We were told that the ship’s bows were rising and falling about 40 feet!!!

Just short of the Red Sea, we met the Nevasa’s sister ship, the Oxfordshire, sailing in the opposite direction. In the Red Sea, near Aden, the temperature was SO HIGH that the safe running temperature of the ship’s engines was in danger of being exceeded, so our Captain had to cruise with the wind behind us for ten miles and then turn around and steam back against the wind in order to cool down the entire ship. After the Red Sea, we passed Cyprus and headed for Gibraltar, where we passed “the Rock” and soon entered the Bay of Biscay. Then it was only a very short time before we reached our ultimate destination which was Southampton, where I was overwhelmed by the welcome I received from my parents, who had travelled from St. Andrews to meet me. It was quite a moment after a whole year apart.