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Maria del Rey 9 Sister* 

Safari by jet: through Africa 
and Asia, N*I*s Scribner 
[1962] 



266.2 M33s 



Hup* 



62-01936 



llaria del rey 5 Oister 
Safari by jet 




SAFARI BY JET )|? THROUGH AFRICA AND ASIA 






BOOKS BY SISTER MARIA DEL REY 

SAFARI BY JET 
DUST ON MY TOES 
HER NAME IS MERCY 
BERNIE BECOMES A NUN 
IN AND OUT THE ANDES 
NUN IN RED CHINA 

(UNDER THE NAME SISTER MARY VICTORIA) 

PACIFIC HOPSCOTCH 



SAFARI BY JET 

0! THROUGH AFRICA AND ASIA 



BY Sister Maria del Rey OF MAR.YK.NOLL 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS >^ Neu> York 



COPYRIGHT 1962 THE MARYKNOLL SISTERS OF ST. DOMINIC, INC. 



THIS BOOK PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND IN CANADA 

COPYRIGHT UNDER THE BERNE CONVENTION 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK 
MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT 
THE PERMISSION OF CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-17726 



To MOTHER MARY COLMAN 

WARM, WISE AND WITTY 



CONTENTS 



PREFACE IK 

TANGANYIKA 

L The "Boy" Has a Golden Coin 3 

2. The Irishman and the Tsetse Fly ij 

3. Young Nation, Young Leaders 32 

4. Lake People 44 

5. Queen for a Week 56 

CEYLON 

6. Mr. Nervous and the Resplendent Isle 7/ 

7. Coolie Bishop in a Buddhist World 7P 

PHILIPPINES 

8. Sentimental Bus Ride ^5 

9. Go North, Young Man, Go North in 

10. Go South, Young Fellows, Go South 121 

11. The Sons of the Prophet Are Children of Adam 732 

12. Sunday Morning in the Plaza 141 

HONG KONG 

13. A Portly Old Gentleman in Cutaway Coat 157 

14. Pigs' House, Dogs' House, and Firecracker Factory 77 / 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

TAIWAN 

15. Nylons, Plastic and House-Cleaning Day 183 

16. A Lot for Seven Cents 192 

17. Bound Feet and an Unbound Mind 20 1 

KOREA 

18. Elizabeth, Eulalia, Ephrem and Assorted Others 2/5 

19. No Time for Tears 227 

JAPAN 

20. The Principle of Just Enough, No More 245 

21. Two Chips Off the Old Heart 254 

22. B-R-R-R! It's Cold Up Here 261 

TRUST TERRITORY 
OF THE PACIFIC 

23. The Grass Skirt Has My Vote 275 

24. They Dance the Bible on Yap 2^7 

25. Koror, the Magnificent 295 



PREFACE 



ONCE in a blue moon it happens. 

To spend eight months in the world's most jittery spots, talking to 
people of all social stripes, being really at home in their homes, what 
journalist would not give his right arm for this? To see new nations rise 
up, to hear old nations groan, to see the puzzled quest for Truth few 
missioners can make such a world-wide survey. 

When Mother Mary Colman broached the subject late one night (all 
Mothers General work late at night), she was killing two birds with one 
stone. Church law requires that a Mother General, either in person or 
by delegate, visit every house and talk to each Sister. To Mother, head of 
sixteen hundred Sisters scattered in one hundred and twenty convents 
over the globe, this is a large order. She did not intend to do it all at 
once; we would simply go through Africa and Asia. My part was, ostensi- 
bly, to carry the baggage but, more often than not, it was Mother lending 
me a hand with typewriter, camera, notecase and gadget bag. Like all 
efficient people, her luggage was nothing; mine was stupendous. 

Some of the places were old stamping grounds for us; some were new. 
Both of us had lived for years in the Philippines; we both knew Japan 
and Hong Kong. I had traveled before in Korea and the Caroline Islands. 
Africa, Ceylon and Taiwan were new territory. In a sense, though, we 
had good background for all of them, for Maryknoll headquarters near 
New York is the hub of a mission network. Reports from the world's 
hinterlands go across Mother's desk constantly; Sisters of every complexion 
and hue are being trained in the novitiate. Missioners come and go con- 
stantly. And in the parlor, there is always a hopeful Bishop from some 
unknown nook or cranny on the earth, coming to Maryknoll to ask for 
Sisters. 

Being a Sister , I think, is an advantage. People take you for just another 
Sister; they talk out as if they had known you all their lives. There are 
no preliminaries to be got over; no ice to break. They know right off 
what you are, and like you or dislike you accordingly. Language was no 
problem, for the Sisters kept up a running translation. 

ix 



x PREFACE 

Jets brought travel time to a minimum. A few hours at most lifted us 
from one culture and dropped us into another. We spent little time in 
big cities. Notes were punched out by the light of kerosene lamps or 
scribbled in windowless huts. Transportation came by jeeps, buses, small 
planes or by two sturdy feet. In fact, at one point I was tempted to name 
this book: "A World of Maryknoll Sisters, or How I Got Bunions." 

At any rate, traveling with a swift-paced Mother General I do not 
need to ask an astronaut how it feels to be in the nosecone of a rocket. 
I know. I have been in one for eight months. 



SAFARI BY JET )jl THROUGH AFRICA AND ASIA 



TANGANYIKA 



N 



Bombay 

KENYA 




TANGANYIKA 



I )1 The "Boy" Has a Golden Coin 



As night fell, the sky reddened. Drums rolled; chants 
rose and fell. We went to the front door to see what was up. With a howl 
a crowd of dancers, one hundred and seventy-five of them, swarmed over 
the slight rise. They waved coconut fronds and banana branches. They 
tossed armloads of flowers into the air. They leaped and writhed and 
twisted. Some had stripped off banana leaves and tied them around 
ankles, neck, waist and arms; others had loose necklaces of some sort of 
spikes. They surrounded us, a howling, shuffling escort, gyrating around 
and around, gradually edging us toward the glare in the sky where flames 
reached for the stars. 

It was melodious howling and the drums kept up a rumbling beat. 
Toughened bare feet scraped against the earth with the sound of sand- 
paper. Every now and then, the noise died down; then a lone voice piped 
up and soon the crowd was bending, swaying, tossing again. 

Where were the friendly dark faces and flashing smiles I knew? Many 
of these were plastered chalk-white with fantastic markings. As we walked 
toward the glare in the sky, such a face would often break away from the 
others, rush toward us, bob and woggle close to ours to frighten us, and 
then flash back into the crowd that circled around. Twisting, tossing, 
leaping, shuffling, they yet managed to sing and clap hands and beat 
drums all the way to the fire. The words must have meant something, but 
all I could get was "ayee, ayee, cha, cha, cha" over and over again. 

We had known all day that something was cooking; now we began to 
hope that it would not be us. Early that morning, the girls had gone up 
the mountainside for firewood. In holiday mood dancing and singing 
and swinging their great crude machetes. Their gay kangas, wrapped 
around and knotted under the armpits, made a line of bright dots against 
the tawny grass. I watched from my window until the string of dots dis- 
appeared into the green trees far up the mountains. 

I was often too often at the window, face to face with the most 
beautiful mountains God ever made. The earth is red, like Hawaii's; the 
grass is lion-colored; the mountain sides are scarred like a giant file and 
their jagged tops cut into the blue sky with saw-tooth precision. The 

3 



4 TANGANYIKA 

Uluguru mountains are plunked onto a flat plain with no undulations to 
get you ready for them. 

For I could step across the hall into Sister Paul Catherine's cell and see 
for miles and miles across a valley striped with rows of sisal, a sort of 
spiky plant like a huge pineapple. Bluish-greyish mountains bulged on 
the horizon, seventy-five miles away, they tell me. Cutting across the sisal 
rows wound a narrow black line like a zip-fastener. From it, occasionally, 
came a puff of smoke and the hoot of a railroad engine. This was the 
Great Central Railroad, put in by Germans at the dawn of the century. 
It follows the old slave trail from Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika on the west, 
to Bagamoyo on the east coast, seven hundred and eighty blood-stained 
miles. 

In the late afternoon that day, as the ridges of the Uluguru were sharply 
defined in deep shadow and strong sunlight, the girls came single file out 
of the forests. Forty of them, like a caravan of camels, treading into the 
school yard. Their bodies moved forward smoothly, their heads were on 
an absolutely even keel beneath fantastic burdens of firewood. Some of it 
was shavings, some twigs, some branches and more than one girl carried 
a sizable log cushioned by the soft kinks of her hair. Yet they laughed and 
passed jokes along the line, and often one took a quick sidestep to evade 
a slap in banter. 

"What are they up to?" I asked Sister Dolores Marie. 

"A campfire, I think/' she said. 

A campfire? My idea of a campfire is a mild affair where kiddies throw 
twigs on well-prepared charcoal and roast marshmallows. 

African girls have no such ideas. This was an all-out conflagration. 
They had built up the pyre to at least ten feet, the flames topped it to 
twenty or twenty-five feet. As the tongues leaped, the African's enthusiasm 
for life leaped too. There were twenty-six tribal dances that is, twenty- 
six on the program. Any number of impromptu affairs and on-the-spot 
solos filled in any blank moments. It was so easy to see where the old soft 
shoe dances and the Charleston and Lindy came from. A gap was un- 
thinkable. When nobody could wait for an organized dance, someone 
would stand in the fire's glare, hold out her hands, start to talk, then to 
chant and at last to shuffle. In a rush, forty or fifty joined her, and around 
they went shouting and leaping and doing everything you could possibly 
do in a dance. And there wasn't a scrap of any music but the drum and 
the chant. 

There is quite a technique to beating African drums. I tried it. It 
sounded fine to me, but the drum beaters said, "No, no, you make it sound 
like this." They use fingers, knuckles, the heel of the thumb and the palm 
itself to vary the sound. From time to time, too, the drumhead had to 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 5 

toast near the fire. The heat tightened the skin and thus raised the pitch. 
There was always a line-up of drums facing the blaze. 

The dances covered Tanganyika and a little of its neighbors, Nyasaland 
and Uganda. The Bahaya girls did Bahaya dances; the Bakuria, the 
Basukuma; the Hehe, the Mfipa; girls danced as they did at home. They 
all told a story; the words are essential to the dance. Here are a few: 

A farmer was digging for potatoes and he found diamonds instead! Oi, 
oi, very lucky! He went to town and bought a motor car. 

Poverty is not in one house. Even the queen has to borrow food some- 
times. 

A man in our village of Kigarama notices that another man had very 
nice teeth, so he made up a song about it. 

When the elephants pass, they leave a wide path. If they go through a 
forest, they take the leaves off the trees; if they go through the tall grass, 
their big feet beat it down. 

Mother is the person who will help you when you need something. 

The people are all very happy because they have received some good 
hides (the same word means clothing) from America. 

Oh, what a nuisance chiggers are! 

Kind Mary, be the protector of your children. 

A man was walking during the night and he stubbed his toe, so he is 
dancing about. 

The heavy rains are over. The bullfrogs are happy now that there is so 
much water. 

Four Ngoni dances have odd themes: 'Don't forget me! f *I have a dish 
full of rice.' 'Will you give me a drink of water?' and 1 don't want to marry 
a teacher!' 

Almost any event, from blighted love to stubbing a toe, can rate a dance 
and song. Not happy with a mere statement of the theme, the dancers 
repeat it until even the stupid European on the side lines knows what is 
being celebrated. They had one, "I like Coca Cola. This is how I take 
off the cap." It took five minutes vigorous de-capping before I leaned over 
to my neighbor and said, "You know, I think they're taking off bottle 
caps." She withered me with her glance. "Yes, you got it." 

The Hehe dances took the prize. Two dancers faced each other, backed 
by the flaming pyre. Each had a police whistle between her teeth. As the 
flames roared, they danced faster and faster and blew the whistles shriller 
and shriller. They leaped so high, so close to the fire, they seemed like 
flames themselves while the whistles screamed above the chant and drums. 
All at once they were two sodden heaps at our feet. The dance was over. 

The Africans dearly love to spoof the Europeans. Two lines of dancers 
opposed each other; one was European, the other African. 



6 TANGANYIKA 

"We are very clever people," chanted the Europeans. 

"What are you so clever about?" said the Africans. 

"We can blow horns." So they do with utmost pomposity. 

Again, the Europeans boast: "We are extremely talented people." 

"Oh yes?" ask the Africans. "What can you do?" 

Well, they run steam engines and fly planes and play the piano and 
read books and so on. 

At last the Africans call out: "We, too, are very knowledgeable." 

"What do you know?" asks the other side. 

The Africans fall into hilarious laughter, rocking and rolling in glee. 
The implication is obvious. The Africans can laugh at us all. This gift has 
pulled them through two thousand five hundred years of slavery under 
Arabians, Chinese, Indians, Frenchmen, Portuguese and in our own 
Southern States. 

"Who is that girl?" I asked about one who was laughing uproariously 
with head thrown back and body twisting from side to side. Her face 
was plastered with white; a cap of banana leaves set crooked on her head. 

"Oh, she's Felysia Burton." 

"Burton? Where did she get that name?" 

"Her father was from Texas originally, one whom we call a white hun- 
ter. That is, he was an expert on big game and used to organize safaris for 
wealthy men out here for a thrill. Her mother was African and they 
seemed very happy together. During World War II, Mr. Burton was in 
charge of a concentration camp set up for Germans and Italians in 
British East Africa. Soon after the war Felysia's mother died, and not long 
after that her father was killed by an elephant. The Italian Consolata 
Fathers took her into the mission and have given her every advantage; 
they are grateful for her father's kindness to them when they were in the 
concentration camp." 

"What will happen to her now?" I asked. "She's finishing High School 
this year, isn't she?" 

"Her future is bright. Almost as bright as she is. She'll go on to higher 
studies and eventually perhaps to Makerere University in Uganda. After 
that the world is her oyster." 

I looked back at Felysia in her banana leaf decorations and white 
plastered face. Here was a girl who could sail away with an English 
Literature examination that would toss many of our college graduates 
for a loop. 

"And that one?" I pointed out a short, chubby girl with a drum under 
her arm. She had just picked it up from where it had been toasting near 
the fire and was testing the pitch with her fingers, like a violinist with his 
strings. Suddenly, she gave it a whack and started up a wild dance. Others 
took it up and the whole crowd was off in full cry. 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 7 

"That's Elizabetti Mwaggi," Sister answered. "A born leader. She's a 
Mchagga. Intelligent. Has lovely manners and speaks beautiful English. 
We got a scholarship for her; she will go to Marymount College in New 
York next September. In the meantime, we will brief her on what New 
York girls do, so that she will not feel too out of place.'* 

The night deepened; the fire flared, died down, and flared up again. 
Agile toes had stirred up the red-brown dust until it rose in a cloud. I 
could feel the grit of it between my teeth; it lined the inside o my nose; 
it caked our veils and habits. 

The girls should have been exhausted. But they gathered in a close 
group, one hundred and seventy-three of them, and sang their school 
song with all their hearts. Then the national anthem: 

Tanganyika, I love you with my whole heart. 

My country, Tanganyika, I love you. 

When I sleep I dream of you. 

When I wake up I sing praise for you. 

Tanganyika, Tanganyika, I love you with my whole heart. 

It's typical. No reasons why no praise of beauty, size, importance, 
ancestral home. No, just "I love you." 

Once again, the drums throbbed, the chant rose, the weird faces where 
white plaster ran off in streams of sweat opened their mouths and sang. 
The crowd in tattered banana leaves surrounded us and danced us back 
to the convent. "Thank you so much for coming to see us!" they chanted 
over and over again to Mother Mary Colman. 

As Mother stood at the doorway and turned to smile, they burst into, 
"For she's a Jolly Good Fellow!" and left us. 

As I went to bed to spend what was left of the night with drums throb- 
bing in my head, a paragraph I read long ago leaped to mind as if from 
printed page. In 1869, Sir Samuel Baker was sent out by the Khedive of 
Egypt to put an end to the slave traffic. He traveled all over the Great 
Lakes Region, meaning, of course, the Great Lakes of Nyasa, Tanganyika 
and Victoria. He didn't stop the slave trade but he did write a book. 
Says Sir Samuel Baker: 

I believe the safest way to travel in these wild countries would be to 

play the cornet, if possible without ceasing. This would ensure safe passage. 

A London organ-grinder would march through Central Africa followed by 

an admiring and enthusiastic crowd. If his tunes were lively, they would 

form a dancing escort of most untiring material. 

I would say that the chief qualifications of a missioner to the Africans 

would be: i, skill at conjuring; 2, surgery and medicine; and 3, the ability 

to play the bagpipes, preferably in full Highland dress. 

You have something there, Sir Samuel, you have something! As a team, 
perhaps, Mother and I could qualify. Mother is good at conjuring. At 



8 TANGANYIKA 

least for some years she has succeeded In conjuring up Sisters to satisfy 
Bishops who want them for missions. I can't play the bagpipes but I can 
grind an organ. All we need, then, is a bit of surgery and medicine. I fell 
asleep and dreamed of myself in full Highland dress grinding an organ 
while Mother played card tricks with one hand and healed the wounded 
with the other, as we marched across Tanganyika with a "dancing escort 
of most untiring material." 

I have never seen such an energetic enthusiastic people. Thirst for the 
new civilization, love for their own old culture, these are priceless in a 
student. Surely, no one can doubt that Africans will lead the world in 
time. 

Next day, you could have heard a pin drop. Those same girls who had 
chanted and clapped, swayed and shuffled in complete abandon to the 
rhythm of drums those same girls were "sitting for Cambridge examina- 
tions" on Shakespeare's Henry V. And lest you think them, easy, let me 
quote you a question or two: 

Referring closely to relevant scenes and speeches, contrast the behaviour 
of the French and English armies before the Battle of Agincourt, and show 
how the conduct of the Dauphin and of Henry helps to emphasize the 
contrast between the two sides. 

What, according to the Prologue of Act I, is the function of the chorus 
in the play? Supporting your answer by close reference to the Prologue to 
Act III and the Prologue to Act V, show how far you consider the chorus 
carries out this function. 

And here's a geometry problem: 

ABCD is a parallelogram. X is the point on the side BC such that BX = 
%XC, and Y the point on the diagonal AC such that AY = %YC. The line 
through D parallel to AC meets BC extended at Z. Find (i) the ratio of the 
area o the triangle CXY to that of the triangle CBA; (s) the ratio of the 
area of the quadrilateral AYXB to that of the parallelogram ACZD. 

Examination days are quiet anywhere in the world. The only reminder 
of equatorial Africa here at Marian College in Morogoro, was the sight 
of a girl walking majestically from building to building with books piled 
on her head, topped by a bottle of ink. Considering how those heads are 
packed tight with the accumulated lore of both the African and European 
worlds, they can probably take heavy weights on top without breakage. 

This "sitting for Cambridge" in fact, the whole educational system 
in Tanganyika requires explanation. To take girls from forty-six dif- 
ferent tribes with forty-six different languages, born and brought up for 
the most part in mud huts far from even the smallest city, whose parents 
are tattooed and adorned with ivory they have personally won from an 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 9 

elephant to take girls such as these, rich though they may be in their own 
special culture, and to turn out High School seniors who can talk and 
write on Shakespeare's Henry V as well as, and often much better than, 
High School seniors of our own country well, this takes real teaching 
from the educator and solid intelligence from the student. 

At Morogoro we saw of all things! a production of Pinafore with 
clipped British speech, real relish for satire of the Royal Navy and a Little 
Buttercup who was cockney straight back to her tonsils. 

The secondary education system of Tanganyika is very simple just 
four Senior High Schools for African girls exist in this nation of nine 
million people. And they are quite new. The first was a government school 
opened in the center of the country at Tabora in 1952; the second was 
Marian College in Morogoro in the east, staffed by Maryknoll Sisters. 
Five other schools, including Rosary College at Mwanza in the northwest, 
will be complete High Schools by 1964. Their combined enrollment would 
be under a thousand. In all of Tanganyika's nine million population, 
fewer than one hundred and fifty African girls have finished twelve years 
of schooling. 

Small wonder that they and their parents strain every nerve to get 
into a school. At Morogoro I met Imelda. A girl about sixteen, she started 
out from home one hundred miles away in February when the school 
year began. But floods had wiped out the road; the buses to Morogoro 
would not run. So she and her father walked seventy-two miles to the 
nearest railroad station. That took three days. There she caught a train 
for Dar-Es-Salaam, two hundred miles away. From Dar she took a bus 
one hundred and twenty miles to Morogoro. When we saw her walking 
up our dusty road from the bus stop, with her wooden suitcase on her 
head, everyone ran out to meet her. She was only a week late for school. 

This is quite a change from twenty-five years ago when Franciscan 
Sisters began a Primary School here. The parents asked how much the 
Sisters would pay them if they let the girls come to school. Why not? 
they reasoned. No one at home to tend cattle, get firewood, carry water 
from the river. 

You may have an idea gleaned from the word "college." To most of 
us, it connotes a campus of venerable trees with several ivy-covered build- 
ings, a gold dome or so, and thousands of students poring over books on 
the lawns. Good enough. But try to visualize such a college when the 
founders had just hacked it out of the wilderness . . . like Fordham up 
in the wilds of the Bronx ... or Notre Dame when the first boys drove 
in from the farms ... or Santa Clara a hundred years ago. 

Marian College starts off with sixteen buildings which might have been 
ordered wholesale by the dozen, exactly alike. One story, concrete, cor- 
rugated iron roofs, xoo by 30 ft. One is an auditorium; several are dormi- 
tories; a number are classrooms; one is the chapel. 



10 TANGANYIKA 

The two hundred and thirty-three girls are between fourteen and 
twenty-two years old from forty-six tribes all over the country. The custom 
is dying out but some still have teeth filed into scallops and points. Some 
have no lower teeth at all; they were taken out with an ice pick when 
they were little girls. Many braid their short hair tight into strips which 
run from front to back, so that their heads look like striped watermelons. 

Many here are from the Chagga, Haya and Nyakyusa tribes. These 
tribes, although their territories lie nowhere near one another, have three 
things in common: they eat bananas as a staple diet; they grow coffee and 
are prosperous; they are cracker jacks in school. Nobody can decide if 
they are smart because they eat bananas, or whether they eat bananas 
because they are smart. 

At Marian College, education supplies are sometimes a problem. Sister 
Marian Teresa tried three times to get a vertebra of a cow for demon- 
stration in her biology class. She explained to the butcher what she wanted; 
he always sent it so hashed up with a cleaver that it was useless for class. 
At last, she got a whole backbone, boiled off the meat and put it out to 
dry. In the morning, it was gone. Somebody during the night had needed 
soup bones. 

But things are picking up in Morogoro. By the way, the name comes 
from "mgogoro," a nuisance, because a certain chieftain used to levy a tax 
on anyone crossing the local river. Germans found it hard to pronounce 
mgogoro, and gradually it expanded to Morogoro. So we really live in 
Nuisancetown. 

The beginnings of a good culture are here. Already, the plant en- 
thusiasts have put their heads together and formed a Naturalists' Club. 
Africans, British government people, American Sisters and a Dutch 
Brother are banded together to preserve the flowers and trees. They 
held a show. Nothing much, but it was the first step forward. I thought 
of the flower exhibits in Hawaii, the botanical gardens in Ceylon, the 
plazas in Manila, the orchid growers' clubs in Hong Kong. It will come to 
Tanganyika in time. If Morogoro with a population of sixteen thousand 
has a Naturalists' Club, the orchid fanciers are on the way. 

Another harbinger of civilization is a lone piano tuner who lives in 
Dar and travels the length and breadth of Tanganyika caring for his little 
charges. He coddles every piano in the country. There are two in Morogoro; 
one is at Marian College. 

Land is what Tanganyika has most of. The nine million people rattle 
around in it. Back in 1883, when the Dutch Holy Ghost Fathers came 
to Morogoro, the local sultan offered the Bishop "as much land as a man 
can walk around in one day." One of those missionary giants of the old 
generation arose early one morning and took quite a constitutional. The 
result is a long thin tract of land between the base of the mountains and 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 11 

the railroad. The Fathers were commissioned by the German Govern- 
ment to catch slave traders. The wily sinners used to sneak behind a cer- 
tain hill in the daytime, thinking the Fathers would not leave their aerie 
halfway up the mountains. But the padres often sallied out to hide be- 
hind the other side of the hill. At nightfall, they caught the traders red- 
handed when the caravans began to march again. The Fathers have many 
certificates of freedom for individuals thus set free and sent back home 
again. Some of them are dated as late as 1903. 

The land has been put to good use. Primary, Middle, Secondary Schools 
and a Teacher Training College are erected; a church and catechetical 
room, a maternity hospital, and our own Marian College, are strung along 
the railroad like beads on a string. Also Sister Hildemar's dental clinic. 
The only dentist in the Morogoro district, Sister has been fixing teeth 
for twenty-four years in a little white cottage on the mountainside. The 
patient can take in a breathtaking stretch of land whenever he closes his 
mouth long enough to do so. Sister has a waiting bench outside her door. 
Very often she finds it occupied by monkeys who swing out of the moun- 
tains to steal mangoes and perch on the dental clinic bench to eat them, 

"Twenty years ago," Sister says, "the Africans had beautiful teeth. 
They were constantly cleaning them with 'mswaki,' a piece of bark they 
used to chew or rub over their teeth all day long. Now they think that's 
old-fashioned. They don't see Europeans chewing mswaki. Too bad. Their 
teeth are deteriorating badly." 

Wild life around Morogoro is on the wane, although while I was there, 
a woman came in saying that three miles outside town, she saw three lions 
eating six cows. She banged two "debbies" (four-gallon gasoline cans) to- 
gether; the noise frightened the lions away. Another time a lion was ac- 
cused of swallowing a dog tied to a pole in somebody's back yard. 

Yes, civilization or what we call that is crowding in on Africa's in- 
terior, seeping in from the coast. We drove from Dar-Es-Salaam to 
Morogoro, one hundred and twenty miles due west along a paved road. 
Very easy going in a light green station wagon which has rolled up forty 
thousand hot dusty miles since it arrived four years before. Its versatility 
goes beyond even the ads for it. It has served as pick-up truck, as school 
bus and even as ambulance. An African priest was sick, supposedly dying, 
out in the mountains. They brought him by litter to Morogoro. He went 
on to Dar in style on a mattress laid over the turned-down seats of our 
station wagon with a Sister-nurse on duty during the ride. 

With such a background, the British efforts to educate Tanganyika 
deserve nothing less than a deep salaam. Language was the first knot to 
be unravelled, A loose figure of one hundred and twenty is given to the 
tribes in Tanganyika. The figure is loose because no one can quite decide 
what a "tribe" is. There are close to a million Basukuma; less than four 



12 TANGANYIKA 

thousand Basonjo; yet each is a tribe. Each has its own language; English 
is useful for contact with the outside world. 

Forty-four percent of African children go to Primary School, having 
lessons in their own tribal tongue in the villages and learning Kiswahili. 
At the end of four years, they take examinations sent out by the Province. 
The twenty percent at the top are permitted to go on for Middle School. 
Here, they are taught in Kiswahili and learn English. Again at the end 
of Standard VIII examinations. Again only twenty percent may go on 
for Secondary School. Only one percent of all African children make it. 
Territorial Examinations weed them out again at the end of Form II. 
Those who have leaped all these hurdles are permitted to "sit for Cam- 
bridge," at the end of the twelfth year, known as Form IV. The Cambridge 
exams are sent out from England even though Tanganyika is now inde- 
pendent. Their very appearance strikes dread into pupils and teachers 
alike. A huge envelope, heavy with sealing wax, stamped ON HER 
MAJESTY'S SERVICE, sewed around the edges with bright green thread, 
with full instructions as to the day, hour and minute that envelope is to 
be opened in front of the class. 

The Cambridge survivors can go on through a sort of Junior College 
course called Forms V and VI; to date this is available only at Tabora. 
Only three or four girls in all Tanganyika finish Form VI each year. 
Persevering further, they can attend Makerere University in Uganda. 
Tanganyika, as soon as it was born a nation in December, 1961, started 
University College in Dar Es Salaam. So far, this is only the beginnings 
of a law school. Makerere specializes in Medicine and Agriculture. 

Anywhere along the line, from Form II onwards, the student can 
qualify as a teacher, although he is graded according to the preparation 
he has had. 

Teachers switch around. Two of our Sisters went to Tabora to "in- 
vigilate" as they call it, and correct other schools' work. Six teachers from 
various boys' and girls' schools from all over the country came to Moro- 
goro and tackled a pile of one thousand eight hundred Standard X English 
Exams. All the English papers came to us; the math, history, and other 
subjects went elsewhere. I went past the room where they were working 
and marvelled to see these English men and women silently contemplate 
the syntax, composition, spelling and poetic ability of one thousand 
eight hundred trembling Tenth Graders throughout Tanganyika. 

It might be good here to give you an idea of Swahili; we are not used 
to prefixes to change a word all around. It's a concise language. Put a 
single syllable in front of the root word and you can save yourself quite 
a bit of breath. Take the root word, "hehe," the name of one of the tribes, 
for example. An "mhehe" is a single person of that tribe; "wahehe" 
means the tribe as a whole. The language they speak is "kihehe" and 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 13 

their territory is "uhehe." Using them all, we could say: "He is a mhehe. 
Wahehe are a progressive tribe. Kihehe is difficult but once you have 
lived in uhehe it comes easier/' 

The Africans love to spoof the European's efficiency. "Zungu" is the 
root word for "dizzy/' In Kiswahili, "mzungu" means a European; 
"mzunguzungu" is a very European European; "uzungu" is the European 
section of Morogoro. 

Swahili itself is not a real African language. "Sahii" is Arabic and 
means "coast." The language is a potpourri of Arabic and the coastal 
Bantu. 

Studying Kiswahili, the Sisters make errors, of course. Sister Anthonita, 
in charge of the kitchen, tried out a new recipe for the Sisters. Later she 
was telling one of the teachers in school, "It was a great success. They all 
died/' Just a matter of a single letter. "Kufa" means "to die"; "kula" 
means "to eat." She meant, "They ate it all/' 

"Colonialism" is a bad word which speakers sidestep nowadays unless 
they intend to inveigh against it. Certainly, a missioner can hold no brief 
for it. Nevertheless, it seems to be the first painful process toward good 
things. I can imagine a Briton around 1100 A.D. looking back on Eng- 
land's history. Rather bleak. The Romans had come, seen and conquered. 
In four hundred years of colonial rule, they must have given the Britons 
a clear idea that the natives of England existed for the economic benefit 
of Rome and of nobody else. Imagine a party in a Roman bath. A rubi- 
cund old Roman who boasts of thirty years "out in god-forsaken Britain" 
snaps his fingers at the "boy," and orders him to take off his sandals, 
bring a basin and towel and wash the lordly Roman feet. "And be jolly 
quick about it!" Then he turns to the other Romans to show his superior 
knowledge of the savage tribes of Britons, and says, "These fellows are 
slow enough when you give them an order, but they could knife you in 
the back in a split second." 

And the poor Briton no sooner saw the Romans crumple and roll into 
a corner, than he fell prostrate under the heel of Saxons, Angles, Danes, 
and lastly Normans. He was well kicked about for a thousand years. The 
cry of "Uhuru" (Independence!) must often have risen to his lips only 
to be squashed by a new invader. The contempt of each new conqueror 
must have galled him to the soul. They called his fair hair and blue eyes 
"barbaric." They said there was no use educating him because his mental 
capacity was incapable of learning. They used him as a beast of burden 
and said that was what God made him for. 

Butl The Romans left their roads and bridges behind, and their code 
of law. All the unwelcome guests, in turn, handed the "boy" a golden coin. 

And the "boy" watched them closely, stole words and ideas from their 
languages, learned how they did things and came off the richer for his 



14 TANGANYIKA 

humiliations. When his own Uhuru came and he started putting the con- 
queror's foot on other lands, he used everything he had learned, the good 
as well as the bad. 

So it is with Tanganyika. Greece and Rome knew this coast. Indians, 
Arabians and Persians have been coming here for two thousand years. 
The Chinese, too, seem to have paid several visits. Traders came for 
ivory, wood, spice, rhinoceros horn and tortoise shell. They left behind 
them glass, cloth, metal, and two priceless gifts the coconut tree and 
sugar cane. 

In 1945, the Colony became a Trust Territory administered by Great 
Britain for the United Nations. In that year, two Africans were appointed 
to the legislature. Tanganyikans are proud that their gradual process to- 
ward independence has been peaceful. The furore over Congo's emer- 
gence as an independent nation has served as a warning to other Africans. 
"We don't want that to happen in our country," they say. 

In 1958, the elective seats in the Legislature were evenly divided be- 
tween Europeans, Asians and Africans. Two years later, seventy-one seats 
in the Legislature were elective, ten for Europeans, eleven for Asians and 
fifty "open" to candidates of any race. All fifty could be African candi- 
dates. Julius Nyerere's TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) 
won seventy of the seventy-one seats. His call is not Uhuru 1 but Uhuru na 
Kazi (Freedom and Work!) 

The Tanganyika Standard (published in Bar es Salaam) gave a good 
idea o how rights of the individual are protected, in this story of a cattle- 
thieving trial. It seems that a Masai chieftain claimed that a certain 
Kamba tribesman had stolen four hundred cattle from him. Indeed, he 
said that over the years, he had lost five thousand four hundred and 
fifty-five cows in Kamba raids. The Masai are pretty good cattle thieves 
themselves and can be presumed to keep tally on their own herds as well 
as on their neighbors'! 

A British counsel was appointed for the Defense and another for the 
Prosecution. The two learned barristers brought to bear all the centuries' 
experience of Common Law upon the case. Something like this happened: 

Defense Attorney: It's jolly preposterous to suppose that this charge is 
true. Why, the Masai tribe cannot count; this old fellow would not know 
if forty or four hundred cattle were stolen/ 

Prosecution Counsel: 'Quite wrong, dear fellow, quite wrong. The Masai 
can count quite well. But they object to counting. It goes against their 
superstitions and their tribal customs. Moreover, when it comes to cattle, 
a Masai with ten thousand head can immediately tell you if even one is 
missing. It's positively uncanny their feeling for numbers/ 

Defense Counsel; 'A statement, I would say, quite safe to say since we 



THE "BOY" HAS A GOLDEN COIN 15 

can hardly bring ten thousand cattle here to prove it! I wonder if the 
complainant is willing to count something else/ 

Prosecution Counsel: 'What, for instance?' 

Defense Counsel: 'Oh, just about anything. Or rather, nothing much. 
How about a bowl of beans?' 

The old Masai, utterly befuddled by this legal interchange, agreed to 
count the beans. The counsels sat him down at a table, poured out the beans 
and let him go to work. His dark fingers with broken nails pushed the beans 
one by one into little piles; his heavy lips muttered Masai figures slowly. 
For two hours and forty-seven minutes, he bent over the small table keep- 
ing doggedly to the task. 

At last, he straightened. The court came to life. The judge mounted his 
bench; both counsels brightened. How many beans? 

'One hundred and eighty-four,' announced the Masai. 

'Wrong!' exulted Counsel for the Defense. 'There were two hundred and 
forty-three beans in the bowl. This proves that the complainant has no idea 
how many cows were taken nor even if any were taken. He is completely un- 
aware of how many cows he had to begin with/ 

'On the contrary, my honorable opponent,' shouted the Counsel for the 
Prosecution. 'Your conclusion is invalid. It proves, rather, that my client 
has underestimated his losses. He has lost probably five hundred or more 
cows in the dastardly Kamba raids/ 

Such is the sense "of fair play embodied in Tanganyika's inheritance of 
British law. Both Masai and Kamba are entitled to have clever men press 
their claims even when the arguments are beyond their comprehension. 

But, I asked, why have British lawyers? Why not Africans? Ah, there 
lies the rub! In all Tanganyika, there are but two African lawyers in 
private practice and two in government posts. In 1960, among the coun- 
try's five hundred and fifteen doctors, only fifteen were Africans. That is 
why Julius Nyerere says, "We are for Africanization, but we would be 
foolish to deprive ourselves of the services of educated Europeans. Until 
we are able to do these services for ourselves, we shall ask. them to stay 
with us." Just how long this quiet voice of moderation can be heard 
above the shout for power, is a question. 

The type of educated African we met, gives one a good idea that the 
day of Africanization of the professions is not far off. The Sultan Patrick 
and the Sultana Bernadette, reigning monarchs of the Waluguru, for 
instance. 

They bounced up our rutted road in their European car and unloaded 
themselves from the front seat and Princess Dolores and Prince Christo- 
pher from the back. Then the Sultan Patrick straightened his European 
style suit, tightened his necktie and took the Princess Dolores* hand; the 
Sultana Bernadette bundled Crown Prince Christopher in her arms. To- 



16 TANGANYIKA 

gether they advanced to the convent door. They had come on a state visit. 
Also, a friendly get-together. 

The reigning family of the Waluguru sat in our small parlor talking 
small talk. Princess Dolores look some time deciding which color gum- 
drop she liked best. Prince Christopher (let's give him his full name, 
Alexander Paul Christopher Anthony, to appease many family friends) 
drooped under such a weight and howled his head off. He is Christopher 
at the convent because we suggested that name. He changes his name to 
suit his surroundings. 

Sultan Patrick Kunambi speaks perfect English. A small man in a 
washable suit, he has a definite air of authority. Not yet forty, he says 
with a hint of a smile, "I am the senior of our tribe." His position comes 
from heredity and also by popular election. His perfect English comes 
from Makerere University in Uganda. He was one of Makerere's first 
students when it opened just before World War II. 

Patrick's uncle was the Sultan until 1959. Then he retired and the job 
was up for election. Patrick, by that time, was one of the fifteen African 
members of the Legislative Council. He put himself into the Sultanate 
race against sturdy opposition from a man of the same family but of dif- 
ferent political persuasion. It was up to the Electoral College to decide 
that is, elders of the Waluguru tribe, men who were over twenty-one 
years, had completed Eighth Grade and who earned $420 a year. 

In November, 1959, Patrick and Bernadette were crowned in three dis- 
tinct but succeeding ceremonies. The first lasted for eighteen hours in 
their home village; the second one, his crowning as the African chief, 
took all morning in Morogoro's public square; the third was his instal- 
lation as a Sultan with ceremonies deriving from Arabia. This used a 
long Arabian coat, a hat of monkey fur and ostrich plumes. Bernadette 
had a cape of the same. The Royal African Rifles, Tanganyika's crack 
regiment, marched; the school children sang; the Bishop gave his blessing; 
the tribes danced; the English Governor made a speech in perfect Swahili 
to match Patrick's perfect English. Later there was ceremonial beer drink- 
ing which installed Patrick as head of his tribe. 

'Tor I," said Patrick with that smile, "am the first Catholic Sultan of 
Morogoro. All the others have been pagan or Moslem. I found, however, 
that religion was never an issue in the campaign." 

He had pictures of the whole affair. Indeed he ran back to his house 
to get them for us. Taken by the Public Relations Department of the 
British Commonwealth, they showed the Sultan, arrayed in his monkey- 
fur crown, silhouetted against the Uluguru mountains. In the dead cen- 
ter of all this barbaric splendor is Patrick's sensitive face, his steady eyes, 
his highly civilized half-smile. 

And now that he is Sultan, what does Patrick do? 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 17 

"Well, one of my traditional jobs is to be rainmaker. However, I don't 
spend much time trying to do that. My district, where the Waluguru live, 
covers 5,200 square miles with some two hundred thousand people. This 
does not count Morogoro itself, which is under its own government. 

"I travel through these beautiful mountains going from village to vil- 
lage. I settle disputes for I am the Supreme Court of the district. I up- 
hold or correct the local chiefs. I explain the laws and try to show that 
they are reasonable and wise. Such is my work with my people. For the 
national government, I serve on the Committee on Education which 
chooses overseas students. We are sending one hundred and twenty to for- 
eign universities this year; twenty of them, I think, will study in the 
States." 

"Is your job for life?" 

"Yes, for life. But," with a spread of his hands, "who knows now in 
present-day Tanganyika?" 

So much for Patrick. What does Bernadette do as Sultana? Like her 
husband, she is a former teacher. In her late twenties, she is a happy sort 
of person, pleasingly plump, a homey wife and mother. Bernadette is up 
to her ears in work for the Girl Guides and Catholic Social Guild. She 
visits the hospital and prison in Morogoro regularly. But her biggest job 
is keeping up her very modest ranch-style house on a side street, doing 
her own housework. 

As they were leaving, Bernadette turned to Sister Margaret Rose. "We've 
been crowned two whole years," she said, "and people want us to 
move into the Sultan's palace. I suppose we* 11 have to do it pretty soon. 
But, oh dear, I hate to think of it. The place is so big it's hard to clean. 
And there's no electricity." 

As they whirled away in a cloud of red-brown dust, I realized that 
Bernadette had shattered forever a cherished illusion. A Sultana is not 
an Arabian Nights' houri; she is a housewife worried about her toaster, 
percolator, vacuum sweeper and floor lamps. 



!( 2 3i The Irishman and the Tsetse Fly 



HE was one of those long-legged Irishmen you meet all 
over the world. They spend thirty, forty, fifty years running plantations, 
railroads, waterworks and such in god-forsaken regions, but they are as 
simple as when they kissed Mother good-bye and set out to make a fortune 



18 TANGANYIKA 

in a cruel world. Some of them have made it; others are still looking. In 
either case, they're usually very good company. 

This particular one, Tim O'Neil, was leaning out the train window, 
resting his elbows on the lowered pane and gazing with lacklustre eyes 
at Tanganyika's flea-bitten landscape. The rest of him completely blocked 
the corridor along our compartments. 

He straightened as we tried to edge by. Then, waving his arm out to- 
ward the baked, parched, burned, excoriated earth, he said, "There's no 
part of Ireland like it for sure. All I can think of is Texas in a bad 
mood," 

Not a bad description. For a day, a night and a day we had been crawl- 
ing through the desolate land at the impressive rate of 17% miles an 
hour. It was like traveling across the United States, a year or so after the 
last spike of the Transcontinental Railroad had been driven in. Already, 
we had chalked up thirty-seven stops where there was a small station, a 
painted house or two for railroad personnel and several small bushes 
struggling to spread their perfume on the desert air. Many other stops 
were out in the wide open with nothing at all to mark them. 

The East African Central Railroad is one of the engineering feats of 
the German regime in Tanganyika at the turn of the century. It is a single 
track stretching five hundred and fifty miles from Dar-Es-Salaam on the 
eastern coast to Tabora, two-thirds across this square-ish country. There 
it breaks into two branches, one continuing two hundred and fifty miles 
west to Lake Tanganyika where boats are available for the Congo, the 
other heading north for Lake Victoria. 

Tim O'Neil used to be on the police force at Nairobi in Kenya, a far 
more westernized place. "Too settled for me!" he said. "I got me a job 
on this railroad." He has been in charge of this crack flier for the past 
seven years. "In charge" is a vague title. His duties were just as vague. I 
gathered that he talked to the European passengers, kept the corridors 
free of boxes, bags, bundles, babies, half-eaten mangoes and bits of curry 
and rice, saw that the sleeping-cabin porter did not fall asleep himself or 
suddenly take off in some deserted spot, and generally kept morale high 
among passengers and crew. 

This particular train runs three times a week Tuesdays, Thursdays 
and Saturdays. The East African Railways and Harbour Company op- 
erates boats on the lakes and buses on the dirt roads, as well. With the 
greatest courtesy, each branch of the service waits for the other branches. 
Furthermore, amicable relations tie it up with boats, trains and buses in 
other countries, so that you can buy a ticket in Cairo in Egypt, for Mom- 
basa in Kenya, a junket of twenty-three days by railroad, boat and bus, 
to go about two thousand five hundred miles. Want to try it? The train 
leaves Cairo every Wednesday at 8 P.M. As Tim O'Neil put it, "The 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 19 

motto of the East African Railroad is: If you're in such a hurry, why don't 
you walk?" 

Tim O'Neil was master of quite a kingdom. His First, Second and Third 
Class coaches held thousands of people. We saw them at every stop of 
importance. Many were African students going home from schools as 
much as a thousand miles away. A week jogging along in trains, buses 
and boats was nothing to these boys, although most of them seemed to 
be only twelve or so years old. Then there were dusty ragged African 
men and women who had climbed aboard at some desolate place and 
who would slip quietly off at another. There was nothing to see at these 
stops but the flattening out of a path through the grass where they had 
walked to the railroad track and had camped a day or so awaiting the 
train. They would get off at the same sort of place, settle their small 
baggages on top of their heads and pad through the grass to the far 
horizon shimmering in the heat. 

The First and Second Class coaches were filled with Indians. Whole 
families of them. Mama, quite chubby, wore a short jacket, a bare midriff 
and a. wrap-around skirt of filmy stuff. A gem in her nostril, gold kid 
slippers, a caste mark on her forehead, elaborate earrings, and jewels on 
fingers and toes, did not stop her from being the complete mama through, 
the trip. Indians do not patronize the restaurant car (as the diner is 
called); they prefer to cook their own food in their own compartments. 
The results tantalized Sister Margaret Rose who loves Indian dishes and 
had to take herself back to the mild English fare in the diner. 

The Indians are the rich people of Tanganyika. The Indian boys were 
coming home from school, too. They wore immaculate turbans of pastel 
colors, white shirts and very short shorts. You would never suspect that 
these little dandies had spent two days and nights on a train. One lad in 
particular had a bright pink turban which brought out the dark beauty 
of his face. Most of the time, as he strolled up and down beside the stalled 
train, he fiddled with a tennis racquet. He was itching to get on a court. 
Others hopped on and off the train whenever it slowed down, and ran 
alongside until they could run no longer. Having a turban over their 
long black hair dampened not at all their Huck Finn wriggliness. 

The Indian girls, too, linked arms and strolled along the platforms 
when there was a platform their long black braids swinging behind at 
every step. The equatorial sun glinted on their nose-gems and earrings 
as they whispered and giggled like school girls all over the world. As often 
as not, they pulled on straws in Coca Cola bottles as if they had been 
brought up on it. They probably were. 

Our conductor was also an Indian tall, dignified, with white turban, 
gray mustache and beard. When he descended at a stop, it was a signal. 
Passengers could also get off and stretch their legs. When he set foot on 



20 TANGANYIKA 

the bottom step to mount the train again, all passengers hastened to do 
likewise. As Sister Juan Maria said, "Keep your eye on Mr. Whiskers. 
When he gets on, you had better hop on, too." 

But it was always a penance. We had a First Class compartment and we 
had paid four shillings (560) extra for bedding. The porter, a small man 
in ragged khaki shorts and bright red fez, had brought us each a big 
canvas bag, much the worse for wear, containing blanket, sheet, pillow 
and towel. We could have ordered a mattress too for just two shillings 
more, but you have to place the order several days ahead. Anyway, with 
the mountain of baggage traditional to Maryknoll Sisters, I don't know 
where anyone could have put a mattress. As it was, we spent most of our 
time and energy shifting suitcases, handbags, airlines bags and parcels, 
so as to get floor room for our feet. 

Tim O'Neil paid a state call soon after we met him. He floated into 
the compartment with the experienced trainman's indifference to lurch- 
ings. He sat on a suitcase, propped his feet on another and rested his long 
legs on the baggage between them. 

"Yes/' he said, "wild animals are often a problem. Not so long ago, a 
giraffe came to grief in an argument with this train. Giraffe are stupid, 
you know. Their only weapons are their hoofs and they can pack quite 
a wallop in those front feet. It was an odd sight, really, to see this big 
fellow rear up and smash into the oncoming engine with his two front 
hoofs. Of course, he came out second best. We had to clear the track of 
his carcass, report the matter to the game warden by radio before we 
could shove on again. 

"Giraffe, by the way, are one reason why I'm not so fond of little cars. 
I keep a big American car with a steel body. I know a fellow who has 
a small car. He met a giraffe not so long ago. The animal lifted a front 
foot and came crashing down right through the roof like an ice pick 
through a tin can. Silly giraffe! He didn't know what to do then, with his 
hoof caught in a trap. Tom took one look at the hairy leg going through 
the seat beside him and decided it was time to make for the nearest exit. 
As he ran off, the last he saw was the giraffe trying to shake the car off 
his front foot." 

He let that story sink in and changed the subject. 

"Lions come out just about dusk. The enginemen see them often. But 
the whistle scares them off and by the time the passenger coaches come 
along, the lion is off into the tall grass. 

"However, we had a nasty incident at Kasikasi a few weeks ago. One 
of the switchmen went out of the station a distance of just about fifteen 
feet, so as to throw the derailer for a coming train. In just that fifteen 
feet, a lion leaped upon him and dragged him off before his companion 
in the station could help him." 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 21 

"We were hoping to see some elephants/' we said. 

"Not in the day, that's for sure. And there aren't so many elephants 
around any more. But this ought to be elephant country around here. 
See that baobab tree?" 

He pointed out the window at a most peculiar tree. It seemed to shoot 
out of the ground with a mighty roar as if it intended to be a giant 
sequoia, but twenty feet or so up, it ended with a fizzle of scrawny 
branches. Like the man who started to build and had not wherewith to 
finish. Baobabs and mangoes were the only trees we had seen for miles 
and miles. 

"Baobabs and elephants go together, the Africans tell us." 

"What about the mango trees? What goes with them?" 

"Slaves! This railroad was built along the old slave trail to the coast. 
Slave traders planted mangoes in clumps a day's march apart. I must say 
those old boys were great business men! They had the slaves carry the 
ivory and gold; they fed them free with mangoes enroute, and sold the 
whole kit and kaboodle when they got to the coast/' 

Tim jerked to attention suddenly. "Put down your screens/* he ordered. 
"We're getting into a tsetse fly zone." He left the compartment quickly 
and we heard him rushing down the corridor, slamming windows shut, 
and calling into the compartments, "Tsetse fly zone! All screens down!" 

It was enough to set the whole train a-slam. The tsetse fly is Public 
Enemy No. One in East Africa. He has made two-thirds of Tanganyika a 
lonely wilderness. Not only does he hit man indirectly by killing off his 
cattle, but he attacks directly by communicating the germ of sleeping 
sickness. Oddly enough, wild animals are immune to the tsetse. This gives 
hope that some day a vaccine may be found to immunize domestic ani- 
mals, too. 

The tsetse is a little larger than the usual fly. He is much less energetic 
and can be caught easily. You know how flies cling in muggy weather? 
That's how the tsetse is. I caught one hanging around me once. As I 
stepped on him, I felt that I had done something worthwhile for Africa. 

If this wretched little pest did not dominate wide tracts of land, the 
African could raise cattle even though there is not enough water for 
agriculture. But the fly makes it impossible even to keep cows in some 
parts of the country. This is serious to Africans, especially, since theirs is 
a "cow-economy." For large sections of the people upcountry, cows are 
the medium of exchange. Yet, I never saw a cow around Morogoro; and 
in all of Africa I saw only one horse. He was in the Maryknoll Fathers' 
back yard in a small village. The priest who rode him said that he pro- 
duced a sensation not to say, terror whenever he entered a hamlet. The 
people thought he and the horse were one beast and nearly died when 
he dismounted. 



22 TANGANYIKA 

Tabora is a long stop on the Central Railroad. It was dusk; we wel- 
comed a chance to stretch our legs in the cool of evening. Everybody else 
seemed to have the same idea. It's an event for the transnational train to 
come through and most people in town were at the station. Besides the 
motley crew and passengers, most of the town's peddlers were out with 
baskets of mangoes, trays of cheap jewelry, bits of cloth just about every- 
thing for sale. A huge King's African Rifleman strode around with an 
Aussie hat turned up on one side of his strong black face; other police 
were stationed here and there wearing broad belts and fezzes of dark blue. 
Stringing through the crowd came a tall White Sister, one of Cardinal 
Lavigerie's French Sisters, head and shoulders above the people, and 
dressed in flowing white. Arab traders, Indian school boys and Africans 
in smart business suits, circulated here and there. Several blind beggars 
patiently went up and down the train tapping on compartment windows, 
not realizing that practically everybody on the train was strolling along 
the platform. 

A tree full of white birds stood just beside the station. There must have 
been hundreds of birds all over it so that it seemed loaded with big 
white blossoms. In the uncertain light, it seemed to me that these were 
souls of slaves come back to haunt the place of their dying. 

For Tabora has a long and iniquitous history. For a hundred years and 
more, it was a main stop on the Arab slave trade route. Here ivory and 
slaves from the north, around Lake Victoria, met ivory and slaves coming 
from the west. Here the Congo products from across Lake Tanganyika 
were re-packed and re-evaluated. Here the chiefs of African tribes brought 
their prisoners of war to sell them to Arab slavers. Intertribal wars were 
a rich source of slaves. For that reason, the traders were not slow to foment 
trouble among tribes. Estimates say that forty thousand slaves a year came 
here. Four out of five of them died between Tabora and Arabia. But 
even so it was profitable, for a slave worth twenty to fifty shillings in 
Zanzibar brought one hundred and twenty shillings in Arabia. The Afri- 
cans have a proverb, "When the piper pipes in Zanzibar, the people 
near the lake dance." The slave markets in Zanzibar decided whether the 
tribes around Lake Victoria would live in peace or not. 

We said good-bye to Oscar here. Oscar is a handsome boy, about four- 
teen, with white teeth, chocolate brown skin, beautiful English and a 
load of artistic talent. He is in Middle School near Dar es Salaam and 
travels to his home in Albertville in the Congo. It takes about ten days 
if he can get a boat across the lake in time. Oscar and his family have 
a struggle to make ends meet. They dress as best they can, practice good 
manners and cultivate resourcefulness. Someday, please God, Oscar will 
be a force for good in Tanganyika. 

"There's Whiskers with his foot on the bottom step," said Sister Juan 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 23 

Maria. Oscar ran off to his section of the train due to head west; we 
hurried into our own part bound for the north. We were due in Shin- 
yanga at 2:30 A.M. 

Bishop Edward McGurkin is one of the highlights of Maryknoll. He 
stands 6' 4" in his episcopal boots and, with a mitre on top of that, he 
is impressive as the Empire State Building is impressive. In the dead of 
night on Shinyanga's casual railroad station, he wore neither. But he 
could look over the intervening populace and get quickly to where we 
were struggling with bags and boxes. We kissed his ring, greeted the Sisters 
and went home to bed. 

The official population of the Sukuma tribe is: 

1,000,000 Africans; 

2,000,000 cows. 

The cow figure does not mean cows, entirely. Officially, five sheep or goats 
equal one cow. This is the scale set in the exchange of cows when they 
are used for money. 

The African loves his cows. He knows each one. If one is stolen he 
can identify it among thousands. There was a fellow in Shinyanga who 
lost a cow and, five years later, identified the hide stretched over a seat 
in the thief's house. However, lest the law not recognize such identifica- 
tion, some farmers notch the cows' ears in fancy designs. It serves as a 
brand. 

The Shinyanga District, or "Shinyanga County" as we would call it, is 
ruled by 15 kings. A beautiful $90,000 building was erected where each 
king has a ceremonial chair. He is in charge of about twenty villages and 
appoints a headman in each. Kings must work for their jobs. They are 
responsible for collecting taxes, judging minor cases, settling disputes and 
making minor laws. They also build primary schools and maintain dis- 
pensaries in their territories. It used to be that Europeans in the Education 
Department could attend the Kings' meetings whenever they discussed 
schools. Not now. Europeans are not invited and have no right to speak 
at these meetings. 

Shinyanga, which literally means "a manure heap under the baobab 
tree/' is nevertheless quite a prosperous area. The major crop is cotton; 
most of it is sent to the United Kingdom or India for weaving. In spite 
of the fact that all Tanganyika is clothed in bright-colored cotton cloth, 
there is but one weaving factory in the whole of East Africa and that is in 
Uganda. However, I understand the farmers do quite well selling cotton 
through cooperatives, managed locally. 

Theoretically, all land belongs to the chieftain and he can force its 
return at any time. But in practice, it is as if every man owned his own 
cotton patch. Hides and aromatic gum are also produced. Many told me, 
"Nobody is starving in Shinyanga." 



24 TANGANYIKA 

Shinyanga market is fascinating. I squandered seven cents on five beau- 
tiful big mangoes at 1.4 cents each. It was the mango season; every tree 
around was laden. The market is a large open square with the entire 
area, you might say, paved with mangoes. Around the edges were stalls 
with just about everything housewares, dried up cow skins, little heaps 
of peanuts at ten cents African (about 1% cents) a heap, new wooden 
pounders for grain, sieves made of wicker and gaudy jewelry guaranteed 
to last all of ten minutes. 

Many a seller squatted beside a small camp stool; displayed on the 
canvas seat was crudely dried tobacco, matted into hard lumps almost like 
putty. You could buy a big or little hunk of this or, if you were new 
f angled, you could buy a single puff of a foreign cigarette. A gay young 
blade, dressed in bright green trousers and heavy black coat like an 
undertaker's, bent over the camp stool, picked up the cigarette, took 
one long draw, pressed a coin into the seller's hand and walked over to a 
counter to get a hot meal of boiled peanuts. 

The meat stalls were fascinating. Have you ever seen the fur stores in 
lower Manhattan? Iron mesh and double locking doors make life very 
difficult for hold-up men. In Shinyanga, the meat stalls are fortified with 
wire mesh and screening. Also, the easy way those butchers swing their 
cleavers would make a marauder think twice. Business is done as with 
a bank teller through a small window in the fortifications. You line up 
at the window, point to the part of the animal you wish, and hope for 
the best. The butcher tells the boy to hack off the piece as it hangs from 
an iron hook. Then he stoops to the floor, picks up an empty cement 
bag, shakes it out a bit and wraps your meat in it. This is one way to get 
a hard crust on meat without using flour. 

There is a parish, St. Mary's, across the street from the market. Father 
Smidlein at 6' 5" looks down even on Bishop McGurkin. His parish in 
this city of less than three thousand occupies a spruce collection of build- 
ings church, rectory, parish hall, and a smallish building on the main 
street bearing the sign, "St. Mary's Reading Room." It is the only library 
facility between Tabora, one hundred and sixteen miles south, and 
Mwanza, one hundred and four miles north. Even at St. Mary's, books 
may not be borrowed; anyone who wants to read may come in and sit 
down quietly. 

Most of the books are in English, for English is a passion in Africa now. 
Two young men were hunched over a table. I peeked over their shoul- 
ders. One was reading Common Errors in English; the other, How to 
Write Letters in English. 

Sister James Eileen holds forth in the parish hall lined with posters in 
Kiswahili. They show clean houses and dirty houses; clean yards and 
dirty yards; good food for children and things they should not eat; how 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 25 

to avoid the common fly and the fearsome malaria mosquito. But I hap- 
pened to be there on a sewing day. Women with bare shoulders and arms, 
wearing their bright kangas bound tightly under the arms, bent their 
shaven heads over nice little dresses for children. Sister has a system of 
combining several scraps of material and getting a baby's dress or even 
a woman's skirt and blouse. She gets samples and remnants from the 
Indian merchants. The whole effort is to improve living conditions in 
African homes, showing that one need not be rich to be healthy and 
wear attractive clothes. 

Sister commutes to town every morning, driving the little German 
car, an Opel, from the suburbs, three miles out. This is Buhangija 
literally "The Place You Don't Pass By" or "A Stopping Place." Bishop 
McGurkin is here and his episcopal throne in our little church is almost 
as lofty as himself. Besides the "cathedral," this compound has several 
small buildings, a Primary School for two hundred and fifty boys and girls, 
a Middle School for one hundred and fifty boys and a very new Middle 
School for Girls, just beginning. Also a dispensary where Sister Ann 
Geraldine carries on the healing arts and a school for catechists. 

The convent is still in the pitcher and basin stage of mission develop- 
ment. And a highly comfortable stage it is, too. For a shower, you lock 
yourself up in a really palatial shower room with cement floor. Rather, 
it would be palatial were it not also a storage room for soaps and toilet 
supplies, extra ladders, pitchers not used right now, several stools and a 
locked cabinet containing something only the Superior knows. You lock 
yourself in this chamber of mystery and steel yourself to tackle the thing 
that hangs from a rafter. It is a pail of water with a hole in the bottom, 
a pipe coming from the hole, a faucet attached to the pipe and a shower- 
head at the end of the faucet. By standing on tip-toe, you can fumble the 
faucet around and get a trickle of water. The soaping-up process is a 
time of deep prayer. "Please let the water last until I get this soap off." 
The water runs across the room and out a small hole in the corner where 
it escapes into the great out-of-doors and helps to water the lawn. 

In the Shinyanga area, you can't help but be careful with water. Every 
drop of it is brought in a wheelbarrow from a quarter-mile distance in 
four-gallon "debbies," originally meant for gasoline and kerosene. I was 
there in December; the rains were three weeks overdue. Fields were dry; 
everything was withering; the trees hung limp; roads were choking dust. 
Cattle did not care if they lived or died. Mother Mary Colman was in- 
troduced to people of the parish. "Mother is from New York," said the 
Sisters in Kisukuma. An old man leaned toward Mother and said with 
such concern in his voice, "Tell me, Mother, have the rains come in 
New York yet?" Another asked, as he would ask any traveler in Africa, 
"What is the food situation in New York?" 



26 TANGANYIKA 

Many were praying for rain; others would just as soon have it stay 
off for a while. These latter are building houses. Made of mud brick, they 
are apt to slough off and collapse in rain. Most of our convents are mud 
brick, too, but they are covered with a layer of cement, which helps* 

Shinyanga has no electricity. We use pressure lamps and Aladdins 
which burn kerosene. They're good for the health. If anything will get 
you to bed early and insure a proper eight hours' rest, it's a kerosene 
lamp burning hot and humid in a town 3% degrees below the equator. 
A half-hour under its benign influence and you say to it, "All right, you 
win. I'll go to bed and finish this in the morning." 

The convent stove is wood-burning, coming from Montgomery Ward 
three years ago for $120. It's marvellous. You keep stuffing wood into a 
small compartment at the side and it heats four burners, an oven and a 
huge hot-water well. Shinyanga boasts a kerosene iron, too, which the 
Sisters claim far surpasses an electric iron. One can't be sure that this is 
the plain unvarnished truth; I find that missioners are apt to think their 
country has the very best of everything. It's an occupational failing, 
evidently. 

But if Shinyanga mission doesn't have modern conveniences, it has 
beauty. Siamese cats are all over the place all descendants of the original 
Hannibal and Mabel which Father Brannigan brought with him in 1954. 
We have their daughter Mitzi at Shinyanga and, more or less as a per- 
manent guest, old Hannibal himself, who has worn out his welcome at 
the rectory and slips over to the convent for comfort. All the out-stations 
of Shinyanga diocese have a plethora of Siamese cats; the record so far 
is Sayu-Sayu where nine of them dispute ownership of the rectory with 
two priests and a Brother. 

On a First Friday morning, I knelt in the back of church for the High 
Mass. Women stayed strictly on the left; men on the right. The church 
was crowded. The women were wrapped in their kangas those large 
squares of bright cloth covered with pictures and lettering. One showed 
a motor bike in the center of her back; under the picture was the word in 
large letters, SCOOTER. Another had Kiswahili words meaning EV- 
ERYBODY LOVES SATURDAY NIGHT. A blue and yellow one said, 
AFRICA IS YOUR COUNTRY. 

The kanga is Tanganyika's billboard. If ever Madison Avenue wanted 
to sell an idea or product there, they would be smart to give away kangas 
bearing advertisements. 

Patriotism has already used the medium. Julius Nyerere's picture adorns 
many a kanga; the map of Tanganyika walks down the street; the national 
flag, the national emblem, the national animal (the twiga or giraffe), and 
many a patriotic motto are displayed to edify the populace as an African 
woman shops in the market. 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 27 

One of the women in church kept her kanga wrapped securely around 
her head. She is Laurentina. A year ago, she and her husband staggered 
past our convent having a knockdown-and-drag-out brawl. They had im- 
bibed too freely of beer. The next morning Sister Ann Geraldine was 
called to see Laurentina. The side of her head was a bloody mess. "My 
husband bit my ear off," she told Sister without much emotion. "And 
what's worse, I can't find the ear so that you can sew it back on." 

"Never mind," said Sister. "It would not do much good anyway. 7 * 

Laurentina came to the convent every day for dressings. On the fourth 
day, she brought a withered piece. It was the ear; she had found it on the 
floor. "Please sew it on again," she begged. 

The wound healed in time. Laurentina was eternally grateful. Both 
she and her husband promised never to drink or battle again. Now they 
are model Legion of Mary members. 

It was only some months later that Sister connected Laurentina with 
a woman whom she had rushed to the town hospital for a premature 
baby about a year before. The baby weighed only two pounds and died in 
a few days. But she was baptized Ann Geraldine. Maybe little Ann Geral- 
dine won this grace of real conversion for her parents. 

I noticed another woman in church that First Friday. Blind Juliana. 
With assurance, she tied her baby on her back and led her small son up 
to the altar rail for Holy Communion. "She never needs help/' says 
Sister Joan Michel. "Really doesn't like it at all." 

She has a story, too. Some years ago Sister had noticed this blind woman 
passing in front of the convent on her way to market. She told her 
Legion of Mary group about her. "She might need a little help in the 
house," she suggested. 

Two neighbors responded. They offered to sweep her house and draw 
her water at least once a week. Juliana let loose. "Get out!" she said. "Ill 
sweep my own house, if you don't mind." The ladies withdrew. 

But she came around to the convent to see what it was all about. 
Sister explained. "A good idea," said Juliana. "Ill join the Legion." She 
had to become a Catholic first, of course. 

To start, Juliana's assignments as a Legion member were easy. She 
did them and made up some of her own. "I pounded a sick woman's grain 
for her," she reported several times. 

Susanna was there, too. She sat in front of me, all absorbed in the Mass, 
$inging her heart out. The Ordinary has been translated into Kisukuma 
and the people sing it to Gregorian Chant. These magnificent voices roll 
out the age-old melodies with all the strength of Faith new born and 
vigorous, strong enough to raise the roof and carry us all on a cushion 
of sound straight to the Pearly Gates. 

Susanna is tattooed; a blackish line runs down her forehead and nose 



28 TANGANYIKA 

as if she had been split apart and sewed together again. The design is like 
the stitches on a baseball. She used to be a witch doctor. "Oh, Susanna 
is just the nicest personl We all love her!" says Sister Juan Maria. 

After Mass we had Benediction. With the Blessed Sacrament exposed, 
four men who had acted as cantors during the Mass, stood up and chanted 
in Kisukuma: 

"What do we do when we see Our Chief?" 

The whole church stood up. Clapping their hands, they bowed the 
men bending at the waist, the women crossing their ankles and sinking 
to the ground. This is the deep obeisance reserved only for the highest 
kings. 

Saturday is clean-up day for the Middle School boys at Shinyanga. At 
rosary next day, my eye caught a lad draped in a once-white cloth with 
the corners tied around his neck halter style, walking up the main aisle 
in church. Then in came another and another. Most of the boys wore 
kb$.ki uniforms. Who were these apparitions in white? Well, it seems the 
church bell had caught them in the process of washing their one and 
only pair of shorts and shirt. So, not having a barrel to jump into, they 
wrapped themselves in their bedsheet and came along. They have only 
one sheet and it's skimpy. It serves as pajamas as well, and also ironing 
board. 

Later, we walked over to the Middle School to observe the process at 
close range. Some one hundred and fifty boys were in their dining room, 
a large open shed, ironing their Sunday suits. The process was complicated. 
They spread a sheet, folded many times, on the concrete floor, making 
sure the pad was smooth. They heated a charcoal iron. Then, on the floor, 
they ironed their shirt and pants very, very carefully, shifting on their 
knees around the ironing pad. Small wonder they look like Eton scholars 
when they come to Sunday Mass! 

The Shinyanga diocese is in the heart of Sukumaland. The Wasukuma 
are by far the largest tribe in Tanganyika, twice as large as the Nyamwezi, 
runner-up at less than half a million people. Their territory in the Lake 
Victoria Province covers six districts, a matter of twenty thousand square 
miles, twice as large as Massachusetts. The Sukuma tribe were very con- 
servative until recently, but are now awakening to leadership, politics, 
and the possibility of bettering themselves economically. 

Their soil is poor; it can support only one person per 3% acres, or 
one hundred people and one hundred and eighty-two cows to a square 
mile. The Sukumaland Development Scheme has done much to restore 
fertility to much of the territory. Better farming methods and grazing 
schemes, the building of small dams to conserve what water there is, and 
the use of imported bulls for breeding are slowly making the Sukuma 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 29 

tribesman aware of what the future can hold for him. The program is 
under local authorities and is paid for by local taxation. 

We drove out to Busando in the little Opel, fifteen miles along a wash- 
board road which can shake the very breakfast out of you. Sister Bridget 
Maureen put her foot hard on the gas; she claims that at a good speed 
you hit only the high spots of the road. Sounds good, but I hit some 
pretty low ones, too. 

This is Father Daly's mission, he who once trekked in the New York 
area. The subway rush was no fit training for this. In Busando there is 
plenty of space and nobody much to put into it. But Father's sights are 
set over the horizon where many a Sukuma hut dots his far-flung parish. 

With him is Father Bergwall. A young M.D. from Marquette, he went 
to Mary knoll and was ordained. Just about a month later, trouble with 
one leg was diagnosed as muscular dystrophy. Knowing well the future, 
Father went on to Africa to use as priest and doctor what mobility is 
left to him. I found him full of plans and ideas. With a cane he walked 
around to show us his small leprosarium. He finds it hard to convince 
Africans that steady treatment is needed to cure or arrest leprosy. Their 
only concern is to get the sores healed for the present. He dismisses his 
own troubles and says he will get along pretty well with a golf cart his 
friends in Milwaukee told him they would send for Christmas. 

Sister Bridget Maureen is one of those perky little Sisters who can 
whip any class into shape. The day I saw her in action at Busando she 
had quite a class. They were about 20 men catechists in all stages 
of outlandish dress. She had them lined up like kindergarteners learning 
a song: 

I am not like a stone; I can say Thank You to God. 
I am not like a river; I can say Thank You to God. 
I am not even like a cow; I can say Thank You to God. 
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, God! 



The men loved it. With the African genius for on-the-spot variations, 
that song was made into a full-blown choral for male voices in no time. 
It is so easy to see how the Negro has enriched American music and 
deepened our contemplation of God with spirituals. Long ago, the Church 
learned that the same words, repeated slowly and often, stretch the soul 
far beyond the world's narrow vise. 

Sister Ann Geraldine meanwhile took herself to a tiny house of mud 
brick with about twenty-five women and girls. They were to learn simple 
hygiene and sewing. All African women want to make Western clothes. 
So Sister spread some gay material out on the concrete floor, put a pat- 



30 TANGANYIKA 

tern on top of it and then cut around the edges, walking on her knees as 
she did so. Try it, sometime. It does wonders for your arthritis. 

Sister took the roll call. "Three of my girls are not here today," she 
said. "They weren't here last week, either. They went to attend a wed- 
ding/' 

If you want a real fuss over your marriage, come to Africa! A young 
girl, when she starts to mature, goes into seclusion in the house and her 
grandmother instructs her on the duties of marriage. No one but the 
grandmother can do this. Emmanuel, a man we know at Morogoro, had 
to take his daughter Konstansia seventy-five miles to his home town, so 
that she could stay with his mother during this time. 

The girl does nothing at all; she is not to work, nor to play, nor even 
to leave the room. She is just to sit still and eat. The child gets to be the 
size of a house. In some places, she is forbidden even to walk. We saw a 
man on the road once, a little bit of a man, carrying his daughter, who 
was chubby to put it mildly. 

After six months, a big "coming-out party" is held and the girl emerges 
into sunshine. The father is now open to offers from young men around. 
This is the time for bargaining. Around Nyegina, the papas are so grasp- 
ing that brides are out of price range for most young men; they are getting 
their brides from other tribes. Which leaves the Nyegina girls stranded. 
Prices vary, but you can usually get a good Christian wife in Shinyanga 
for sixteen cows. Up in Rosana where people are rich, the price is thirty- 
five. 

The payment of cows is required by the government to make the mar- 
riage legal. Ten cows is the minimum but few girls want to marry for so 
low a price. Who wants to be known as a ten-cow bride? 

Cow payments are approved by the Church, too. It makes the marriage 
stable. Fortunately, in Tanganyika, a girl has a good deal to say about the 
marriage. It is not at all a case of being sold for so many cows; she can 
put her foot down and usually Papa pays attention to her. But if she 
agrees to the marriage and then, after the ceremony, runs away from her 
husband, Papa sends her back. Otherwise he would have to return to 
his son-in-law the very same cows he was paid. Papa doesn't like that. 
Besides, probably those identical cows have already been paid out for 
his son's brides. Sometimes, five or six marriages would have to be re- 
adjusted so that the cow with the brown spot could go back to her origi- 
nal owner. What price divorce! 

Marriages are not casual, even though they may be based on very 
little courtship, as we know it. Not long ago, a young soldier from the 
Royal African Rifles, stationed in Shinyanga, came to the mission asking 
if we could get him a good Christian wife. Sister James Eileen went to 



THE IRISHMAN AND THE TSETSE FLY 81 

Agnesi, a good girl and still unattached at twenty. Agnesi agreed and 
her parents agreed. Then the meeting took place. 

Agnesi braided her hair almost out of her scalp and arrayed herself in 
her gayest kanga. She and her parents came to the mission. Up drove 
the mission car with Father and Damianus the soldier. 

"This is Agnesi, Damianus." Agnesi turned her back to them all. 
Damianus looked at her and walked into the mission office. In a few 
minutes, Father emerged. 

"Damianus agrees/' he said. It was over and both parties prepared for 
a bang-up wedding. 

After the ceremony, all the guests repair to the bride's home and the 
feasting begins. It may last a week or more. Then the guests go to the 
groom's house and start all over again. The only way they know it's time 
to go home, is when the cow's feet are served. That means there isn't 
anything left. 

Recently a touchy case for the Church came up. The bride's father 
killed a cow, maybe two, and put on a big spread. He was a pagan, but 
his wife and daughter were Christians. After much feasting, the wedding 
party repaired to the groom's house. Horrors! The groom's father had 
killed only a goat. 

Enraged, the bride's father went out of the house and took with him 
the bridal party, including the bride but excluding the groom. He killed 
another cow to show that he, at least, was a good host. 

For a while it was nip-and-tuck as to whether this marriage would ever 
get going. But in time Father was able to start the young couple on the 
right foot. 

Cows are estimated at $50.00 each. The exchange of even ten cows is 
quite a contract; a Wakuria bride bringing thirty-five cows can make 
or break the family fortune. 

But the cow economy brings difficulties to the Church. If a man has 
many daughters and few sons, he accumulates so many cows his own 
wife is overburdened with work. He is severely tempted to buy another 
wife for himself. There is really nothing else for him to spend his cows 
for. His old wife urges him to get a younger woman, too. It divides the 
work in the fields and gives her companionship. 

Christianity's stand for monogamy accounts somewhat for the success 
of Mohammedanism in Africa. The Biblical custom of a man taking his 
dead brother's wife obtains. It is understandable. It gives the woman a 
home and tribal standing; it gives her children a new father, The laws 
of the Church are hard to make clear. 

African village life is set up for polygamy. Wives seem to live together 
with no more arguments than other women. The husband apparently 



32 TANGANYIKA 

plays no favorites or, if he does, it is his first wife. Everyone else accords 
her first place in the household. Many a time, a young woman comes to 
our maternity hospital at Kowak, and with her will be the faithful First 
Wife to help as best she can this Second, Third or Fourth Wife. 

However, outside influences are seeping through Africa fast. Young 
men in towns are a little ashamed of polygamy. They know that the rest 
of the world looks down on it. It is a "backward" trait, they read. Also, 
in the towns, it's not so easy to have another wife. She is an expense, 
not an economic asset. In the country, a man can put up another house 
with very little trouble; in the city, he would have to pay rent. 

The old folks, however, have real trouble understanding monogamy. 
A hoary tribesman listened carefully to the instruction on marriage as 
Sister explained it. Then she summed the lesson up. 

"Supposing a man married the widow of his dead brother and later 
met a woman he liked and married her also. Which is his real wife?" 
she asked. 

The old African pondered some time. He raised his head. "The wife 
he married first; the one who belonged to his brother. She is the real 
wife," he said. 

"What about the other one?" Sister asked. 

"The wife he married because he liked her she is not the Real Wife. 
She is the Very Real Wife." 

Sister sighed and started all over again. 



C( 3 5-5 Young Nation, Young Leaders 



"ACH!" Bishop Joseph Blumjous pulled on his long ex- 
tinct cigar and ran his fingers through his almost extinct hair. "I told a 
priest what I am going to do and he wrote to me, 'We did not do things 
this way ten years ago/ So I wrote back to him, If you expect to do 
things in Africa as they were done ten years ago, my boy, then you are 
a hundred years out of date/ " 

We were sitting on the edge of a cement porch overlooking Lake Vic- 
toria. There was no railing around the porch; if one stepped off he 
would drop twenty feet to rocks below. But the Bishop seems to like to 
live dangerously. He does not go in for settled security. Someone of our 
party said to him, overlooking the small city he has built on the heap 
of giant boulders the government gave him, "This is quite a step you 
have taken, my lord." 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 33 

The Bishop of Mwanza laughed a laugh which shook all through his 
loose white cassock straight down to the mud-stained boots which had 
tramped through fields all afternoon. "A step?" he questioned. "I'm not 
afraid of taking long steps provided I think they are forward steps." 

Indeed, he is not. And results prove it. 

Although White Fathers have been in Tanganyika since 1878, the 
society's main effort for the Church was in Uganda. Priests visited the 
southern end of Lake Victoria sporadically whenever possible. Not until 
1930 was a diocese established in Mwanza, port city at the southern tip 
of the lake. There were twelve thousand Catholics then scattered over 
an area that took in practically all the northwest corner of the country. 
Lack of personnel and transportation kept the numbers low. In 1946, 
Bishop Blumjous was consecrated and took possession of his huge see. 
In the last ten years, Catholics have reached the seventy-five thousand 
mark and some fifty thousand catechumens are studying. The course be- 
fore Baptism extends over four years. Together, they make up about 
thirteen percent of the population. 

"These people are the solid peasant type/' the Bishop explains. 
"They're not poor. They are very conscious of the forces changing Africa 
today. They want a 'dim/ a religion. And we have it for them/' 

We had had an appointment with the Bishop at 4 P.M. that after- 
noon, but a flat tire made it all of 5 P.M. before we drove up to the 
seminary at Nyegezi, just outside Mwanza. This is the center house in 
a fantastic collection of rocks like huge pebbles which some prehistoric 
stream has tumbled down and left piled up. The seminary, which serves as 
Bishop's residence, priest's retreat house, chancery offices and whatever 
else is needed at the time, is surrounded by many other smaller build- 
ings to house other projects of the Bishop's fertile brain. They are all 
put here and there on rocks, sometimes hiding behind them, sometimes 
set right on top of them. 

We had hardly pulled the brake when the door was flung open with 
all the episcopal energy Bishop Blumjous is noted for. He came down 
the stairs in welcome, with his cassock flying and his small pectoral cross 
all a-flutter, glinting in the equatorial sun. 

Have tea! It was a man's household. The Bishop waved us to a huge 
room lined with books. The shelves were neatly labeled Theology, 
Missiology, Church History, Biography, etc. There were German and 
French, Italian, English and Latin books. Some were ancient tomes; 
some had shining wrappers, just published. In a magazine rack were the 
latest in American magazines, Catholic or secular, as well as African, 
Dutch, German and English magazines. 

In the center of this library was a table taken, surely, from the Mad 
Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. A white cloth decorated 



34 TANGANYIKA 

one end and an assortment of tea cups and plates was scattered on it. 
A plate of cheese, a loaf of bread on a wooden platter, tin cans of con- 
densed milk, a pot of some sort of jam. 

"Join me for teal" said the Bishop, waving his hand and chewing his 
cigar furiously. So we did. One of us poured the tea, another cut the 
bread, somebody else started on the cheese. We served others and helped 
ourselves. No ceremony at all. The Bishop in gay good humor laughed 
a hearty Dutch laugh throughout. A bearded White Father with a rosary 
around his neck joined us. Several others passed through without a 
word. "They are all on retreat," the Bishop explained. 

The delightful, informal tea which was really a hearty Dutch lunch 
ended. We went out to our miniature car and the five of us plus the 
Bishop squeezed in. The Bishop waved from right to left, pointing out 
the new Social Hall, the new Domestic Science School, the dormitories, 
the buildings meant for the School of Social Development. All are con- 
crete block, one-story, painted blue and pink and faint purple. All have 
shining yea, blazing aluminum roofs. 

"The road, Sister 1 You're going past it!" called the Bishop. To Sister's 
credit, be it said that the road was barely discernible with the naked 
eye. Just a faint track across the tumbled rocky terrain. We jostled along 
it for a while until we came to an open field. Quite a surprise in this 
country of piled-up boulders. "Stop!" 

We all got out. Waving his walking stick, Bishop Blumjous pointed 
here and there into thin air. "This is the two-story classroom building; 
over there is the dormitory; the dining room is here and the kitchen 
is right behind it. Over by that clump of bushes is the convent." 

A man of vision almost, of visions he could see it all. Then he ran 
over to a space bare of grass. "Like this!" He grasped his walking stick 
with both hands and used it as a pencil. Scoring the dry earth, he drew 
a ground plan of all the buildings and floor plans of most of them. "The 
front entrance is here. The second floor goes like this. The roof will jut 
out here to form a shaded area, etc., etc." He was showing off Rosary- 
College-to-be. 

"Date for opening? Six weeks from today. Buildings up? Well, none at 
present but you can use some I have for another project until yours 
are up." 

Here is a man of immense vitality. He feels Africa pulsing beneath 
his feet. He sees young Africa with its mouth open, thirsting for educa- 
tion, equality, status among nations, independence and God. He is ready 
with something to put into that open mouth. 

His School for Social Development is meant to train two hundred 
lay people married couples and single men and women in the 
Church's principles of social action. A two-year course taken right there 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 35 

at Nyegezi should make them spokesmen for the Church in labor unions, 
legislatures, factories and business offices. 

A few years ago, Bishop Blumjous looked over the streets of Mwanza, 
filled with Indian shops and Indian residences. He could never reach 
these people except through prayer. That's it, prayerl He brought in a 
convent of Poor Clares from India so they would pray for the Moslem 
people in his diocese. 

Rosary College is another long step forward. A Secondary School 
for girls, it should give many of them a chance to be educated women, 
able to take part in Tanganyika affairs and perhaps in the world's. 

A young country uses young people. Julius Nyerere, the leader, is 
not yet forty. Bishop Otunga when he was appointed in 1957 was thirty, 
the youngest bishop in the world. Women too can change overnight 
from school girls to national figures. For instance, Mary Kasindi, now a 
scholarship student at St. Mary's, Indiana. She was one of the first women 
to go through Standard X, equivalent to our Grade 10, one of the first 
qualified to teach Middle School, and at twenty-two she was one of 
three women in the National Legislative Council, the lawmaking body 
of Tanganyika. This is her story: 

I was born in Iringa in southern Tanganyika in 1934, and brought up 
by the Italian Consolata Sisters at the Catholic mission at Tosamaganga. 
From them I learned Italian; they still write to me in that language. Very 
young, I started at the mission primary school and had private classes in 
the afternoon. Middle School followed along easily, also at Tosamaganga. 
This is one of the oldest Middle Schools for girls in the country, established 
in 1931. 

In 1949, the year I finished Standard VIII, the end of the Middle School, 
the mission began a girls' Junior Secondary School for Standards IX and X, 
This and the government school for girls at Mbeya (Loleza) were the first 
two to open in Tanganyika. Tosamaganga had had a boys' Middle School 
for many years. There were six of us girls in the first class at Tosamaganga, 
We and the Mbeya girls were the first African girls to start what you would 
call High School. Two years later, I finished Standard X, which was as far 
as any girl could go in Tanganyika. I was the only one of our six who 
passed the Territorial Examinations. 

In January, 1951, I started at the Teacher Training School at Tosama- 
ganga. It was a boys' school and I was alone. So the Government told me 
to transfer to Mbeya to go on for Teacher Training. We were the pioneer 
class at Mbeya. I was there for three years; only nine of us finished out of 
the fifteen or so who began. How proud we were! We were the only women 
in Tanganyika qualified to teach Middle School. I was nineteen years old. 

That was 1953. The next year I taught in a new government school near 
Mwanza but I asked to return to the mission at Tosamaganga. A Training 
School for 'Grade Two teachers' had opened that is, for Standard VIII 



36 TANGANYIKA 

graduates who would qualify to teach primary schools. For two years I 
taught there. 

In 1956 and 1957, 1 served on the Legislative Council, one of three women 
in the sixty-seven-member lawmaking body of the country. The governor 
appointed me; I have often wondered how he knew anything about me. I 
was then twenty-two years old. 

In the Legislature, I realized the need for an intelligent understanding 
of government, so the following year I enrolled for a civics course at 
Makerere College in Uganda. Then I followed my first love, teaching 
feeling that in the classroom I could best serve God and my country. I went 
to the faculty of Marian College with the Maryknoll Sisters. Through them, 
I was offered a scholarship by the Holy Cross Sisters at St. Mary's, Indiana. 

Education is so new for African girls. The marvel is that they measure 
up to it so easily. Some of their facility may be due to women like old 
Sister Hildegarda. I heard her story in Mwanza and knelt behind her 
at Mass in the White Sisters' convent there. It's a stopping place for our 
Sisters who often have to come to Mwanza for shopping or dental at- 
tention or whatnot. The White Sisters, with real missioners' hospitality, 
throw open their doors to us at all times. 

I knelt in one of the back pews of the white-washed chapel at Mwanza. 
In front of me was a wheelchair; over the back of it, I saw the hunched 
shoulders and low head of Sister Hildegarda, eighty-nine years old. A 
German prayerbook with very large type was in her hands. She tried 
to read it with a magnifying glass. And it seemed to me that an aura of 
history glowed around that wheelchair. 

I learned her story from Sister Matthea who apologized for not know- 
ing it all. "I've been here only thirty-two years," she said. "So there is 
much I don't know." 

Sister Hildegarda entered the White Sisters' convent in Holland in 
1893. A year later, she went to Algiers and there was professed. Not long 
after came the call for Sisters to go to the Congo. Sister Hildegarda was 
one of the first group. In 1894 she landed at Mombasa, lowered in a 
basket from the ship to the lighter. There was a large caravan ready to 
go inland traders, missionaries, adventurers. It was mostly a walking 
job nearly a thousand miles. But they made it all the way to Baudouin- 
ville in the Belgian Congo across Lake Tanganyika. 

Sister was sick much of the way and she got no better as the years 
passed. So it was decided she should go back to Europe, and off she started 
again on the long, long safari to the coast. But they stopped at Ushirombo 
where the Sisters had an orphanage and school. And then to Mwanza. 
In 1907, Sisters were needed at Tabora, the old slave trading market 
and Hildegarda asked to go. It meant walking all the way. Even so, she 
wanted to volunteer. So off they started on foot. It took three weeks to 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 37 

go the two hundred and forty miles in 1907, for the railroad had not 
been completed on the northern branch which now runs to Mwanza. 

In Tabora the main work was ransoming slaves. The Sisters used to 
buy girls from the traders. Then, when women slaves in town saw the 
healthy fine girls the Sisters were teaching, they were incited to run 
away. And when their masters came to settle with the Sisters, the women 
pleaded, "You should not ask much for me, master. I'm very old. I have 
no teeth." It was all illicit slave traffic but the arm of the law often did 
not reach to Tabora inland. 

Often, too, the Sisters were asked to treat women in the harems of 
the Arabs. There were double locks on these enclosures. 

In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Sister Hildegarda was on 
Ukewere, a large island in Lake Victoria. Here she was in charge of a 
leprosarium. She was regarded as a doctor, so clever was she at treating 
the lepers. She was not interned as other Germans were. For twenty-five 
years she stayed on Ukewere and even now, the Sisters at Mwanza tell 
me, her old patients and the children born in the leprosarium come to 
Mwanza to see her. 

In 1939, she was too old to continue. Her legs were bothering her 
and she came back to Mwanza. However, she still insisted on walking 
into the mountains to visit people, scrambling up and down the rocks 
to huts of people she knew. A bad fall put an end to that and, after 
she was brought back to the convent, she never went out on mission 
safaris again. 

Sister Hildegarda sat hunched in her wheelchair in chapel with her 
feet up on a stool. Her old eyes tried desperately to see through cataracts, 
to read the old German prayers in the big type. Her mouth drooped 
open often as she took a little cat nap in the presence of her Lord. In 
sixty-seven years in Africa she had never gone back to Europe, I almost 
genuflected as I passed in front of her to leave the chapel. 

Mwanza is important. There is the breath of a big city there. The 
shops are full of imports soap, cosmetics and machines from the States; 
candy and cotton cloth from England; toys and gimcracks from Japan. 
In the streets you see the Indians, British, Americans and occasional 
Arabs done up with wooly turbans. They are the "gypsies" of Africa; 
they live in closed villages with high walls. Suspicion points to them 
for kidnappings, shady deals, stealthy safaris at night. 

With a population of only about fifteen thousand, Mwanza is still the 
largest city on the southern end of Lake Victoria. Here, you jump off 
for the hinterlands. Missioners pack their jeeps full for the long months 
of rainy season when roads are impassable. Here wealthy sportsmen make 
up safaris into the Serengeti Plains for wild animal hunting. Here, tour- 



38 TANGANYIKA 

ists who are "doing Africa" pick up the darling-est souvenirs. Lake 
boats discharge crew and passengers here. Local chieftains gather at 
Mwanza. Engineers from the Williamson Diamond Mines, largest in the 
world, drop in for a few days' respite and then go back to Shinyanga. 
For Mwanza, they tell you, has everything: electricity, telegraph, wire- 
less, telephone, an airfield and a water supply. It has a hotel, a good 
garage and three banks. Certainly, more than any other town in the en- 
tire Lake Province. 

We were very conscious of all we left behind in Mwanza as the Opel 
chugged along the washboard road which leads north along the Lake. 
We were to meet the Sisters from the north on "the road." That's odd, 
isn't it? You don't see every car passing on a road. What if a truck 
should hide it? What if ... Nonsense! said the Sisters from the south. 
We'll see the car a long way off. It will probably be the only one we 
will pass on "the road." What if they come by another road? That 
brought a big laugh. 

Out here one can easily see how Padre Serra founded the California 
missions in a string along Camino Real. The missions make the road 
and the road makes the missions. This single road, one hundred and 
thirty-four miles between Musoma and Mwanza, is the only road a jeep 
or car can navigate in the whole area. Foot paths and small spurs lead 
off to a mission or a mine or a cotton ginnery but when one speaks of 
"the road" one means this single artery. For miles it plays hide and seek 
with the Lake. 

Nassa is, of course, on this main road. The mission (which seems to be 
all there is to Nassa) surmounts a hill at the end of one of those little 
cut-offs. Indeed, we cut off right across the fields, following a foot path 
which eventually broadened enough to permit all four wheels to operate 
on roadway. 

At Nassa, we met a subversive agent one Father Ganley who did his 
best to deflect Maryknoll Sisters, due to come to Nassa, to his mission 
at Malili instead. It was fascinating to watch his insidious tactics. Like 
a study of crime. He had come as a visitor the night before, extending 
the hand of friendship to Father Bayless of the Nassa mission. 

When Mother Mary Colman arrived and we started out to look at 
the site for the new convent, Father Ganley readied his sniping guns. 

"Look at these paths, Mother," he said. "All rough and pebbly. Now, 
at Malili, we expect to put in cement paths if we get Sisters." 

And the view. "Lake Victoria's all right, Mother. But that's an awful 
lot of water to look at all the time. The Sisters might get complexes here. 
Malili has a few trees. Oh yes, and lots of wild animals. The Sisters could 
have roast rhinoceros every night if they wish." 

By this time his host, Father Bayless of the Nassa parish, joined in the 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 39 

game. "Look at those chickens!" he said. "All over the place. You know, 
Mother, that will be convenient for the Sisters. They can collect their 
breakfast eggs right on their front porch." 

"That's too much work for Sisters, Mother/' protested Father Ganley. 
"You can see that he has no appreciation of the blessing he would have 
with Sisters. In Malili we have the chickens trained. They come into the 
kitchen and lay eggs right in the frying pan." 

Mother laughed. "You win the prize for tall stories, Father," she said. 
"But Nassa wins the Sisters." 

At Nassa, and again at Tarime later on, we came across the question 
of building in Africa. Both places were to open in three weeks. Yet 
Mother was shown several sites to select from and there was desultory 
talk about what floor plan the houses would follow. Evidently, no one 
was pressed for time. So Mother said to Sister Margaret Rose, in charge 
of the work in Africa, 

"Sister, we can't let the Sisters go to either place before their house is 
built." 

"Oh, no, Mother." 

"And we can't let the girls come before there is an adequate kitchen 
set up and dormitories, as well as classrooms." 

"Of course, Mother." 

"But, so far as I can see, nothing has been started yet." 

"Well, we have three weeks." 

"Three weeks! What is that when you intend to build?" 

Sister Margaret Rose laughed easily. "You don't understand Africa, 
Mother. Out here buildings go up in a week. Father gets some men to 
come in in the morning and they make mud bricks before evening. Next 
day, you have your building put up. After that, it's just a matter of 
whitewash and making partitions and such. Don't worry. We'll be ready." 

And they were. 

If building is fast, travel is slow. And human weaknesses make it 
exasperating as well. One learns to keep his temper well in hand. Trail- 
ing along a road out there, we were stopped by an elderly Englishman in 
Bermuda shorts. He stood beside his car on the roadside. 

"I say, can you spare a bit of oil?" he said. 

Sister started to fuss around in the back of our station wagon but we 
had no extra oil. 

"So sorry to trouble you!" the gentleman exclaimed. "Please don't 
bother. Someone might be along soon. You see, I had the car in the 
garage and had all the oil drained. But the boy forgot to put any new 
oil in." 

"How did you get this far?" Sister asked. 

"That's it, I shouldn't have. But I never thought to look at the 



40 TANGANYIKA 

thermometer until it was too late. Now never mind about me, Sisters. 
Someone will surely come/' 

We had to go on. But once we got to our destination thirty miles 
further on, Sister got an extra can of oil and went back in the gather- 
ing dusk to see if our friend was still there. Sure enough, he had waited 
for hours and no one had come. 

The ferries slow up traffic considerably in Tanganyika's northwest. As 
we approached one river, the Sisters groaned that it might mean a four 
hour delay. The river itself was only about forty feet wide, but the 
wretched little ferry could take only one car at a time. You waited your 
turn that was all. However we found wonder of wonders! a bridge 
of young trees had been constructed. We zipped across in no time. 

The ferry across Mara Bay in Lake Victoria is a matter of seven men 
sitting on boards across a low gutter, pulling on a wire cable with their 
bare hands. They can take two cars or one bus at a time and the trip 
back and forth takes about forty-five minutes. If there are four cars lined 
up ahead of you, you can count on twiddling your thumbs for an hour 
and a half. There were two buses and three cars ahead of us, as we 
drove up to the landing place. We could amuse ourselves for three hours 
as we waited. 

The other car which was to share the ferry with us, was a Land Rover 
midget pick-up truck. All of these people were in it: four girls, an older 
woman, an African man, two African boys, and three Indian men, one 
quite old, who restrained his voluminous beard by a hair net. These 
eleven had gone to Nairobi from Shiny anga, a distance of at least five 
hundred miles over fantastic roads, and were now returning again. What 
would make them go through that kind of Purgatory? A wedding in the 
family. They had been on the way for three days and expected to spend 
three more before they reached home. 

As we waited, they asked to borrow our pump. We unpacked the trunk 
of our car and lent them the pump. They used it. We put it back and 
repacked our trunk. "Please, may we borrow a jack?" Unpacking. Find- 
ing. Giving. Using. Returning. Repacking. "Maybe we should check the 
batteries. Have you a hydrometer?" 

I would have refused out of sheer exasperation. But Sister Marie Wil- 
liam turned on him her nicest smile. Without even a grunt, she got out 
and unpacked again. 

At last the ferry was ready for us. We slid down the muddy shore 
and wobbled on board. The Land Rover got on too, the passengers en- 
joying their last bit of fresh air. On the other side, the eleven of them 
crowded into the dark interior of the little pick-up truck. 

You would not believe it, but there are cars that even the natives are 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 41 

ashamed of. We have an ancient Citroen in which Sister Noreen Marie 
drives three miles to Musoma every day for her religion classes or to do 
shopping. Its springs are so good that when you sit on the front seat, it 
goes up and down like a bundle of laundry at the end of a spring scale. 
Every pebble on the road gives you that air-borne feeling. The paint- 
job, however, leaves much to be desired. Sister Noreen Marie took a 
young student to Musoma in it to see a doctor. In the meantime, she did 
some shopping. When she got out of the store she found the car with 
apparently nobody in it. Then she found the student hiding under the 
steering wheel, ashamed to be seen in the venerable Citroen. 

Beginnings are joyous, people say. Something new happens every day. 
"Firsts" are all over the place. Tanganyika is in that stage now. They 
have just attained independence. They were never a nation before; now 
they are. They are to open their first school of college level soon. The 
Peace Corps is to survey roads; they never had good roads before. One 
feels that he is getting in on the ground floor of history. 

You can imagine what a commotion St. Benedict stirred up, when 
he had the fantastic idea of men living together in community to help 
themselves and others to follow Christ more closelyl No one could see 
then the blessings which would come to Europe from the monasteries he 
founded the books preserved, the fields properly tilled, learning and 
culture saved from the flood of barbarism. 

Similarly, you cannot blame these new Catholics for objecting when 
their daughters say they wish to become Sisters of the Immaculate Heart. 
Who ever heard of such a thing? After all, a girl in the family may mean 
thirty or forty cows in dowry. If she goes off to the convent, where is 
Papa going to get cows to pay for her brother's bride? 

In the novitiate at Makoko, where these Sisters are trained in religious 
life, we hear and see marvellous tales of the power of God's grace. What 
these girls will go through to keep a vocation is a powerful lesson. I 
know I would have crumpled up before such opposition. 

The Immaculate Heart Sisters began their training in 1948. When 
two Maryknoll Sisters arrived at Kowak, they found ten girls waiting for 
them. One was Ethelida. This is her story: 

She was born in a "village," that is, a compound where one man and 
several wives live in a number of circular mud huts around the corral 
where they keep their animals at night. The family was up-and-coming; 
they decided to send one of their girls to school with the White Sisters 
near Mwanza. Ethelida was about four at the time. When her sister 
returned home several years later, she heard all about the White Sisters. 

"I will be a Sister, too/' she said. 

It was only a childish idea, people thought. She had never seen one 



42 TANGANYIKA 

and there seemed little chance that she ever would. But when Ethelida 
was old enough for marriage, she flatly refused. Beaten, whipped, dragged 
around and even cajoled, she still said she wanted to be a Sister, 

"This is too much of a good thing/' Papa decided and turned on the 
heat. Ethelida ran away to Kowak and asked the priest for refuge. The 
priest, too, thought the child wanted to get away from persecution at 
home and the mood would pass. There were a number of women living 
near the mission; they were widows who would be given out to other 
men if they stayed in their own tribes. One of these was Marsella who 
is a whole history in herself. The Kowak priest asked Marsella to take 
care of Ethelida until she gave up the impossible dream and went back 
home. 

It was longer than Father thought. The girl worked hard around the 
mission, did her best, never complained, was angelic to Marsella and 
the other women. Five years passed. Then the White Sisters at Mwanza 
opened a novitiate for African girls. Joyfully, Ethelida packed her be- 
longings and walked three hundred miles to knock on the convent door. 

For a time everything went well. She passed several years as a novice 
and pronounced her vows. But through some technicality, the congrega- 
tion did not have a proper foundation in canon law. They were told to 
disband. This threw Ethelida back to Kowak, no more a Sister than if 
she had never left it. 

By this time, however, the Maryknoll Fathers had taken over the 
parish. They told the disheartened girl that they intended to have a 
native sisterhood. If she wanted to wait around a little, Maryknoll Sisters 
might be coming to get it started. Ethelida waited. She was one of the 
ten who were there in 1948. During this time, her family woke up to 
the possibility that they might get her back. Her mother was ingenious; 
she stood outside the gate and called out for hours on end, "Gome home! 
Come home!" Several suitors came to within a few miles of the convent 
and sent runners with love letters. They offered so many cows that Papa 
frothed at the mouth. But Ethelida went quietly on with her far from 
glamorous work. In 1953, she took the first real step into religious life; 
she was a postulant. Three years later, she pronounced her first vows. 
After fifteen years of trying, she was at last a Sister. 

A big obstacle for most African girls is the education required. Im- 
maculate Heart candidates must be at least Middle School graduates. 
Their chief work will be teaching; their community language is English. 
They must know, besides, Kiswahili and their own tribal dialect. If we 
were to wait until girls with vocations could get through Middle School, 
or until Middle School graduates got a vocation, we would wait a long 
time. So at Makoko, we have a Middle School which is open only to 
girls who think they want to be Immaculate Heart Sisters. Not all will 



YOUNG NATION, YOUNG LEADERS 43 

persevere through the many stages before Profession, but a number will 
go on to serve God in their own diocese of Musoma. 

Wonderful to see the happy spirit in these dark-skinned Sisters! Al- 
though so much in the world's estimation separates us from them, I felt 
at home immediately in their neat little convent at Makoko. They be- 
gan teasing Mother to leave one of the Maryknoll Sisters with them. 
"You are so many," they reasoned. "We are just new and have so few 
Sisters." 

"Well/' said Mother, "I need all my Sisters but if you want one I can 
spare Sister Maria del Rey best. How many cows are you ready to pay 
for her?" 

They were disappointed, I could see. They had hoped for a sprightly 
young Sister. At last they came up with a decision. 

"We haven't any cows, Mother, to pay for her. But we have two 
ducks. Only, we would want you to give one duck back to us for Christ- 
mas dinner." 

I have been insulted in my time, but never sold so cheap. A ten-cow 
bride was a princess beside me. Two ducks, and one had to be given back 
for Christmas dinner! I reminded Mother that a duck is not much use 
carrying hand-luggage into planes and that she had far too much of it 
to leave me behind. For I am good as a porter. So the deal was off. 

Immaculate Heart Sisters already staff one school in the diocese a 
Primary School at Nyegina. While we were there, a second convent was 
opened. This was at Zanaki, one of those spurs off "the road." The parish 
was out in force, oh-ing and ah-ing at the tidy convent where each Sister 
had her own small cell. The Bishop was there, so were the pastor, cate- 
chist, parishioners, school children and many of the breed known as In- 
nocent Bystanders. It was a red letter day for Zanaki. Also for the Im- 
maculate Heart Sisters, for they will be on their own at Zanaki. 

The Bishop drove down in a jeep from Musoma, disappeared into the 
rectory a moment and reappeared shining in his episcopal dignity. Men 
of the parish had erected a sort of annex to the church, really just a 
framework covered with leafy branches to fend off the sun; Zanaki is 
about 1% degrees below the equator. Early morning saw the footpaths 
for miles around, alive with family groups trudging to Zanaki. Africans 
enjoy a party so much they don't mind spending days to get there. As, 
for instance, our friends at the ferry who thought nothing of Purgatory 
for two weeks in a pickup truck to attend a family wedding in Nairobi. 

There was a Pontifical Mass and a program and speeches. At the end 
of it all, Sister Consolata, brand new Superior of a brand new convent 
of a brand new religious congregation, stood up in her sweet simplicity 
and thanked everybody of the parish. Her mother was there, a tall thin 
African woman. Years ago, when there was only one church in all of 



44 TANGANYIKA 

North Mara, she had brought her children to Mass over the plains. And 
now there was her daughter, in the grey cotton robes o an Immaculate 
Heart Sister, standing up to thank people like her mother. The tall 
spare woman pulled at her pipe in deep satisfaction. 
Every missioner feels the same. 



JL( 4 )J? Lake People 



IF you took equatorial Africa and laid it flat across the 
United States, putting a thumbtack through Dar es Salaam to peg it to 
Washington, D.C., you would find that the western coast of Africa would 
stretch approximately from Helena, Montana, through the Great Salt 
Lake and down to Phoenix, Arizona. 

The country of Tanganyika would cover most of the eastern States. 
The southern border would be on the line which divides Virginia and 
Kentucky on the north from North Carolina and Tennessee on the south. 
The northern border of Tanganyika on the north would come on a 
diagonal from New York to Saulte Ste. Marie in northern Michigan. 
Lake Tanganyika on the west would be some place around Chicago, and 
Detroit would fall upon and smother Mwanza, the metropolis of 
15,000 on the southern end of Lake Victoria. 

The Great Lakes of the United States and of Africa divide the honors 
of the world between them. At 31,000 square miles Lake Superior is 
the largest body of fresh water in the world; Lake Victoria is runner-up 
at 26,000. Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are third and fourth; Lake 
Tanganyika is fifth. Lake Nyassa and Lake Erie are just about the same 
size; Lake Ontario is not far behind. 

So, in Tanganyika when people talk about "the Great Lakes/' they 
have in mind just about the same size of lakes, at just about the same 
distance from the coastal cities, as our Great Lakes. If you can imagine 
that Dar es Salaam with its population of 100,000 is New York around 
1785, just after the United States became independent, then perhaps you 
can imagine what the area around Detroit was like at that time. It would 
give you some idea of the contrast between Dar es Salaam and the "up- 
country" section around North Mara and Musoma today, just after 
Tanganyika has emerged as a nation on its own. 

Most of our missions are wedged up in this corner of North Mara and 
Musoma districts. Just across the border are the famous "White High- 



LAKE PEOPLE 45 

lands" of Kenya where in the Mau Mau trouble the Africans expressed 
their feelings against white settlers. 

The eastern coast of Tanganyika has been exposed to civilizations al- 
most as long as there have been civilizations to be exposed to. The mon- 
soons, blowing all winter, brought adventurers from Arabia and India, 
and blew them back home in the summer. As early as 1000 B.C. traders 
came from India, Egypt, Arabia, Assyria, and Persia. A Greek merchant 
found the trade in full swing when he ventured down the coast of Africa 
around 150 B.C. 

The fortified towns they put up in Tanganyika still survive to some 
extent. The greatest was Kilwa. An Arabian chronicler traces it from 
about 900 until the Portuguese took it early in the 1500*8. During that 
time, Kilwa built up quite a little empire, subduing other Arabian and 
even Persian settlements on the coast. It gained a foothold on what is 
now Somaliland^ Southern Rhodesia, Mozambique, and eventually Zanzi- 
bar. Chinese traders, too, hitched a ride on the monsoons, and came at 
least as far south as Malindi. Their trading pieces went further. Chinese 
coins and pottery dating back to A.D. 713 have been found on the coast. 
There is a record, too, of a giraffe sent as a gift to the Emperor of China 
in 1414. Just what the Emperor thought of the giraffe and what the 
giraffe thought of the Emperor have not been recorded. Two treasures 
of psychology lost! 

For well over 2,500 years, then, Asian traders used Tanganyika as a 
seemingly inexhaustible mine for gold, ambergris, rhinoceros horn, ivory, 
tortoise shell and slaves. They brought glass, cloth and metal. They 
planted coconut and sugar cane. 

Around 1500, the Portuguese took Kilwa. Their hold was fast and 
loose for several centuries, leaving the coast open to raids by Arabs, Turk- 
ish pirates, Sultans of other African towns, French slave traders, and 
even a cannibal tribe, the Zimba, who attacked from the land side. The 
British too were prowling up and down the coast. The Germans got 
Tanganyika in 1885 and named it German East Africa. There is a story 
that the boundary between Kenya and Tanganyika was supposed to 
run due south of Kilimanjaro, the highest and most beautiful peak in 
Africa, so that the mountain would belong to Kenya. However, Queen 
Victoria was grandmother of the Kaiser of Germany and she gave him 
Kilimanjaro for a birthday present. If the original line had been fol- 
lowed, most of the Maryknoll missions would be in Kenya. After World 
War I, Tanganyika became a British colony; after World War II, it was a 
mandate of the United Nations entrusted to Great Britain. 

Except for very few reports, one made several centuries before Christ, 
nothing was known of the interior of what is now Tanganyika until 
1850. Germans and Arabians penetrated inland at that time. Just how 



46 



TANGANYIKA 



mixed up they were is shown by the famous "slug map," which shows 
a huge lake, shaped like a slug, in the center of Africa. It is all the great 
lakes rolled into one. The map wasn't very accurate but it sparked the 
Great African Grab. By 1914, England, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, 
Spain and Belgium had each its own bailiwick in Africa. Only two small 
nations were independent Ethiopia and Liberia. 

With this background, it is easy to see how Mohammedanism got a 
very early start in Africa. Small wonder that most Africans, especially 
those in towns, wear the red fez of Arabia. Christianity in the interior 
is less than eighty years old even in Uganda, where Catholic missions 
began. In the Maryknoll section, less than thirty. The first mission in 
North Mara was in 1933 when a White Father and Brother set up the 
cross at Butili. How Christian do you suppose the Germans were thirty 
years after St. Boniface set foot on the land? Or the Slavs when Cyril 
and Methodius were there just thirty years? Or the Irish when St. Patrick 
was getting his first white hairs? Growth is slow but steady. As old 
Elizabetta said at Kowak, "When I was a new Christian ten years ago 
there were only three or four bicycles outside of church on Sunday. Now 
we have bicycle racks for them stretching all across the church front." 

Even so, there are many many more bicycles at the "pombe market" 
on Saturday night. This is a drinking party of county-wide proportions. 
In the center of any fair-sized town, twenty-five 5O-gallon drums of potent 
liquor are set up in an open square known as the "Kulabu," taken from 
the English "club." Drinking couples lounge around in doorways, up 
against telephone poles and street lights, or lie on the ground. The 
African has served in enough Europeans' clubs to know what happens 
there. So he goes one better at his kulabu. 

They also go us one better in their expressions of joy at Baptism. 
Out at Rosana one afternoon, the studious quiet was shattered by a 
mighty shout. Thirty adults and heaven alone knows how many children 
had passed their examinations for Baptism; also twenty children were 
to make their First Communion. What better way is there known to 
man to show how happy he is, than to break branches off the trees, toss 
them about, shout, sing, dance and leap? Old Konstansia took the lead. 
She sang out, "We will be baptized. We will be children of God." Every- 
one repeated this and gave a long drawn out "ay-ay-ay 1" up three notes 
and down three notes. Konstansia carried on; "Father has been good; 
he has taught us well." Again the repeat and the ay-ay-ay! 

The dancing went with it; sometimes a simple hop, kick, slide. Some- 
times a high leap and a shake of the shoulders. Many quivered the flesh 
on their shoulders like the wind ruffling water. The sea of laughing faces, 
moving bodies and green waving branches gave a feeling of joy you 
never find anywhere else. 



LAKE PEOPLE 47 

Konstansia chanted a compact history of everything that had happened 
during the six months her group had studied at the mission. The Sisters 
did so and so; Federiko's father died but we got him to heaven too. Re- 
member the hard questions Father asked? Yes, and the good reply of 
Francisco 1 

The ecstatic catechumens danced by Father's office, stopped at the 
convent and then went shouting, singing, leaping down the road to 
Edward the catechises neat grass-roofed house. 

I often thought in Africa of that saint who was being hauled off to 
prison when he met his deacon, St. Lawrence. The deacon protested, 
"Where are you going without me? Let me go to prison with you." But 
the older saint replied, "Your turn is coming. Sterner trials await you/* 

Stern trials await these new Christians. It isn't easy to be a Christian 
in an African village, hemmed in on every side by pagan rites. We have 
four tribes in our section, each one with its own customs and language. 
And none of them very fond of the other tribes. Mission stations are only 
a few hours apart, but going from one to another means changing lan- 
guage, dress and custom. 

Nyegina is the most southern of these up-country missions. Three miles 
from Lake Victoria, it is still parched for water. Sister Elizabeth Grace 
was getting desperate as she saw the stored rain water dwindle to four 
inches, three inches, two inches in the tank. She has a dispensary at 
Nyegina. Once the water was gone, she would have to hire a boy to go 1% 
miles to a water hole where women wash clothes, ducks swim, cows drink 
and children bathe. He would carry the water in debbies slung on either 
side of his donkey. That water would have to be boiled, strained, filtered 
and cooled before it could be used in the dispensary or even in the con- 
vent. Such a prospect would make braver hearts quail. Believe me, her 
prayers for rain were fervent. 

Water is the problem even to villages within a stone's throw of the 
second biggest lake in the world. When one sees the "tanks" or reservoirs 
built by the ancient people of Ceylon, and the rice terraces of the Ifugao 
tribe in the Philippines, it is plain that Africa has a long way to go. A 
common effort for mutual benefit is a new idea; they are beginning now 
to make small dams for irrigation. Cooperation on the family level is 
good, however. 

I lay on my downy couch in Nyegina, one midnight, and heard right 
outside my window the crunching of gravel and the slide of calloused 
feet. Many feet. Men were talking quietly; women muttering. I got up 
and looked. Then I slipped on my clothes and went out, for I could see 
Sister Elizabeth Grace in her nurse's uniform in the crowd. 

In the moonlight, a party of about twenty Africans was milling around 
in our small back yard. They had brought a young woman for treatment. 



48 TANGANYIKA 

For ambulance, they had fixed up a contraption two bicycles roped to- 
gether with short sticks so as to make a four-wheeled frame. A canvas 
folding chair was slung between the bicycles and on this was the pa- 
tient. 

Two men lifted her off the chair and laid her on the ground. Sister 
Elizabeth Grace bent over her. Then she straightened and called, 
"Gabriellir A man detached himself from the shadowy figures crouched 
by the tree. 

"Is she your wife, Gabrielli?" Sister asked. 

"No, Seesta. She is my child." 

Sister let it pass. Gabrielli is a Christian in dubious standing. He was 
baptized in danger of death some years ago and has five wives now. 
Whether this was one of them or just a woman in this village, no one 
knows. The expression "my child" might mean anything. 

Sister went to the convent, got an injection and gave it to the patient. 
She scolded Gabrielli; this was the second time within three weeks he 
had brought in a patient at midnight when she had been sick for many 
days. The woman, with an infection following delivery six days before, 
needed help long before this. The baby was dead, of course. In this 
area, eighty percent of the babies die before they are five years old. 

Nyegina to Kowak is two or three hours by washboard road. You are 
out of Sukuma territory and into the Luo grounds. As we approached 
Kowak, Sister Margaret Rose became strangely exhilarated. Everything 
began to improve the air, the mountains, the people, the road, the 
scenery. Even Mother and I took on a new glow. When we rounded 
Lolia, the mountain which hides Kowak from the vulgar world's view, 
"Sister Margarose" (as she is called out here) burst into lyric poetry. 
Kowak, we gathered, was God's gift to a blighted world, the serenest gem 
of all Africa's limpid diamonds, the proudest feather in the continent's 
crown of ostrich plumes. 

We did not interrupt. After all, Sister had started our African missions 
at Kowak thirteen years before. She saw this one small mission station 
of four Sisters in a school and dispensary grow to eight missions with 
five schools, four dispensaries, a hospital and a native novitiate. She loved 
Kowak, 

The Luos are "The Strangers." They are not Bantu like the rest of 
men in Tanganyika, but Nilotic. They spilled over from Kenya and 
even further north from the Nile regions. The Luo is energetic and in- 
telligent. His tribe is fast rising in the country. 

The ancient habit of the Luo is to extract the six lower teeth, "Ex- 
tract" is not the right word. They are dug out with an ice pick when 
the child is about ten years old. Very often youngsters come to the dis- 
pensary with pus in the sockets. A little girl, playing in the school yard 



LAKE PEOPLE 49 

at recess, fell and started bleeding. She almost died before Sister could 
stop the flow. 

The reasons for undergoing all that pain are obvious. The first is that 
Luos say you cannot pronounce the Luo language correctly with a full 
set of lower teeth. The second was expressed by a young man in the 
dispensary with a bad case of infected teeth. "If I go to Kenya and get 
killed in a fight, how will anyone know I am a Luo unless my teeth are 
out?" 

The convent at Kowak is the usual African type: Pressure lamps, 
wood stove, candles, bucket for shower, and kerosene iron. The bathtub 
is purely for ornament at present, but gives promise of running water 
in the future. Kowak holds a treasure of history. It's a stove left over 
from the previous century which served gloriously in a mission for the 
White Fathers years ago. Now retired from active duty, it has yet an 
honored place in the kitchen. The name of this cast iron stove is MOD- 
ERN MISTRESS. 

Mail comes to the post office at Tarime twenty-five miles away. Any 
Maryknoll priest, Sister or Brother near Tarime is commissioned to pick 
up the mail for anybody he is likely to see within the next week. 

The roof of our convent is anchored with cement blocks tied to heavy 
wire. They keep it from wandering off too far in a heavy blow. The 
kitchen roof blew off last Palm Sunday while everyone was at church. 
Returning home, Sister James Elizabeth saw a roof in the tall grass and 
thought to herself, "Somebody must be building a low house over there." 
Then she saw her own roofless kitchen. 

The five Sisters at Kowak don't have much time to worry about such 
things. They have a clinic, a small hospital and a parish, so to speak, to 
keep going. The parish work is varied but it all boils down to teaching 
the people how to lead a Christian life. One of the most powerful means 
to clo this is the Legion of Mary. I stepped over into one of Sister 
Catherine Cecilia's Legion meetings after Mass one Sunday. To tell the 
truth, I just followed a number of interesting characters and found them 
heading toward a mud hut near the church. They ducked inside. So did I. 

It was hard, at first, to see. Then I found myself facing three very 
serious men standing behind a bare table on which were a statue of the 
Blessed Virgin, the Legion insignia, two candles and flowers in a tin can. 
The three men dropped to their knees. A noise made me look around. 
Crowding in the doorway and spreading around the edges of the circular 
hut came many men and women about thirty of them in all. They too 
knelt down on the mud floor and the rosary began. 

At the finish, the officers took their places at the table and the rest of 
us sat down on the low seat which ran like a baseboard around the entire 
hut. Reports began: 



50 TANGANYIKA 

"I went to the village of a lapsed Catholic and talked to him. He will 
come to Mass next Sunday but does not promise to continue/ 1 

"I tried to get my brother to permit his daughter to be a Sister/' 

Marriage cases usually could not report much success. 

Michael, the president, is quite a character. For one thing, he wears 
red shoelaces in his black shoes. For another, he runs a small "duka" 
or trading post near the mission. Most dukas are owned by Arabs or 
Indians. I took a look at the shelves in his store, not more than 10 by 
12 ft. in area. He has for sale Epsom salts, chewing gum, shoe polish 
(where practically nobody wears shoes), dress goods, kangas, ploughshares 
of iron, knives that could fell a forest giant, candy in tins from England, 
rubber boots in red and yellow and brand new "rungu." These last are 
walking sticks and weapons combined. A large knob at the end is lethal. 
Sister Agnes Jude once saw a man throw a rungu at a snake thirty 
feet away and smash it right in two. 

Michael is also quite a seamstress. He operates the one sewing machine 
in the area. As president of Kowak' s Legion of Mary, he attended a 
meeting of district officers at Musoma. "On their table/' he told Sister 
Catherine Cecilia, "they had a cloth beneath the statue of Our Lady. 
We at Kowak can do no less for her. If the Legionnaires buy the cloth, 
I will run it up free on my sewing machine." Thus does civilization 
spread! 

At Kowak is a small hospital only a long one-story building of cement 
block with galvanized iron roof. Several smaller buildings and a few huts 
are annexes. But it is a beacon of hope for miles around. Sister Marian 
Jan, a doctor, and three Sister-nurses keep their eyes on twenty or so 
patients who rejoice in wearing the standard "hospital gown," a bright 
red kanga. A more cheerful outfit I cannot imagine. 

Most of the cheer comes from the obstetrics ward. Twelve beds and 
twelve bassinets are here. One baby a day is born. Not a spectacular num- 
ber but when you consider that nearly all the babies live and the mothers 
are spared complications which could last a long time, then one a day 
is "nice going" in this sparsely settled country. 

"Our emphasis is on an attempt to give some knowledge of hygiene to 
these mothers: what to eat, how to recognize symptoms of ordinary ill- 
nesses, clean habits for themselves and the baby. It's all so elementary 
to us and yet brand new to them," Sister Marian Jan says. "We have a 
weekly class for pregnant women and at delivery time they graduate 
from this to another class held on well-baby clinic days. They seem to 
like the classes. At least they come/' 

In spite of the names wished upon them, the babies are content as 
they lie in their mothers' arms or on a rag in the corner. Some circum- 
stance of the birth decides the infant's name. Undiak was born when 



LAKE PEOPLE 51 

a hyena howled; Indwi, when a lion was around; Mdege, while an air- 
plane passed overhead. Kungu came into the world during a scourge of 
caterpillars; poor little Hittra, during Hitler's rise to power. A little 
fellow named Motocaa came by the name because his mother was picked 
up on the road and taken to our hospital in the mission's motorcar. 
Twins are invariably Apio for "I came first" and Odongo for "I de- 
layed." 

On the other side of the hospital are a variety of illnesses some of 
them are practically unknown in the States chronic malaria, persistent 
worm infestations, severe avitaminosis, extensive and long-lasting tropical 
ulcers, leprosy and even several cases of African sleeping sickness, once 
thought to be eradicated in the Kowak area. 

In a separate house is the clinic where seventy to one hundred patients 
come every morning. Those from a great distance who need treatment 
every day can live in several huts on the mission property. Besides the 
Sisters, a fairly good staff has been built up through the years. One 
young lad has been trained to wash and care for patients with sores and 
cuts; another keeps the records on intravenous injections. The laboratory 
technician is a Standard VIII graduate whom the Sisters have trained. 

I spent a routine morning in the clinic routine for everybody but 
me. A man came in with his face all but torn off by a leopard; a boy 
had been bitten by a snake. 

Sister Marian Jan serves as a dentist in a pinch. Brother Damien of 
Maryknoll came in from Tarime, twenty-five miles away, with an abscess 
and big cavity. Sister did what she could and filled the tooth with 
amalgam until he could get to Nairobi for real attention. It was old 
amalgam and crumbled. Brother went to Nairobi, saw a dentist and came 
home with a filling. However, within a week or so, it fell out. Sister 
was in despair. "Our amalgam is just no good, Brother. It's too old," 
she said. 

"I'm a provident fellow," said Brother. "I bought some amalgam in 
Nairobi. See? I have my filling in my pocket." 

One noon, an old woman brought in her grandson, a baby seriously 
ill. The abdomen was distended. Preliminary treatment for several hours 
relieved the condition a little but it was obvious that the baby needed 
hospital care. A messenger went to Musoma Hospital about sixty miles 
away to let them know this baby would be coming in the next morning. 
The next morning at 8 A.M. a young girl at the mission was sent along 
to help carry the old woman's bundles. The Sisters took her to the main 
road four miles away, so that she could get a bus to Musoma. The first 
two passed; they were too full to stop. The third came along slowly. That 
also would not stop but the driver called out to the old woman as he 
crawled by, "This bus is breaking down; I can't stop." 



52 TANGANYIKA 

At noon, the Sisters went to check on the situation at the roadside. 
This sort of thing had happened before. The old woman, the girl and 
the baby were still there in the blazing sun. They brought them back to 
the clinic, and worked on the baby most of the afternoon. Then they 
borrowed the Father's jalopy and, wondering how it held together, 
they drove the little group to Musoma. Luck this time was with them, 
for they managed to get on the very last trip the ferry made that day. 

Just about everybody you see at Kowak has a story. Sister Margaret 
Rose and I went down to the small houses near the road to visit Marsella. 
Back in 1948, when the Sisters were brand new in Luo-district, Marsella 
was a mainstay in language and customs. Anytime they were puzzled, 
old Marsella could straighten them out. 

She was old even then and a firm Christian. In the old days, she was 
wife of a chief. When he died, she was supposed to marry his brother. 
He was married already, so she refused. In the ensuing ruckus, Marsella 
fled to the mission and has been there ever since. Her son Paul came 
to her some years later; he was taught to read and write. Paul's children 
are brilliant. In his Cambridge exams after High School, Christiani 
passed first in all of East Africa. The two girls, Bertha and Gertrudis, are 
in Middle School now, hoping to be Immaculate Heart Sisters. 

Marsella stays in bed most of the time. Her round hut of mud brick 
is immaculate, although quite dark. Sister Margaret Rose sat on the 
bed and held Marsella's hand and the two of them talked long in Luo. 
I perched myself on a stool covered with cowskin and looked around. 
Then I took a little notebook. A hearty laugh came from the bed. Sister 
Margaret Rose said, 

"Marsella just remarked, 'Look at that clever Wazungu (European)! 
She can write!' " 

"What does she think you are?" I asked. 

"Me?" asked Sister. "Marsella forgets that I'm white. To her, I'm just 
another African like herself." 

Which means that Sister has made the grade as a missioner. 

At Kowak, they still talk about the night they showed St. Joseph the 
door. Before the Feast of the Sacred Heart all the Sisters went to church 
for a Holy Hour at midnight. There was a character around the mission 
known as Wanga perhaps a little less than brilliant. Coming home 
from the Holy Hour Sister Marie William saw everything from the 
convent piled in a heap outside. She proceeded cautiously inside and 
there, standing in the bright moonlight, was Wanga dressed in a cloth 
he had pulled off the table. A brown paper bag was upside down on his 
head. He folded his arms and viewed her imperiously. 

"Get out, Wanga," Sister said in a tone that meant business. "Leave 
this house." 



LAKE PEOPLE 53 

Wanga was unmoved. "You can't talk to me like that," he said. "I'm 
St. Joseph." Sister thought quickly. 

"St. Joseph/' she said nicely, "Blessed Mother is outside and is calling 
for you." 

"Oh, is she?" asked St. Joseph. "Where is she?" 

"Right out here," as she led him forth. 

Once on the porch, St. Joseph's eye caught the pile of things. "This is 
my house," said St. Joseph. "You don't take care of the place. I found 
all this junk in the rooms." 

Another day, Sister Agnes Jude and I traveled up a hilly footpath 
to visit Magdalena. As a concession to my advancing years, she stopped 
now and then to look back on the panorama of yellowing grass spread 
behind us. One would think that no human being lived there; grass 
roofs blended perfectly with the fields. We passed a high hedge of ojuok, 
a type of euphorbia, which is planted as a sort of fence around private 
property. 

"This was Magdalena's old Village/ " Sister explained as we passed 
it. "Her mother-in-law died here last year, so the family had to move 
away. They built another village further along this path." 

There was a small, young hedge around the new village. Even so, 
we could not see through it, much less step through or over it. We 
walked almost all around it before we found the opening. Even then, 
we were not admitted right into the open space. An inner wall of 
euphorbia made a narrow corridor first. Silvanus and Magdalena want 
their visitors one by one; that was plain. 

In spite of these precautions, it was a friendly place. We emerged 
into a circle of huts. The largest one was directly opposite the opening; 
this was Silvanus* and Magdalena's. Another hut was the family dining 
room; another the kitchen; still another was for Taddeo their son, now 
a Middle School boy. Ordinarily he boards at his school, some distance 
away. In the usual village, other wives would occupy huts in the circle. 

A little vegetable patch was at one side, with flowers here and there 
to give color. In the center was the corral for the family cows. At night 
they are brought in and kept there. 

Three women were busy pounding cassava on a pile of stones at one 
side. None of them was Magdalena. "She has the best stones anywhere 
around," one of the women told us. "So we bring our cassava over here 
to pound." They were ready to leave for the day; they left the roots 
covered with leaves and weighted down with rocks. 

"Where did those women come from?" I asked. 

"Oh, maybe a couple of miles away in this or that direction," Sister 
replied waving vaguely. "It's not unlike the old sewing bees at home. 
They gather at some woman's village and have a good day's gossip. 



54 TANGANYIKA 

It doesn't matter if the hostess is present or not. See? Magdalena walked 
off and left them." 

A little girl was sitting on the doorstep of one of the locked and empty 
huts. She had a small pan in her hand neatly covered with leaves. She 
showed it to us meat she was to give to Magdalena. 

We had just about given up hope when Magdalena herself came 
through the opening. She took the meat from the child and crossed the 
court to greet us, with a wide grin. Like all Luos, her six front teeth 
were missing from the lower jaw; this made her upper teeth protrude. 
She hastened to fish out a bright new key from her clothes and unlock 
the padlock to the main house. 

It was a lovely house. Everything simple and in order arranged around 
a center pole. I had not expected a bed but a big wooden frame occupied 
almost half the circular room. The weapons were handy. A spear was 
stuck in the roof, several large knives like machetes were close, and a 
rungu leaned up against the wall. Many enameled iron basins hung 
from sisal poles which formed the conical roof. They contained supplies 
cassava, dried vegetables, gourds, seeds. Magdalena brought down one; 
in it were her sewing supplies needle, thread, patching cloth, etc. 

Magdalena has a story, too. Twenty years ago, she was the fourth or 
fifth wife of a chieftain near Shirati. She wanted to be a Catholic so she 
ran away. There was a big to-do about the cows for her dowry, but she 
stuck to her guns. She married Silvanus at the mission. It is a real sorrow 
to them that they have only one child, Taddeo. 

Coming home down the hill we saw two men dragging a woman be- 
tween them along the mission road. Her screams re-echoed through the 
countryside. But she did not seem to be protesting, just someone in 
terrible pain. We reached the mission gate together* When she saw us, 
the woman fell to the ground and rolled up into a ball. With this, Sister 
Marian Jan hurried out from the convent. She spoke to the men, stand- 
ing helplessly by, and they picked up the woman and carried her to the 
hospital, rolled up just as she was. It was a delivery case. The men had 
found her some distance down the road and like Good Samaritans had 
helped her along. 

The next morning, I thought I'd look in on this unfortunate woman. 
In the ward, her bed was empty. I feared she might have died. But no, 
she was outside with the baby in her arms posing for a picture with 
Sister Marian Jan, a bundle of smiles. Then she came into the hospital, 
put the baby in bassinette and went out to wash her clothes, dusty from 
yesterday's walk. Such is Africa. 

Besides the Luo tribesmen at Kowak, often some of the Wasambiti 
wander into the clinic. These keep pretty much to themselves and we 
don't know them so well. Their tribal identification is their teeth filed 



LAKE PEOPLE 55 

to sharp points. In the clinic the Sisters have had several cases o fight- 
ing where the loser's flesh has been all but chewed off by the victor. 

Another strange case, a woman, was brought to the hospital by a 
Sambiti man. She had a tapeworm and intestinal adhesions; surgery was 
needed. The woman had a 50-50 chance of living. Sister asked a few 
questions since the woman wanted to be baptized. The chain of inter- 
preters was long the woman in Kisambiti to the man, the man in Kiswa- 
hili to Corneli an assistant, Cornell in Luo to Sister Catherine Cecilia. 
Sister at first was not quite sure of the answers but she found that this 
was the conversation. 

"Are you married?" 

"Yes." 

"Who is your husband?" 

"The first wife of my village." 

"No, no, I mean who paid cows for you?" 

"The head woman in my village." 

"I mean, what man do you live with?" 

"Oh, many! But my husband is the First Wife." 

Sister then remembered that she had read of a strange Sambiti cus- 
tom. If the First Wife wants more children, she pays cows for another 
woman whom she gives to any man at all. The children are hers. 

"Listen," she said to the woman. "You want to be baptized. But if I 
baptize you, you must have only one man. Which do you choose?" 

The patient was silent a moment 

"I choose him," and she indicated the man who had come with her. 
"He is kind. He brought me here." 

Sister turned to the man. "Have you a wife?" she asked. 

"I have four." 

This looked like a stalemate. "We cannot baptize you," she said to the 
woman, "unless you promise not to live with any of them." 

"How wonderful!" said the poor woman. "How wonderful! I promise 
with all my heart!" 

She was baptized and died the next day. 

I don't know what your mental picture is of a Sister who does this sort 
of thing. It probably has no resemblance to our Sister Catherine Cecelia. 
She is very young and frail looking, seems to be a dear sweet eighth 
grader. If you saw her in a bus in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, or 
New York, you might think she had no knowledge of the rougher facts 
of life; her soft voice had only murmured prayers; her mild eyes had 
seen nothing but kindness. You might be tempted to think, "What a 
colorless, if not inane, life that child has led!" 

But I have walked the African hills with Sister Catherine Cecelia. I 
saw her get on her motorbike and go off to catechism classes when I 



56 TANGANYIKA 

was ready only for a cool drink and a soft chair. She took me to sev- 
eral villages where many wives lived. In many there was a good wel- 
come. In others, one in particular, there was only sullen curiosity. Yet 
in that one she braved the wives, en masse, and did her business with 
a Catholic girl who had been sold into the menage. 

"Elizabetti, I have come for you. Do you want to come with me?" 

"Yes, I want." 

"Come." And we walked her out of the village. 



5 )JI Queen for a Week 



ON to Rosana! Easier said than done, Rosana is on a side 
road off Tarime, largest town in the North Mara district and the only 
one with a post office. The latest Tanganyika Handbook credits Tarime 
with 620 Africans, 30 Asians and 10 Europeans. Besides, it is listed as 
having a dispensary with eight beds, but no garage, no bank, no air- 
field, and no Catholic church. This last condition has been changed 
since the book came out. A nice little compound is sprouting around 
the town's one and only traffic circle. Not a thing is planted in it, but 
the cement curb is there to show where the side road shoots off. This 
side road is Tarime's main street. 

It was a mistake to stop here; but we did. We had hardly pulled the 
handbrake when the car was surrounded by people right out of the 
National Geographic Magazine. Brass arm bands made the flesh puffy 
above and below; short red skirts were the entire dress; anklets and knee 
bands of brass glinted in the sun. And the ears they were cut and 
pierced and inlaid with so much jewelry that they hung down to the 
shoulders. 

But friendly? They were the hand-shaking-est people in the world. 
Not content with shaking the nearest hand, hundreds of them, it seemed, 
thrust their arms through the car windows to grab all our hands in fel- 
lowship. So many arms came in that most of them were shaking hands 
with each other across the narrow car. Not that we minded; we had 
enough to do to keep from being shaken to pieces. 

"The best way out of this," I thought, "is to get out of the car and 
face up to it in the open." A good idea, for as soon as I stood outside and 
people saw my camera, they suddenly remembered urgent business else- 
where. Thus I learned that the Wakuria people are camera-shy to an 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 57 

amazing degree. I saw three girls, shined up for a day in town, walking 
down the street toward me and aimed my camera nonchalantly toward 
them. But just before they walked into focus, a woman called out from 
the crowd and they ran off the street in panic. It was only in Rosana 
where the Sisters are well known that anyone would permit it. A woman 
fears she will never have children once her picture is taken. Even at 
Rosana, old Birgitta and Victoria had their qualms about it all. 

Victoria, although an Mkuria, is addicted to her pipe, one of the 
creature comforts Luo women like. As the two old women lined up to 
pose, Birgitta said to Victoria, "Take that pipe out of your mouth. Do 
you want people to think you're a Luo?" 

The Kikuria word for Luo means "slave people." There is little love 
lost between the tribes. 

The distinguishing mark for the Wakuria is the ear. From an early 
age, the lobe is pulled and twisted until it hangs to the shoulders. The 
hole is filled at first with bits of cassava, later with wooden plugs, then 
brass rings go through it. Only grandmothers may wear large brass coils 
in their ears. Young ladies go through torture when the upper parts of 
the ear are cut out with a piece of sharpened tin can, and square plugs 
of ivory are fitted in. Some, not all, of these square pieces indicate that 
the wearer has been sold to the devil. These are forbidden to Catholic 
girls, and must be removed when a woman is baptized. 

The Wakuria ear is more than an ornament. Local justice recognizes 
this. Sometimes in a fight the ear, stretched to the thinness of a rubber 
band, may be broken or even bitten off. Such a case has top priority in 
the "baraza" or court. 

To guard against an accidental break, most men twist the long pieces 
of skin around their upper ears while working. To break the ear is the 
worst accident that could happen. 

Next to their ears, the Wakuria value their cows. When cattle thieves 
have come into a village, a most unearthly cry wails through the night. 
It is taken up from village to village. Every able-bodied man is expected 
to turn out and catch the thief. Whoever kills him is feted for weeks in 
his village. 

There is a story that a cattle thief one night got into an old man's 
village. He tied him and his old wife together by a padlock through 
their ears. He knew that Wakuria would never break their ear lobes. 
Sure enough. Rather than do this, the old couple let all their cattle go. 
Only when the thief was far away did they set up a howl to inform the 
neighbors what was going on. 

The Wakuria also love brass. Brass coils on arms and legs indicate 
wealth. The brass sells at ten shillings (about $1.14) a coil in Tarime. 
No girl wants to be without some indication that her Papa has a little 



58 TANGANYIKA 

pocket money. It's a matter of status. And to Papa, a matter of cows. 
Investment in brass coils today may bring a rich son-in-law. 

Beaded collars and belts are another feminine vanity with the Wakuria. 
Also cow grease, a sort of crude lard, used to shine up their bodies for 
dances. Nowadays, however, the old cow grease is second best to per- 
fumed oil. Sister Paul Christopher and I went down to a hut to see how 
one of Sister's patients was coming along. We found a domestic crisis. 
The young girl of the house was going out to a dance that night. She 
had just come in from washing in the river and was putting on her 
beaded belt and the family's dance skirt. Then Mama said, advancing 
with the gourd of cow fat, "Come here. I want to get you shined up." 

"Oh Mother!" the girl pouted. "That horrible stuff! It stinks and 
the flies come all around and it's just awful. There's some wonderful oil 
in Tarime. Only two shillings a bottle not a big bottle but it smells 
so nice and it lasts a long time. Just a little bit makes you shine beauti- 
fully/- 
But Mama cut up some very odoriferous soap, mixed it with the cow fat 
and applied it in large doses to the squirming teen-ager. "There now," 
she urged. "All the bad smell's gone. You look just lovely. Nobody will 
ever know that you don't have on two-shilling oil." 

Teen-agers are not much different in any part of the world. In the 
Rosana dispensary a girl about thirteen years old was brought in by her 
father. She had had her ears cut; the piece of tin can had slipped and 
she had a nasty gash across the back of her head, bleeding profusely. 
As Sister tended the child her father scolded. "Stop crying. You can just 
stand the pain. You wanted your ears cut and begged and pleaded. You 
pushed me into it." When they were ready to go home, Sister said to 
the man, "I hope you will help your daughter. She has lost a lot of 
blood." "I'll help her," he conceded. "If she falls, I'll let her rest a 
while." 

It seemed cruel. But this man had given up at least one day's work to 
bring the girl in for medical care. Then I laughed at a memory. Years ago, 
I begged my father to let me ride horses. Ten minutes after he gave in 
and two seconds after I mounted, the horse threw me to the tune of two 
black eyes and a broken collarbone. The parental explosion that fol- 
lowed was not cruel. It came from relief that my neck was still intact and 
annoyance with himself for letting me go my silly way. Through my tears 
I loved him for it. 

It seems to be a normal reaction of love. Police say that the first thing 
parents do to a child who has been lost is to scold him. Even Our Lady 
chided her Son when she found Him. I had to keep similarities in mind as 
we watched these very primitive people. Judging from circumstances, it 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 59 

is so easy to say, ''How barbarous!" without weighing the basic ideas un- 
derlying the actions. 

Every race has its little vanities and women will go through torture to 
preserve them. Bunions, callouses, corns and fallen arches are an old 
story with us. False teeth, cosmetics and Metrecal keep the cash registers 
of the nation merrily ringing. The older the women the gayer they ring. 

Old ladies have their foibles in Rosana, too. Victoria, who loves to 
putter around the sacristy shining up the candlesticks, often takes a dab 
or so of brass polish to give the coils in her ears an extra shine. It's getting 
so that brass polish for the sacristy is quite an item in the budget. 

Speaking of church, the Sunday Mass was a joy to eye and ear. Men and 
women in the bright Wakuria brass toiled up the escarpment (for Rosana 
is perched on the edge of the Great Rift Valley) to attend Mass. The 
whole church sings the chants in Kiswahili. Sometimes, hearing and see- 
ing the stories of their tribal life, one might be tempted to wonder just 
what they understand of the Mass. But to them perhaps, the story of life 
sacrificed on the Cross to redeem mankind is more believable than it is to 
us. They are so much closer to elemental justice. Their reverence during 
the Mass, at any rate, shows that they understand what is going on. 

At the Offertory, as the usher went down the aisle, he collected chickens, 
fruit, eggs and meat. I was highly edified until Sister James Florence said 
to me as we went home after Mass, "I always like to see what comes in the 
collection. Now we know what we can borrow from the Fathers." 

I spent a day watching Sister Paul Christopher at work in the clinic. 
She holds forth under a spreading umbrella tree. Her small white clinic 
is as much a haven on the long dusty life-road these people tread, as the 
umbrella tree is for the sun-smitten traveler. To us, it is incomprehensible 
that people will walk ten miles when they are ill. A night or two under 
a tree or in a stranger's hut means very little. A steady stream of patients 
arrives each morning. Women whose ears hang to their shoulders, whose 
arms bulge above and below tight brass bracelets, whose babies seem to 
have no chance to live. Sometimes, they wedge a leafy branch between the 
bracelets and their arms, to form a bit of shade for the baby. 

Men with dreadful sores; children with worm-filled tummies; boys 
trembling with malarial chills; any and all diseases come to the umbrella 
tree. There were more than fifty patients sitting along the hedges or spread 
out on the grass the day I was there. 

Most are pagans. Many wear the square plugs in the upper ear which 
indicate devil worship. Some had discarded the arm. and leg bands sold 
them, perhaps. The limbs regain their normal size but marks of the rings 
remain on the skin. 

"These people are so patient," Sister Paul Christopher said as she ex- 



60 TANGANYIKA 

amined a woman stretched on the table. "This woman has walked nine 
miles, starting out before dawn, to get here. She has waited several hours 
under the tree. What's wrong? Malaria, for one thing, malnutrition, worms, 
bilharzia, and she is two months pregnant. She has had two miscarriages 
already. I think the malaria is at the bottom of her trouble." 

"She seems very young/ 1 1 said. 

"Maybe 16 or 17. The serious business of life starts very early out here." 

The next patient tottered in on a walking stick. The old fellow's long 
ear lobes were looped around his upper ears to get them out of the way. 

"What can I do for you, granduncle?" Sister asked. 

The old man pulled his animal skin cloak about his stooped shoulders 
and shuffled up to stare into her face. He blinked almost blind eyes to 
get Sister into focus. 

"Give me the kind of medicine you take/' he said with real envy. "You 
look so healthy!" 

Sister laughed and turned to her cupboard. 

"What will you give him?" I asked. 

"Just a few vitamin pills and some worm medicine to begin with. It's 
amazing what medicine does out here. The people have so little that they 
respond quickly to anything/' 

Your heart goes out to the Wakuria people; they seem involved in pain 
from the first moment of their lives to the last. And so much of it is self- 
inflicted. Women, especially, take suffering for granted. In the clinic, 
I heard a mother say to her two-month-old baby as the youngster howled 
during a treatment, "Hush upl How do you expect to stand childbirth if 
you can't stand a little thing like this?" They certainly pay for Eve's 
transgression. 

Both the Wakuria and Wasambiti have circumcision rites for boys and 
girls. The boys' day fell a week or so before I arrived; the girls' were "done" 
in a small house down the road from our mission. Some twenty girls were 
operated on with a razor blade as an introduction to womanhood. To 
them it had all the glamor of a first pair of high heels. They are brought 
in procession to and from the hut. I stood by the road and watched several 
of these processions pass by as the girl was taken back to her village. The 
first was advertised a long way off by the high screech of whistles. The 
crowd of thirty or so people came around a bend in the road. Three small 
boys dressed in withered corn stalks and leaves danced backwards and 
forwards across the road, now approaching the girl, now backing away 
from her. The adults in bright brass arm and leg bands danced along- 
side of her. One man carried a flag (really just a kanga waving from a 
sisal pole); he and others blew little tin whistles. 

And the girl herself? She walked stiff-legged in the center. Opposite me, 
she stood still and reeled a little. One of the women had an enameled iron 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 61 

tea pot of water. She poured water over the girl's head and let it run 
down her face. The child stood in the center of the road's dust and let the 
water trickle over her kinky hair and down her shoulders. Then once 
more she took up her painful walk to the hut of her father. 

That was a big party. After this, some ten minutes later, came a smaller 
group only about fifteen men and women. One woman blew the whistle 
and danced in front. This was just about all the jubilation. The poor 
child seemed much younger and smaller. 

Opposite our mission the caravan rested on the long pilgrimage home. 
The girl stood; she put her arms around her mother's neck and rested 
her head on the broad shoulders. But there was no whimpering or cry- 
ing. This group seemed more in sympathy with their child. Several 
women took the girl's hands as they started along the road once more. 

Sister Paul Mary and I followed along to the top of a hill. We looked 
down on a small village below, probably the home of one man with six 
or seven wives. Five flags waved from five huts. People were going back 
and forth across the open space; groups sat in the shade of the overhang- 
ing grass roofs. I thought of the five mutilated girls within those five huts, 
condemned to the hard life of an African woman. 

At least, the worst of their agony was over; they were to sit and rest for 
about a week and be queen of the village. Served and tended by all, the 
girl will never again be so feted. Outside her hut there is laughter and 
singing in her honor. People from other villages come and drink millet 
beer; her own relatives go to dance and drink in her girl friends' villages. 
Wherever a flag waves from a village, a circumcision party is going on. 
The little ladies, for all their pain, are proud and happy. They wouldn't 
miss it for the world. 

We went to a village and happened to attend one of these circumcision 
parties. We could hear the drum some distance away. In the open space 
surrounded by the huts a one-man orchestra was in full bloom. He had 
a stringed instrument with the sound-box covered with zebra hide. His 
toes worked a stick with bells. He sang and drooled along with appropriate 
noises. Beer was being served in one of the huts; men walked in and reeled 
out. Women were not permitted to drink until all the men were finished. 
They gathered in front of one hut where the flag was posted; I suppose the 
girl was there. They were some distance from us and kept that far away. 

However, the men were having a good time. They weaved up and down 
to the music, linking arms or doing extemporaneous solos. One old fel- 
low wearing two hats kept up a steady chant, "I'm dancing because this is 
a party." He came up to us and asked, "Did you-all use to dance like this 
when you were pagans?" Before we could think of a good answer, an 
old woman sidled up to him and the two of them went dancing away. 

On the sidelines was a truly magnificent figure. Tall and muscular, 



62 TANGANYIKA 

maybe forty years old, he wore a monkey-fur cape, a necklace of some kind 
of animal teeth and a circlet of ivory around his upper arm. It must have 
been a two-inch-wide slice of elephant tusk. He looked with disdain on 
the proceedings. 

Other guests were not so colorful. Behind us was a very prim and 
proper boy in pressed khaki shorts, white shirt and pullover sweater. And 
a man in shirt and long pants wore a dilapidated hat once the proud badge 
of the King's African Rifles a large affair turned up on one side like 
the Aussie hats. 

The drunken old man and several of his friends came dancing up again. 
"Well give you a show," they offered. Then suddenly, a man ran from 
the rear and pushed the dancers away. "You've danced enough for them. 
Now get out!" We felt that his "get out" was addressed more to us than 
to our friends. We turned to go. 

The gentleman in monkey fur and ivory came with us. He asked several 
polite questions. He spoke in Kikuria, of course; the Sisters translated 
into English. Where are you from? How long are you staying? Then he 
invited us to a party in his village on Thursday. 

"I'm sorry," Mother said, "but we will be going on Tuesday." 

"Do stay until Thursday," he pleaded. "You'll miss half your life if 
you miss my party. I'll have much better beer and I've hired a number 
of dancing girls." He might have been a multimillionaire inviting us to 
a week-end on his yacht. 

Nevertheless, we left on Tuesday. 

To keep the girls from growing up too fast, to give them something 
more to think about than the glory of their circumcision party, to pre- 
pare them for marriage which will produce healthy families, Sister James 
Florence has started sewing and hygiene classes. "A definite gap exists 
between the time when our girls finish Primary School at Standard IV 
and when they get married. Up to a year or so ago, they have just sat 
around and waited for life to begin/' she says. "I started classes in simple 
sewing, health, reading and writing three afternoons a week for fourteen 
girls who live within a mile or so." 

The classroom is a newly white-washed shed; the blackboard is Contact 
Paper stuck to the wall; the pictures are calendars and old Christmas 
cards. Seats were a problem until the girls solved it; they went outside, 
picked up some boulders and brought them in. They're good, but some- 
times Chacha can't resist the temptation to wobble Matiku's rock just 
when she is writing. 

If you are nervous, perhaps you should stay away from Sister's sewing 
classes. I thought one little girl was chewing something but when Sister 
asked a question, the child took a razor blade out of her mouth to answer. 
Sister James Florence is used to it. "Oh, that's nothing," she calmed me. 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 63 

"Even youngsters In First Grade carry razor blades under their tongues. 
Sometimes, they stick their tongues out of the slit in the middle. I have 
never heard of any accidents nobody has swallowed one nor cut him- 
self. Razor blades are used for everything here cutting hair, fingernails, 
corns, callouses and so on. If you asked any girl here what is the most nec- 
essary thing for sewing, she would say, *A razor blade/ " 

All through this primitive section of Africa, I had the feeling, "This 
won't last long/* Truly, things done as they were ten years ago are a 
hundred years out of date. Also things done ten years from now will be 
a century further advanced. The girls circumcised today will not permit 
their daughters to go through it. The school boy in prim khaki shorts 
and white shirt will not be content to live in such a village as the one we 
saw him in. The girls who ran off the road in Tarime lest I take a picture 
of them may ten years from now stand on a stage near the crossroads and 
pose anyway you wish for a shilling a pose. 

Already, the great-grandfather of the supermarket is riding the roads 
of northern Tanganyika. Early Friday mornings an enterprising merchant 
starts off with a truckload of fresh fruits and vegetables from the lush 
gardens around Nairobi in Kenya. The shortest route over a fantastic road 
to Rosana is all of two hundred and twenty-six miles; the truck stops at 
every mission, government house, mine or ginnery in the area. It goes 
eighty-six miles further on to Musoma and ends out at Makoko often 
after nightfall. By that time, the vegetables are wilted and the fruits not 
at their peak. But they are far better than any available nearby. The 
meat we don't trust after twelve hours in such a truck, but we are glad 
to get the green goods. 

This Indian will take orders. If you know guests are coming next week, 
you can ask him to save some lima beans for you, or maybe strawberries. 
Seeing his tired face as he turned the empty truck to drive through the 
African night back three hundred miles to Nairobi, I thought of him 
twenty or thirty years from now when he will own a supermarket chain, 
a fleet of trucks to provision them and, perhaps, hundreds of acres of 
farmland. Then people will growl, "Why should he have so much and 
we so little?" They should remember the truck, the road, the twenty-hour 
working day and the smile which is bright right down to the last customer. 

The amenities are creeping into the district at a fast pace. One of our 
convents has Afrigas, a bottled propane gas, for hot water heating. This 
is definitely civilization on the march. 

Africans are a little tired of being "colorful." They feel it's another 
way of saying "underdeveloped" or "backward." Those who have had 
good education don't like the world to think that every African wears 
monkey fur and files his teeth. Even in places like Kowak and Rosana, 



64 TANGANYIKA 

many are ashamed o the old ways. The Luos are getting false teeth to 
fill the gap in their lower jaws. The Wakuria are cutting off their long 
ears and sewing them up. Many cases of infection from this come to our 
clinics. 

Anchabina Boke is a round-faced, round-eyed miss at Rosana. Her 
mother came to Sister James Florence recently and said that Anchabina 
would be out of class for a few days. "She is old enough to have her ears 
cut in the upper parts/' she explained. 

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Sister argued. "It's not the style any more. 
That sort of thing is going out fast." 

The mother thought it over for a few days. "You're right, Sister. I'm 
old-fashioned, I guess. We'll let it go for Anchabina although her older 
sister had it done." 

The Africans are sensitive; any difference they feel is a slight. Sister 
was showing a picture of many nations gathered around the Christ Child's 
crib. The Chinese wore his saam; the Filipina, her terno; the Japanese, 
a kimono. But Matatiro pointed to the African boy. "Why doesn't he have 
clothes? Everybody else does." 

On a ferryboat one day a woman we all know greeted Sister Margaret 
Rose and spent some time talking to her. She had on a very bright kanga 
and I took a picture of the two as they talked by the railing. A young 
man came up to me. "You did not ask that woman's permission to take 
her picture," he said. 

"Why, no," I excused myself. "After all, she saw the camera and could 
have stopped me in a moment. I don't think she minds." 

But I stepped up to her and told her, asking permission post facto. 

Americans like to see the skyline of New York or a view of the Rockies 
on travel posters advertising the States; Tanganyikans feel that the harbor 
at Dar es Salaam, or a shot of Kilimanjaro, best advertise their country. 
We would not be pleased to see America shown as the country of Tobacco 
Road and the well-filled spittoon. We can understand the African's feel- 
ing. 

Nevertheless, the situation poses a touchy problem for the missioner. 
He hates to see the distinctive things of African civilization thrown away 
with the "backward" things. That's like throwing the baby out with the 
bathwater. The dances, the intricate designs, the tremendous verve of 
Africa it would be a shame to squeeze these into conventional Western 
molds. 

At Rosana, an incident happened which sums up the situation. A 
man and woman brought a baby to the dispensary in very bad condi- 
tion. Sister Paul Christopher took care of it. She could see the child was 
dying and advised the couple to have it baptized. However, they refused 
and went away. 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 65 

The next morning during Mass, when everyone was in church, a plain- 
tive wail came from outside. "Hodi! Ho-o-o-di!" This is an expression like 
"Hello, may I come in?" When you approach a village and want to rouse 
someone to open the gate, you call "Hodi!" 

No one answered; the door was wide open and anyone could come in 
if he wanted to. The cry of "Ho-o-o-di" was insistent. After a time, Sister 
Paul Christopher went out. It was the couple with the baby, now plainly 
at the last gasp. They did not ask for medicine this time; they asked for 
Baptism. 

The Africans are outside the Church politely calling "Hodi!" Someone 
must go out and invite them to come in. 

It was over. We had come to the end of our line in Tanganyika. There 
were still eighty-two miles to go to Musoma where a small plane would 
take us to Nairobi, From there we were due to fly to Bombay. 

Long drives may be dull in some places but never in Africa. The jeep 
becomes a post office with a letter that Marwa wants us to mail in Tarime 
as we go by. To whom is Marwa writing? The wobbly handwriting on the 
envelope reads: 

Sears Roebuck, Chicago, U.S.A. 

Boke has a sackful of corn to be ground at the mill. May she go with 
us as far as there? It will save a fifteen-mile walk. Jukara wants her scissors 
ground; will we take them to Musoma? A young man over in Father's 
house has an alarm clock which doesn't keep perfect time doesn't keep 
time at all, to be frank. Can that be left for repairs? Fortunately, this 
time there was no one sick who should go to the hospital; more than 
once the jeep has been an ambulance. 

We got to Musoma, however, and went out to the airfield where our 
plane, a four-seater Cessna, was to land. The "airdrome/* as the official 
listing of Musoma's facilities has it, is nothing but a large field and a 
small shack. It is like all other large fields and small shacks around, except 
for a grass-free strip down the center and a "stocking" wind indicator fly- 
ing in the breeze. 

It was market-day in Musoma. A stream of people were crossing the field 
with all the week's garden produce on their heads. I held my breath as the 
tiny speck in the sky circled, getting bigger and bigger, and finally slid 
down neatly to earth. The stream of market-bound buyers and sellers 
stopped for hardly a second as the Cessna sped down the strip, disap- 
peared into the tall grass at the end, and taxied toward us. 

Out stepped a compact man, with bronzy skin, bright blue eyes, a 
slightly rolling gait and many squinting wrinkles. All business, he walked 
toward us pulling an old envelope and a pencil stub from the pocket of 
his worn zip-up jacket. By the time he was within speaking distance, he 



66 TANGANYIKA 

was ready: "Good morning! Who are the passengers? Names, please/' 

He was Dutch. Indeed, he should have been a gnarled farmer with 
wooden shoes, smoking a pipe on his peaceful doorstep. But here he was 
flying a tiny plane over Africa, ready for any assignment from tracking 
an elephant across the Serengeti Plains, to driving three nuns one hundred 
and fifty miles to Nairobi. 

We were stowed inside the plane as into a compact car with seats and 
headroom for four not-too-big people. The single engine sputtered and 
roared. The plane lifted. This is the way to travel! Jets fly too high; you 
see nothing. Jeeps fill your eyes and nose with dust. But a single-engined 
plane with wings overhead skimming just below the clouds is perfect for 
see-it-alls. 

The earth looked as if God had just this minute made it and He 
hadn't had time yet to smooth out the jagged cliffs, to sprinkle greenery 
around and turn on the rivers. Here and there, miles and miles apart, 
were villages, looking like craters on the moon. Six or seven huts in a 
circle, surrounded by thorny hedging, were the commonest type. Others 
were wheel-shaped, each hut separated from its neighbor by the spokes. 
Now and then across the wide empty spaces, a herd of cattle broke into 
a wild gallop out in the middle of nowhere. They must have belonged to 
someone; how could anybody keep an eye on them? 

This is the Great Rift Valley, a gigantic "fault" which cracks the Near 
East and Africa all the way from Palestine down to Mozambique, Portu- 
guese East Africa, four thousand miles. Back in geologic ages, somebody 
pulled a strip of carpet out from under Africa and that area just fell 
down. It accounts for the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the Dead 
Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and for all of Africa's Great Lakes 
except Lake Victoria. The section from 1 north to 1 south of the equator 
is the most spectacular. Cliffs rise thousands of feet on either side. Winds 
roared up the escarpments as they are called, and fave us a biffing. Wob- 
bling on the air currents, I looked at our pilot. He was bored with it all, 
holding his hands low on the wheel and looking ahead with the air 
of a man trundling home to supper and bed. 

Suddenly he perked up. We swung over still another sharp cliff and 
we were in paradise. Green fields well laid out, substantial houses with 
tennis courts, swimming pools and planned gardens, acres and acres of 
white erithium flowers, the largest crop in Kenya. DDT is made from 
erithium flowers. It was Kenya most developed, most settled and, ac 
cording to Tanganyikans, most favored of the triumvirate of East African 
countries. 

Nairobi is a frontier city. Chicago, before Mrs. O'Leary's cow practically 
rebuilt the city, might have been like it. This is East Africa's jumping- 
off-place to the world. Jets from Rome, London, Bombay, Aden, Johan- 



QUEEN FOR A WEEK 67 

nesburg, circle her airstrip. Mud-spattered Landrovers lumber through 
the street, stopping at traffic lights beside limousines and every conceiva- 
ble type of truck. All sorts of people jostle on the sidewalks diamond 
prospectors, Protestant missioners, fair-skinned English schoolgirls, Indian 
traders and their sari-clad wives, nuns who hold their pocketbooks tight 
as they stare at school supplies in the bright windows, scientists out to do 
a study of hog typhoid, government people and airlines people, smart 
young business women and missioners 1 wives with straight hair and leath- 
ery skins. And Africans! Africans with ultra correct clothes and those 
with practically none at all. Some with ears full of holes and hanging 
to their shoulders and some in the smart uniform of policemen or sol- 
diers. 

I used to know a girl who made a unique potato salad. It had radishes, 
pickles, olives, onions, garlic, pimientos, green peppers, bacon, hard 
boiled eggs, bits of ham, and Heaven-knows-what-else in it. The inventor 
claimed that no one mouth was big enough to hold a sample of every- 
thing; therefore every mouthful tasted different. So it is with Nairobi. 
No one day standing on a street corner could give you a complete idea of 
its variety. It would take weeks. 

A sample: We went to Ethiopian Airlines where a Mr. Chong, a 
Chinese, arranged for us two Americans to go from Ceylon to the Philip- 
pines, via Siam, using Air India, KLM Dutch Airlines and Scandinavian 
Airlines. This was done in the British Protectorate of Kenya in Africa. 

Of course, we went to Woolworth's, the universal mecca of Sisters. 
There I watched an Indian buy a hairnet for his beard. Iron grey and 
very distinguished, he bent his turbanned head over the envelopes of hair- 
nets and carefully chose the color. Then he stood in front of the counter 
mirror and saw how the net would match his beard. I must admit, it 
was a wise move; in a high wind, such a beard would be a hazard to vision. 

Wild animals are a norm in British East Africa. We saw ostriches, 
monkeys, giraffe, baboons, zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest, crown birds, two 
lionesses with six cubs and even the nostrils of a hippopotamus as he 
snoozed in a river. These are commonplaces for tourists. We enjoyed 
them but paid little attention. However, it was the wild animals who 
gave us the nicest farewell to Africa. 

As we drove along the macadam highway to Nairobi's airport Father 
Bordonet jammed on his brakes quickly. A herd of wildebeest sailed over 
a fence and across the four-lane highway. Traffic on both sides halted in 
a hurry. Wildebeest are gnus; they run hunched over like the American 
buffalo. 

Wild animals are something of a problem in Nairobi. There is a wire 
fence around the airport where it borders Nairobi National Park, sane- 



68 TANGANYIKA 

tuary for thousands of animals. The poor beasts are constantly straying 
in the path of planes a custom which is good for neither. The problem 
must have been much the same in the old days of America when buffalo 
herded across the transcontinental railroad tracks. 

There are still frontiers; there are still nations not yet fully jelled. 
There is still greed and heroic self-denial, leadership and chicanery, heights 
to be won and troughs to be skirted. And through it all, I could hear the 
high wail of the African family outside the Rosana church, calling "Hodi!" 



CEYLON 





o 



CEYLON 



1L( 6 )J Mr. Nervous and the Resplendent Isle 



I FIRST noticed him at Nairobi airport a tall thin Indian 
with a sharp nose and prominent eyes that darted to right and left, up and 
down, anxious to see everything. We were standing in the long lines in- 
evitable to customs, passports, baggage, bank statements, health certifi- 
cates, and tickets. The airport was crowded with Indians en route, as we 
were, to Bombay. Schoolboys in bright pink, lavender, or yellow turbans; 
women in nose-jewels and saris, girls in gold kid slippers; men in drab busi- 
ness suits looking like Bill Hinkson from Peoria all standing guard over 
a welter of baggage on the handsome parquet floor. 

The tall thin Indian stepped over our baggage and pushed to the head 
of the line. He thought nothing of easing first his fingers, then his arm 
and at last his whole body in front of you. International passengers are 
usually a meek, brow-beaten lot. "This ticket window is closing; please go 
to another window/' usually sends them shoving their hand luggage into 
another line without protest. "Flight #616 is expected to leave at i A.M. 
instead of 8 P.M." brings nothing more than a sigh as they go to buy a 
magazine. Customs men leaving one's best party dress a mess of wrinkles 
get only a mild look of reproach. 

But let anyone jam ahead of the lines and the worm turns. I was fas- 
cinated to watch this Me-First push through the patient hordes of the rest 
of us. He seemed so afraid that something was going on he didn't know 
about, that something was being passed out that he should be getting, that 
he was being left out or left behind. He wriggled his way to the ticket 
windows to ask questions, dashed up to the gateman to see if the plane was 
going soon, shoved to get a place on the waiting room benches only to 
spring up in a minute and rush over to the bulletin board, A placid, chubby 
Indian was standing near me. As he caught my eye, he lifted his shoulders 
and spread his hands with a smile. "What can you do with a man like 
that?" he asked. I smiled vaguely and went back to minding my own busi- 
ness. 

On the plane, as we took our seats, the Nervous One and the Placid One 
were seatmates. Nervous had the window, Placid sat in the middle and a 
husky Englishwoman with long legs had the aisle seat. The three were a 
circus to watch all night. 

71 



72 CEYLON 

Nervous was like a live nerve wriggling at the end of dental forceps. He 
stared out the window, twisted violently to see what the hostess was doing 
in the galley, wrenched back to the window, stood up to get something 
from the rack overhead, crouched on the floor to drag out his briefcase, 
tested the tray which comes out of the seat ahead. If you have ever ridden 
in Economy Class, you know that economy of motion is essential to happi- 
ness. The only good seatmate is a dead seatmate, or at least one sound 
asleep. 

Then Mr. Nervous wanted a magazine. His feet sailed over the two 
pairs of knees between him and the aisle, and went to the magazine rack 
in front. Back in his seat again, he remembered that he needed a drink 
of water. Again, "Pardon me, pardon me!" as his largish feet grazed Placid's 
nose by an inch. 

At Aden in Arabia, he was first out for the free drink at the airport. It 
was only half drunk when he remembered that his luggage was unguarded 
on the plane. Zip out he dashed. 

Mother and I walked around the airport a bit. Arabia at 2 A.M.! Well, 
it might have been Idlewild, or O'Hare, or Hong Kong, or Tokyo. The 
stars were dimmed by the glow from jeep and gasoline truck headlights, 
the searchlights swinging around, the lighted airport. 

The Air Age has brought forth a new race of men, a vast array of me- 
chanics of all facial molds and colors. They swarm around airfields and 
minister tenderly to a metal bird that swoops down from outer space to 
rest a half hour or so on land. As it wobbles to a stop a crowd of men con- 
verge to oil it, to stock it, to clean it, to feed it, to check wings or tail or 
feet. Their jobs are identical whether they are performed in Addis Ababa, 
Delhi, Manila, the Aleutians or Tahiti. They may scramble onto the wings 
and walk over the hot metal in bare brown feet, but they cock at the 
wing flap the same knowing eye that the mechanic gives at Idlewild. 

In the pool of brightness around our bird, a familiar figure rushed up 
the steps, paused a moment at the doorway where the hostess stood, and 
came down again. We met the Nervous One at the foot of the stairs. "They 
won't let me in!" he exclaimed. "All my things are in there." He watched 
each Arabian cleaner as he passed us up or down the stairs. He searched 
each one, piercing any non-personal bulge with his eyes. But he controlled 
himself. Except for two more forays up the steps, he waited until we got 
the green light. Of course, by the time two slow-going nuns entered the 
plane, Mr. Nervous was feverously checking his belongings around that 
window seat. 

Our last look at him was characteristic. He was bound to be the first off 
at Bombay. As we sped down the runway he was standing with luggage in 
hand waiting for the door to open. The rest of us were all seated calmly. 



MR. NERVOUS AND THE RESPLENDENT ISLE 73 

Then Mr. Nervous came crestfallen back to his seat and climbed over 
the well-worn knees to sit down disheartened. He had not counted on the 
fumigator. In many Eastern cities, no one is allowed off until a Depart- 
ment of Health man comes through the plane spraying ceiling, floors, seats 
and passengers with a germ killer. It's one of those little indignities which 
make international relations in the East interesting. India says, "You came 
from Africa? My, you must be terribly germ-y!" Ceylon says, "From India? 
We must spray you!" Siam says, "If you want to enter our fair country, get 
rid of those Ceylonese germs." 

The spraying seemed to take all the spunk out of our friend. This time, 
he let the Englishwoman in the aisle seat, the chubby Indian beside him, 
and even us pokey nuns get out before he once more gathered his luggage 
and deplaned. Poor fellow, he was exhausted after a hard night. 

I felt that Mr. Nervous should have had a placard across his shoulders 
labeled Excessive Nationalism, for he seemed a symbol of it. This may 
have been his first plane ride; no wonder he was nervous. A good man, no 
doubt, anxious to gain a living for his family, to give them all the things 
they had a right to. Eager to take his place in the world. Fearful that he be 
pushed behind; suspicious of the stranger; determined that the good things 
of life do not pass him by. 

It is all very understandable. Only later will it be plain to him that even 
with the most powerful nations, life is mostly Give and very little Take. 
Until small nations do learn it, they can play havoc with the very people 
who want to help them. 

Mr. Nervous was a good introduction to Ceylon. 

I could sit all day in the Bombay airport and watch East and West parry, 
thrust, merge, embrace, divide, tease and torment each other. Buddhist 
monks, smart turbans, filmy saris and nose-rings, fantastic baggage of 
wicker and bamboo, beards that would startle even your grandfather 
these things are part and parcel of the jet age. I watched a crowd of school- 
girls in flowing saris, gold kid sandals on bare brown feet, nose-jewels, 
earrings and caste-marks of gold paper pasted between the eyebrows. Some 
had flowers braided into their long hair. The girls giggled and cast languid 
eyes at a group of boys also going home to Madras from high class schools 
in Bombay. 

At one point the girls bustled out of the waiting room. The baggage 
truck from school had arrived. In they came again with their luggage. I 
wish you could have seen it very smart cosmetic cases, millions of tennis 
racquets and, if you please, well-used track shoes with spikes. These houris 
from Arabian Nights were track enthusiasts. 

Madras. Colombo. And up the mountains to Kandy by car. Practically 
nobody in Ceylon has an American-sized car. It wouldn't fit the narrow 



74 CEYLON 

roads and hairpin curves. Kandy, ancient capital of Ceylon and world 
center of Buddhism, lies seventy-five miles from humid Colombo, directly 
inland from it and almost straight up. 

We really don't live in Kandy but some three miles out of it at Kunda- 
sale, the smallest of small towns. The address is swanky Paddiwatte 
Estate. But an estate in Ceylon is like a hacienda in the Philippines, a finca 
in Chile, a cftamba in Tanganyika or a plantation in the South. In other 
words, a place for growing some crop for sale. We live in a bungalow on 
an estate growing cocoa, coconuts, and pepper. In other words, we live in 
Paradise. 

If you want to know what Eden looked like before the Fall, stand out- 
side the little white church of Our Lady of Fatima, as daylight lifts the 
night mists off river and rice fields. Like everything else near Kandy, the 
church perches on top of a mountain. After early Mass, the fog of dawn 
reluctantly leaves the valley down below. The silent huts are still wrapped 
in quiet. A pointed temple on the opposite mountain gradually clears. 

Then you start walking home. Day begins in the small thatched houses. 
Children run out to take your hand. A woman looks up from her washing 
at the stream and waves. It is idyllic. 

Then you see that the child whose hand lies in yours, is limping. A 
tropical ulcer has eaten deep into his leg. An estate worker overtakes and 
hurries past you. Young and very frail in body, she carries a great basket 
of coconuts on her head. As you get nearer home, the old smell comes 
back. It is "the lines" where hundreds of estate workers live in one room 
per family. You can smell "the lines" a long way off. 

You know that the snake is still around Eden and Adam has lost none 
of his taste for apples. 

The Sinhalese name for Ceylon is Sri Lanka, translated as Resplendent 
Isle. The guidebooks call it "a pear-shaped island," and so it is, of course. 
But the practical man might see in it a smoked ham. The sentimental 
would say it is a tear dropping from India. The artistic call it a pearl set 
in blue-green seas. To us, coming from parched Tanganyika, it was an 
emerald of verdure, one hundred and forty miles wide and two hundred 
and seventy miles long at the greatest measurements. But all agree that it 
is just a bit too close to India for comfort. Twenty-two miles separate the 
Pearl of the East from the teeming land of India. Hungry eyes look over 
that strait at the fertile valleys and cultivated mountainsides. 

The Sinhalese themselves came from the valley of the Ganges five hun- 
dred years before Christ. The Tamils arrived later from southern India. 
In the thousands of years that the two peoples have lived in Ceylon, there 
has been some intermarriage, but the six million Sinhalese and two million 
Tamils still remain separate and hostile. The Europeans, chiefly English, 



MR. NERVOUS AND THE RESPLENDENT ISLE 75 

have added a third element. Not so long ago, Ceylon was a country of three 
languages. Bus signs, store fronts, billboards, railroad crossings and sta- 
tions all carried three lines of information. English appeared in our 
familiar alphabet; Sinhalese showed its own curly script; Tamil used 
straight up-and-down characters. Since 1956, when Ceylon became a 
Dominion of the British Commonwealth, the reins have tightened against 
minorities. On most signs, the Tamil has been blacked out with a vin- 
dictive brush; English still shows on a few signs but the number is 
growing fewer. In January, 1961, Sinhalese was proclaimed the only 
language to be used. This leaves the Ceylon people isolated with a lan- 
guage known to only six million people in the whole world, a language 
unknown also to one-fourth of the people who were born and brought up 
in Ceylon. 

The Sinhalese script is fascinating as if a tipsy worm was trying to get 
home after a gay evening. Time and time again, I asked the Sisters to read 
a billboard showing a languid lady in sari and jewels. It always said some- 
thing like, "I bank at the First National," or, "Use Dial Soap. I do." What 
a shock to find that a line of such beautiful curves means only, "Keep off 
the grass!" 

The people are beautiful too. Every one of them. Straight noses, dark 
eyes, wavy hair, graceful carriage, pearly teeth and soft voices, they have 
them all. A photographer goes crazy in this country. Each child is more 
exquisite than the last; every mother, even if her sari is tattered and her 
nose-jewel tawdry, is a picture of gentle dignity. Going down our road to 
the main highway to catch a bus or buy a few peanuts, you are bombarded 
with heavenly smiles. Children run out to greet you, putting palms to- 
gether in front of their faces and shouting "ayubowan!" Mothers come to 
the doors, hoping to catch your eye so that they too can put their palms to- 
gether and call out "ayubowan!" They are the friendliest people in the 
world; if you produce a camera, you are mobbed. It's a cooperative project 
picture taking. Ratnapala holds the flash gun; Appuhamy stands guard 
over the case; Sirisena hands you the flashbulbs. Everybody else gets into 
the act and will stand on his head for an hour if you want to take the 
picture that way. 

I didn't expect to find much friendliness on Ceylon. After all, we Mary- 
knoll Sisters are foreigners in an intensely nationalistic country. We are 
Catholic missioners stationed at the heart of pure Buddhism. But anyone 
going down our road would think we were the answer to Ceylon's prayer. 
Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and Catholics ail give us the "ayubowanl" 
treatment. 

Our bungalow is very small; it requires rugged economy of space. Only 
after the front door is closed, can Sister Maria Luz spread out her fold-up 



76 CEYLON 

cot against it. There is no electricity. Kerosene lamps are the staple light; 
two pressure lamps are for chapel and reception room. The Sisters' trunks 
are tables; cupboards are made of packing crates; small fruit boxes are 
bedside stands. The nicest piece of furniture in the convent is ingenious. 
It is a bookcase using planks as shelves and uprights of bricks; it looks like 
something out of House and Garden recommended for a hunting lodge. 
The kitchen has two kerosene burners on which the Sisters perform 
miracles three times a day. An old (and empty) gin bottle serves as rolling 
pin and also for grinding pepper right from the vine. An open fireplace 
of cement heats water for baths and laundry. 

Most of the daytime light comes through small skylights let into the 
roof. They make the cozy house very cheerful on a sunny day. One of 
these skylights shines on the tabernacle on the altar; it looks like a well- 
placed floodlight. Several times, leaving the chapel, I felt around on the 
wall for the electric switch. 

Across the road from us is a large cemented area about the size of two 
tennis courts. All day long in the hot sun the estate workers spread out 
cocoa beans to dry, in neat squares of Grade One, Grade Two and Grade 
Three. The workers are Tamils, small of frame, very dark-skinned, bright 
with earrings, bangles and hair ornaments. A handsome people, they have 
innate grace as they carry baskets of coconuts on their heads, or swing a 
heavy brazen jar on their hips. 

They are very fond of us, and we of them. The children crowd around 
our back door every morning and Sister pours into them their vitamins. 
That's right, pours. The bigger children come up with their mouths open. 
Sister drops a pill into the mouth and with her other hand pours some 
water from a high-held bottle to wash it down. The system was devised 
to keep the pills from being handled by grubby hands, and the water from 
being drunk from a common glass. The smaller children and babies are 
vitaminized by a spoonful of liquid poured into the open mouth. Any of 
the mothers who need it get the same treatment. It's like watching a nest- 
ful of little birds get their daily worm. All the children of estate workers are 
on the morning line-up, plus a dozen or so little chiselers who come from 
across the paddy fields. 

At Kundasale, Maryknoll Sisters have a small maternity hospital and 
staff a clinic. In thirteen years of medical work on the island they have 
learned the customs. One is that Tuesdays and Fridays are bad days to take 
medicine. Also the first day of the month and the "poya" days when the 
moon is full, find skimpy lines at the dispensary. 

In Ceylon they shake the head "Yes" just as we shake it for "No." It's 
sort of a wobble like a reluctant "No." 

"Does it hurt here?" 



MR. NERVOUS AND THE RESPLENDENT ISLE 77 

The shy woman wobbles "y es -" If the Sister is new she goes on. "Does 
it hurt here? Here? Weil, where does it hurt?" 

"Here!" and they are back to the first place. 

We often meet very bad sores in the mouth and all the way down to the 
stomach, from the habit of chewing betel nuts, spiced with pepper leaves 
and sprinkled with lime. The people even make a paste of the lime and 
spread it like peanut butter over the roof of their mouths. You meet betel 
chewers in many parts of the world, but I never saw such havoc from it 
except in Ceylon. The blood-red juice squirts out of a million faces in 
market, streets, plantation "lines" and school yards. 

As nurses, one of the hardest things to get used to, oddly enough, is the 
Buddhist's respect for life. A man who in anger will slice up his enemy, 
still cannot bring himself to kill a cockroach or a snake in cold blood. Even 
bedbugs are allowed to live. The most we can get hospital orderlies to do, is 
to brush them away. One evening, a deadly tick polonga was found near a 
patient lying on the clean floor. No one would kill it; the orderly gently 
picked him up on a stick and placed him tenderly outside. 

To watch a mahout with his elephant is a lesson in labor management. 
To watch an elephant with his mahout is a lesson in devoted service. The 
two form a unit, a happy marriage, a smooth capital and labor combina- 
tion, a real team of brains and brawn. Of the two, I think the mahout 
works harder. He rides on the animal's neck where he can whisper sweet 
nothings into his ear. There is definite "elephant talk"; it eludes grammar 
and syntax. But each understands the other perfectly. 

Every afternoon around three o'clock, the elephants swing down to 
the river for their daily bath, each with a mahout riding on his neck. In 
the shallow banks at Katugastota, the animals stretch out full length in 
the cool water. Now the mahout's work begins. Like a chauffeur polishing 
up a Cadillac, he goes over every square inch of that elephant (and an 
elephant has plenty of square inches) with a coconut husk brush. The long 
skinny tail, the great flaps of ears, all the way down the trunk from fore- 
head to nostril the mahout scrubs carefully. Then he gives a command. 
The elephant opens his eyes, flicks his tail, slowly raises his head and oh, 
so wearily stands up. Then the feet buckle a little and, first thing you 
know, there is a large displacement of water as His Majesty slides into the 
water to expose his other side for scrubbing. Perfect contentment. Nirvana. 

For his master he will push anything, uproot anything, stand in any sort 
of pose for tourists and expect nothing in return but a bale of hay. And 
that daily bath. Without it, he is just not a happy elephant. 

In Kandy, elephants are not only work animals but they add style to a 
procession. Like limousines at a funeral, they measure the importance of 
the event. We often passed small processions en route to this temple or 



78 CEYLON 

that, but once we saw a seven-elephant procession bringing the first rice of 
a nearby village as an offering to the famous Temple of the Tooth in 
Kandy. Oddly enough, the elephants carried no rice. They just walked 
along, as gayly decked out as the dancers who twisted and leaped and 
danced all the way into Kandy. When we saw it, the procession was trudg- 
ing a dusty road; the dancers were sweaty and played out. Men under an 
ornamental canopy carried the rice sacks on their heads. 

These Kandyan dancers are a race unto themselves. They train from 
childhood for muscle control which makes possible the fierce leaps that 
end every dance. We passed a wooden hut on the roadside one day and 
noticed a small sign in Sinhalese, "Dancing taught here." So we asked the 
shabby, middle-aged man who answered our knock, if we might watch. 
He was all smiles. Inside, three or four low benches faced a low stage. The 
ten-or-so students were furiously climbing into their best costumes, now 
that an audience had arrived. They ranged from about ten through sixteen 
years of age. The excitement and chattering were what you would expect 
of any youngsters that age. They pushed each other out the rear door so 
as to leave the stage ready for action. 

Wham! goes the drum. The gourd rattles take up the rhythm. And in 
come the children not children at all but stylized creatures picked off a 
travel advertisement. Palms spread open, feet at odd angles, the head stiff 
and knees bent, they did their master proud. Like the father of them all, he 
sat on the front bench and beamed at them and at us. 

Suddenly, I felt that a curtain had fallen. I did not know these children. 
In fact, they weren't children at all. The jolly little man who was their 
teacher, so smiling and human a moment ago, he too had stepped into a 
world beyond my understanding. Something I had never experienced. 

Children in Hong Kong, children in Africa, children in the Philippines 
I have taught them all. They are different from children in Chicago and 
San Francisco, but they stay children. Little ones on the island of Yap 
do the same dances their elders do, but they do them in a childish way. 
However, these Ceylonese youngsters were hardened performers, dead seri- 
ous, and almost in a trance. It was such a relief at the end to see them break 
the pose and scamper off stage. 



( 7 )J Coolie Bishop in a Buddhist World 



KANDY is the center of Buddhism, not only for the island 
but for the world. Ceylon, it is estimated, is sixty-five percent Buddhist, 
twenty percent Hindu, six percent Mohammedan and nine percent Chris- 
tian. In Kandy, the religion is at its purest, without the furbelows added to 
it in India, Siam and China. Buddhist leaders of other countries make 
pilgrimages to Kandy to venerate the Tooth of Buddha, and to study the 
religion as the monks of the great Temple of the Tooth practice it. From 
this temple the Great Perahera procession originates; ninety magnificently 
caparisoned elephants bring the Tooth out among the faithful. There is 
some dispute about the authenticity of the Tooth since the Portuguese in 
the sixteenth century took it to Goa and ground it to powder, but tradi- 
tion says that the particles reunited and came miraculously back to Kandy. 

For our pilgrimage Sister Regina Therese and I caught the bus at the 
corner of our country lane and the "big thoroughfare" well, anyway, it 
was a macadam road and wide enough for two cars to pass. On second 
thought, "caught" is hardly the word to use. The bus was standing in the 
shade of a big tree, like an old horse with his head between his knees. 
Wijesena, the driver, was stretched alongside deep in an after-dinner siesta. 
Sister and I climbed aboard to join the six or seven passengers who sat on 
the small wooden benches waiting for Fate to nudge Wijesena awake and 
get the bus moving. 

It took more than Fate to accomplish that. Wijesena awoke refreshed, 
eager to compete once more in Life's Frenzied Battle. He leaped aboard, 
twitched the ignition key, twitched and twitched again. No result. He 
shouted something to the passengers. Three or four men got out and 
started to push. The old bus moved imperceptibly from under the tree's 
shade out to the road. All of a sudden there was a frightening roar, the 
motor caught on and we were off to Kandy. 

We made up for lost time. Trees, bullock carts, bicycles, small huts and 
rice paddies flew past the window. Kandy clings to the side of several steep 
mountains. Even walking has its hazards when a banana peel can hurtle 
you several hundred feet straight down. But since Sister Regina Therese 
sat there so placidly, speaking of birds, flowers and Sisters we had known 
in Hawaii years ago, I commended my quivering soul to God and decided 
to be just as nonchalant. 

Ceylonese have the steadiest nerves I have ever seen. I used to think the 

79 



80 CEYLON 

Chinese were the experts at looking Death square in the face and yawning 
politely as they did it. Both races are good, but there is a difference in their 
techniques. The Chinese have zest in the danger as if to say, "Oh, boy! I 
missed the grave by half a second that time. Let's try for a quarter second 
next time/' The Ceylonese on the other hand avoid obliteration as if it 
didn't exist. There are no wild leaps, no scurrying, no grabbing the child 
away in the nick of time. There is not even a glance at approaching dis- 
aster. Yet, as the bus passes, you see that the filmy sari has stepped aside, 
the child is not on the road, the man's big brown foot which should be 
under the wheel now is whole and well. There is a good inch to spare. 
These people who were so close to eternity may glance at you with a quiet 
eye, but there is no rebuke nor perturbation in their hearts. 

It all adds up. What I said above is true. Obliteration doesn't exist; a 
Buddhist believes that he is probably doomed to live on this earth in 
eternity in some form or other. If you are convinced that you will return 
in another shape, maybe you won't care too much. Any change might be 
for the better. Only the very holy can break the bonds of existence and 
attain to blessed non-existence. 

The animals too seem to believe this. They wander the streets with ease 
not to call it insolence. A gentle cow will not blink even though her 
eyelashes are singed by the exhaust pipe. Why should she? She was prob- 
ably one of the ancient Kandyan kings seven hundred years ago. 

As we all but made an ink spot out of a miserable dog, I said, "Any ani- 
mal as flea-bitten and starved as that should be put out of his misery." 

"Don't say that/' Sister said. "He might be your Uncle Joe." 

"Well, if he is my Uncle Joe I think I'd treat him a little better. Cure his 
mange, feed him something, clear up his fleas." 

"Yes, but you don't know. That's the hard part of it. Maybe he's Hitler 
or Stalin or Jesse James or somebody wicked. No, no, better play it safe, 
Sister. Let nature take its course/' 

The famous Temple of the Tooth stands on Kandy's main street, a jum- 
ble of low buildings erected, it is said, by Portuguese prisoners some four 
hundred years ago. This accounts for the squat octagonal tower. The "new 
wing," not yet completed, was begun thirty years ago. For those who have 
seen the Buddhist temples of Japan, Korea, China and Siam, this is very 
unimpressive. There are no red and gold rafters, no solemn sitting Buddhas 
twenty or thirty feet high, no great halls redolent of incense. "This might 
be one of the lesser California mission monasteries," I thought. 

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when Sister Regina Therese 
and I stepped through the low stone door. We confronted a corridor some 
ten feet wide with a rough stone floor. Nobody was around. We advanced 
cautiously. Ten seconds later, our fate was sealed. 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 81 

ing very very fast Sinhalese. Then the rest of him became apparent 
rumpled black hair and oddly appealing eyes, the tattered and dirty shirt, 
the cotton wrap-around skirt that nearly all men wear in Ceylon, and the 
bare feet beneath it. He was gesturing toward our feet in an agony of 
apprehension. 

"We have to take off our shoes. This is holy ground," Sister translated 
at last. "He wants to take us around/' 

To say truth, I was disappointed in the great Temple of the Tooth. Our 
voluble friend showed us a sitting Buddha in a glass case. A table littered 
with flower heads was before it a shabby table with dead and dying 
flowers. A few feet further down the corridor, there was a smaller Buddha 
sitting in another glass case, like someone in a smudgy telephone booth. 
The tables were ugly, the walls were grey stone and whitewash, the floor 
a dull uneven grey stone. You might find this sort of thing, I thought, in 
any small Buddhist chapel hidden behind a market stall in Honolulu or 
in a corner of a farmer's house in China or Japan. Where was the splendor 
of the great Tooth Temple with its hundreds of monks in the mon- 
astery, the ninety elephants of the Perehera festival known all over the 
world? 

Our friend was chatting away in Sinhalese. He pointed out the railing 
which separates the monks from the people. "If you wish to consult one of 
the monks," he explained, "you ask at this door to see him. Then he comes 
out of the monastery and seats himself at this table. You ask your questions 
and he answers you. This railing is always between you. He never leaves 
the cloistered area/' 

He pointed through an open window across the court to what he called 
the "new wing." The English words stuck out in his rapid Sinhalese. "That 
building is where the monks have their living quarters," he said. 

We went around some more. Suddenly we found ourselves in a large 
room, like a gymnasium with no equipment. A shabby wooden partition, 
perhaps twelve feet high, blocked off about half this hall. A dingy door 
was open in it, and our friend disappeared inside. We would have followed, 
but a sign, the only one in English, stopped us. NO ADMITTANCE EX- 
CEPT ON BUSINESS. Well, that let us out. We stopped short. It seemed 
an abrupt end to the grand tour, but we bent over to put on our shoes and 
leave. 

"No, no!" Our betel-juice friend was back, standing in the doorway 
and waving us on. We pointed to the NO ADMITTANCE sign. Still he 
waved us to come. 

We came. He ushered us into a small room, rather dark. Confronting 
us were two Buddhist monks arrayed in saffron robes and quite unsmiling. 
One was tall and well built, maybe forty-five years old, with shaven head, 
face, eyebrows and even eyelashes. The other was short and rather plump. 



82 CEYLON 

He too had shaved head, cheeks, chin and eyebrows, but a goodly growth 
of hairs sprouted from his ears as if to taunt, "Try to catch us here!" 

We were speechless. We had expected another sitting Buddha, not live 
monks. 

"Do you speak English?" I asked the larger monk, feeling like Goldi- 
locks when she woke to find three huffy bears staring down on her. 

"No," said the monk and that was all. 

By this time, our betel-chewing guide had recovered his breath. He 
rattled on and Sister Regina Therese translated in tremulous English. It 
gave me a chance to look around. 

A large business-like desk was up against one of the drab walls of long- 
unpainted wood. The bigger monk may have been working there; the top 
was littered with papers and a wastebasket beside it had overflowed on 
the floor. Under the high window on the far side of the room was a bed 
with a square mosquito net. Beside this was an alarm clock of ancient de- 
sign with two bells on top. In the other corner was another bed, or rather 
a cot with rumpled bedclothes, A washstand with pitcher and basin com- 
pleted the furnishings. This was evidently a combination office and bed- 
room for these two monks. 

I looked at Number One closely. I have seen that sort of face on a New 
York banker or managing editor of a newspaper or a Jesuit superior 
or a trust fund administrator when you come asking for a grant. He was 
looking at me too, and I could see the questions in those very suave, know- 
ing eyes. What are you here for? What's in that bag you carry? Are you a 
spy, or a bomb setter, or just an innocent tourist? 

In the meantime, Sister was translating. "He says that the monks arise 
at five in the morning and have prayers. Then they expose the Tooth for 
veneration by the public at 6:30 and again at 9:00 A.M. Many people come 
at those hours. The Tooth is shut off from view at other times except at 
6:00 in the evening when it is again shown to the devout. He says we may 
not see the Tooth now, but if we wish we may leave flowers outside." 

We thanked him for the information. The monks nodded that this was 
indeed the schedule of hours. We knew well that we need not have been 
brought into the monastery to be told it. These monks wanted to see what 
kind of people we were. We were about to bow out when I decided to put 
those steady eyes and saffron robes on film. I stepped forward and opened 
the airlines bag I use for a gadget bag, 

"Pictures?" I asked. 

A dither ensued. The big monk turned to the wall where the washstand 
was; the little one dashed out of the room. 

"Now you've done it!" I thought. "You'll be lucky to get out of this 
alive." How does one expiate an insolence to the Btiddhist Father General? 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 83 

The rack? Sitting in hot sun? Buried in ants? Washing dishes for life? 
I started to put the camera away. The guide stopped me. 

"They just want to change their clothes for the picture/' he explained. 

Sure enough! The Number One monk was swinging another bright 
saffron robe around himself. Monk Number Two soon came in arrayed 
also in new clothes and a broad smile. They posed like models, anywhere 
I wanted them. We parted a smiling, urbane, very chummy group. 

Looking back on the incident and translating it into the same situation 
in America, I can see what happened. The political situation was tense 
against Catholics. The government had said it would take over the man- 
agement of all private schools; Catholic families were camping in the class- 
rooms to forestall such a move. Then, at noon when few people would be 
astir in the Temple of the Tooth, greatest of all Buddhist temples in Cey- 
lon, two Catholic Sisters wander in with an airlines bag. What would hap- 
pen if two Buddhist monks in their saffron robes, carrying a suspicious 
bundle between them, came into a big city's cathedral, just when a Catholic 
government God save the day! was to take over Buddhist schools? 
Maybe the pastor would send a sacristan to show them about and try to 
find out what errand they came on. It was obvious that they would not 
show us the audience chamber where the famous Tooth was. They were 
wary of letting us anywhere near that Tooth. 

The relief in my heart when the monks joyously posed for pictures 
must have been nothing to the relief in theirs. 

Ceylon is thoroughly Buddhist. When a bus passes the Temple of the 
Tooth, most of the passengers rise from their seats and bow toward the 
structure. On a trip to Polonnaruwa, our bus driver stopped to buy a coco- 
nut and smash it against a stone before a wayside shrine. If it had not 
broken, it would have meant bad luck and probably he would have re- 
fused to make the trip. On the way home, he bought another coconut to 
smash in gratitude. What hurt was that each time he borrowed ten cents 
from us to buy the coconut. 

The sacred bo tree is never destroyed. Tradition says that Buddha 
rested under a bo tree when he had his revelations. 

Every bo shoot has enjoyed immunity thereafter. When a new bo tree 
is discovered, the faithful drape ropes around the branches to indicate that 
it is sacred, and place votive offerings and lights on the ground in front 
of it. The bo leaf is round with a long tapering point, rather like the head- 
dress of Siamese or Javanese dancers. Possibly the pointed headdress is 
derived from the bo. 

Buddhism came to Ceylon around 300 B.C., leaping over from India. In 
the two thousand three hundred years since then, it has been the corner- 
stone of Ceylon's history. There have been several Temples of the Tooth; 



84 CEYLON 

the sacred relic, reputed to be Gautama Buddha's left canine tooth, has 
been carried from capital to capital as Sinhalese kings have evacuated one 
town after another. Its present home is by no means the most gorgeous. 
We had to go to Polonnaruwa for that. 

One thing about Ceylon the people are not parsimonious with their 
syllables. Particularly in names. Kandy and Colombo are plebian names, 
corrupted by short-tongued foreigners. The real Sinhalese names are un- 
rememberable at first and unforgettable later. The effort to master them 
fixes them indelibly in mind. Sight and sound have but the vaguest con- 
nection; Nurawa Eliya is pronounced Nuralya. 

A mere babe in arms carries a name which drags along the floor after 
him. Surely, nobody who loves the child will deprive him of a few syllables 
when they are free for the asking. I asked a lad what his name was, ex- 
pecting a handful of syllables but not what I got. "Mawaranuwa Bandu- 
tanaikara/* he said. I tried adding him to my list for the Commemoration 
of the Living at Mass, but it put me two pages behind the priest in the mis- 
sal. 

Small wonder then that on a map of Ceylon the town names begin in 
the middle of the island and keep going for an inch or more into the 
ocean. Polonnaruwa seemed close to Kandy. But I was looking at the end 
of the word; the dot next to the P was fifty miles away. 

Polonnaruwa is a mine of antiquity. Through wild jungles which look 
as though the hand of man had never touched them, our crowded Volks 
station wagon ran. If we had had time to hack a way through the tangled 
vines and undergrowth, we could have stumbled upon many an ancient 
irrigation canal, many a reservoir and pool. This whole area was once 
rice fields and gardens. But we were bound for Polonnaruwa, city of the 
kings of the Resplendent Isle from 1056 until around 1220. Before that, it 
had been the summer resort of Ceylonese nobles from Anuradhapura. After 
that period it was and has been a jungle. 

Americans, when we think of background and history, follow a familiar 
line back to Adam. There was George Washington, and before him, Eu- 
rope. Before Europe was Rome and Greece. Then comes the Old Testa- 
ment back through David, Moses and Abraham to Adam himself. We may 
take a side line through Egypt or Assyria or northern Africa, but on the 
whole the path is well marked. In the house of our family tree, these are 
the ancestors who hang on the walls. 

Wandering through Polonnaruwa gave me a queer uninvited feeling. 
Like a child who has gone to bed and finds it isn't his mother who is tuck- 
ing him in at all. Or a guest at the wrong party. Or someone who thinks he 
is going on a boat ride and finds himself going down a snowy slope with 
skis on his feet. I felt I had gone into the house of history and found the 
wrong ancestors hanging on the wall. 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 85 

For, while our Greece and Rome and Europe were bowling along, other 
civilizations were erupting elsewhere. The Incas in Peru, the Aztecs in 
Mexico, the Chinese, Japanese and Ceylonese. Climbing the ancient ruins 
o Polonnaruwa, one doesn't know whether he should say, "How strange!" 
or "How familiar!" The human problems are so ordinary; their results so 
strange. You sit down on remnants of a royal bath and you think, "These 
were men like us. They had the same human nature to contend with as we 
do. Their objectives seem to have been about the same. Civic welfare, de- 
velopment of public works, how to make the 'haves' share with the 'have- 
nots' the welfare of religion, defense against enemies within and without. 
Our newspapers could have been published in Polonnaruwa in the year 
1156 just by changing a few names and technical terms." 

The greatest king was Parakrambuha. (I told you the Ceylonese do not 
skimp on syllables.) He got his throne without too much trouble. He was 
nephew of the old king and, from his youth, had shown he was rich in 
genius as well as everything else. They say he had some Tamil or South 
Indian blood; certainly he had the energetic approach to problems which 
the Indians have. On his coronation in 1153 he said, "It is my ambition 
that no drop of water in my kingdom reach the ocean without having 
benefited mankind," 

This is the origin of the "tanks" of Ceylon. They are really artificial 
lakes; the one at Polonnaruwa itself covers four thousand acres. The whole 
thing is so perfectly designed that when British engineers reconstructed 
the area they could not find better places for the locks and gates than those 
the ancient Ceylonese builders had used. 

The city and cultivated rice paddies and gardens all around it extended 
for miles and miles. The site of the city thus far excavated, although 
covering an area four miles long, is only a small cleared patch in the 
jungle which has grown over the farm lands of old Ceylon. 

Palaces with council chambers, sleeping apartments and gardens; mon- 
asteries for thousands of monks; theaters and picture galleries; fountains 
and baths with elaborate underground piping; the original Temple of 
the Tooth, and many other shrines, are scattered here and there. Just to 
stand at the doorway of the monastery known as Lamkatilaka (if you can't 
pronounce that name, try its other one, Jetavanarama) and to gaze at the 
gigantic Buddha on the far wall, more than fifty-five feet high even with- 
out his head, is to realize the mental power of these old Ceylonese who 
laid brick upon brick here eight hundred years ago. 

Most impressive of all is the Galvihara, where four huge figures of 
Buddha are carved out of solid rock. It is as if you had cut a pound of 
butter in half, pushed the front part away and carved the statues out 
of the cut surface. The standing Buddha is twenty-two feet high; the re- 
clining Buddha forty-four feet long, and the sitting Buddhas slightly 



86 CEYLON 

smaller. After all, the Christ of the Andes is only twenty-six feet high. 

Beside these colossal figures carved in the rock is a huge "page" of writ- 
ing. I asked the Sisters to read it for me. It is, they said, something like what 
the Rule of St. Augustine is for Catholic religious a rule of life laying 
down general directions for community living. It's a good idea to cut it 
into stone. Our copy of the Rule at Maryknoll is always wearing out; the 
monks of Polonnaruwa had one that has lasted for eight hundred years. 

The trouble is, it outlasted the monks. As I looked, a green lizard skipped 
across the great foot of Buddha. And among the ruined buildings were 
little grey monkeys, gathering acorns and scratching themselves, just as 
their ancestors did in A.D. 1100. Their ancestors' homes are gone long 
since, but the lizards and monkeys remain. The homes of men are still 
there, even their Holy Rule, but the men are gone. 

Compared to Buddhism's age in Ceylon, the Church is a mere upstart. 
And Catholics show something of the spunk of the early Christians. Portu- 
guese brought the Faith around 1500. Dutch came around 1650 and 
Catholics had to go underground for one hundred and fifty years. Yet their 
numbers grew. The main figure during this time was Father Joseph Vas, a 
Goan, who came into the country disguised as a Tamil laborer. By skipping 
away from the police often enough, he managed to live to a ripe old age. 

Ceylon's Catholics are invigorating. More than seventy percent of their 
priests are Ceylonese and four of the six bishops on the island are native. 
There is a vigor and youth about them that bodes well for the future. 
Many have studied in Rome, England or the United States; they have a 
worldly polish as well as solid Catholicity. Sisters too have joyousness and 
vitality. There are six hundred Ceylonese Good Shepherd Sisters and 
many from other congregations as well. 

They will need, it seems, all the spunk and polish they have. Not long 
ago, Catholic Sisters who had staffed some of the government hospitals 
at the previous government's urgent invitation were summarily dismissed. 
The result is awkward for those who invited them to come and a little 
bit disastrous for the sick. 

Schools came next. About two-thirds of all children in school attended 
Catholic schools. At the same time, the Ceylon Times estimated that be- 
tween 400,000 and 700,000 children had no schools at all. Yet the Catholic 
schools were taken over or closed down and no new schools were opened. 
The Catholics put up a stiff fight. Something of their calibre can be seen 
from this incident. 

During the Christmas vacation of 1960-1961, Catholic families took 
turns occupying their schools on the premise that they had built the schools 
and financed them, and therefore they could sleep in the classrooms if they 
wished. This was to prevent the government from using the schools for 
its own purposes, since it took over the management but not the property 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 87 

of Catholic schools. A young girl from the country was attending High 
School in Colombo; since things were so unsettled, she decided not to go 
back to her home town for Christmas but to spend the feast In Colombo. 
However, her mother wrote: 

My dear daughter, 

As you may have heard, the Catholics of our town are taking turns in 
occupying the school; each family has a night of the week. It may well be 
that we will be called upon to suffer for our Faith on the night our family 
occupies the school. I would not want anyone of my family to be absent on 
such a glorious night. Come home. 

The government gave one of those "or else . . . ." choices. A Catholic 
school could "go private/' which meant that it might open its doors but 
charge no tuition. It must depend on good-will contributions for support. 

As a result, every diocese started a School Fund. Catholics wished each 
other "A Courageous Christmas!" They sent no Christmas cards, bought 
no new clothes, ate no Christmas candies, and drank no Good Cheer. 
Money thus saved was donated to the School Fund. They realized a tidy 
sum but not enough, of course, to operate all the schools. 

The Ceylonese are a deeply spiritual people. Their shrines are under 
every tree; consciousness of the supernatural shines in their eyes. They 
know how to manage the world. Some of them manage it superlatively 
well. But their main interest is in things of the spirit. This is true of 
Buddhists and Catholics alike. Of all Ceylonese. 

I met a remarkable man in Ceylon remarkable to me, but not so 
extraordinary as Catholic Ceylonese go. He had just retired as manager 
of the Government Farm School where he had spent forty years. At last 
he had time to pray! I found him going from church to church with a 
beatific smile on his face. At our request he wrote out the plan of his 
pilgrimage. 

TOKEN OF DEEP GRATITUDE TO OUR LORD 

What shall I render to God for the things He has rendered to me? 
As an esteemed token of my love and gratitude . . . for helping to perform 
forty years of meritorious government service in the Department of Agri- 
culture with a clean record, I have decided to make a private pilgrimage to 
forty churches commencing from the Feast of the Purification (February 2), 
to be completed if possible before Easter Monday (April 3), and to con- 
clude with a Thanksgiving Mass. My wife will accompany me if she can 
and at the Thanksgiving Mass I wish my whole family to attend and re- 
ceive Holy Communion. 

Then follows a list of prayers to be recited kneeling. The list would 
fill an hour very easily, as he sprinkled benefactions on millions of people, 



88 CEYLON 

from the Holy Father and all mankind down to the last soul in Purgatory. 
Not one escaped his generosity, now that he had time to kneel quietly 
before God and talk to Him about them all. I wondered how many Catho- 
lics in the States had similar retirement plans. 

We spent Christmas in Ceylon the Courageous Christmas. It was all 
wrapped around with interest in Bishop Regno, who is as saintly in a 
European way as the retired farm manager is in the Ceylonese way. 

He is known as the Coolie Bishop this small Italian with the pon- 
derous beard and quick laugh. More than fifty years in Ceylon, he first 
worked with the Tamil laborers on big estates. Stories are rife as to his 
prowess. He walked more than thirty miles from place to place. He slept 
and ate in "the lines" with the workers, refusing invitations to stay with 
the owners. His polished manners and gay humor made him good com- 
pany for wealthy people but he preferred to stay with his parishioners. 
Even when he was Bishop of Ceylon's proudest city, he still rode in 
buses and third-class railroad compartments. He resigned in 1959 * n f avor 
of a young Ceylonese and chortles in glee that he can now ride with the 
common people and not excite comment. He wears no stockings except 
on state occasions. He insists on being his own sacristan, caring for the 
altar and vestments himself. He gets his candles made from the stubs of 
votive candles before the statues in his church. He has no housekeeper 
because he eats but one meal a day and that is breakfast at the Mary- 
knoll Sisters' convent. 

Since we are three miles from Kandy, it is sometimes awkward to get 
transportation when the Sisters attend school plays or functions in the 
city. On one occasion, the hostess arranged that the Bishop and the Sisters 
would return in a car she provided. Bishop Regno, seeing that the car 
would be crowded, slipped away early and came home by himself. The 
next morning at his breakfast, Sister Regina Michael ventured to chide 
him, "You should not have done that. There was plenty of room in the 
car, Bishop." 

The Bishop playfully popped a cashew nut into his mouth. "Don't 
worry about me/' he assured her. "I came home in one of the biggest 
and most expensive cars in Kandy. Had a professional chauffeur, too. I 
always give myself the best.*' Later Sister found out that the most ex- 
pensive cars in Kandy are the city buses. 

On Christmas Eve, the nine of us dressed silently for Midnight Mass 
and walked down the country lane to Bishop Regno's church. Past the 
patch of snake gourd where the serpentine squashes glistened with strange 
brilliance in moonlight. Past a rice paddy; one could almost hear the 
roots stretching down through the ooze at the bottom. Past a row of huts 
dark with sleep. Yoganandra's house, and Mari's who always carries her 
baby brother, Ratnapapala's house, and the champion of them all, Na- 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 89 

waranuwa Bandutanaikara. It was odd not to see them run out into 
the road to greet us. Poor children, they slept fitfully on the earthen 
floors inside, unaware that Christ was being born again, not in faraway 
Palestine but in the white church at the crest of their hill. This after- 
noon, they had been Sister's Little Helpers setting up the crib in church. 
Questions galore from them. But we dared not tell them about Jesus' 
coming tonight. Who knows? Stories get around and soon the stern finger 
of the law would shout, "Proselytizing!'* It's a pretty fix for missioners 
to be in, but we were in it. 

We made the steep climb to the top a bit breathless. After all, when 
you are trying to pray for everyone you ever knew and all those you 
wish you could understand, there's not much breath left to push old 
Brother Ass up a hill. 

The church was full and filling fuller. On the pews were Sinhalese, 
middle class women in filmy saris of most exquisite color and texture; 
children in dresses and white suits, smart young fellows in shirts and 
wrap-around cotton skirts; older men with white hair and mustaches 
contrasting with their dark skins. Squatting, kneeling, sitting on the 
familiar floor were the Tamil estate workers. Judging from wrinkles, 
many coats had lain folded in trunks for most of the year. Nose-jewels 
and bracelets even on the poorest, even on the babies. Many old men 
wore their hair in a bun at the back and their ears were adorned with 
rings. 

The Bishop was hearing confessions right out in the open with only 
a screen between him and the penitent. Midnight came, 12:15 and 12:30. 
Still the confessional line had always three or four. The Bishop peeked 
around his screen several times and thought he would finish those few, 
but new ones continually had a bright thought, "I think I'll go to con- 
fession!" and joined the line-up. 

We didn't mind too much. It was good to sit there jammed together 
with Sinhalese and Tamils and Europeans, knowing that in our very 
closeness we formed a solid block of humanity welded by Faith. With 
that in common, all our differences dwindled to the vanishing point. 
Each of us had something personal to say to God on this night; yet be- 
sides our individual stories there was the common cry for light to see 
God's Will and strength to follow it. 

At Holy Communion time, the whole mass of us surged forward, 
stepping over the Tamil babies left behind on the floor. The heads 
were tilted back heads with turbans or hats or veils, heads with whiskers 
profuse, or cleanshaven, heads with dark faces or light ones the tongues 
came out and the Lord of us all rested on them. Our fusion was nothing 
to His. 

Ceylon Catholics were tense that Christmas on account of what might 



90 CEYLON 

happen. Think of all the Christmas Masses in countries where it had 
happened. Our schools were threatened; in so many other lands they 
were closed. Long closed. Foreign priests and Sisters wondered, "How 
long before the government cancels all visas?" Think of the nations 
which have driven out even native priests. There was much to think about, 
much to pray strength for. 

After Midnight Mass, the Bishop went walking. Arrayed in all his 
episcopal robes, down to the black pumps with red pompons (which I 
am sure were part of his original outfit when he became Bishop of Kandy 
years ago), he set out to walk through his unconscious parish. We Sisters 
followed him: two little altarboys went along for the fun. 

It was fun. He left a trail of quips, bright remarks, quick laughter 
along the silent streets. We went past the dispensary; no lines waiting 
outside. Past the shops, shuttered and boarded for the night. Past the 
bus stop on the main road. Past the children's houses, past the growing 
rice and the snake gourd patch. We were back at our bungalow. The 
path was outlined by tiny flames from wicks floating in coconut oil in 
half-shells. An outdoor crib made of brown paper with silhouettes cut 
from X-ray film glowed before the door. We sang some hymns with the 
Bishop trailing an octave below. Then we swung into Christmas gaiety 
over a hearty cup of cocoa and mammoth doughnuts. The Coolie Bishop 
joined us, displaying a coolie appetite for good things, all the good-er 
after his long fast. 

The talk soon turned to yes, more Sisters. The same old story; so 
much to be done, so few to do it. As I feared, Mother put me up for 
sale. How much? The Bishop offered an elephant. The Ceylon Sisters 
thought that reasonable. One elephant for another, I suppose. Fortunately, 
we travel on tourist rates. "What about an elephant in those tourist 
seats, Mother?" I asked. The subject, thanks be to God, was dropped. 

Later, I rather wished I were an elephant in the tourist seat en route 
to Bangkok. For one thing, with a tough skin I might not have felt the 
people behind walking up and down my seat back; for another, with a 
long trunk I might have done something about it. Like squirting water 
over my head at them. These people behind seemed never to be settled, 
pushing and poking while they rearranged their hand luggage under, 
over and around their feet. Then they gave the whole floor space over 
to baggage and propped their feet up against the chairback. My chair- 
back. That got boring, and they tried leaping all over the back, jumping 
from my waist to my head to my shoulders in gay abandon. I couldn't 
resist taking a look. They were an Indian couple, newlyweds probably. 
They were having such a good time billing and cooing, I hadn't the heart 
to look severe and sat down again. 



COOLIE BISHOP IN A BUDDHIST WORLD 91 

After a while, as I leaned on the armrest, something touched my elbow, 
touched and stayed pushing forward. I looked down. It was the fair 
bride's foot, resting casually halfway into my armrest. It stayed there 
for some time; I could observe it well. Besides the bright red nail polish, 
each toe had a silver ring on it. The stones, believe it or not, were be- 
tween the toes. This is real penance. 

You often hear about the East rubbing elbows with the West, but 
I never thought an Eastern foot with rings on the toes would be rubbing 
my Western elbow. But that's what travel does to one. 



PHILIPPINES 




PHILIPPINES 



8 



Sentimental Bus Ride 



SHE'S a lovely lady. Dignified and warmly human. A 
widow twice over now, fond of both her husbands but subservient to 
neither. Now that she is alone, she rather enjoys making her own mis- 
takes. They aren't the mistakes her husbands would have made, but 
what's the use of freedom if you can't make your kind of mistakes? That's 
the fun of handling your own affairs, isn't it? 

She is Manila, a woman of history. Her girlhood was wild and free, 
playing around with Chinese, Japanese, Malayans and Borneans, who 
ran in from the neighborhood. She was well educated, had a written 
language, made pretty things of gold and silver, hammered out bronze 
and iron tools. 

Then, one morning she woke to find herself married to Spain. Not 
an easy marriage, but she learned to mingle with her husband's family, 
so unlike the neighbors' children she grew up with. At first she was 
bewildered in her new setting; often galled by their calm assumption 
that all she had learned before was stupid. But she picked her way daintily 
through the European household and looked over the tray of jewels 
they offered for her adornment. Some she liked and kept; others she 
appraised and threw away. Of one, she said, "This is for keeps." It was 
the family pearl. 

Even when her second husband, the energetic young American, took 
possession of her house, she kept that pearl. Sometimes he laughed at 
her for thinking so much of it; most often he shrugged as if it were a 
thing not worth bothering about. More than once she went up to the 
attic, thinking to put it away with the few keepsakes of her first marriage. 
With the trunk open, she would pause to look at her pearl. And to look 
again. No, no. Her Faith was not just a recuerdo of Spain; it was part 
of herself. She closed the trunk again and came downstairs. 

It isn't often one sees an old friend with enough years between visits 
to let you note the changes. Mother and I knew Manila during the hey- 
day years before World War II. We knew her when strangers' boots 
tramped the streets when the prisons were full of her sons and the 
nightclubs were full o the strangers. After the liberation, Mother re- 

95 



96 PHILIPPINES 

turned to the States. I stayed on for two years while Manila dug the 
bodies out of the air raid shelters and pushed the buildings back up. In 
1949, I saw her again as she struggled to her feet once more. Now in 1961, 
we saw Manila flourishing again, strong like new growth from a charred 
stump. 

I went out to make acquaintance with the lady again. I had an idea 
that there would be changes. Even from the air, flying over the harbor, 
I could see no Japanese ships on the harbor bottom. Right after the 
war, an American soldier took us up in a plane and we saw straight 
through the clear water to the fleet hobnobbing with the fishes down 
there. In 1947, our ship steered gingerly through a forest of mast heads, 
all one could see above water of that fleet below. Two years later, the 
ships had been raised, bailed out and the rusting hulks pulled over to 
the breakwater just to get them out of the way. Now well, now nobody 
remembered them much. When I asked what happened to them I felt 
like Hannibal asking where his elephants' footprints were in the Alpine 
snows. 

"How would you like an expedition into the dim mists of history?" I 
asked Sister Paula Cathleen. She eyed me warily. 

"How far back?" she wanted to know. 

"Twenty years or so." 

"Oh," she said, "I'd like that. I teach history, you know." 

"Ancient history?" I asked. 

"No, medieval and the beginnings of modern history. This will just 
fit in. Let's go." 

We went. At the corner of our country road, we hopped a bus coming 
from Marikina, bound for Divisoria market in Manila. The buses haven't 
changed much I noted. Still no room for my knees. Probably the very 
same bus honked along this street twenty years ago. Speedometer and 
mileage meter put out of commission; wooden floor unswept, wooden 
seats the same. The scenery outside was unchanged, only there was more 
of it. Interminable lengths of small sarisari stores, selling bits of clothing, 
crackers, canned foods, toys, religious statues, artificial flowers and candy 
in glass jars. But now the peanuts come in cellophane bags and the flowers 
are wrapped in plastic to keep the street dust from settling on them. 

The city started to grow up around us. A much bigger city. Manila 
has two and one half million now sprawled out around it like Los Angeles. 

Out of the open window (are windows ever closed on Manila buses?) 
I saw Bilibid prison. Couldn't resist it. Hopped off the bus. Dear old 
Bilibidl Just around the corner from Santo Tomas University where 
seven thousand American civilians spent the war years in internment. 
Old Bilibidl A Sing Sing alumnus could not have been gladder to see 
the dear old place. Here Father Cummings of Maryknoll and eight hun- 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 97 

dred of his comrades in arms sweated and starved and slaved. From 
Bilibid, he boarded the prison ship to Japan and died on the way, having 
used his last teaspoonful o precious water to baptize a dying soldier 
who asked him for it. God rest his soul! And God rest the soul of his 
Japanese guard who kindly let him out one afternoon every two weeks 
to forage around his friends in Manila asking food and money for dis- 
heartened, sick American boys. Hataji his name was a name that comes 
often to the lips of those Maryknoll Sisters who knew him. Hataji was 
killed when Americans liberated our internment camp at Los Banos. 

I looked at those squat towers of Bilibid as tourists might view the 
Colosseum in Rome. Many a martyr died there. 

We hailed a jeepney and squeezed into it. For the uninitiated those 
benighted folk who have never squeezed into a jeepney this requires 
a bit of explanation. The word "jeepney," dear children, is a hybrid de- 
rived from "jeep" and "jitney," with all the good qualities of both. It 
was spawned in postwar years of the Army jeep and will go down in 
history as the Filipino's gift to the god of Enterprise. 

The basic idea is to get a jeep by fair or foul means. Then remove 
the back seat, build out the rear end to a fabulous length. Then place 
seats lengthwise so that eight or ten people can sit, squeezed in tight 
with interlocking knees. This is the basic procedure. From here on, the 
imagination can free-wheel to creative heights. Paint, chrome trim, jig- 
saw work, painting on mirrors, dainty curtains, and tinselled shrines 
one jeepney can use them all. 

Sister Paula Cathleen and I waded out in midstream traffic to where 
the jeepney driver was courteously waiting for us. The honks behind 
him meant nothing to this Sir Walter Raleigh. He would spread his Sun- 
day shirt upon the street if it would direct two more customers to him. 
We crawled into the back seat; Sir Walter lurched forward to get the 
green light, and we sat down suddenly. Beside me was a middle-aged 
man with his favorite fighting cock on his lap. The cock was quiet, blink- 
ing at each of us with brilliant, stupid eyes. Every now and then Mang 
Andoy stroked his iridescent tail feathers with the touch of affection. 

Our jeepney too had had tender care. Curtains with chenille balls 
dangled at the windows and framed the back door. Bright paint spangled 
the ceiling and outside walls. A mirror spread from side to side in front 
of the driver not at all content with a single rear-view mirror. In white 
paint on it was "In God We Trust." A rosary dangled before the -wind- 
shield. A St. Christopher medal and small statue of Our Lady danced 
attendance on the dashboard. Anyone who must jerk and push, swerve 
and leap through Manila traffic twelve hours a day if Mama and the 
kids are going to have rice tonight, is wise to get the whole of Heaven 
plugging for him. 



98 PHILIPPINES 

The jeepney is old stuff now; in fact, it is going out. City fathers 
who have Cadillacs to ride around in say it is a hazard to life and limb. 
Of course it is! So is mountain climbing, and automobile racing, and bull 
fighting. Some people spend lots of money for the thrills a common 
"tao" gets from merely crossing Plaza Goiti in Manila. But that's progress 
for you. The expensive thrills remain; the cheap ones are condemned. 

Remember the millionaires, proud to say they started out in business 
as newsboys? Well, try to find a newsboy these days. Hopping on and 
off trolley cars, slipping past the traffic cop, selling papers as customers 
hang out of bus windows these are pass sports now. But a sizable 
number of boys do a similar job in Manila. In a traffic jam waiting for 
the lights to change, a slim lad eased his way through the cars. He was 
selling cigarettes, one at a time. It was a step up from the African in the 
market who sold one puff at a time. These cigarette boys selling "loosies," 
are the modern newsboys in Manila. Quite a number of them go to our 
Maryknoll Free School in the heart of the city. Most have had schooling 
for only two years. We offer them a completely free education under 
excellent teachers. Maryknoll Free School is reserved for children who 
are willing to study hard but who cannot afford a good school. Others 
need not apply. One of these lads works in the slaughterhouse from 5 
to 11 P.M. Another puts in several hours as "conductor'* on a jeepney; 
that is, he yells out the destination all the time, keeps an eye out for 
customers, helps stow the baggage, and collects the fares. 

The teachers get the spirit of Maryknoll Free School. One came first 
to offer his spare time; he was a teacher at an exclusive school for American 
children only. Next year, he quit that job to teach our poor children 
full time. Then he offered to teach algebra from 5 to 6 P.M. to any 
child who wants to excel in math. It's amazing, the intellects discovered 
in these underprivileged children. One boy went through Grades Two 
to Seven in two years; he had missed many years of school in his short 
life. He won a scholarship then to the Ateneo, the best school for boys 
in the Philippines. Many a rich lad would give his eyeteeth to be ac- 
cepted there. 

Into Quiapol You must have lived in Manila to appreciate Quiapo. 
The cacophony of jeepney horns, the smell of gasoline, the constant 
shouting " 'Soria 'Soria," "Malabon, Malabon," "Paco, Paco, Paco," "Pa- 
say, Pasay" as bus and jeepney conductors try to inveigle passengers 
for these various sections of the city it's a nightmare. A delightful night- 
mare. I could never be in Manila and not go to Quiapo there to be 
strangled by the fumes and deafened by the roar just for old times' sake. 

I'm glad I went. Next time I see Manila, law and order will have 
taken over Quiapo. They are building a tunnel to ease the traffic situa- 
tion. That huge plaza before Quiapo church is mostly a big hole. But 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 99 

still the buses honk and the jeepneys squirm; Mamita with a basket 
of fruit on her head and a cigarette backwards in her mouth pulls her 
Pedrito out o the way of oncoming annihilation. Still the devout pour 
in and out of the old Spanish church, done up anew with aluminum 
paint and new decorations. Still the venders of drygoods, religious articles 
and hair ornaments keep calling the passerby. 

We too went into the church. Here the Black Christ is venerated. Every 
Friday at 3 P.M. from time immemorial, the Black Christ of Quiapo 
has a service; every Good Friday men who will not darken the doors of 
a church at any other time, fight for the honor of bearing the Black Christ 
in procession around the plaza. The inside of Quiapo church, once the 
mecca of enthusiastic unregulated devotion, is succumbing to law and 
order also. A railing around the shrine makes people come up one at a 
time to venerate the statue. People still crawl up the middle aisle on 
their knees but they finish by kneeling at the altar rail before the Blessed 
Sacrament. Many more were quietly sitting in the pews and praying. A 
blind beggar at the door was saying his rosary, not calling out as they 
used to do. We gladly gave him fifty centavos. 

Quiapo Market could it be that law and order had penetrated even 
to Quiapo Market? Well, not entirely. But it is making headway, even 
in this citadel of the picturesque. There are no flies repeat: no flies 
around the meat and fish counters. However, baskets of fruit skins and 
left-overs, bits of wilted radishes and carrots, squashed squashes, and 
slightly rotten fruit clog the aisles in the good old way, and the floor is 
wet constantly if not with dirty water, then with clean water put on 
to mop up the dirty water. 

But the heart of the Filipino market venders is unchanged. It was good 
to hear them call out, "Mother! You will buy my eggs, Mother!*' "See 
the pechay, Mother. Just picked today!" It was not that they really wanted 
us to buy. But a bit of conversation with the Sisters going past is good 
for the soul and, perhaps, for the pocketbook as well. They were so 
friendly, so pleasant, it was a shame we could not buy out everybody. 

A silly incident came to mind as we wandered through the market. 
When I was new in Manila, Sister David Marie and I came here to do 
the family marketing. As we bought the last thing, she put the change 
in her purse and said, "Now we go soak," All the way down the street, I 
puzzled silently on "go soak." Soak whom? Does she mean we cheat some- 
body? Maybe it's a whimsical way of saying we will go to a swimming 
pool. What could be nicer? Or perhaps we soak our feet in a doctor's 
office. They're so tired. Maybe we go home and take a bath. They were 
all pleasant thoughts, but just then we turned into a Chinese hardware 
store. Over the door was the owner's name GO SOK, pronounced with 
two long O's. 



100 PHILIPPINES 

I looked for Go Sole's as we went down Echague. Also for Ah Gong's 
where once we asked for "dog meat," meaning meat for a dog, and the 
clerk thought we meant meat of a dog. Echague is a welter of Chinese 
stores, selling cloth or glassware. Go Sok has a brand new three-story 
store in a swankier part of town. Plastic has taken over the cloth and 
glassware stores. Cups and glasses, plates and serving dishes are all of 
plastic now. The bolts of cheap cloth are mostly synthetics or plastic, too. 

And into Santa Cruz. This is the heart of town. Plaza Goiti used to 
be the meeting place where hawkers and sellers from Quiapo on the 
east, and the more staid business people of Escolta on the west, met with 
the intellectuals and government workers who came across Santa Cruz 
Bridge from the south. Dominating the welter of people, buildings and 
bridges, is Santa Cruz church. Before the war, you couldn't see the church 
for the shabby, fly-by-night stalls and small stores set up all around it. 

But war smashed the church almost to the ground; fire burnt out 
the stalls and stores. I remember coming across Santa Cruz Bridge when 
it was a makeshift affair of planks and pontoons put up by Army en- 
gineers. In those days, nobody had any transportation but Army personnel. 
We Sisters used to stand on street corners surrounded by our bundles, 
hoping that some private, colonel or general would take pity on us for 
a few blocks at least. Thus we got home from shopping trips by stages. 

During one of these expeditions to replenish our cupboards, Sister 
David Marie and I went into the ruins of Santa Cruz church to refresh 
our spirit and to rest our feet. Ill never forget it. The Blessed Sacrament 
was exposed on the altar, under a galvanized iron roofing. The rest of 
the church was roofless. We sat on some benches in the bright sunshine 
or knelt on the old tile floor in those spots not dug up by bombs or 
shrapnel. The benches were fairly well filled with people who had lost 
the roofs over their heads, too. They had come to visit with our Lord, 
now in the same predicament. When we had rested, Sister David Marie 
and I went out the door to Plaza Goiti and looked down the Escolta, 
Manila's proudest business street. Three tall buildings had been smashed 
across the street as if a mighty hand had come down upon them from 
the rear. Just heaps of rubble. Others thrust jagged walls against the 
burning sky. This was Manila in 1945. 

But not now. Sister Paula Cathleen and I came out of the beauti- 
fully rebuilt Santa Cruz Church where the Blessed Sacrament is always 
enthroned, and looked down an Escolta that far outshines its predecessor. 
Air-conditioned office buildings, svelte stores, wholesale firms resplendent 
with neon signs these line the Escolta. It's a one-way street now. Yes, 
the Escolta where traffic used to be a knock-down drag-out struggle 
where the best man reached the other curb and the second best went 
to bed! 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 101 

You have to dip down into side streets to get any Philippine flavor. 
There you find the little camera stores, where a patient craftsman will 
spend an hour or more to help you find a screw to fit your tripod and 
charge you fifty centavos for it. There you find Mama sitting behind the 
counter with a cigarette in her mouth, the family sewing in her hands 
and the newest baby in her lap. And you need only to go down a few 
stairs from the Escolta to see the boat families who live in cascos plying 
up and down the Pasig River and penetrating the "esteros" or canals 
through the city. There are few canals left; the sanitation boys have 
been around. But the Escolta still bridges one in the heart of the city. 

Then we took a carromata. Nowadays, the gracious carromata is called 
"a horse-drawn rig," and traffic regulations forbid such to canter down 
the main thoroughfares. Before the war no one dared make such a ruling; 
the "cochero vote" was a potent factor in any election. But in war times 
the horses were eaten up and the cocheros turned to other work. Now 
they are almost a relic, even though you find some very handsome car- 
romatas decorously plying the side streets. 

We hailed a beauty replete with silvered harness and fancy curtains. 
The horse was tall for a Filipino horse. Since the shafts in front of the 
wheels were high to accommodate him, the seat for passengers in the rear 
tilted back comfortably. Sister Paula Cathleen, for all her youth and 
long legs, had quite a time climbing over the wheel. These young Sisters 
are used to scaling nothing higher than a Fifth Avenue bus. Eventually 
she put one foot on the small iron support and swung herself up over 
the wheel with help from the cochero above and me below. Joy filled 
my wicked old soul when I reached the seat with a single graceful step 
from street to footrest to carromata. "Cluck, cluck" went the cochero 
and we were off, down Rosario, to Binondo. The wheels were not in 
alignment; the cart swayed from side to side going over the cobblestones. 

Binondo in the bad old days was the Chinese ghetto. Many Chinese 
people still live in Binondo, in and out its devious alleyways, behind its 
warehouses and atop its shops. The church at Binondo is still roofless 
sixteen years after the war. In an over-enthusiastic beginning, a replica 
of St. Peter's in Rome in bas-relief plaster was put behind the main altar. 
But money stopped there and the rest of the church has a scrappy tin 
roof over part of the nave. The back is open to winds and sky. Bright 
sunshine floods the rear. Here an enterprising family has put up a nipa 
hut and even planted a papaya tree beside it. It was laundry day when 
we were there; tfce clothesline ran from the bars of one ancient church 
window across the nave to those on the other side. And this inside the 
church, with the tabernacle in plain view. It was the only church I saw 
in the Philippines not repaired. A good record, surely, for it is estimated 
that from 1941 to 1945, churches were demolished or damaged to the 



102 PHILIPPINES 

value of $75,000,000. The Church also lost 275 priests and religious who 
died in these years. 

I wondered if Our Lord minded this Filipino family who had moved 
in with Him, putting up their kind of a house in the middle of His kind 
of a house. They seemed so perfectly at home with Him. Maybe they 
were very holy people who did all their daily chores "in the sight of the 
Lord." Maybe they greeted Him from bed in the morning and said 
"Good night" to Him after a quiet evening sitting on their front steps. 
And they guarded Him all night. If anybody came over the doorless 
threshold, or scaled the roofless walls, Our Lord was not alone. His 
house guests would come to defend Him. When we were there, nobody 
was around. But doubtless they would be back to spend the night with 
Him. 

Outside Binondo church, we hailed another carromata. Very easy to 
do. You just say "Psssst!" and the carromata comes. I think either the 
cochero or his horse is psychic. Maybe both. Sometimes you just think 
"Psssst !" and you get results. Sister Paula Cathleen had another fit of 
giggles trying to get into it, but we went off in state in an equipage 
spangled with silver all over. 

Divisoria market. Pots and bamboo sieves and hair ornaments; wooden 
shoes, ribbons and even false teeth you can buy anything at Divisoria. 
We parted with a modicum of money. I bought one onion for five cen- 
tavos, two bits of ginger for two centavos,, a toy turtle made of papier- 
mach and a rubber band for ten centavos. Again, we were invited to 
buy everything we passed. Not a commercial lure at all. They meant, 
rather, "Come over here, Mother, and talk to me." 

Tabora, outside Divisoria, is a street noted for remnants. In the old 
days, the shops overflowed into the street with baskets of scraps velvet, 
satin, cotton, spangles. Pieces left over from slipper straps, tatters no 
bigger than a few inches, were carefully picked over by dressmakers. They 
could use just such a scrap for an appliqu flower or leaf. Things are a 
little different now. I didn't see remnants but good bolts of material, 
although some of them might have been end-of-the-bolt pieces. The baskets 
of scraps are no more. 

Right here we saw a sad little fellow digging around in a rubbish can, 
so we gave him a bit of money. He was too dazed to know what was hap- 
pening. A young fellow nearby kept urging him, "Say thank youl" I 
only hope the child was not robbed as soon as we left him. 

From Tabora we emerged to Azcarraga and took the first jeepney 
that came along. It was marked Jones Bridge and Pasay. So we honked 
and hooted, lurched and jolted through Manila's business district again, 
and over the span named for Jones, an American congressman who 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 103 

fostered Philippine self-government. This brought us to the entrance of 
Intramuros, the old Spanish walled city, practically wiped out in World 
War II. Where hundreds of thousands once lived and died in unbe- 
lievably crowded houses, now fewer than three thousand are in the make- 
shift huts thrown up in Intramuros' tall grass. It's an area of warehouses, 
newspaper offices, and piers. Only a few relics of the past remain. One 
is St. Augustine Church, the only church left standing in Intramuros 
after the war. It was in the sacristy of St. Augustine's that Admiral Dewey 
and the Spanish Governor of the Philippines signed an agreement to 
turn over the city to the United States in 1898. Toward the end of World 
War II, thousands of terrified people took refuge in the cellar of one of 
those solid Spanish buildings while American forces bombarded Intra- 
muros. Hand grenades were thrown in on them. They all died except 
one Augustinian Brother who stayed seventy-two hours under the pile 
of corpses. I was there several months later when steam shovels dipped 
down into that cellar and brought up the bodies. Relatives seeking news 
of loved ones stayed around to see if they could identify a belt buckle, 
a shoe, a few artificial teeth, a wallet, a bit of jewelry. If so, then they 
knew where one more of the family had died. 

Our own St. Paul's Hospital was in Intramuros, housed in a building 
hundreds of years old. The floor boards were two feet wide and four 
inches thick; the walls were solid masonry six to eight feet thick. Ceilings 
were twenty feet high; and the rafters were whole trees of wood like iron. 
Yet there is nothing of St. Paul's Hospital left. It is a field of high grass 
now behind the magnificently rebuilt Manila Cathedral. 

Sister Paula Cathleen and I, on our sentimental bus trip, left Intra- 
muros and walked up Taft Avenue. In the old days, lofty trees lined 
the broad street; government buildings sat back behind pampered lawns. 
Farther south were Philippine General Hospital, the University of the 
Philippines, large private schools for girls and boys, Jai Alai the gambling 
center. I tell you, Taft Avenue was an address worth having. 

It still is. Seeing the buildings all repaired, the street smoothed out 
again, students, professors, government office workers, smart women bus- 
tling by, the picture I had in mind seemed the veriest illusion. For in 
my mind was the thought that two Maryknoll Sisters and a Filipina 
friend had crawled across that street on their stomachs. It took them 
two days and two nights to go one short block and reach safety in Philip- 
pine General Hospital in. February, 1945. From curb to curb, they lay 
out flat many times when bullets and shells flew by. And a young girl 
who had started out with them from one curb, did not reach the other. 
She was snatched away and never found again. 

It struck me that there are no lofty trees in the city any more. They 



104 PHILIPPINES 

were burned in the last days of struggle. In 1947, there were blackened 
stumps; in 1949 there were little saplings; and now the trees were fair 
but not venerable. 

Yes, Manila is a city of young trees. Dewey Boulevard, the Luneta, 
Plaza Lawton, Taft Avenue, all of Ermita and Malate, once filled with 
solid homes in dark green gardens, look different somehow. Like a woman 
who has changed her make-up. The features are the same, but the aura 
is different. 

I wonder what it does to the psyche of a city not to see a tree more 
than fifteen years old. I know what it did to me to turn into the garden 
at Assumption College and see once more just a few grand old trees. 
The bark is blackened from fires, but these few had not died. We went 
up to them and patted the dark trunks, for these trees had shared our 
life for more than two years. 

More than trees, I wanted to see Mother Rose who had taken thirty- 
six Maryknoll Sisters under her wing and shielded us as long as she could. 
Mother Rose of the Assumption Sisters is like her trees her head high 
in the sky, her roots deep in Philippine soil. Her habit is deep purple, 
her head is straight, her heavy brows move up and down to punctuate 
her sentences, her wit is penetrating, her kindness legendary. She is eighty- 
nine years old now. Her daughters rise up and call her blessed. In sixty 
years in Manila, she has educated most of the country's well-placed 
women and pounded Christian principles into them. Governments also 
rise up to do her honor. France and the Philippines have pinned medals 
on her. Last and least of those who love her, we Maryknoll Sisters (who 
were her houseguests for two years and found we could not wear out 
her very durable charity) rise up to call down benedictions upon her. 

You can't help but enjoy Mother Rose. Little, sprightly, quick in 
repartee, she sits straight as a ramrod at eighty-nine, yet flexible as a 
young girl. Sister Paula Cathleen and I sat in a parlor awaiting Mother. 
She came in with two cold bottles of Coca Cola on a tray. Even without 
seeing us she knew we would be thirsty. From then on she was her old 
delightful self. 

Sixty years ago, Mother Rose came to a Philippines just lifting its head 
after the Spanish-American War. The physical damage was not great 
but the psychological impact was worse. She helped pick up the pieces 
and glue them into a new shape. Her type of religious superior is best 
described by the old saying: She has one foot planted firmly on earth 
and the other as firmly in heaven. 

We walked a bit under the old trees in Assumption Garden and talked 
about them. How they provided dark shade when loyal Filipino friends 
stealthily brought us food in those days; how they arched over the men 
and women, British and American, who came to Assumption for refuge 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 105 

in the early days of Japanese occupation; the Christmas feasts and Easter 
tidbits when Assumption Sisters shared their best with us. They're party 
to many a secret, those trees. 

Then, Sister Paula Cathleen and I took a prosaic old bus and went 
home to Quezon City over Ayala Bridge. Which means we passed the 
vast modern Magnolia Ice Cream Company which cools off millions of 
sweaty Manilans every day. This is at one end of the bridge. San Miguel 
Brewery is at the other end, equally famous for refreshing people. And 
in the middle is a stairway leading down to an island in the river, Hos- 
picio San Jose, where for hundreds of years unwanted babies have found 
a haven. In the old days, the babies were brought by boat and left in 
a turn at the Hospicio gate, silently, anonymously. Hospicio San Jose 
St. Joseph's refuge for the Little Unwanteds. 

It was the Rush Hour. In any city this means the hour when nobody 
can rush. As our crowded bus stopped and started, we took time to hang 
out the window and see everything. There was Singian Clinic, once a 
very shabby building and, after the war, the only hospital in working 
order. And Malacanang Palace, now in its fourth era as Chief Executive 
mansion. Spanish Grandees, American Governors, Japanese Commanders 
and now Philippine Presidents have used it for their official residences. 

Then we left the city behind and crawled out to the suburbs, those 
dreary, dusty lines of small shops along Santa Mesa Boulevard. Gradually, 
people got off. First we could breathe, then we could move. At last there 
was no one on the bus but Sister Paula Cathleen and me and the woman 
conductor who slumped in one of the seats. She looked so tired. 

"You seem tired," I commented. 

"Yes, Mother, I am tired/' 

"I hope this is your last trip today." 

"Oh no, Mother, I must work until 11:00 tonight. I begin at 5:45 in 
the morning and work until 11:00 at night." 

It was true, I found out later. Labor regulations do not apply to those 
on piece work or on commission. Bus conductors are paid on commission. 
There is also a law that women workers must have seats. And who can 
gainsay the claim that there are always plenty of seats in a bus? As in 
the New York subways, there are plenty of seats but somebody else is 
sitting in them. 

I felt sorry for her. But was it really necessary? She felt it was. She 
was putting her son through medical college. When he got his MD her 
life purpose would be over. She could fall under the wheels of the old bus, 
for all she cared. She would die happy; her son was educated. 

Those who delve into such things, tell us that in the Philippines, the 
Pivotal Institution that "Idea" around which everything swings is Edu- 
cation. In the United States, they say, it is Money; with the Chinese, it 



106 PHILIPPINES 

used to be Family. In East Africa, it is Cows. Among the Japanese, it is 
probably the Emperor. Up to the time of our bus ride, I was inclined to 
believe the psychologists had made an error; but the weary bus con- 
ductress convinced me that they are right, 

There is little time for sentiment in the Philippines today. Everybody 
is too busy building up the new life. Enterprise is bursting out all over. 

Spurred on by government offers of land, homesteaders by the thousands 
leave the settled places and strike out for new farm lands in the north 
of Luzon, and in the southern islands. Since 1945, there has been a 
standing offer that one may get twenty-four hectares per man if he cul- 
tivates it for five years. He gets a free patent but cannot sell it for a 
certain term of years. This has brought many families into new areas. 
Later, in Mindanao and up in Isabela, we saw how the plan worked out. 

Even those who stay in the old farms are planting new crops. Just 
driving through the coconut groves in Batangas and Quezon provinces, 
it's a joy to see planted between the rows of coconut trees corn, papaya, 
pineapples. Formerly coconut groves were coconut groves and that was 
that. Canning native fruits has taken quite a hold on the country. Mangos 
those big "carabao" mangos, pride of the Philippines come in cans 
now. Bangos, the islands' favorite fish, are canned, too. 

Heavy industries too are moving in. A steel mill is proposed in Min- 
danao; the Philippines imports steel worth fifteen million dollars a year. 
Oil companies have a foothold already. Caltex has had a refinery at 
Batangas since 1954; begun with almost entirely American personnel, it 
is manned now by Filipinos except for two Americans. Shell Oil, Standard- 
Vacuum and a local company called Filoil plan to open refineries. Pros- 
pectors hope to find oil on the islands. Near Santiago, Isabela, in northern 
Luzon, engineers started to drill; they were sure that oil would be found 
at fourteen thousand feet But at twelve thousand they struck the hardest 
rock they had ever met so hard and so big that they could not get 
through it nor around it. After six months of expensive effort, they pulled 
up their stakes and left. But some day, someone will strike oil in the 
Philippines. 

There is much more variety in the occupations, too. Time was when 
everyone was either a doctor or lawyer. Now chemistry, engineering, 
foreign service and agriculture are among the favorite college courses. 
Filipinos are branching out into many fields they never thought of before. 
An old pupil of mine has made a fortune in chemical supplies; another 
is a researcher in plastics. 

Something new in Manila and the suburbs is modern housing develop- 
ments. Philippine American Life Insurance Company has built Philam 
City, where houses are identical with upper middle-class homes in the 
States, Out in Forbes Park are palatial homes such as you could find in 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 107 

any "upper-bracket suburb." Stultifyingly American. Old time Filipinos, 
if they made money, built a mansion right where they had always lived. 
A beautiful home on a squalid street was ordinary. They had no idea of 
zoning so that the "right people" could be happy that the "wrong people" 
were kept out. They did not intend to take up with a new set of neighbors, 
just because they had struck it rich. 

To counteract Philam City and Forbes Park, a friend took me out to 
Bagong Bantay, or "new village," as the Tagalog name implies. This sec- 
tion was set aside to resettle families who had been squatting in Intra- 
muros people who had come in from the country and, having no place 
to live, had thrown up a shack in the old Walled City. They have to build 
their own houses at Bantay but they get the plot of land free. 

The "new village" had the old flavor. We visited Marcellina who came 
up from the island of Samar four years ago. She and her husband looked 
for work and squatted in Intramuros meanwhile. They were glad to get 
out of it. "Many bad people live there," Marcellina said. She beckoned 
me up the bamboo ladder on to her split bamboo floor. "Maupo kayo, 
Madre!" "Sit down, Mother!" and she cleared off a chair. The house was 
very poor, of course, but very clean and neat. Probably much better 
than they had had in Samar. And the ground was not going to waste as 
a mere residence, either. A marvelous big pig, very clean and white, and 
struggling vegetables decorated the back yard. Flowers in tin cans were 
all over the place. The welcome and hospitality ah, that's Filipino to 
the core! 

Marcellina' s husband makes 120 pesos (about $36.00) a month as orderly 
in a hospital. He has to spend thirty centavos a day in bus fare to and 
from work; he tried walking but he almost broke down under the four- 
mile jaunt twice a day. This is the family's only objection to Bagong 
Bantay, 

Marcellina's hut was not hot; in fact, it was cool. The air conditioning 
was simple just keep trees around, and let air come in through the 
woven bamboo walls and up through the split bamboo floor. They cap- 
tured any breeze that might be moseying around. Out in Forbes Park, 
people build homes of air-tight concrete and then have to spend more 
money for air conditioning. 

"So! It's old-time Philippines you want!" exclaimed Gilda Fernando. 
"Come, 111 take you to Miss 1896 herself!" 

Gilda could be Mrs. 1961. Small and fair, compact, mother of four 
children, and housewife with a House-and~Gardens home, she is more 
important a writer who can write rings around any other pupil I ever 
had. Her short stories bring in a tidy bit for the family budget. And she 
loves her native Philippines. 

"Miss 1896" I found was Marcela Cuenca in Bacoor, Cavite, just around 



108 PHILIPPINES 

the south end of the bay from Manila. We picked up a Mrs. de Guzman 
who knows Marcela very well. "We are town-mates/' she said. If you 
know the Philippines, that means they are very close indeed. 

Marcela, Ladislawa and Pura Cuenca live in a very old house on 
Bacoor's main street. A plaque in Tagalog marks it. 

THIS HOUSE OF THE MARRIED COUPLE 
JUAN CUENCA AND MARGARITA BAGTAS, 
SERVED AS SEAT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY 
GOVERNMENT FROM JULY 12, 1898, TO 
SEPTEMBER 15, 1898. HERE WERE HELD 
SESSIONS OF THE PARLIAMENT OF THE 
PHILIPPINES UNTIL THE GOVERNMENT 
EVACUATED TO MALOLOS. 

We went in, admitted by Pura, a mere stripling of seventy-five. It was 
one of those magnificently practical old houses, built for coolness and 
yet for privacy. The door, a mere slit in the wall, opened into a dark 
cool first floor. There were oddments stored here, a broken chair, an 
ancient and battered brass urn which may have come from China years 
and years ago, a cot and mosquito net for the servant girl. First floors 
here are like the attics at home. 

Pura Cuenca was waving us up the broad stairs. "Itaasin ninyo!" 
(Come upstairs!) she called, begging us to invade her home. Her grey 
hair was pulled back; she wore a simple peasant woman's blouse and plain 
wrap-around skirt. But she might have been Queen Elizabeth throwing 
open Buckingham Palace. We followed up the wide stairway of burnished 
molave wood, as straight and true as the day it was built, the wood so 
hard that seventy years have worn no hollows on the treads. 

A Filipino home is like a box, with a central staircase leading to a 
foyer. All the rooms are little more than alcoves of this central space, 
lighted and aired by sliding windows and doors with panes of sea-shell 
cut so thin that it looks like frosted glass. On hot days, the windows open 
so wide that the whole wall seems to drop out. 

There was a commotion on the stairway behind us. "Ay!" said Pura, 
"Marcela is coming/' At the bottom indeed half way up was Marcela, 
ninety, leaning for support on a child not more than three years old. 
But he helped his great-great-great-great-grandaunt carefully up to the 
last step. 

The old lady was duly introduced. She took command at once; Pura 
somehow melted away. In Spanish and Tagalog, she told us her story. 

In the sitting room were six rattan chairs placed stiffly like museum 
pieces, which they were indeed. "Here," said Marcela touching one with 



SENTIMENTAL BUS RIDE 109 

a trembling hand, "Mabini sat." She referred to the paralytic, Apollonario 
Mabini, reputed to be the brains o the Filipino revolution. 

She shuffled into the next room, a small bedroom with a monstrous 
bed made of carved wood with a canopy to match, fit for a royal pair. 
"Here/' said Marcela, "Mabini slept." 

She crossed the hall, blessed herself, dipped in a quasi-genuflection 
and brought us to the oratory. A statue of Our Lady decked in white 
satin surmounted a small Spanish altar; she carried the Christ Child, also 
arrayed in nice clothes and a crown. "Nuestra Senora del Rosario," 
Marcela announced. And at the left, "La Magdalena." At the right, "San 
Jose." Finally with another dip of the knees, "Mass was celebrated here/' 

"Yes, it was," Mrs. de Guzman explained. "The parish priest followed 
Gregario Aglipay, who founded his schism at that time. Only eight 
families in Bacoor remained true. The Cuencas were one. So this house 
was used as the parish church. You see, the Aglipayans held on to the 
church building." 

"When was that?" I asked, 

"Oh, around 1900 or so," Gilda answered. 

"Ay!" Marcela moaned with all the weight of Cassandra, "It was 
then!" 

Marcela goes to Mass every morning now, walking about a quarter 
mile. I wondered that she was able to do it. "Able?" she bridled. "I am 
unable to live through a day without Holy Communion." 

We saw the dining room huge dark buffet of bygone luxury and 
simple table with cheap plastic cover. In the kitchen, food is still cooked 
over depressions in a concrete slab where open fires of twigs and branches 
burn. I rubbed my hand over the kitchen table; it seemed so clean and 
smooth. "Done three times a day with sandpaper vine," said Marcela. 
She pointed out the window to a vine climbing up the wall. Good old 
sandpaper vine! At Malabon, too, we used to pluck all the steel wool 
we needed right out the kitchen window. Talk about convenience! All 
the window sills in the house are done with sandpaper vine and then 
oiled. "I tell them not to scrape so hard, or they will wear away the 
window sill," Marcela complained. But there is a good three inches of 
hard molave wood to sandpaper through. Seventy years of scraping has 
made no impression on it. 

We sat down then in the revolutionaries' conference room with the 
six huge chairs. Marcela told her story. 

Our father was Juan Cuenca 'Mayaman Cuenca' (Richman Cuenca) 
he was called. Ours and the Angeles were the two wealthiest families in 
Bacoor. But that was long ago. 



110 PHILIPPINES 

I was twenty years old when this house was built in 1892. It was the pride 
of Cavite. We were in it only four years when revolution broke out. Ay, 
Good God, so much burning and killing! Everyone running here and 
there. Cavite Province was the center of it all, for many of the head rev- 
olutionaries came from here. Aguinaldo, the chief, came from Kawit, just 
east of Bacoor. He was exiled to Hong Kong and things quieted for a time. 
Then came war with America; Aguinaldo came back to Kawit, passing 
through our town- right outside that window on Calle Real. Pura (she 
pointed out the door to where Pura was fussing over refreshments for us), 
Pura was very young then. 

We moved to Manila. And hardly were we there when the revolutionaries 
took this house for their headquarters. The next day, Spanish soldiers 
marched my father to prison. He must be a revolutionary, they said, or 
why is his house their headquarters? 

My mother and I went from officer to officer. Anybody we knew or had 
ever heard of. All day, every day, we went from office to office, to army 
camps and government buildings. At last, we had him freed. Then, we put 
the younger children to board in Manila schools and we came back to 
Bacoor, staying in a small house not far from this one. 

The Spanish closed in around Bacoor. They were determined to burn 
this house. I pleaded with the Captain. But he would not listen to me. 
*I must burn it/ he insisted. 'Aguinaldo and the others are there.* 

I was leaning forward to hear more. Marcela's eyes had glanced up- 
ward in supplication to the Spanish captain. They stayed up while tears 
welled and flowed over on her cheeks. I thought this was just superb 
acting; the past was so real to her. But her eyes wandered here and there 
over the ceiling. "Nasira-sira!" she said at last. "Ang aming bahay nasiral" 
(Broken! All broken! Our house is falling apart.) 

It was, too. The light blue plywood ceiling was cracking, parts of it 
hung in tatters in the corners. Rain water had stained the upper walls. 
The roof evidently had needed repairs for a long time. 

"Broken!" she mourned and pulled out a purplish flowered hankie 
to wipe her eyes. 

I couldn't help it; I knelt beside her and hugged her. What could I 
do to help? Nothing, The old house would go; Marcela would go; the 
times they belonged to had gone long ago. 



fL( 9 & Go North, Young Man, Go North 



LUZON is quite an island, as islands go. On the map it 
looks like a fried clam a chunk of land with an indeterminate straggle 
at the end. The big part in the north is about one hundred and twenty- 
five miles wide and three hundred long; not many people are there. 
The straggle in the south has most of the people and nearly all the money. 
There, you can't go more than thirty miles, east or west, without hitting 
sea water. 

Luzon is not the only Philippine island, of course. Seven thousand 
others jostle each other out there in the far western Pacific, nearly all 
of them less than a square mile. But Luzon on the north and Mindanao 
on the south are sizable. Among the world's millions of islands, they both 
rank among the top twenty. Luzon is about as big as Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, or Virginia, and not much smaller than Pennsylvania 
really a respectable size. 

Northern Luzon has always been more or less undeveloped. It's hard 
to get at because the mountains make rugged going for trains, cars or 
buses. Even for horses. In ancient days, as waves of Malayans and Indo- 
chinese pushed for a foothold on the island, the original inhabitants 
retreated into the mountains. That is why you find up there semi-civilized 
tribes like the Igorots, Benguets, Ifugao and others, and even some in the 
bow-and-arrow stage like the Negritos in Zambales. At that, the fleeing 
tribes got the best climate and scenery. The pine-clad mountains are 
cool while Manila swelters. 

As you might know, Americans soon made a resort up there in a town 
called Baguio. Its origin is said to be this: William Howard Taft, when 
he was first Civil Governor of the Philippines, found Manila heat en- 
ervating. He decided to try to get to Baguio. Not so easy to do, since 
nothing but trails went through the mountains. Furthermore, Taft was 
a very large man and the Philippine horses are small. However, he made 
it all right and informed the State Department, "Am in Baguio. Made 
the trip on horseback. Feeling fine." The State Department answered 
(so says the story), "Good! How does the horse feel?" 

But the Taft days are long gone. Even before the war, a road wound up 
the mountains and leaped over canyons. This road rejoiced in the title, 
the Zigzag Trail. It was a symbol of hope to Americans who lay at night 
in Manila with their tongues hanging out the window for a breath of air. 

Ill 



112 PHILIPPINES 

"De Zeegzawg," as the Filipinos call it, was for a long time like a draw- 
bridge for Baguio, the only way to get in or out of it. Then Naguilian 
Trail was constructed. On these two roads depended the fate of the whole 
mountain province. The Japanese army had to fight its way up these two 
trails in 1941; the American army did the same in 1945. Filipino guerrillas 
hid out in the mountains near Baguio during the war years; Yamashita re- 
treated to Baguio and surrendered there in 1945. Long after that surrender 
small detachments of Japanese lived in caves and fought the war out to a 
bitter end. 

It used to be that when one announced, "I'm going to Baguio/' he got 
congratulations and envious looks from everyone. But there was one last 
struggle before he could relax. Five hours in a train and another two 
hours in a bus, squeezed in with chickens, vegetables, babies and dogs 
and he was quite ready for a rest cure. It was always a day of heat and 
soot and constant war for one's right to space against the ducks in the rack 
overhead and the pig nestling at one's feet. I never minded it. In the 
Second Class coaches, people were always so happy to be getting away 
from Manila heat. Thrifty folk, they hoped to sell some of these things 
to help pay for the vacation. 

But now, after an hour in a comfy plane, we slid on to a flattened shelf 
in die mountains and stepped out fresh as daisies into the waiting arms of 
our Sisters. Planes ply back and forth to Baguio like the subways to 
Flushing. 

To old timers, Baguio is a wee bit of a shock. Our convent used to be 
far out, beyond the beyond, on the edge of civilization. If you heard a car 
on the road you knew it was coming up our driveway because there 
wasn't anything further out. But now the convent is surrounded by 
modern homes, both modest and affluent. Campo Sioco, a miserable collec- 
tion of huts at the foot of our hill, used to be the domain of the Igorot 
King; his palace occupied one corner, not much more solvent than the 
others. Denizens of Campo Sioco were our friends; they came to Mass in 
our chapel, sold us vegetables, hung around the backdoor, sent their chil- 
dren to catechism classes, lent us their ox carts on occasion, and figured 
largely in our prayers. But the Igorot King sold Campo Sioco to a smart 
real estate operator and now we have the "Happy Homes Subdivision" 
at the foot of the hill. Nice split-level homes in pastel colors with streets, 
driveways, garages, and even street lamps every one of them dreamed 
up in Ladies' Home Journal. 

Houses are everywhere. There's even one set up on high stilts on the 
mountainside so that nothing of it touches earth but the front doorstep 
which gingerly reaches out for the road. It's a good idea for discouraging 
thieves. All you have to do is to pull in your doorstep at night and you're 
surrounded by a moat of air. Even so, I hardly think you would sleep 



GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN, GO NORTH 113 

comfortably; an enemy might saw through one of the stilts and your house 
would slump twenty or thirty feet to the ground. 

Eut if the Happy Homes Subdivision took over Campo Sioco, what hap- 
pened to the Campo Siocans? Some took their houses and households 
down "Dominican Hill" where the good Fathers rent them land for one 
peso a year. Others, and thousands more like them, retreated to the hill- 
sides still farther out of town. The mountains are covered with a honey- 
comb of huts belonging to people who came to Baguio to make their 
fortune and didn't. 

Indeed, the boom is on. Most places demolished by bombs are rebuilt, 
or cleared away and something better built. Now and then through town 
you see reminders a set of concrete steps with no house to belong to, or 
a chimney standing gaunt and alone with fireplaces on its sides to warm 
rooms no longer there. Our own house looks as it always did. You would 
never think that in 1945 the roof was more off than on. I remember run- 
ning around to close the windows during a storm and getting wetter from 
the holes in the walls than we would have from the windows. Inside, neat 
squares of new wood show shrapnel holes in floors and partitions have 
been repaired. You see, it was Japanese headquarters once. From our front 
windows, they could see the American fleet land at Lingayen Gulf twenty 
miles away, just as we saw the Japanese land at the same place a few years 
earlier. 

In those days, Igorot men wore a G-string, long hair and, in cold 
weather, a shirt. American visitors were always properly shocked to see the 
shirt walking down the road with no trousers below it. Women wore their 
own tribal dress of plaid hand-woven cloth. They carried a basket on 
their shoulders supported by a leather head strap. It was heavy. Because 
ours was the first house they came to, they used to stop at the backdoor 
trying to sell as much as possible. There would be that much less to carry 
on to the market. Now, nobody carries vegetables, firewood, bananas and 
her newest baby in a basket. Oh no, indeed. Market women ride past in 
jeepneys, and if you want vegetables you can go to the market and they 
will deal with you there. 

Baguio is in full swing of modernization. People once thought of noth- 
ing but growing sweet potatoes to get money for clothes or farm imple- 
ments or a new water buffalo. Now they are tourist-conscious. A young fel- 
low stands in the Baguio market in full Igorot dress with some fanciful 
additions of his own; he will pose for you for one peso a shot. Even old 
women in market stalls expect money for posing. And, to give you your 
money's worth, they will suggest angles to make it more colorful. Igorot 
wood carving once featured carabaos, nipa huts and native faces. Now it 
goes in for bloodthirsty warriors carrying human heads on high or women 
with a human leg ready for the stew pot. The Igorots used to be ashamed 



114 PHILIPPINES 

o their old head-hunting days, but now they know there is cash in them 
tha'r hills of shame. 

However, it's commercialism in a simple style. If they ever start putting 
on fake head-hunting parties, or stage a dog-meat canyao at ten dollars a 
plate, or charge admission to see the shrunken heads at Crystal Cave, then 
we will know that Walt Disney has moved in. You can still go down the 
mountain paths and see young boys and old men carving wood or fashion- 
ing exquisite things of fine silver wire. And if you bring a chart of religious 
pictures, they will ring around you and ask questions. "Did you say that 
God became a man and lived on earth like us? That he did it for our 
sakes?" Some believe; for others, it's too good to be true. But they all won- 
der. 

Christianity among the Igorots is fairly recent. I remember going on 
horseback with Sister Fidelis to small hamlets in the woods places with 
just a few families here and another few several miles away. There she 
relied on my strong right arm to hold up the chart while she taught ten- 
or-so women with their million-or-so babies. In the early 1930*5, there were 
fewer than twenty Catholics. Before 1940 they numbered around three 
hundred. Now that the second generation is coming along, our chapel is 
just not big enough to hold everybody and, anyhow, it is better for them 
to go to Mass in town or in their own localities. But four groups of Legion 
of Mary workers meet on Sunday mornings in the school rooms at Mary- 
knoll convent. I sat in on several of these meetings. It was a joy to see 
these sturdy mountain people sit on our kindergarten chairs and discuss, 
in a very business-like way, the work to be done and who is to do it. 

To tell the truth, one morning I was very glad that the machine age 
had caught up with Baguio. We took a jeepney out to Atab, the smallest 
of small hamlets along the road to Santo Tomas mountain. Otherwise we 
would have had to walk it and I am not ambitious like that any more. We 
supervise a two-room school house out there for some sixty children who 
would have no schooling at all otherwise. This Atab school is one of the 
many mission projects supported by our other schools in more settled 
areas. We found classes going on apace in both sides of the wooden school. 
Three youngsters to a bench and not much in the way of equipment, 
but considering that they never speak a word of English otherwise, they 
read amazingly well. 

We started to walk back home, thinking no jespney would be along for 
several hours or so. We stopped to catch our breath and to gaze entranced 
with the view of mountain after mountain straight over to the horizon, 
each a different shade of purplish blue. Then I heard music, very, very 
soft, and the accents of a man's voice, and again music like a symphony 
orchestra. Where could it come from out here in Luzon's mountains? 

Then I saw him. A very old man in baggy coat and G-string, squatting 



GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN, GO NORTH 115 

on his heels under a tree, his hands around his knees, his eyes looking out 
across the wonderland of his native heath. His fathers had tramped these 
mountains, perhaps hunted heads in them, performed pagan worships in 
their caves. He held his head at an odd angle and there was a strange in- 
tensity on his face. Then I saw that he held in his hand a small transistor 
radio. He was listening to a wonderful voice from a land far away, luring 
him to a world outside his ken. I thought: "His eyes are on Baguio and he 
loves it; his ears and his mind are in America. He doesn't understand what 
he hears but he is fascinated by it. More so than by what he sees. God grant 
he goes into the radio-hi-fi-TV civilization with his heart still loving the 
culture and hills of his homeland!" 

A jeepney came along unexpectedly. We left the Old Man of the Moun- 
tains who has seen things that, as a young man, he would have deemed 
quite impossible. That a voice, speaking in America, could be heard from 
a little box in his hand .... How ridiculous can one get! 

Santiago, Isabela, is one of those Philippine towns you can't see until the 
dust settles. Which it rarely does. If it isn't a carabao dragging his feet 
on the road, or a pig rooting around in the pulverized dirt, it's one of those 
big trailer trucks rolling by loaded with farm tractors and such. The dust 
is really high around Santiago these days, for carabao and pigs and trucks 
are making speed up there. So if you want to find Santiago for yourself, 
put your finger on the dot marked Manila and move it about one hundred 
and fifty miles due north and slightly east. Your finger is now in the 
middle of northern Luzon and it's pretty dry. If you want to wet that 
finger you will have to move it about seventy miles east or west and over 
high mountains in either direction before you can dip it into the Philip- 
pine Sea or the China Sea. 

A carabao or a pig making dust? One expects that in a town like Santi- 
ago. But a trailer truckl And loaded with those yellow iron monsters? 
You'd think that everybody in town would be out gawking at it on the 
roadside. Far from it. The carabaos plod alongside it, still twitching their 
ears in utter boredom; the little caratela horses don't skitter; the children 
in their shirts and nothing else hardly look up from playing in the mud. 
In less than fifteen years, Santiago has become accustomed to many things. 
All of Isabela Province is waking up. 

Mother and I had taken the 8:15 A.M. plane from Baguio. Seen from just 
under the clouds, the pine-clad mountains were a travel poster. Sharp 
shadows from the morning sun on the cliffs made a geometric pattern; 
the shadow of the plane rose and fell up and down mountainsides like a 
toy on a string. 

Too bad all this beauty was wasted on birds for so long! 

Then we skimmed over broad flat lands planted in rice, rice and more 



116 PHILIPPINES 

rice. Forty minutes in all from Baguio we dropped on to the grass airstrip 

at Cauayan, center of the Cagayan Valley. It is a fabulously fertile valley 

before the airplane, a hidden garden hemmed in by the sharp Baguio 
mountains on the west and the horrendous Sierra Madres on the east. So 
impassable are they that in pre-aviation days, land passage from the 
civilized South was impossible. You had to sail all the way around Luzon to 
Aparri on the north and trickle down south on the Cagayan River. There 
wasn't much fun raising rice, either, when it had to go by oxcart one 
hundred and twenty miles north to Aparri and more than seven hundred 
miles by ship around the western shore to Manila. The plane has put new 
hope into the Cagayan Valley. 

You probably don't know Sister Robert Marie. It's just as well for you 
that you don't. She can charm the last dollar out of your pocket. Worse 
still, she can make you work to the bone and love doing it. There are just 
two automobiles in the whole town of Santiago (pop. 37,000), yet she man- 
aged to borrow one and to persuade Dominador, the owner, to drive it to 
the airport to meet us. He was smiling as he did it, too. 

To Santiago, it was fifty miles over a dusty road dignified by the title 
Provincial Road and honored with a red line on the road map. We must 
have left that road very clean behind us because we certainly picked up 
all the loose dirt as we went along. 

Outside of the dusting, it was a wonderful ride between two mountain 
ranges. Flat land devoted to rice fields spread over to the west where 
Baguio nestled among pine-clad beauties. On the east rose the Sierra 
Madres, a formidable wall between this fertile Cagayan Valley and the 
Pacific Ocean. So formidable, indeed, that the entire eastern coast of 
Luzon three hundred miles from north to south is cut off from the rest 
of the" world. There are no good harbors. In all those three hundred miles 
of mountains there is but one horrible road which even the road map 
admits is third class, and one trail. These are one hundred miles apart. 

Some of the places in the Sierra Madres have not been explored. A race 
of wild men, aboriginal pygmies, live in mountain hideouts and make 
periodic raids on the outskirts of our little Santiago. Even the Ifugaos, 
classified as semi-civilized, are surprisingly naive. Virginia, an Ifugao 
girl, came to work in Santiago. She was stupified when she saw a hose. 
"You turn this thing at one end and water comes out of the other end?" 
she marvelled. She was to wash clothes, so she picked up the basket and 
asked, "Where is the river in this town?" The idea of water coming to her, 
rather than of her going to the water, was soul-shaking. 

As we bowled over the road, Dominador was quite talkative in the front 
seat. At first we talked too, but every time we opened our mouths, the soil 
of Isabela Province rushed in. We learned to grunt "yes" or "no" and let 
conversation go at that. On the edge of town, Dominador stopped. He 



aawfi-wc ?;'!? v. " 




This bell once clanged from a railroad locomotive in the United States, but it serves 
the little thatched church right well. 





Form IV students (12th Grade) take the fearsome Cam- 
bridge examinations in stride. 



LEFT. African Sister does a neat job on the sewing machine 
as Mother Mary Colman watches. 



*;;.. ; BELOW. I thought Fideli (RIGHT) would be dead, but I 

found her ready to pose with her new baby. 





African school girls get into a friendly hassle 
with the referee. 



RIGHT. Maternity work in clinics and hospitals is 
most important. 



BELOW. No lack for good biology specimens in 
Tanganyika! 





Emmanuel's family show me their western clothes and 
kangas. 



RIGHT. Two Morogoro students arrive for the new school 
year carrying baggage the easy way. 



LOWER RIGHT. A wooden comb makes mama beautiful. 



BELOW. The Sultana Bernadette and Princess Dolores show . 
papa's monkey-fur regalia to Sister Martin Corde, an 
American Negro Sister. 






Mother looks at a monastery sitting on the shore of the lake in the center of Kandy. 



CEYLON 




Not the most comfortable seat in the world, 
but I stood it for 1/100 of a second at f!6. 



Wrap-around skirts are tucked up when men are working. 



BELOW. The Monk in the Temple of the Tooth had his 
doubt about me, at first. 




BELOW. The vitamin pill is dropped in and a swallow of 
water follows. 





The school bus at Pakil is a "banca" which ferries across Laguna de Baye. 



PHILIPPINES 




Homesteaders at Sto. Tomas, Mindanao, take pride in their crude church. 



Progress has invaded Dulawan by way of street signs and Coca-Cola. 





Lucena is set in coconut country. Sister Godfrey plays Piecl Piper. 



The street vendor at Lipa wants five pesos; I got the mat for four. 




ft:^ 31 :*-'*' 1 



Neighbors in Ceylon 



THE "OIL OF GLADNESS" JFCEEPS 
LIFE'S WHEELS RUNNING SMOOTHLY, 




Small patient in the Philippines 



The student in Tanganyika 



Sister on Taiwan 





Big Sister in Hong Kong 




Palauan child with papaya 




Neat little Miss in Japan 



Nurses in Korea 




HONG KONG 



Any way von look at it, Hong Kong is crowded. These fishing boats are homes 

as well. 








What land there is, is well used. Cottage type units are in front; y-story "daai-ha" 
behind and tinderbox shacks left rear. 




This is Peach Blossom. She died four days later. 



RIGHT. I tried to win her with the toy drum, but 
she much preferred to get her scrap paper tied 
up. 



BELOW. Home is where you take off your shoes. 








. CATHOLIC^ 
WELFARE CEN 

MARYKNOLL 9ST 




New clothes (ABOVE) and a sack of rice (BELOW LEFT) 
bring the faintest of smiles to the faces of refugee 
children, but . . . 

Students at Blue Pool Road enjoy a 'tween-classes ses- 
sion with Sister Maryam. 





Where to hang the laundry is Hong Kong's biggest problem. These people put their 
bamboo poles from roof to roof. 



GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN, GO NORTH 117 

wanted to clean up; nine hundred boys and girls of Our Lady of La Salette 
School would be on parade to greet us. So he opened the back door, 
shoveled out the brown dust and picked off the back seat three shriveled 
Sisters, dried to a crisp. At that stage, we could have been put into an 
ordinary envelope and sent through the mails for 4^ First Class* It would 
have saved money on plane fares, but we never thought of it, 

Dominador poured us each a drink of water from a thermos jug; like 
mashed potatoes you buy in boxes, we swelled out to normal. A good 
thing, for the nine hundred were upon us, complete with band, uniforms 
and flags. As the car advanced through town, first one wheel and then 
another dipped into the holes in the street. We maintained equilibrium 
and smiled graciously, feeling not unlike bronco busters in slow motion. 

These youngsters range from kindergarten straight through Junior 
College. Good schools in "the province" are one answer to the Philippines' 
social and political problems as well as the religious ones. The emphasis 
has always been on Manila; the capital of course would have cultural ad- 
vantages. But in ten provincial towns in the Philippines there are schools, 
mostly High Schools, staffed by Maryknoll Sisters. In some, we work with 
men's religious orders Columbans, Oblates, La Salette and Maryknoll 
Fathers. Others are "on our own/* which means that we are responsible 
for operating them. But all of them are dedicated to the job ahead to 
build up an intelligent body of Catholic citizens in every part of the Philip- 
pines. 

Up until 1945 or so, the Cagayan Valley lay fallow, a potential bread 
basket isolated from the mouths that could empty it. The government 
offered free land to anyone who would settle and cultivate it. Home- 
steaders are coming in now, picking their property and setting to work. 
Population has almost doubled in the past twelve years, growing from a 
quarter-million to a half-million in Isabela Province alone. The Sisters 
say that hardly any of the older children in school were born in Santiago. 

As in any pioneer town, rumors of great developments are rife. The 
Manila Railroad is to be extended all the way to AparrL Planes will come 
every day rather than twice a week as now. Airfields are to be opened; even 
Santiago will have one. 

Well, I can believe it. I spent five minutes in Santiago doing nothing 
more ambitious than looking out my window on to the provincial road. 
First came a cart filled with jute sacks for rice. The carabao picked up his 
feet and put them down again at the same speed and in the same way he 
has done for centuries. A man rode on his back because there was no room 
on the cart. He was sleeping soundly as he jogged along, his head bent low 
and the GI helmet, probably picked up from some battlefield further 
south, almost bobbed off at every step. Then a horse strung with fancy 
harness and bits of silver ornament trotted by with a highly ornate caretela. 



118 



PHILIPPINES 



Behind him was a rider with wooden saddle and rope harness. He left in 
the dust the plodding carabao, Suddenly from behind came a loud noise, 
a grinding of gears and, in a perfect billow of dust, a huge Coca-Cola truck 
overtook all of them. He was in a hurry. Why not? The y-Up truck had 
made deliveries in the town market half an hour ago; the Pepsi-Cola man 
was hard behind him. Whoever got to the vendors first will sell drinks to 
the carabao man, the caretela driver and the horseback rider when they 
arrive thirsty at the market. No longer in provincial towns do we see the 
man who used to dispense "tuba," a fermented coconut drink, from a 
section of bamboo slung over his shoulder. Who wants lukewarm tuba 
when the market has slot machines full of ice cold drinks? Such is progress! 
Yet there is not prosperity nor even sufficiency in Santiago. The harvest 
dictates whether Juanito goes to school this year or not. Often the Sisters 
carry them along without tuition. Many a child, they say, goes home at 
noon for lunch, finds nothing on the table and comes back early for after- 
noon classes. And no complaint. We came across several women threshing 
rice with their feet green rice which is hard to thresh. "Why don't you 
wait until it's dry?" Sister asked. 

"We can't wait; we need it for dinner today," they replied cheerfully. 
And yet it need not be so bad. The whole economy of the area is in one 
basket a rice basket. Between rice harvests, the ground lies fallow. 
"Why don't you plant some vegetables?'* the Sisters ask. 
"But we don't like vegetables/' is the answer. Not as bad an answer 
as it seems. If they don't like vegetables, others don't either and there 
isn't much sale for unpopular items. The answer is, of course, education 
as to food values. A long hard road, but one that leads to many good things 
for body and soul. 

We have been in Santiago only about five years. In five years, a lot of 
water flows down the Cagayan Valley. Changes, as in any pioneering coun- 
try, occur overnight. Tales of the Sisters' early days at La Salette sound 
fantastic now as you see the young boys and girls change classes, carry books 
for the teachers, raise their hands to answer in class, act as students do all 
over the world. 

Sister Aquinata tells the tale that soon after school opened in 1956, she 
asked why Pedro was absent. "He is in jail today, Sister," his classmates 
volunteered. "He was fighting and used his knife." 

After class, Sister went to the jail to comfort the prisoner. Pedro was 
properly contrite. He promised to study in jail and catch up to the class. 
"I am a La Salette boy," he said. "I can never forget that!" 

As Sister turned to go, a ruckus started in the adjoining cell. The 
prisoners came to the bars and called, "We too are your boys, Sister! You 
will come to visit us!" Sure enough, during the day others had landed 
behind bars. 



GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN, GO NORTH 119 

But things have tamed down in town since then. Almost nobody fights 
with knives at least in the school yard. The jail must look elsewhere for 
tenants. La Salette isn't quite up to the expression, "Oh, we don't do that 
sort of thing at St. Xavier's." But it's getting there. 

In the country districts feuds die hard. Revenge doesn't hesitate to 
strike at a hated man through the things he loves, rather than directly at 
him. For instance, Macario and Alberto were in Sister Patrice's class at 
La Salette. Macario's father worked for Alberto's father and both boys 
knew there was no love lost between the men. Alberto's father was known 
to be a hard overseer. However, the two boys were the best of friends. They 
went home deep into the mountains for the Christmas vacation. 

One evening Alberto heard Macario whistling outside. It was a signal 
to meet. "I'm going out bird-hunting with Macario/' he told his older 
brother. 

Three days later, they found Alberto's body in the woods. An arm had 
been hacked off; a rope was around his throat; the boy had been tortured 
horribly before the bolo went through his heart. No one is absolutely sure, 
but suspicion rests on Macario's father. 

When Macario whistled, did he know he was luring Alberto to his 
death? Sister Patrice cannot believe it but men in town have no doubt 
about it. "Sure, he did!" they say. "He may have been under pressure from 
his father, but he did it knowingly." Certainly Macario is a changed boy 
since that Christmas vacation. Whether it is a guilty conscience, or sorrow 
for his friend, or fear of reprisals, who can tell? He is quiet, almost sullen, 
and he keeps his secret to himself. 

Sister Patrice has a talent for counseling boys. I remember her in Hawaii 
where we taught in a school near the docks. There Sister spent her after- 
class hours talking cold turkey either to boys liable to get into trouble or 
to their mothers after they had gotten into trouble. In Santiago she told 
me the story of Pablo. This young lad wants to be a priest but the road 
before him looks mighty difficult. 

He graduated from High School as valedictorian. Then, almost immedi- 
ately his family acquired a farm away out in the mountains, surrounded by 
the Ifugao tribe. Pablo started gathering the young fellows about him to 
teach them the Faith. When I was in Santiago, he had ten young men and 
boys who wanted to be baptized. Pablo's new area is so far from town 
that he has to walk three days and then take a bus for a peso. (You can 
get an awful lot of bus mileage for a peso in the Philippines.) 

Pablo, being new at teaching religion, wasn't sure that his converts knew 
enough about their Faith. He made the trip in to Santiago to consult 
Father about it. Father sent him over to Sister Patrice. One of these pro- 
spective Catholics, Pablo reported, is a young man who has already killed 
three people. 



120 PHILIPPINES 

"Three people!" Sister Patrice gasped with her hand up to her cheek. 
"What on earth did he kill them for?" 

"When he went to ask his girl to marry him," Pablo explained, "he wants 
to show her how brave he is. Also, his father will not even talk about mar- 
riage until the young fellow has killed a man and put the head on a post 
in the girl's front yard. So, this boy thinks he will do the thing up brown 
and put three heads on posts while he is at it." 

"Whom did he kill? Were they enemies?" 

"Oh no, Sister," Pablo was very patient with her. "He is not killing them 
because he does not like them. But he needs the heads. He went down to 
the river and saw a man fishing, so he went up and got his head. It is the 
same for the others." 

"But Pablo he must have known that was wrong. 

"Sister, I am unable to convince him that murder is wrong. Maybe 
you will do better. He says that it is the custom of his people; it just 
shows that a man is very brave. Besides that, he is a very good man. He 
knows his prayers very well and answers best to the questions." 

"But there's more to it than that, Pablo!" 

"Very well, I will bring them all in here next Saturday. You can examine 
them all then, Sister. Maybe I did not teach them right in everything." 

Too bad I had to leave Santiago before that Saturday. 

But in spite of things like that, Isabela is still a pioneering neighborly 
place at heart. We were to leave by plane from Cauayan but reservations 
were a bit shaky. There is no telephone in Santiago that really functions; 
we decided to take our chances on being bumped. Still and all, it's no fun 
to drive fifty agonized miles to Cauayan just to learn there is no room for 
you on the plane. We put the affair into the angels' hands; after all, they 
have used the airlanes for a good long time. 

The day before zero-hour, Felicita in Grade Five said to Sister Robert 
Marie: "The airlines agent at Cauayan says there is room for you on 
Thursday's plane." 

"Oh? How do you know? Bid you see the agent?" 

"No. Our truck driver told me." Felicita hops a truck each morning 
to come to school. 

"How did your truck driver know?" 

"Well, a friend of his was passing the Cauayan airport and the radio 
man ran out of his cabin and asked him to tell our truck driver so that 
he could get word to you." 

It beats the old Pony Express. The chain of command, so to speak, 
seemed a bit involved, but Felicita had the right information. 

"The plane's up in Tuguegararao." The radio man smiled when we 
appeared at the door of his cabin. "The pilot will have his lunch and then 
he's coming down here for you." 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 121 

Manila greeted us with scare headlines: 

CITY IN ICY GRIP 
SIBERIAN BLASTS SWEEP AREA 

MERCURY PLUNGES TO LOW 6o'S 

Which proves, it's all in the point of view! 



( 10 B Go South, Young Fellows, Go South 



EVEN as a child, Florencia Castinila was the Dainty Miss. 
Like one of those fragile orchids her mother often sent us from her 
collection. I used to look down the rows of school desks at the youngest 
Castinila with her luminous dark eyes, her long braids, her ultra- 
feminine way and say, "Please, life, be easy on her." 

After the war she met Andres and fell in love. Born in New York 
but brought up in the Philippines, he had graduated in accountancy 
from one of the big Manila schools and took a job with Caltex. In 1945 
he joined the United States Army and spent a year in Japan. Here he 
saw the intensive farming Japanese excel in. It fired him with enthusiasm. 
His own family had coconut plantations in Zamboanga, but the young 
man burned to hack out his own fields from the jungle. So he spent 
another year at Louisiana State University studying agriculture, espe- 
cially rice growing. Armed thus with all the book knowledge he could 
acquire on the subject, he returned to the Philippines and went down to 
Mindanao to get a place to begin. 

Mindanao, even more than northern Luzon, has attracted home- 
steaders. Eighty percent of the land area is still undeveloped. Five years 
working a farm gives title to it. Andres enlisted his cousin Diosdado into 
the enterprise. They rolled up their sleeves and went to work. Just about 
in the dead center of Mindanao, an island as big as Indiana, they found 
what they were looking for land good for rice. Andres invested his 
money in a tractor, thresher, harrow, plough and harvester. Modern 
science must have modern tools to work with. 

He put down his stakes and started to build what they always called 
"House #i" in expectation of Florencia* s coming. It never had time to 
grow up to be a house. He had the four posts in, the roof on and two 
walls in place. But a high wind demolished House # i overnight. Nothing 
daunted, Eulogio built House #2. Then he went to Manila to be married. 

"What a weddingr Florencia told me. 



122 PHILIPPINES 

I had just graduated from college; our families had known each other 
for years. After the Nuptial Mass, the Breakfast, the Reception, the pictures 
and good wishes, we ran for the boat which would take us to Cebu, half 
way to Mindanao. 

During the week's honeymoon in Cebu, we bought a hundred Hamberg 
chicks. For two days and three nights on the boat to Cagayan de Oro, 
the cheeps and chirps of chicks came from under the bed in our cabin. 
They were my chicks, Andres said. I loved every one of them. 

Cagayan de Oro is not a big town not to us coming from Manila. 
But it has ships and stores and now even planes. It's the jumping-off 
place for the interior. A good road, rambling for two hundred and sixty-five 
miles, leads from Cagayan de Oro on the north to Davao on the south. 

Of course, we took the bus. Three or four wooden seats were up front; 
the rear was filled with our wedding presents and household things and 
somebody else's carabao. We were to go seventy-five miles to Valencia 
and from there we would strike out into the hinterland. The bus trip 
should have taken less than two hours but one of the passengers asked 
the driver to wait until he had finished his dinner. And the driver thought 
he would do a little gambling while he waited. So we all waited until the 
driver had made up his losses. 

We passed the Del Monte pineapple plantation at Maluko, twenty-five 
miles from Cagayan de Oro. A marvelous road. And they call this rough- 
ing it! I thought. Then we passed through Malaybalay; the road was not 
so marvelous. And on to Valencia. It's very, very small; has a market 
day only once a week. Everybody knew everybody; they had all come from 
small towns in the Visayan islands. Many were from the same town. My 
ritzy Manila bride's outfit seemed so out of place down here. 

Diosdado had brought the tractor out from the farm. We piled our 
household things in the trailer and I sat on top. Andres and Diosdado 
manned the tractor and off we went over the fields seven miles to our 
palatial estate at Maapag. Don't ask me why they named it that; to say 
truth, there really wasn't anything to name. 

It was delightful climate, a high plain like Baguio. Mountains sur- 
rounded it on every side. Often from the top of our heap in the trailer 
I could see nothing; the cogan grass was so high. It shows how fertile 
the soil is/ Andres called back to me. 

At last he called, There Is the house!* 

*Where?' I strained my eyes in every direction. 

There! Therel' he shouted. But I could see nothing until we were 
right in front of It, 

He wanted to carry me over the threshold. But I took one look at the 
bamboo steps and declined. They were too narrow and shaky; I had no 
desire to start off my pioneer life with a broken leg and/or a broken 
husband. 

It was a nice nipa house with two bedrooms, a split bamboo floor and 
a thatched roof. A Coleman lamp hung from the center beam, gave a 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 123 

good light. Andres and Diosdado had made the furniture from crates, 
and very well, too. That night, going to bed, I found that the window was 
just a hole; there was no way to close it. Also the door had no lock. 'Just 
twist the wire around those two nails/ Andres advised. In the middle of 
the night I heard a strange noise, waked, and saw two big eyes looking 
in the window. I screamed. 'Oh, it's just an owl,' Andres said, annoyed, 
I got a blanket, brushed the owl off the window sill where he perched, 
and covered the window. I did that every night thereafter. It was my first 
rejection of nature in the raw. 

Next morning there were bright sun spots over everything. The roof 
was full of holes, I remembered Andres' letters where he had said, *I never 
clean; the rain comes and washes the floor for me/ Sunshine filtering through 
was cheering, but rain was another thing. We were glad of it though, 
for soon the brook overflowed into our well and polluted the water. We 
gathered the rain from the roof, then, boiled it and drank it even though 
it was an unpalatable brown. 

I had so much to learn! How to make a fire, for instance. I cooked on 
a table covered with galvanized iron, and three stones made a tripod for 
my pots. But I could not get that fire started. I puffed and puffed; I was 
covered with soot. But I learned. I learned. 

It was worse killing a chicken. Diosdado said, 'I've seen them holding 
it by the neck/ So we did until it died. Then we could not eat it; the 
blood was coagulated in the meat. So I wrote to Mama in Manila. 'How 
do you kill a chicken?' She answered, 'Take it by the neck but don't hold 
too tight. Step on the wings. Hold knife in right hand and cut through 
neck/ So simple when you know how. But the nearest post office was at 
Valencia; I walked five hours to mail that letter, and walked five hours back. 

The primeval forest was just thirty feet from our house. So many lovely 
birds and flowers delighted me. Monkeys and wild pigs were there too 
and they were naughty. Often in the morning we woke up to see that 
monkeys had eaten our vegetables and wild pigs had rooted up what was 
left. But revenge is sweet; the wild pigs we caught had very tasty meat. 

As I said, the chicks were mine to keep. The breed mixed with the 
wild chickens from the forest. In a way it was good, for they were sturdier, 
but the meat grew tough. The eggs were good. I never did have good luck 
with the Hamberg chicks; some died, some were run over by the tractor. 
When the last one fell into the well, I cried. 

We were not so isolated as you might think. About four miles away 
were a couple, the Maretas, who were working on the Areneta experi- 
mental farm. They lived on a hill and we could see their light at night. 
Now and then the Manobo tribes would be around; they are nomads, 
burning the land one year, sticking seeds into it, and moving on the 
next year. But our nearest neighbors were Visayans at Laligan about 
three miles away. They were a comfort to me; there were many things I 
could have learned from them if I had made friends sooner. But I do not 
speak Visayan dialect. I visited there often. In the dry season it was easy 



24 PHILIPPINES 

to ford the river but during the rains I went on a log thrown across. 
Once, as I walked, I saw a snake on the underside. Green. I backed off 
and went home. And once Andres was bathing in the river and had to 
shoot a crocodile. 

Poor Andres! He worked so hard, He and Diosdado ploughed day and 
night to get it all done before the rains. 

One day he slaughtered our pig. He dumped seventy-five pounds of 
fresh pork into my lap. 'It's all yours, honey/ he said. What would I do! 
No refrigerator. And I didn't know how to smoke it. By that time I hated 
salt pork. I wept over that pig. I was exhausted. 

I was sick, too. The next day we started for the hospital before dawn. 
We had hired a carabao and sled from the Visayans. I lay on the sled 
with a burning fever, five hours to Valencia. There we got a truck to 
take us to Malaybalay and arrived in the late afternoon. The driver 
went straight to the hospital rather than letting us off at the bus station. 
I was so grateful to him. The doctor said it was due to bad water, salt 
pork, and everything else. 

After a week I felt stronger. 'Let's go to Valencia/ I said, 'and get a 
house. Then you will be closer to the farm, and I will be closer to a 
doctor/ So we did. This was House #3- It was a rickety thing, infested 
with lizards and chicken lice. But I must confess, we had a good time in 
that house. The neighbor's chickens used to peck holes in our sacks of 
rice which we kept under the house. I lowered a noose made of string 
from between the floor bamboos above. I caught one over the head and 
we had chicken that night. 

We had lots of fun. We bought an old phonograph you wind by hand. 
Andres and I danced and danced, just to feel the house sway. One night 
as we slept, it swayed more than we wanted. Earthquake? No, it was only 
a carabao rubbing himself against the front steps. 

We soon found that I was pregnant. And I wanted water chestnuts 
in the worst way. We call them 'apulid/ Andres asked Diosdado to go 
seventy-seven miles to Cagayan de Oro and get some. He came back empty 
handed. *Say, what are those apulid?' he asked. 'I asked every hardware 
store in town for them/ 

I went back to Manila to have my baby and returned when my little 
Enrico was a month old. My husband had built House #4 by then, about 
a mile from Valencia. I had Dr. Benjamin Spock's book on babies. It 
became our bible; we read it page by page. Enrico must have read it too 
for he did everything Dr. Spock said he would do. 

But things were going badly. I caught malaria and weighed only ninety- 
three pounds although I am 5'6 7 ' in height. The farm was plagued by 
either floods or drought, maya birds, locusts or rats. The tractor could 
not be used in the mud and our modern equipment was not made for 
carabao. 

My malaria recurred again and again. Eventually we went to Cagayan 
de Oro, and Andres became personnel manager for the Del Monte pine- 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 125 

apple plantation. Then we sold our rights to the land and came back 
to Manila. 

Our Visayan friends are still there. They prove our conclusions about 
the Maapag valley for homesteading. It's very good for farmers with 
carabao, but not for modern machines. And since one man with a carabao 
cannot till a large area, many farmers are needed. You can't start any 
big farming operation at least not with rice. The area would be wonder- 
ful for ranching, though. 

Homesteading is quite the thing in the Philippines. What were heart- 
breaks for Florencia are part of daily living for most homesteaders. They 
are born farm folk. They have spent their lives tilling small farms for 
landlords. The prospect of land to own is like an invitation back to the 
Garden of Eden. 

Mindanao is the Land of Promise. Settlers are going down there by 
droves; it is estimated that five hundred new settlers arrive in Davao 
every month. The whole area has a Wild West feeling, a "Howdy, neigh- 
bor, where'd you come from?" attitude, an Oklahoma land-rush air. This 
is, definitely, the time to get in on the ground floor in Davao. 

Before World War II, the Japanese knew a good thing when they saw 
it and started much of the agriculture of Davao. The government offered 
this land, formerly owned by Japanese, to veterans and homesteaders. 
Now that the fever has caught on, frontiersmen have gone way beyond 
the Japanese lands out into the virgin hillsides. 

In the late 1930*5, Jesuits in Manila were urging their students: "Go 
south, young fellows, go south." It was a fantastic idea, then. In the 
late 1940*5 it was a rumble; in the 1950*5 it was a rush. The Church is 
swimming along desperately just keeping her head above swirling waters. 
Bishop Clovis Thibault of the Quebec Foreign Missioners came as a 
lone priest in pre-war days to take over a parish of almost 8,000 square 
miles. He hid in the Mils during the war years, emerged to go on with 
his work afterwards, and then found himself bishop of the place in 1954. 
He now has almost a million people under his episcopal wing with five 
hundred new families coming in every month. Two years ago, there were 
only six hundred and fifty thousand. You can see why bishops* hair 
grows grey and worry wrinkles come into their benign faces. 

We plunged into Davao's enthusiasm at an early hour. 8:30 A.M., to 
be exact. We had left the Hub of the Universe (Manila, not Boston, 
out here) at 6:15 A.M. and arrived at the Fringe of the Forest Primeval 
two hours later on a non-stop flight. For pioneering, this beats the 
covered wagon by a couple of months. Only, in the Philippines covered 
wagons would be of little use to pioneers. The real ones come in boats, 
large and small, from the Visayan islands. 



126 PHILIPPINES 

Those who are a bit hazy on Philippine geography should know that 
the Philippines consist of three parts: i, Luzon, a big island in the 
north, where Manila is; 2, Mindanao, a big one in the south, where 
the pioneers are; and 3, the Visayas, many small islands between the 
two big ones, where the pioneers come from. All the Philippines stretch 
a thousand miles north and south; the distance from Manila to Davao is 
more than six hundred watery miles. 

There is a hearty enthusiasm about Davao. They can do a welcome 
up brown. Even from the plane, we could see a hubbub at the airport, 
just a quonset hut on a grassy strip. The middle of the commotion was 
a man walking around with a sign such as pickets carry during a strike. 
It was readable as we got off. In foot-high letters it said; 

WELCOME TO OUR DEAR 
MOTHER MARY COLMAN! 

The mob was a pleasing welter of men and children and women and 
Sisters and Maryknoll Fathers all trying to be the first to pin a huge 
bouquet on Mother's very small person. Mother usually out-shrinks the 
shrinking violet. However she went through it with a smile. She did not 
quaver even when the sign was roped to the front of a car and she rode 
in state around town, trailed by loyal cohorts, 

We headed for the Apo Hot^l for a reception. Mt. Apo is the highest 
mountain in the Philippines; it dominates Davao just as Illimani lords 
it over La Paz in Bolivia, The Apo View Hotel is just going up. Indeed, 
we had to step over soft cement, wooden horses, and workmen to get into- 
the front entrance. But already, it is passe; a much bigger hotel will 
start building soon. 

The reception was brief, but everybody had a chance to say "Hello! 
Glad you came!" One of these was a young college student who knew 
what the books say about speech making. He started off: 

"Reverend Fadders" (with a low bow to the priests) 

"Revered Mudder and Seestahs" (bowing to us) and with a big wide 
generous gesture taking in the whole room, 

"Distinguished Everybody!" 

Mark my words, someday that lad will be Senator from Dayao. 

But our missions are not in Davao. We went twenty jiggly miles to 
the north to Panabo. It's a good example of a boom town. 

Twelve years ago, the Panabo district had a population of 13,000. It 
had 47,000 two years ago, and 60,000 this year. The parish was opened 
in July, 1959. Down here, a new parish opens every year, Even that is far 
from taking adequate care of the people; the old parishes are growing 
too fast. Just comparing figures in the 1959 Catholic Directory with 
those for 1961, we see things like this: Lupon parish grew from 20,000 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 127 

to 37,000; Magugpo from 30,000 to 62,000; Nabunturan from 25,000 to 
35,000; Mati from 13,000 to 22,000. All within two years. 

Of course, everything is very new. Our convent is the upstairs of a 
school building. Two classrooms take care of First and Second Year 
High School. Houses, schools, churches, offices are going up like mad. 
The classrooms for Third and Fourth Year High we hope will be finished 
in time to start the new year. 

Sister Ramona Maria is an itinerant dentist down here, so to speak. 
She got a dental chair and a foot-treadle drill from Army surplus pos- 
sibly Civil War surplus and set them up in the school office. She takes 
care of the children's teeth with most of the school peering into the 
window and down the victim's throat. There's never a whimper out of 
any of them; that's for surel Sister is the only dentist in town but she 
cannot stay long in any place. She packs up her equipment and takes it 
to our other schools on Mindanao. 

I met Judge Luis Consolacion at Panabo. A graduate of the Law 
College at the University of the Philippines, he came in 1950 as a very 
young man and set up a law office. Now, in his early thirties, he is a 
power in the community, and one of Panabo's most enthusiastic citizens. 

"The place is bursting out all over!" he said. "And not just with 
settlers but with good substantial businesses. The Dalisay Corporation 
down here is making bamboo plywood for a luxury market in Europe. 
Dalisay also has a corn mill in Panabo. Corporations like Tadeco, Dapco, 
Merco, Minda, Diokno, Napro and many others used to raise abaca 
(Manila hemp), but after that was almost wiped out by the mosaic pest, 
they turned to coconut, coffee, corn and rice. They're clamoring now 
for an irrigation system and, mark my words, they'll get one before long. 
Things happen fast down here. Some companies were able to control 
the mosaic infestation; as a result they lead the Province in producing 
hemp. 

"As for transportation! Why, these companies have built beautiful 
roads all through Davao Province. The Inigo and Alcantaro lumber 
people have thus helped our small farmers immensely. I remember that 
whenever we went to Esperanza seven or eight years ago, we had to cross 
the river six times in thirty miles. And there were no bridges. Now we 
cross it only twice. A logging company opened out there and couldn't 
stand that sort of nonsense. We have two navigable rivers too, the Lasang 
and the Bincungan. The Davao-Agusan Highway passes right through 
Panabo. We're twenty miles from Davao, which is just right. It makes 
our town an ideal place for residence. You can partake of the fresh air 
of a rural life as well as the hubbub of the city. 

"Sometimes settlers come down and can't make a go of it. Or they 
need outside jobs until they can get on their feet. Well, we have them. 



128 PHILIPPINES 

The logging industry employs hundreds of laborers who would other- 
wise be a drag on society. We hardly ever see a 'one day, one eat' gang 
loitering around the market place. 

"Although we used to be just a barrio of Tagum, Panabo was made a 
municipality in 1949. Only a Fifth Class Municipality, but in ten years 
we climbed up to First Class. Now, some of our barrios like Malativas 
want to become separate municipalities on their own." 

Judge Consolacion shifted to the edge of his chair, afire with his 
favorite subject. "Why, Panabo has vast fertile lands and coastal swamps 
covered with fishponds. We have marvelous forest products hard woods 
and soft. Our potentialities are enormous. Best of all, our citizens are 
industrious and public spirited, the best people on earth* A man comes 
down here destitute. Within five years he is a landed proprietor. Not 
much land and it's rugged living at first, but his life is his own and that's 
what he came for. I'm telling you this town will be one of the most 
prosperous cities in Davao Province. Maybe in all the Philippines. Per- 
haps in all the world. Expect big things of Panabo." 

I do. The Panaboans are on to public relations techniques. Getting 
advertisers to finance the job, they put out a printed sheet extolling 
the advantages of their town. You would think they had enough new 
inhabitants, but they want the whole world to know how wonderful 
is life in Panabo, It ends thus: "Panabo grows not only economically 
and politically but also spiritually. Although a regular parish was not 
established as soon as we became a municipality in 1949, the Catholic 
community banded themselves together and organized the Panabo Catho- 
lic League. Through the untiring and persistent efforts of this associa- 
tion, led by Sllvestre L. Gavins, president, a church, school and convent 
were constructed. On August 3, 1955, this town became a real parish." 

Of course, any church constructed in 1955 would be utterly inadequate 
in a few years. Father Leo McCarthy, when he came in 1959, found his 
congregation hanging on to the chandeliers. Only there were no chan- 
deliers to hang on to. No need for them because there is no electric 
power in Panabo, yet. But it's coming. Oh my yes, mark my words, it's 
coming. The logging companies have generators; well soon have elec- 
tricity right in our homes 1 

"You've heard of buying meat 'on the hoof/ *' says Father McCarthy. 
"Well, out here we buy a new church while it's still in the forest. You 
keep your eyes open as you go along the road looking for good trees. 
Then you choose one. After that you go to the owner and say, 'Look 
here, you can't put money in the collection basket because you need your 
money right now to develop your business. Why not put that tree into 
the basket instead?' So he gives you the tree. 

"I have my eye on a kalantas tree for the new church. It's twelve feet 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 129 

in diameter and the fins go up thirty feet. We can make all our pews 
out of that. The owner has given me the tree; now I have to persuade 
somebody else to build a scaffolding thirty feet high and steady enough 
to be a firm foundation for sawyers." 

In the meantime, Panabo's church has a shell of concrete. The floor 
is of rough concrete. "We expect to put in tiles, later, when we can 
afford it." There are no windows to open or close. "We've ordered the 
glass, though." The roof is single thickness of galvanized iron. "Some 
day we'll have a ceiling." No pews, of course. "Wait till we get that 
kalantas tree sawed up." The essentials are there an altar and a pulpit. 

Yet in Panabo we had a Solemn High Mass. We knelt on shaky old 
prie-dieus; the priests had workmen's benches in the sanctuary, and Pan- 
abo's high school students sang the Mass just as if they had not learned 
it only a week ago. A plethora of altar boys roamed the sanctuary trying 
to find enough employment to justify their being there. Two took the 
cruets, one clutched the bell, one got the censer and it took two to hold 
the Communion plate. Others found supervisory jobs. Father McCarthy 
wanted to make a good showing for Mother; he confessed later that he 
had mustered out his entire altar boy troops in her honor. They wore 
all sorts of cassocks and cinctures with a charming variety of hemlines. 
Some wore sneakers, some chinelas, some bare feet and many had bor- 
rowed daddy's one and only pair of shoes. 

It was beautiful to see the priests at Mass. Still more so, to look beyond 
the lovely vestments, the ceremonial gestures, the ancient chants and still 
older words. At the bottom of all, there were three pairs of muddy boots. 
These boots had sloshed through rain and jolted in jeeps to get to Panabo 
for the solemn High Mass for Mother. Three priests at one time in the 
same place? In Mindanao that takes travel. Each of these priests had to 
come in from his own parish. 

Part of the parish is the Davao Penal Colony. Panabo's Public Rela- 
tions sheet has this to say of the local jail: "It looks more like a civilian 
community than a penitentiary. Here one can find a botanical garden, 
a wide, well-kept park and playground, a Catholic church, secondary 
and elementary schools and a social hall. The residential lots are very 
well planned and laid out. When one goes outside the 'poblacion* he 
sees big plantations of abaca, ramis, coffee and kenaff, as well as irrigated 
rice fields covering 500 hectares (about 1,250 acres). It is said that this 
institution supports itself." 

This seems correct. The idea is that prisoners from all parts of the 
Philippines can work out their sentences here, learning agriculture. They 
may bring their families down, build small homes, work farms allotted 
to them and, when their sentences run out, the land is theirs. In the case 
of life sentence, the land goes to the widow and the children. It's an old 



ISO PHILIPPINES 

idea; wasn't that the way Australia and Georgia were started? There are 
few restrictions at the Penal Colony no walls, and only a small corps 
of guards. As you drive on the public road through the colony, the 
prisoners wave and smile at you as any group of free men would. 

It was raining not to say pouring that day. We went on to Santo 
Tomas as the heavens wept. This is the domain of Father Walter Maxcy, 
who should have a book all to himself. But first, his parish! 

In 1955, Santo Tomas did not even exist. The place was virgin forest. 
Population: zero. Six years later, population: five thousand. And ten 
thousand more in the parish. 

More than a thousand children are in the Elementary School; there 
is no high school for them. Father Maxcy is sawing wood and mixing 
concrete like mad to get one built. The beams are hewn right there 
from logs brought from the forest practically in his back yard. The 
wood is so hard, it is termite-proof; no termite is going to bruise his 
little nose trying to get through that stuff. 

When it is finished, it will be the only building in town that is not 
a shack. Father lives in a shack and the church is two shacks holding 
each other up. It has a mud floor, a tin roof and twenty ancient pews. 
Father's shack is falling to pieces, leaking like a sieve, overrun with 
rats, with no stove, no icebox, no windows. He gets his meals from the 
sari-sari store at the corner. "I used to buy food and keep it here/' he 
explained, "but the rats ate most of it. Now I let them eat it at the 
store and I buy what's left. At least I don't have to pay for their meals 
as well as my own." 

For a long time, Father slept on the floor. He is chaplain at the Davao 
Penal Colony. One day, when prisoners were bringing something for 
the new school, they saw how he was sleeping. So they ran out and stole 
a bed for him. Well, maybe they didn't steal it but they won't tell where 
they got it. 

The hero of these yarns is a debonair young priest, very much of the 
Bing Crosby type. For ten years he did heroic work in New York, doing 
everything possible to interest people in the missions. 

"People would do anything in the world for Father Maxcy," one woman 
told me. "If he had asked me to stand on Times Square and hold out 
a tin cup for Maryknoll, I would have done it gladly. One time he called 
me up and said, 'Would you want to go to Maryknoll tomorrow? You 
may have to ride on the fenders, but if you want to go you can.' I went 
to the Maryknoll Fathers' House on ggth Street the next day. The whole 
front room was crowded with people. They were from all parts of the 
city, even from Philadelphia. Not one of us knew any other. But we 
were all friends of Father Maxcy, and when he came he had mustered 



GO SOUTH, YOUNG FELLOWS, GO SOUTH 131 

enough cars to take us all to Maryknoll, just to see the place where the 
Church's frontiersmen are trained." 

Father Maxcy, with his charm and wit, could live a very easy life in 
New York, but here he is in Santo Tomas, Mindanao, fighting with 
rain and rats and a population which swells every time you breathe. He 
says about his shack, 'Til have to move from here, someday. But when 
I do I'll do it with regret. This is the kind of house the people are used 
to. They feel they can come in here to see me without feeling strange. 
I love it." 

As one of the priests said, "The Church in Mindanao is in the nail 
and hammer stage, not yet graduated to the brick and mortar stage. 
Every parish is building a church, a rectory, a school or a convent, or 
all four together. A portable sawmill is set up in one parish and moved 
to the next as soon as the job is finished. It's like the family car; you 
have to sign up for it and take your turn." 

Although a priest may have to be builder, plumber, educator, tree- 
collector or anything else on occasion, his first job is to say Mass and 
administer the sacraments. We were looking over some logs that Father 
McCarthy expected to make into cabinets for his sacristy, when a very 
thin elderly man came up to us. "Father, my wife is dying. Will you 
come with the Sacrament?" 

Sister Rhoda and I went along in the back seat of the parish jeep. 
There were three up front: Father, the man, and the Lord of Heaven 
and Earth. The man pointed the way up a side road and we stopped 
before a small nipa house, such as you see in any town on any Philippine 
island. Quite a crowd had collected around it. For these pioneers often 
live in towns and go out to their farms during the day. 

The family led us up the bamboo steps; the daughter-in-law and grand- 
children stepped aside, hushed and awed. Old Macaria lay on the floor 
in the front room on a rice-straw mat, clean and cooL As Father came 
up the steps, she tried to stretch her arms out to greet Our Lord. She 
was very thin, very weak. Father knelt down to hear her whispered con- 
fession; he placed the Sacred Host on her tongue. She swallowed grate- 
fully and lay for a long time quiet. The family prayed with her. Then 
we talked to them for a while. They had been in Panabo for four years 
and were doing quite well. Expected to do even better next year. Good, 
solid, hardworking people who expect only a sufficiency from life. Then 
we drove home. 

As we entered the church, a young couple had been waiting for Father. 
Baptism for the baby, please. The little thing was decked out in a cheap 
pink dress, very prudently left open in the back. Husband and wife 
were so proud. They had a farm some miles out; they had left Samar 



132 PHILIPPINES 

on their wedding night and this was their first child. As they left the 
church in the late afternoon, they caught a bus going their way. There 
would be a few miles* walk into the jungle afterwards, but what was that 
when little Eulalia, their very own flesh and blood, had been made a 
Child of God that day? 

5 A.M. in Panabo and life gets under way for the day. The cries of 
men hitching their carabaos to sleds, of women getting fires alight, of 
children yawning into consciousness. Above and throughout these sounds 
is the steady crunch of the town pump as everyone works the handle to 
get the first pail of water for the day. The long, slow pulls of a man, the 
short jerks of a child. It's a never-ending task, from the dawn of human 
life to its close, to get water. 

The day could be translated into our own terms when America was 
settled, be it in 1621 or 1961. It's great to be in at beginnings! 



fC 1 1 B The Sons of the Prophet 
Are Children of Adam 



"ARE you going by bunny or kangaroo?" is a common 
question in the Philippines. Local planes go bunny-hopping; expresses 
leap like kangaroos. Having leaped by kangaroo from Manila to Davao, 
we now went bunny-hopping around Mindanao. 

Cotabato is one hundred and sixty miles west of Davao as the crow 
flies. But crows take no passengers, so we went one hundred and twenty 
miles by Philippine Air Lines to Dadiangas; and on to Alah, another 
sixty miles; and so to Cotabato one hundred miles further. I was glad. 
We traversed the length and breadth of Cotabato Province. The Phil- 
Asian Atlas claims that this province alone could feed every Filipino 
man, woman or child for years to come. Indeed the Philippines need 
not fear a population explosion; if developed, it is said the country could 
feed one hundred times as many people as are there now. Small wonder, 
then, that the province has leaped in thirteen years from less than half 
a million to i,z 68,000; this is sixty-five percent gain as against forty-two 
percent for the country as a whole. 

Yet we Maryknoll Sisters are not in this rapidly expanding part. For 
the new influx is of Christian Filipinos mostly from the Visayas. We are 
at Dulawan, recently renamed Datu Piang, a settlement ninety-five per- 
cent Mohammedan, and forty miles southeast of Cotabato City. The 



THE SONS OF THE PROPHET ARE CHILDREN OF ADAM 133 

town used to be on the main road from Cotabato to Davao across the 
Island, but the new road bypasses our town. The ferry isn't used; the 
old road is not maintained any longer. Our population of nineteen thou- 
sand stays where it is. 

Just how Mohammedans got into the Catholic Philippines is some- 
times asked. The answer is easy. They were there first. The original in- 
habitants of Mindanao were slightly Hindu in their cast of thought. Even 
now their mythology has many Hindu touches. Around 1580, Makdum 
arrived in Sulu from Malacca; not long afterwards, Rajah Baginda came 
from Sumatra. These two converted Sulu and from there Mohammedan- 
ism became strong in Mindanao and spread northwards. If the Spanish 
had not come when they did in 1565, all the islands would have been 
under the crescent. Even Manila was a Mohammedan settlement when 
Governor Legaspi arrived to set up his office there in 1571. 

At last, after three hundred years, Governor Claveria got three steam- 
boats and went against Jolo, the citadel of Mohammed. They were the 
first steam vessels ever seen in the Philippines. These did the trick al- 
though not at once. Governor Urbiztondo had to bring out the same 
steamboats and reconquer the Sulus seven years later. Within ten years, 
with eighteen steamboats bought from England, the Spanish chased the 
Moro raiders up their rivers faster than the wind could blow their vintas. 
The final blow fell in 1876 when Governor Malcarnpo finished the job 
and broke Mindanao up into Provinces and Sub-Provinces. After three 
centuries of trying, Spain enjoyed the victory only twenty years when 
she lost the whole Philippines to the United States. Americans had a 
good deal of trouble down that way, too, before things smoothed out. 
The Mohammedans are still violently anti-Christian. 

It is odd, then, that Datu Piang, chief of Dulawan, approached the 
Bishop Gerard Mongeau, O.M.I., of Cotabato and asked that the Church 
staff the high school in his town. He was really up against it. For some 
years, the boys had threatened the teachers with bloody vengeance if 
they did not pass tests, and even pulled knives against them in the class- 
rooms. One year, the staff resigned en masse. In 1954, three Mary knoll 
Sisters arrived to take over that school. It wasn't easy and it didn't hap- 
pen in one day, but eventually the school straightened out. Now, one 
hundred and ninety-three boys and girls are enrolled, half of them Mo- 
hammedan. This shows the growing confidence of local parents. It is all 
the more remarkable since a new school, advertising "a complete Moslem 
education," opened the year before. 

All of this led to a trenchant remark by the Datu. "You Sisters seem 
to be very well liked in this town," he said. "You have been here five 
years and haven't been killed yet." 

The whole feeling here is quite different from any Philippine town I 



134 PHILIPPINES 

ever knew. The people show little friendliness to us, and little among 
themselves. They go up and down the street without greetings. They 
don't stand together in neighborly groups on corners or in doorways. 
They don't even talk together while walking. You can't help but miss 
the children running up to you, the happy smiles of women, the wave 
of a hand from men. 

However, some citizens of Dulawan are cut on the old pattern. A horde 
of small fry live around the convent. "Live" is the correct word. They 
sit on the back steps, peer into the windows, lie in wait for any Sister 
stepping outside. Then they rush forward and each of her ten fingers 
is commandeered by one grubby hand. In a settlement behind the market, 
too, the Sisters have loyal friends. So there is some improvement. When 
the Sisters first came to Dulawan . . . well, it's better now. 

There is no electricity in Dulawan. Seeing fluorescent bulbs in the 
convent, I had hopes. But it seems that a wealthy woman has the elec- 
tricity franchise in town. Three years ago part of her generator broke 
down. She refused to have it repaired until outstanding bills were paid. 
So we do without electricity. 

Transistor radios are common enough. One hears them from dawn 
to dusk. Bishop Mongeau and his Oblates of Mary Immaculate have 
established twenty-five high schools throughout Cotabato Province. Each 
year a week of field days brings the athletic teams of all these high schools 
to Cotabato for baseball, basketball, softball, tennis, track and other 
sports. Our Notre Dame de Dulawan school has never won much of any- 
thing, but the interest is intense. We followed our team's progress by 
radio, either our own or the neighbors'. You can walk to the market 
and pick up the scores along the way, first from one tienda (or small 
store) and then from the next. In between you learn all about the super- 
lative properties of Fletcher's Castoria and Tide Detergent. 

But lest you think the townspeople very American in their ways, the 
girl in our kitchen used laundry starch in apple pie. And one of the 
boys in school is named Maseen-gun; he was born during the war when 
machine guns were popping. Many boys in school have burnt patches 
on their arms. When they were five or six, their grandfathers put small 
balls of cotton on the inside of the arm from the wrist to the elbow. Then 
the balls were set aflame. The child proves he is of worthy stuff if he 
lets them burn out without shaking them off. 

Here again, we met Sister Ramona Maria, the dentist. There is no 
dentist among the Moros. One went through dentistry school but failed 
to pass the Board examinations. A dentist "from outside" has set up 
shop in Cotabato City, but that is forty miles away. The Moros do have 
four doctors and fifty lawyers. The plethora of lawyers is due to the fact 
that, not so long ago, they elected a Representative for the Legislature 



THE SONS OF THE PROPHET ARE CHILDREN OF ADAM 135 

in Manila. This man was not a lawyer and felt he was held in small 
esteem by other Representatives. From that time on, any family aspiring 
to politics puts its boy through law school first. Dentistry can wait. The 
local blacksmith is willing to chisel a hole in your front tooth and fit 
into it a gold heart or key or Ace of Spades. 

Sister had come from the school in Panabo. She can flatten down her 
collapsible dental chair into a package no bigger than the rest of the 
baggage one sees loaded on top of buses in Mindanao. As she goes from 
one school to another, all she has to do is to buy a ticket and catch the 
next bus at the corner. 

If Sister's equipment is rudimentary, her knowledge and skill are not. 
When she has a Mohammedan datu on the chair (for she takes in emer- 
gencies), she sometimes must practically stand on his chest to ease out 
a molar. But she does it with consummate art. She has been not only a 
tooth-saver but a life-saver for many a poor country child. 

"There was a little boy, only seven years old/* she told me. "He had 
a tumor beside his back tooth as big as that." She pointed to the top of 
a medicine bottle on her shelf. "He couldn't even close his mouth. I took 
out the tooth and the tumor and saved him from possible cancer. Another 
boy, thirteen, had a cancer on the roof of his mouth and a girl I found 
with a tumor under her tongue. Of course, they went to the hospital 
in Cotabato, when I insisted/* 

I spent a half-hour in chapel one morning in most distracted prayer. 
The windows face on the main street. Only when I resolved to pray 
especially for everybody who passed, was I able to reconcile piety with 
curiosity. First, a carabao came along ponderously, pulling his sled and 
his owner on top of it. Next came a man swinging a piece of meat from 
a rattan string. Horrors, he's turning in here! Is this our dinner? Then 
an old man in a wide straw hat walked hand in hand with a small boy, 
no more than three years old, who wore a "copia" the white cap of 
one who has been to Mecca. The copia is the white "overseas" cap we 
associate with pictures of Nehru; the women wear a white scarf called 
a kagi, loosely draped around the head. The old man and boy were slow; 
from behind came a billow of dust as the bus roared by. It was close, 
but the old man pulled the child to him and they were safe. From the 
market, a woman with a basket of fish on her hip approached. Behind 
her was the ice-cream man pushing his wagon and ringing the bell. Head- 
ing for school recess, no doubt. The woman with the fish put her basket 
on the ground, rearranged her off-center topknot of hair and pinned it 
together again. She fixed her skirt; that is, pulled out the single cylinder 
of cloth far too wide for her, wrapped it around her hips and pulled the 
excess into a knot at her waist. That done, she picked up the fish and 
went on. A goat and several kids got my next prayers. Then, a smartly 



PHILIPPINES 



dressed woman, maybe a newcomer to Dulawan, with high heels and 
Western clothes. For lack of beneficiaries, I prayed for the pig rooting 
along the roadside. A jingle of bells and a tricycle-cab rolled by with 
two passengers. None of these people had spoken to any other. 

By this time, the children who swarm around the convent had found 
me sitting in chapel They took up watch as youngsters do at the Monkey 
House in the Bronx Zoo. I could not understand their language, but^the 
general tone was uncomplimentary. So I decided to change occupations 
and type a while on the other side of the house. 

But they found me. I typed in the limelight of twenty children's 
riveted attention. We communicated by gesture only and got along quite 
well. The typewriter was more fun even than I. We have no glass windows 
in the house just screening across the window frames. They imitated 
my fingers on the keys, listened for the carriage bell, put in a new sheet 
of paper, turned to a new leaf. The typewriter was the strangest table 
ornament they had ever seen; I was the oddest character ever dropped 
from Mars. We were great friends before long. 

"I have to take care of a woman behind the market/' Sister Patricia 
Marie put her head in at the door. "Do you want to come?" 

Sister Patricia Marie is from Philadelphia. I lived ten years with her 
at Malabon near Manila, when we two formed half the convent of four 
Sisters. We went through the war together sharing the same bowl of 
lugao, so to speak, and even at one time possessing a pair of red leather 
shoes between us. There was little we did not know about one another. 
We used to play duets together. If you can play duets with a person and 
turn the last page still on speaking terms with her, you have a beautiful 
friendship. Sister is a teacher; she does not pretend to be a nurse, but 
she has some simple remedies which help cuts, boils and so on. 

So we set out, surrounded by the children who were thrilled to see 
me leave the typewriter and come out into the open. We passed a house 
distinguished from the others by a red car parked in front. "That's the 
ex-mayor's house," Sister said. "He has thirty-eight wives and that red 
can That makes him very opulent indeed. We could run our school just 
for his children, they are so many. It's impossible to keep track of who is 
whose full-sister or step-sister." 

We turned a corner and came on to the riverfront. The Rio Grande 
flows by Dulawan en route to Cotabato City where it empties into the 
ocean. It's a magnificent river, yet the boating on it seemed very small. 
Outboard motorboats were parked alongside dug-out canoes. Geese strutted 
up and down the riverside. Stores, warehouses, small piers seemed very 
busy indeed. We got no hearty greeting from passers-by but every now 
and then boys or girls of high school age invited us into their family's 
stores and the parents came forward politely. We tried to rent a boat 



THE SONS OF THE PROPHET ARE CHILDREN OF ADAM 137 

for half an hour or so; the boatmen seemed loath to do so, but eventually 
one man agreed. Once everything was settled, he could not have been 
nicer. We paddled down the river a way, viewing Dulawan's riverfront. 
Many people were hurrying into a large but shabby tin-covered building 
vaguely resembling a temple. It was the Mohammedan mosque. "Our 
school lets out at 10:30 on Friday mornings, to give the children time 
to bathe and dress for religious services at the mosque. Between 12 and i 
o'clock on Fridays, no traffic may pass it. It will soon be noon; that's why 
all the people are hurrying in, now. We can pass it in this canoe, but 
cars or outboard motorboats are taboo." 

We got out of the boat and proceeded market-wards. Halfway down 
the street we met a man draped in a towel around his neck, shaved on 
one side of his face and gummy with lather on the other. 
"What's the matter, Akas?" Sister asked. 

"I was getting shaved there/' he pointed toward the market, "in the 
shop of Dad turn, the barber. He had just started on me when a fellow 
came in wearing brass knuckles and he hit Dadtum all over his face. 
Then a lot of men gathered round and they took Dadtum and the other 
man off to the mayor's house. But in the meantime, here I am not shaved 
yet- 
There was nothing we could do about that. We went on to the market. 
Nobody there, of course. From 10 A.M. onwards, a village market is an 
empty field strewn with the well-picked garbage that nobody can sell. 
We passed through it, then over a foul creek and onto a ledge of land 
barely above water. Here were eight or ten nipa huts, ready to fall down 
any minute. Sister got a tremendous welcome here. She went into one 
house after another, treating women lying on the floors, breathing all 
day the fetid air of ground moistened by garbage rills from the market. 
There was a case of mumps in a shaky house set in filthy goo. An old 
woman was dying in a very small house no larger than five feet square. 
On the porch of another, a young woman lay on the floor too languid 
to sit up, burning with fever. Sister gets gifts of money at times to be 
spent "for charity." With these she buys vitamin pills, antibiotics, oint- 
ments, antiseptics, etc. She has been able several times, too, to send severe 
cases to the hospital. We met one woman who could not welcome us 
enough to her small home. "She had a large tumor," Sister told me. "I 
sent her to the hospital; it was removed; and now she is a well woman. 
In gratitude, her husband and oldest son appeared at our back door one 
afternoon and said they would guarantee to keep our basketball court 
in good condition. They do, too. Every week or so they come to give it 
a trim and a conditioning/ 1 

Even in this wretched place, however, many women had gold stars, 
keys, Aces of Spades inset in their teeth, and not a few wore twenty dollar 



13 g PHILIPPINES 

gold pieces fastened on to safety pins and worn as broodies. "Why don't 
you get that converted into pesos?" I asked one of them. "You could get 
many things you need, then." 

She smiled sweetly and turned away. I don't think she even recognized 
it as negotiable currency. Probably it had been in the family for years 
as an ornament. My suggestion would be equivalent to saying, "Why 
don't you hock your wedding ring?" 

We went back over the deserted market to Main Street. A young girl 
from school stopped us, said a few words to Sister and passed on. 

"She was Queen Killed To The Last Rat in our school/' said Sister 
Patricia Marie. 

"Queen what?" said I. 

"Queen Killed To The Last Rat," she reaffirmed. "Rats are such a pest 
here that the Bureau of Health instigated a contest in the schools to collect 
rat tails. They were to keep them in salt solution and bring their collec- 
tion to the municipio once a week. Pinadtaya earned her title the hard 
way. Dear knows how many rat tails she produced to be crowned Queen 
Killed To The Last Rat. But she made it." 

At this point we met Dadturn, the barber, coming back from the mayor's 
house. The marks of his recent assault were obvious, a swollen lip, closed 
eye and blood on his shirt. He was one of the few Christians in the town 
although just how Christian he was, I don't know. However, he stopped 
to tell us that his assailant was now in jail. 

The sound of gongs, struck lightly, wafted on the dusty air. We soon 
saw the cause. Brass cylinders, some of them two feet across and ten inches 
deep, hung from the rafters of a porch facing the street. Smaller gongs sat 
in a wooden rack in gradated sizes. Three small children went from one 
to another tapping them with well-worn sticks topped with balls of leather. 
It was like a fairy concert. 

"That reminds me," said Sister. "We have to get home. Some of our 
high schools girls and their mothers are coming to give a concert on the 
gongs this afternoon. There's just one place I want to go first," 

We stopped at a small house down a side street. "Tarhata!" Sister called 
at the window. A smiling woman appeared. "Francisca," Sister went on 
and gave her a message. 

"Why did you call her Tarhata outside the house, and yet Francisca 
when you were talking to her?" I asked. 

"She's a Christian woman sold to a Mohammedan in payment for a 
debt," Sister explained. "She's known as Tarhata here although her hus- 
band is quite good and lets her practice her religion fairly well." 

Back home, we found preparations for the concert well under way. A 
board had been nailed to the basketball standard. The huge gongs called 
Ahgang were tied with rattan to this. These aren't made in Cotabato 



THE SONS OF THE PROPHET ARE CHILDREN OF ADAM 139 

Province; they come from Lanao to the north. Slightly smaller gongs, 
called Gandingan, hung on racks about five feet high. The small ones, 
Kalintang, rested in a lower rack where one operator could sit down and 
reach all of them, as a xylophone is played. 

Such a concert is a cooperative effort. Four girls took their places be- 
tween the great Ahgangs and the smaller Gandingan. In each hand they 
held a stick topped by a ball of rubber bands looped and twisted together. 
Another girl, Maruha, who wore the kagi veil to signify that she had 
made her pilgrimage to Mecca, sat at the Kalintang. She was the star per- 
former. At the last minute a young man walked over with an umbrella 
over his head. He took his post between two big gongs. "Who is he?" I 
asked. 

"He really doesn't belong to this team," Sister said. "He has conjunc- 
tivitis of the eyes and came only for some medicine at the convent. He's 
a good player and the girls asked him to help." 

For more than two hours they played. For rhythm and variation in vol- 
ume I have never heard the like. In spite of the umbrella, the young man 
kept several gongs going rapidly. Sometimes he fixed the umbrella handle 
under his chin so that both hands could play. We stood in the hot sun or 
sat on the school steps. A goodly crowd gathered. The girls were much 
shyer with us than Christian girls would have been, but for all that, there 
was a pleasant feeling throughout. At the end, they hired several tricycle- 
taxis, loaded the gongs into them and went off having given us a concert 
indeed. 

Maruha, the star performer, stayed behind a few minutes. She made the 
pilgrimage to Mecca when she was nine years old; it will place her in 
honor all her life. Her white kagi was of filmy stuff, intricately em- 
broidered in white. She was so pretty, so graceful, so poised and dignified, 
I felt honored to have seen her and heard her play. 

Mohammedanism is not a gentle religion as Buddhism is. It seems to 
have violent penances and violent orgies. The Sisters tell of a boy in class 
who studied very hard for an examination. "If I pass my father has prom- 
ised me I can have two wives on graduation," he told them. 

For one month a year, the fasting is extreme. From sunrise to sunset, 
they eat nothing. They do not even swallow their spittle. 

"Running amok" has become fairly rare due to the red tape one must 
go through before indulging in this old Mohammedan sport. Indeed, 
much of the fun has been eliminated but enough remains to make it 
highly exhilarating to spectators at least. 

It used to be that any market day or holiday when the streets were filled 
with business men or merry makers, you might spot a hungry looking 
fellow in red pants wandering through the crowd. He would be carrying 
over his shoulder or under his arm an "upo" a gourd maybe two feet 



140 PHILIPPINES 

long and five or six inches across. Then, all of a sudden, he'd give a fiend- 
ish scream, whip a bolo out of the upo (which was only a scabbard to hide 
the weapon) and start slashing around him. Arms, legs, heads, ears any- 
thing at all might sail through the air for the next five minutes or so until 
somebody with a longer bolo and a steadier eye had dispatched the 
"amok." 

The custom comes from the pious idea that anyone who kills a Christian 
rides a white horse to heaven. The chances are that if you kill a dozen 
people, one of them is bound to have Christian tendencies. 

But now, as J said, red tape complicates the process. In Dulawan, when 
a man feels like going amok, he has to go through quite a process. To be- 
gin with he says to himself, "I will run amok. I probably won't live much 
longer anyhow and I would like to go out fighting. Also, it would be good 
to arrive in heaven on a white horse, no?** 

He makes a vow. He must report this vow to the datu, the police and 
the pandita (the priest). This takes much of the zest out of the enterprise. 
It spoils the element of surprise. However, the Sisters say that most comply 
with this regulation. The datu is held responsible for any murders going 
on unless he has informed the police. He wishes to make this religious act 
as safe as possible. 

The amok then goes on a nine-day fast, eating nothing from sunrise to 
sunset, and then only a very spare meal. On the appointed day, he shaves 
his head and puts on red pants. Next he hollows out the upo and conceals 
his bolo in it. Then he strolls casually down the street to the market place. 
Everybody knows the signs, of course. When they see him they should 
start going home, but often they stay around just to see the fun. The 
marked man saunters nonchalantly until people are off guard or until a 
Christian shows his face. Then he screams and runs amok until he is cor- 
nered and killed by the police. He stands to gain eternally even if he has 
no Christian scalps to show. He can always report to Mohammed, "I 
tried." 

Fighting is inbred. The schoolyard is often an arena. When the Sister 
comes along the boys protest, "Only in fun, Sister, only in fun!" But after 
class or beyond the schoolyard, the fight goes on. Sister Patricia Marie 
knows how to handle them. She separated two gladiators and took a kris 
(a wavy-bladed dagger) from one and a hooked blade from the other. 

"What are you fighting about?'* she demanded. 

"When we were cutting the grass yesterday/' Abdul said at last, "Akmad 
came very close to me. He almost cut my pants/* 

"Did you mean to cut his pants? Answer me, Akmad/* 

"No, but now I do/* lunging forward. 

Sister settled the feud. "Abdul, you will shake hands with Akmad; then 
you will shake hands with me. Akmad, you will shake hands with Abdul 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 141 

and then with me. There! Nothing can break that pact. We are all friends 
together/' It sounds silly, but it worked. 

Dulawan is a fascinating town; the spiritual potentials are enormous. 
Most of these people have such good qualities, if they could be turned 
from destructive uses. It will take day-by-day, week-by-week education. It's 
the hammer, hammer, hammer drives the nail home. 

So we took the bus back to Cotabato for another series of bunny hops 
in Mindanao. In some future age, Maryknoll Sisters may learn that bus 
schedules in mission lands are "such stuff as dreams are made on." This 
generation has not yet learned it. The bus was to stop at our door at 11:00 
A.M. At 11:00, we were ready. At 12:00 the bus arrived; we piled on, three 
to a small seat. The bus looked full to our untutored eyes. For an hour 
afterwards, we roamed up this street and down that, picking up passen- 
gers. We passed our own door three times maybe more, because we could 
see nothing over the solid block of suffering humanity wedged in the aisle 
and between the seats. Men standing in the aisle hunched over the for- 
tunates in the seats; baggage was tied on top; chickens stored in the steer- 
age compartment between the wheels. The driver himself was only one of 
eight men jammed in the front seat. When he was sure of a profitable trip, 
he steamed out of town. 

The road was fair, all of coral rock. It seemed the only solid land be- 
tween swamps aglow with pink lotus and beautiful white birds, cranes 
of all sizes, some also dark grey with white markings. The people were 
used to all this beauty; they did not bother to look. The seat before us 
held a sick woman who rested her head on her husband's shoulder. He 
was very attentive. A boy got tired standing and sat down on the aisle 
floor. Many of the men wore copias of white velvet, plastic or cotton cloth, 
proud of having fulfilled the obligation of the true son of Mohammed 
to visit Mecca at least once in his lifetime. How human they all were! Love 
between man and woman, weariness of a long journey, pride in the badge 
of honor. Though they are sons of Mohammed and we are Spouses of 
Christ, there can be no doubt that we are all children of Adam. 



t 12 )J? Sunday Morning in the Plaza 



IF Panabo's youthful Chamber of Commerce can ever de- 
cide just where the entrance to their fair city is that is, if they can fix 
upon a spot which will not be swallowed into the middle of town in a few 
months they should erect a bamboo arch with the words, "Welcome to 



PHILIPPINES 



THE FUTURE." And the Moros in Dulawan could well put up a road 
sign, "You are entering ANOTHER WORLD ENTIRELY." So Jimenez, 
our next stop, should advertise, "Come, enjoy THE PAST/' 

Mindanao is an odd-shaped island. You can think of it as a^face with 
a receding chin, blowing out a billow of steam on a frosty morning. (Wel- 
come thought a frosty morning on Mindanao!) The billow is the fasci- 
nating Zamboanga peninsula. Where the breath issues from pursed lips it 
is very narrow but it soon broadens out. Right at this isthmus, where 
Panguit Bay on the north almost meets Illana Bay on the south, is the 
metropolis for this area, Ozamis City. It is a very up-and-coming city in- 
deed. A new city gymnasium was just dedicated, built for 107,000 pesos; 
a new city hall is going up, to cost 500,000 pesos. Some 175,000 pesos will 
go to lengthening the wharves, and a supermarket is on the way which will 
cost 500,000 pesos. Ozamis City and environs have some excellent roads, 
most through self-help endeavors. Those who dream dreams of Minda- 
nao's future, talk of cutting a canal through the eight miles between 
Panguit Bay and Illana Bay. This will save ships the trouble of going all 
around Zamboanga peninsula. 

Eew on Mindanao do not dream dreams. A hereditary ailment, it seems. 
When Governor Claveria and his three trusty steamboats waged war on 
the Moro raiders, perhaps some of his men saw the possibilities in this 
inviting coastland. In the next fifteen years or so, quite a few settlements 
had sprung up at Ozamis City and the land around. Jimenez is a little 
town about twenty miles north. Now and then a visiting Augustinian, 
Padre Jimenez, came out from the city to say Mass and administer the 
sacraments; in gratitude, the town was named for him. 

But things never took root until the Man of the Hour arrived. This was 
Padre Roque Azcona, who was the first resident pastor. He took his job 
seriously. The town of three thousand people then lay on the seashore 
near the Palilau River, subject to floods. Father Azcona planned a new 
town, a bit inland. He said, "Let* s use the lowland for rice fields. We will 
irrigate it properly and build dikes." And so it was done and now is. Then 
he viewed the thick forest inland. "Let's build the city of Jimenez here," 
he decided. "We will have wide streets, ample trees, and a broad avenue 
from the plaza which will take the eye straight down to the sea." So it was 
planned and so it is now. "We will have a reservoir and water system for 
drainage and for irrigation," was next. "And now we are ready to build 
our church, parish office, rectory and school. And we lay out a cemetery." 
All these things were done; they remain to this day in full operation. A 
fifty-mile road along the western shore of Iligan Bay is still the main high- 
way. That was one of Padre Azcona* s projects. 

Then he set to work on the people. He got them to plant coconut, rice, 
corn, coffee and cacao on a big scale. He encouraged them to get into the 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 143 

abaca trade. He also kept a watchful eye on who was marrying whom and 
thus built up some o the First Families o the area. The Hynson family 
is one; the Bernad is another; the Ozamis is a third. They have all made 
great contributions to the land here. 

The original Hynson came from England to America and settled on the 
Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1630. He became a landed proprietor in 
St. Mary and Charles Counties. The Maryland Historical Association has 
his family tree. His descendant, Thomas Hynson, came to the Philippines 
on an unfortunate whaling ship which left him in Cagayan de Oro. The 
only other white man there was the redoubtable Father Roque Azcona; 
later, when Father Azcona was sent to open the new parish of Jimenez, he 
invited Thomas Hynson and his family to come along. 

Father Azcona wrote letters back to his home in Spain; his words threw 
a glow around Mindanao. His brother, Manuel, decided to emigrate and 
try his hand at pioneering. Father Azcona had a likely young bride picked 
out for his brother but she died before he came. Manuel then sought 
the hand of Basilia, Thomas Hynson* s daughter, the most eligible maiden 
in Jimenez. This was in 1870. Consuelo Azcona, their child, married 
Anselmo Bernad, the son of Ramon Bernad who had emigrated from 
Spain in 1860. 

Mr. and Mrs. Anselmo Bernad, with the blood of pioneers flowing in 
their veins and pride of Spain setting their shoulders square, were head 
and front of Catholic resistance to the Aglipayan schism which split the 
Philippines from top to bottom in the early i goo's. Anselmo was Governor 
of his province for many years. When Spanish priests left the islands after 
the Spanish-American War, all of Mindanao was left without a priest for 
twenty years. Jimenez itself had none for thirty years. But even a large 
city such as Ozamis was bereft. During that time Bishop Hendricks of 
Cebu found himself, an American, ecclesiastical head of all the Visayan 
Islands, hundreds of them, and of half of Mindanao as well. He came to 
visit Ozamis City, then called Misamis. As his boat drew near to shore, 
the forlorn band of Catholics, headed by Anselmo and Consuela Bernad, 
knelt on the sands to receive their Bishop. The Bemads offered him hos- 
pitality. At dinner, the house was mobbed by Aglipayans shouting, "Death 
to the Bishop!" "Down with Hendricks and Rome!*' Lest he bring harm 
to the entire family, Bishop Hendricks left for the parish convento, then 
in ruins. Anselmo stuck with him; he too moved into the convento for the 
duration of the visit. The Municipal Council of Misamis formally passed 
a resolution approving the mob and took the trouble to present a copy 
of it to the Bishop. 

Later a Jesuit priest, much beloved even yet, Father Gabriel Font, had 
just about half of Mindanao as his parish. They say he used to marry 
people in the bus as he went along. From 1921 until 1927, he lived on the 



144 PHILIPPINES 

road going from town to town in a desperate attempt to be twins or tri- 
plets. The Bernads' son, Miguel, was his traveling altar boy. Now he is a 
Jesuit priest himself, a mine of information on the history and tempera- 
ment of Misamis. 

The Bernads' daughter was Conception, who married Dr. Bomediano, 
grandson of Romualdo Bomediano, an artist imported from Bohol to 
paint the church. He made it one of the most elegant, spacious churches 
in all the provinces. And if you think that is small praise, you should see 
some of the tremendous buildings put up by Spanish friars far from the 
centers of culture. This one in Jimenez had a magnificent organ from 
Spain and a bell tower with a chiming clock. I, myself, taught school 
beside a village church which would put to shame half the churches in 
American cities; it might make even Grand Central Terminal blush a 
little. 

Dr. Bomediano was acting Governor of Misamis Occidental during 
World War II. He and Concepcion hid out in the mountains near Mt. 
Malindang. "The town was occupied by Japanese/* he told me, "but 
nobody was in it." He is now with Philcoa, a government organization 
responsible for the quality of copra shipped out of the country. Copra is 
still first on the Philippine export list. It was slipping due to poor methods 
of drying, but Philcoa is trying to keep the quality high. 

Concepcion Bernad de Bomediano is a very simple, straightforward 
woman, I met her in her pharmacy on Jimenez Main Street. We shook 
hands over the counter. Then she left the store to the care of a girl and 
we went upstairs to their comfortable but modest apartment. She spoke 
of her childhood in Jimenez. "In the early days, there was always a raid 
going on, it seemed to me. The Moros slipped across Iligan Bay from 
Lanao by night and took crops, women and children. They sold them. My 
grandfather bought three children who had been stolen from other islands. 
They did not know where they came from. One of these lived with my 
mother until she died at a very advanced age. She had kinky hair so she 
may have been a Negrito from as far north as Zambales on Luzon. 

"During the Aglipayan days, when for thirty years there was no resident 
priest In Jimenez, eight families remained loyal. We used to go to church 
regularly every Sunday even though there would be no Mass. The head 
of the Catholic Action group opened the door for us and closed it again 
after us. He held the keys. This was very important; the Aglipayans had 
to build their own church. In many towns the Catholics had no church; 
the Aglipayans had taken over the parish." 

You cannot go far in Mindanao without coming across another remarka- 
ble family, the Ozamis. The father came to our little town of Jimenez in 
1890 or so, as purchasing agent for Tabacalera, a Spanish tobacco firm. 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 145 

He settled down, married a Fortlch (another name to conjure with in these 
parts) and had one boy and nine girls. The boy became Senator Jose 
Ozamis; during World War II he fought bravely as a guerilla and was 
executed for it. To honor him, Ozarnis City adopted his name; formerly 
it was Misamis City. 

The girls all manifested that undying energy which is the stock in trade 
of well-born Filipinas. Remedios Ozamis married Senator Fortich at the 
beginning of World War II. When they were hiding in the hills during 
the war years, he was mortally wounded by Moros. As he lay dying, 
Remedios reminded God that her husband had made nine First Friday 
Communions and that He had promised that none such would die with- 
out the sacraments. Out of nowhere a priest came just in time to hear his 
confession and to bless him. After the war, Remedios filled out her hus- 
band's term as Senator. She is now head of the National Rural Rehabilita- 
tion Agency responsible for the government's homesteading projects. She 
lives out in pioneer land at Malaybalay where my friend Florencia passed 
going out to her honeymoon nipa hut in the wilderness. With her boom- 
ing voice and mannish ways, Remedios sees a job to be done and does It 
Her father, so tradition says, used to call her "My little typhoon." 

Nieves, her sister, went to Manila and allied herself with the Roces 
family, publishers of the Manila Times. She writes for the newspaper 
and is in printer's ink up to her elbows. Paulita went to Cebu where she 
built up a restaurant, The Bee Hive; she has a thriving catering service, 
too. Consuelo is unmarried and keeps up the old home. Quiet, she is a 
power for good in every Jimenez civic and church project. 

Carmen has the business head. Her father chose her for the job. She 
operates haciendas of coconut, rice and corn in Jimenez; a cattle ranch 
in Bukidnon and a pineapple farm there as well; lumber and coffee estates 
in Cebu. She has a large interest in Toledo Copper Mines in Cebu. The 
Visayan Electric Company is another of her pet projects and, just to keep 
her hands full, she manages the Shell Oil depot at Jimenez. Outside of 
those trifles, she has nothing to do. She has no telephone, of course, but 
uses a lot of telegrams. Like other big business executives, Carmen Is al- 
ways looking for talent. She picked up a poor boy named Cruz Lagura, 
sent him to school in Cebu for automotive engineering, and put Mm in 
charge of all the tractors, trucks and jeeps used In her various enterprises. 
He is also her personal chauffeur, driving her Buick which no one else is 
allowed to touch. Carmen does not use it much; she prefers to walk. Nearly 
every morning finds her walking up Main Street to early Mass. The car Is 
as much ours as hers, judging from the use of it. 

The important families of this town, which Is just emerging from the 
chop-the-trees-down stage of pioneering, stand In contrast to those of an- 



146 PHILIPPINES 

other section o the world. At first glance, one might suppose conditions 
would be similar in Jimenez and in the middle of Bolivia. Both are iso- 
lated sections of the great Spanish empire, established long after the sun 
had set on its colonial glory. Pioneers to Jimenez came over the sea; those 
in Bolivia's jungle lands paddled down the rivers and portaged the rapids. 
Both are hot countries; pioneers in both were surrounded by hostile 
neighbors, the Indians in Bolivia, the Moros in Jimenez. 

While in Bolivia, I stayed several days in the deserted Suarez mansion, 
far grander than anything in Jimenez, a palace built in the humid jungle 
of South America's Green Hell. The fancy English plumbing had rusted 
beyond use; mould hung in festoons on the damask wall papers; the in- 
laid hardwood floors were half in and half out. The once handsome bath- 
tub had been torn from its pipes, hauled outside and, upside down, served 
as a shelter for chickens when it rained which was always. In the early 
i goo's, Nicolas Suarez built up a tremendous rubber empire. His wife, 
Judita, grew her own sugar cane, crushed it and boiled the juice. I saw 
the vats she used, in a small clearing in the jungle. Nicolas and Judita 
are buried beside the mighty river which carried them from civilization 
to this primitive rubber kingdom. But their children, educated in Europe, 
live in foreign countries and have little interest in the land their father 
worked so hard to conquer. 

The Ozamis family is not unusual in the Philippines. Every province 
can point to families who came early, settled down and formed the bed- 
rock of the place. Very often two such families intermarry until you can- 
not tell them apart. Our own Sister Concepcion comes from two of the 
most powerful families in Batangas Province, the Kalaw-Katigbaks. The 
intricacies of the business-social-political life therein would baffle a mas- 
termind to unravel. She has cousins and in-laws in every field of life. Yet 
Sister Concepcion, like all her family, is a very simple forthright person 
who washes dishes and teaches catechism to youngsters with the same zest 
as she stands before a college class and expounds nuclear physics. Master 
of all trades and jack at none that* s Sister Concepcion. 

It is Sister's job, among others, to collect the tuition fees at St. John 
the Baptist School in Jimenez. Let it be understood from the beginning 
that this school is strictly nonprofit. Strictly. To pay living wages to lay 
teachers (and we have nineteen on the staff) so that they can teach chil- 
dren whose parents do not have a living wage themselves this requires 
a good squeeze on every penny. The school pays out much more than 
it takes in on fees. Bazaars and benefits fill the gaping holes in the econ- 
omy. This instability would make any bursar turn green at the edges 
but Sister Concepcion knows that in her books, cold arithmetic meets 
generosity at home and abroad, and melts at the impact. 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 147 

One Sunday morning, a slight man came to the convent steps to parley 
with Sister Concepcion. His statistics are unassuming: Lives at Carmen, 
twelve miles up into Mt. Malindang. Has eight children. Four now in 
our high school. Has little money. Sells farm produce in market. 

Such is Ceferino Lumantas. Like many others, his children live in town 
for the week, walk home on Saturdays, wash their school uniforms, get 
supplies and come back Monday morning. The road is often so muddy 
that it takes devotion above and beyond the call of duty to get home. At 
first, only one Lumantas child lived in Jimenez during the week. He could 
stay in any house and be welcome. But as more came each year, Ceferino 
decided to build a nipa hut for them in town. An ambitious project? He 
thought so too. He came to Sister Maura Shaun with his heart in his 
mouth. Would she lend him about ten dollars to build a house? This paid 
for the nipa; Ceferino and his boys did the work. Now, after seven years, 
the nipa hut had collapsed in the night. The Lumantas clan planned a 
more solid wooden house. So well, he might be behindhand with his bill 
for a while. 

In Carmen, there are few practicing Catholics. It's too hard for them 
to attend Mass and they have grown indifferent. But the Lumantas tribe 
are different. They were the first children from Carmen to go to high 
school. Also the only ones to receive First Holy Communion. They pre- 
pared for it at Jimenez, but Father went out to Carmen to celebrate the 
Mass and made a real barrio fiesta on the Great Day. 

Ceferino Lumantas spoke quite a while with Sister Concepcion. In a 
quiet dignified way, he asked her to carry his account along for a time. 
She said, of course she would. Then she offered him a meal before he 
started back to Carmen. He said he really didn't need it, thank you. The 
slight man with waning hair and just the beginning of a stoop turned 
down the steps and set his face toward Carmen, twelve miles into Mt. 
Malintang. 

St. John the Baptist School is housed in the old rectory. Built nearly 
one hundred years ago, the posts and beams are hardwood logs. One can 
easily see the tree in them. Today, they would cost a fortune but they 
probably had to be cut down anyway to clear the land in 1870, Floors are 
wide planks of polished wood narra, molave and Philippine mahogany. 
These things make interior decorators drool. Walls are of Spanish plaster 
fortified with bamboo. In some rooms, windows of shell tilt out to open 
the whole side wall. The rooms were huge. I say "were" because they aren't 
so any more. For instance, we cut the reception room up into three class- 
rooms. 

Jimenez boasts of a telephone, a wind-up affair connecting convent, 
rectory and school. It was a walkie-talkie during the war but has retired 



148 PHILIPPINES 

to spend its old age In the service of Holy Mother Church. "It's fun to 
fool with it," says Sister John Francis. "There's always the chance that it 
might work this time." 

Electricity is on from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. As the priest comes on the altar 
for Mass, all the lights go off. During Mass, the sun comes up shining 
through the back windows and lighting up the gold-leaf altar. Just at the 
consecration, it leaps clear of the horizon and blazes in glory. The priest 
disappears in the splendor that fills the sanctuary. Then sunlight catches 
the white host elevated for all the world to adore. And after that, the 
golden chalice and the golden sun return gleam for gleam. It's magnifi- 
cent! You can't tell me old Fray Roque Azcona didn't have it in mind 
when he built that church. 

Something else he had in mind. When the priest turns around for the 
last blessing, he lifts his hand over the whole town. From the altar steps, 
his gaze goes out the great front door, across the plaza and down that wide 
main street, straight and true to the sea several miles away, shining in the 
new day's sun. He blesses all his parishioners, some of them holy, some 
of them not; some rich and some poor; some clear-minded and energetic, 
some hazy and slow; some always in church, others who darken its doors 
once standing up and twice lying down. For they stand up for their wed- 
dings but take Baptism and the funeral prayers recumbent. Whoever 
they are, whatever they do, they are the padres' spiritual children. Irish 
Columban Fathers have the parish now. These two Irishmen, when they 
turn around at the altar, bless fifteen thousand people in a parish they 
cannot possibly cover adequately. In the United States, there is one priest 
for every seven hundred Catholics; in Jimenez quite a well established 
mission in the Philippines there is one for every seven thousand five 
hundred. 

Our school has seven hundred pupils six hundred and ninety-nine to 
be exact. About forty percent are grade school youngsters; forty-five per- 
cent are in high school and fifteen percent take a junior college course. 
It's the only good school in the province, except for one in Ozamis City. 
We aim to keep the standards high. This is our purpose to establish good 
schools in the Philippine hinterlands. 

The best way to savor Jimenez is to spend Sunday morning on the plaza. 
You might as well; everybody else does. The old trees spread a grateful 
shade. Families lounge in the shadows. Carabao snooze in the coolness 
and dream of heaven where all yokes are sweet and burdens light. Goats 
nibble the grass. Horses exchange gossip about themselves and their mas- 
ters- A cow, hungry for salt, licks the coral imbedded in the church wall. 
The chickens strut around. One corner of the plaza is a basketball court; 
another is laid out for volleyball. Some older men bat a rattan ball around 
with their ankles. It's the ancient Filipino game of sipa. Market women 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 149 

rest on the knobby roots of the great trees. A young colt rolls from side 
to side on the ground, kicking his hoofs in the air. There's plenty of room 
for everyone. Come and enjoy it! 

On the edges of the plaza, two-wheeled carts called tartanillas jingle 
past, the little horses bright with metal ornaments. Small refreshment 
stands, not too avid to do business, offer bananas roasted over low char- 
coal fires, or corn on a spit, or babinka which look like steam-rollered 
pancakes, or vicious colored ices. The sellers of these delights are in Sun- 
day morning mood, too. Neighbors for many years, they comment on 
everybody going by and speculate on the day's business. When you take 
a picture, they call out, "Take mine, too, Sister!" and explode in merry 
uproar when you do. "Show my face in America!" the victim implores as 
you leave. 

Then the Angelus rings out from the great church tower. Everyone 
stops dead. A few very silent minutes. Then we go home. Sunday morn- 
ing in Jimenez plaza is over. 

Four bunny hops over water brought us to Bacolod on Negros via 
Dipolog, Dumaguete and Cebu, each on a different island. Negros is the 
"sugar island." We have a hospital about thirty miles north of Bacolod, 
barely discernible over the waving tassel tops of sugar cane. Sugar lined 
the road and stretched far far away to the horizon some of it just planted, 
some blossoming, some six to eight feet tall and some harvested. America's 
troubles with Cuba gave a great boost to Philippine sugar and Negros 
was making the most of it. The workers were at it continuously, some- 
times far into the night, but the common laborer got little increase in 
wages. He is paid by the day, and that doesn't mean an eight-hour working 
day. 

Planting, harrowing, fertilizing are piece work and paid for by the hec- 
tare. The whole family works together, yet often all of them get only 
about Pi .50 ($.50) a day. The children cannot afford either the time or 
the money to go to school. However, harvesting pays ^2.30 a day; only men 
can work at this. 

In such a setting, we staff St. Joseph's Hospital for the Victorias Milling 
Company, a sugar refinery. Quite definitely, the company tries to operate 
along lines of social justice. The minimum wage is ^4.80 a day plus 
"fringe benefits." One of these fringes is a boys* technical school operated 
by the Salesian Fathers. Formerly, only sons of employees could attend, 
but the school is so good that now the doors are open to boys from many 
towns and provinces. Besides the academic studies, they learn mechanics, 
tailoring, electro-mechanics and/or cabinet making. Since 1958, junior 
college courses in engineering and industrial education have been added. 
Thus teachers for large or small factories are trained here. 



150 PHILIPPINES 

The popularity of technical schools in the Philippines is another post- 
war development. It used to be that education was only for the professions; 
what was the use of educating a lad if he was not to be a doctor, lawyer, 
dentist or pharmacist? Don Bosco Technical Schools are now thriving 
institutions spotted over the Philippines in Laguna, Rizal, Pampanga and 
Negros. 

Our hospital is another "fringe." When they need care, any employee 
and his family may occupy one of the one hundred and twenty-five beds at 
St. Joseph's. If I were there, I would be tempted to fake something if I 
could get away with it. Nice clean bed, cool breezes blowing through 
the ward, and tender loving care from Sisters who serve God by serving 
me. Sounds nice. Mighty nice. Some have tried it. Not many, but a few 
have got away with it. A young fellow, when I was there, celebrated a solid 
year of tender, loving care at St. Joseph's. Not employed by the company 
in any way, he was drunk one night and crawled under a sugar-cane car 
to sleep. The train started and the boy was badly injured. While it was 
his own fault, crooked lawyers might claim that the train personnel had 
not checked sufficiently. Many of the accident cases come from the com- 
pany railroad which hauls cane from fields to mill, and out again to ships 
in the harbor. 

Signs are everywhere in English and Visayan: "The company is not 
responsible for accidents to unauthorized riders/' Yet when you are poor, 
and you want to get some place, and you can't pay bus fare, and it's a long 
hot walk, and right there is a sugar-loaded train going where you want to 
go, .... well, most people hop on for a free ride. That's how it was 
with the unfortunate Dominguez family, Juan, Crisostoma and nine-year- 
old Asuncion. They were going to Victorias. Usually they slipped off just 
before crossing a bridge where company guards might see them. But they 
were slow this time. Then all three jumped quickly. Crisostoma missed 
her footing and was killed outright. Asuncion was dragged seventy-five 
feet; Juan leaped clear and then ran after his mangled child. The child 
had two broken arms, a broken clavicle and a head so crushed that gray 
matter was oozing through. 

Of course, the train stopped. Of course, the company ambulances 
brought the child to us. Of course, we took care of her until she died. Of 
course, the company paid for everything on the case even though nobody 
in the family was employed either in the mill or on the haciendas. The 
point I am making is that social justice works two ways or, if you want a 
sub-title to that, companies have to absorb a little injustice sometimes, too. 
And, thanks be to God, they do it graciously, 

A "kangaroo" took us to Manila, three hundred watery miles away. 
Manila, as you may have guessed from what has been said before, is an 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 151 

old shoe to Mother and me. Very comfortable. Just ten miles north, on 
the shores of Manila Bay, is a venerable old church with lopped-off towers. 
They were shot off, so tradition says, when Admiral Dewey steamed into 
Manila Bay in 1898. Some wooden towers take their place but they do not 
match the building. Beside this church indeed, attached to it is an 
old Spanish "convento" which was the first Maryknoll school in the 
^k^ippi nes - Today it is vastly expanded and with twelve hundred pupils 
is one of our largest schools. This is St. James Academy at Malabon, Rizal. 

It was the same with other provincial schools. They have struck down 
roots and spread. At Lucena, Quezon Province, Maryknoll Academy vastly 
overflowed the original building and is now jamming the extensions 
added in the past few years. In Li pa, Batangas, a new girls* high school 
is crowded and the old boys' high school is so old that it cannot long 
endure the tramp of manly feet. Every evening, the Sisters pray that it 
will fall down during the night; every morning, they pray that it will hold 
up until classes are over. In Pakil, Laguna, the Maryknoll Fathers' High 
School could use more space easily. At Pako in Manila, the waiting line 
forms at the right; please go to the end of the line. While out in Quezon 
City, Maryknoll College has sixteen hundred pupils from kindergarten 
straight through college. The trouble is, you have to register a child as 
soon as she's born to secure a desk and a place at the blackboard for her. 

One of the great joys of growing old (besides having people run to pick 
up your suitcase which I am still waiting for) is that you can sit back 
in your wheelchair and think on your rugged youth. Then all the hard 
moments smile right back at you. The little numbskull you pounded arith- 
metic into is running a nuclear laboratory; the girl who couldn't care less 
if she never saw the inside of a church again, is a Carmelite nun. You used 
to be on yard duty, watching the kiddies as they ate lunch on the front 
steps; the gleaming new cafeteria seats five hundred. You, who had books 
lining the staircase and set in shelves straight up to the ceiling, can rejoice 
with the new librarian as she reigns in a hushed citadel of learning. And 
Francisco why, he's a living saint beloved by God and man! Which 
Francisco? That Francisco, the one you prayed calluses on your knees 
for. 

What's more, they crowd around their aged teacher and tell her she had 
a hand in it. You may not put full faith into that but it folds around your 
soul like a blanket on a cold night. It's good to feel that somebody might 
think it's true. 

So it was with Mother and, to a lesser degree, with me when we came 
back to Maryknoll College, now on a spacious campus in Quezon City 
on the outskirts of Manila. Mother spent much of her youth smiling 
bravely to parents, creditors, fellow teachers and inspectors from the 
Board of Education. Her gallant spirit failed not, though the roof leaked 



152 



PHILIPPINES 



and the yard boy may have run off with the funds saved for a new micro- 
scope. Twenty years ago Maryknoll College moved from one rented build- 
ing to another. All too often, the end of a school year saw Mother packing 
her blackboards, charts, dictionaries, textbooks, globes, science equipment, 
chalk and erasers, to start up again in another new location. 

Now she stood at the window and watched twelve handsome buses un- 
load children at the front door, family cars disgorging youngsters, groups 
of classmates running up the front path. She walked over to the new 
dormitory for college students where girls from all parts of the country 
mingle while they learn the intricate art of injecting knowledge into 
children. She, who had produced Shakespeare in a little garage, stood on 
the stage of the beautiful auditorium, gazed up into the catwalks and 
fingered the heavy curtains. She stood a long time there with her hand 
on the curtains. I couldn't see her eyes; my own were a bit misted. 

Just the atmosphere around the college is erudite. Even the mosquitoes 
are intelligent. Maybe that comes from drinking so much Ph.D. blood 
from the Sisters. I used to be a match for any mosquito. All one had to do 
was to butter a plate very thickly, then swing it around in the air, and all 
the insects would stick to it. But I spent a night matching wits with these 
college-educated mosquitoes and came out the small end of the horn. 

A mosquito net is a godsend. It ranks next to the wheel as Man's 
Greatest Invention. That is, if mosquitoes play fair and stay on their side. 
These slick boys, however, hide in your hair or under your pajama collar 
and come along in with you. For hours that night we batted it out. Then 
the cold war started. I wrapped up completely, leaving only a small section 
of one cheek exposed as bait. A hand was raised ready to swat the first 
paratrooper to land on it. Do you think they bit? No, indeed. They re- 
tired to a corner of the net and played pinochle until I tired of this waiting 
game and threw the covers off into the sweltering night. By next morning 
I was bled white and they were stupefied with gorging. It was rare revenge 
to roll them in the net and squash every one. If they had stuck to mind 
over matter, they would be happy intelligent mosquitoes today. 

All ye who teach, take courage! Fear not; your children remember you. 
Malabon spread a red carpet all the way down Main Street and over the 
bridge. (No, no, not literally.) The town has grown from the days when 
Manila Bay gently lapped the Municipio and the cemetery wall, and 
rolled under the bamboo stilts of a few houses along the shore. There is 
a Malabon Chamber of Commerce and a Malabon Women's Civic Club. 
Land has been filled in to make a shipyard where six good-sized vessels 
for deep-sea fishing were building at once. The row of tiendas, or small 
shops across the street, is replaced by a bank with Greek-columned portico. 
Trucks, buses, jeepneys outrun and outshout the horse-drawn caretelas on 



SUNDAY MORNING IN THE PLAZA 153 

our street and horrors! a traffic cop is stationed on our corner, so 
important has it become. How metropolitan can one get? 

And the old students! Just as, during the war, they had swarmed around 
bringing rice and meat and fruits when they, themselves, had all too 
little, so now they came bearing gifts. They came to talk. "Maring' 7 took 
us around town to see the old places. Many are teachers, some are social 
workers, others have forged ahead into new businesses. Liberate deals in 
chemicals; Ramon is a doctor; Sebastian is in the Bureau of Commerce. 
Gilda writes short stories for newspapers; Flaviana operates a fleet of 
fishing vessels; Paz is Dean of Women at the University of the East. 
Carmen specialized in Home Economics and is going around the country 
giving lectures on nutrition and how to make the most of native fruits 
and vegetables. Dominador went on with his hobby of photography and 
now all the movie stars and society women come to his air-conditioned 
studio. 

Best of all were the teachers Rufina, Belen, Purificacion, Lucia, II- 
luminada, far too many to list. For years they have poured their best into 
the children of Malabon. God bless them for it! 

I could start now and sing a panegyric in praise of the Filipina, but 
it's not necessary. The Book of Proverbs has done it already. "She brings 
her bread from afar; she rises In the night and feeds her household; 
she considers a field and buys it; she shall not fear for her house in the 
cold of snow; she has made fine linen and sold it and delivered a girdle 
to the Canaanite." These things the Filipina has done from time im- 
memorial. Her business acumen has earned itself a place in the lan- 
guage; "ang may-bahay" (she who owns the house) is the common term 
for a wife in Tagalog. And none of it Interferes with her primary work 
of wife and mother. High-born or low, she was the Emancipated Woman 
long before Susan B. Anthony went on the stump for the rest of us. 

The modern Filipina has everything. She dresses daintily; she dances 
superbly, especially her own native dances; she speaks English well; she 
Is good at mathematics, tea drinking, piano playing, running a household 
and driving a good bargain. On top of all that, she has, like every good 
superior, a sense of self sacrifice. Let me tell you about Gregoria in Pakil, 
a country town on the shores of Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the 
Philippines. 

She is young and pretty with a trim figure, an oval face and a silky 
mane of long black hair sometimes hanging down her back, sometimes 
knotted Into a business-like pug. She has never gone beyond sixth grade 
but her manners are nice, her clothes attractive. Working for an American 
family, she earns her family's living. She keeps her marketing accounts up 
well and, an avid disciple of Fanny Farmer, she shows intelligence in 



154 PHILIPPINES 

managing a kitchen. The biggest part of her salary goes to her mother 
for the family needs; some goes to help her younger brother and sister pay 
tuition; they work for the rest themselves. The family is giving one priest 
to the Church; "Goring" helps pay his expenses. She would like to con- 
tinue school. At times she says, "I used to be good in arithmetic," in a 
wistful way. She knows now that she will probably never go back to 
study, but she is so convinced of the value of education that she will put 
off her own marriage until her younger sister and brother are through. 
Such is the Filipina. 



HONG KONG 




*MoryknollWork$ 



U. S. S. R. 

Peiping 

ASIA 

CHINA 



INDIA 

Calcutta 
Bombay 




P4HIUPPINES 



HONG KONG 



f 3 B A Portly Old Gentleman 
in Cutaway Coat 



How odd! Prowling the streets of Hong Kong! Quite a 
portly gentleman, too, and most respectable looking. I saw him poking 
his cane into open drains to get them imclogged. He counted the huts 
around a public water tap. He stood on street corners and noted the 
fatness or skinniness of the babies on their mothers* backs. In his cutaway 
coat and morning trousers, he went before me down the crowded alley- 
ways in Hong Kong where men dangle baskets at the ends of a shoulder 
pole and women push baby buggies, full of almost anything but babies. 
"Fat foreign devil, stand aside," they say with scant respect for his 
ruddy face and snow-white mustache. And he does. He squeezes himself 
by the side wall. When they have passed, he continues gently but firmly 
to inspect the fruit on stands in that alleyway. 

I've seen the old gentleman In the back of classrooms, counting the 
children at the desks. Sometimes, he takes one on his knees, feels the 
skinny little arms and stuffs the child's pockets with vitamin pills and 
food tickets. He sidles up to the clinic desk and peers over the nurse's 
shoulder as she takes down information and hands out medicines. He 
tiptoes into the storeroom and counts the bandages, the pills, the anti- 
biotics. Then, as often as not, he clucks sympathetically and writes out 
an order for more. Late at night he tiptoes through hospital wards, feel- 
ing the quality of the sheets and pushing the hair away from sweaty brows. 

Who is this odd fellow? He is GOVERNMENT spelled with capital 
letters in Hong Kong, or Good Old Guv'ment to his co-workers. I first 
met him in 1947 when I tried to spend two weeks in Hong Kong. Guv'ment 
told me then, with obvious reluctance, that I might come into the colony 
(i) if I had a place to sleep other than the streets, (2) if my friends would 
feed me and (3) if I wouldn't stay long. "You see," he explained, "the war 
has uprooted a lot of people and we are very crowded. Later we hope to 
have room. Sorry to be so inhospitable but ahem you see the situa- 
tion." Yes, yes, I saw it. One million six hundred thousand people in forty 
square miles. Several years later, I came back. The situation was no better, 
but Guv'ment did not question me. 

157 



158 HONG KONG 

Now the situation is twice as bad. We found Hong Kong in the throes 
of census-taking. Three million one hundred thousand at least stood up 
to be counted. How many others preferred to be unidentified is a moot 
point. Some say another half-million. This is no shock to the old gentle- 
man now, but it was when he first realized how many Chinese from Red 
China had parked on his doorstep. 

Along about 1952, Good Old Guv'ment stepped outside his cricket field 
possibly to pick up a lost ball. But he met an odd sight which made 
him forget the ball entirely; he hasn't looked for it since. A pillar of 
smoke was twisting up from a mountainside opposite his playing field. 
And from the base of the smoke, swarms of black things were fleeing. 
Were they beetles? Or ants? Guv'ment fished out his pocket binoculars 
and took a good look. My word! My goodness me! They were human 
beings ragged, hunched over, carrying what they could, hurrying along 
small children. Bless us! Their shacks are burning, thought Guv'ment. 
Where will they go? 

Through the hours of that night he worried. He had seen armies such 
as this before. Had seen crowds pushing out of Red China. Had seen 
line-ups before relief doors. Had heard and smelled the tenement 
houses for years. Every now and then, it seemed, something had happened 
in China to which large numbers of Chinese objected, and they had 
poured into Hong Kong. They hung around a while and moved away 

either to foreign shores or, if another upheaval at home put their 

party on top, back into China again. 

Hong Kong was used to taking a deep breath, squeezing them all in 
for a time and then breathing out in comfort in a few years. The Com- 
munist scares in the twenties, Japanese forays in the thirties, World War 
II in the forties during these times the colony's population swelled to 
one and one half million and deflated down to five hundred thousand. 
They would sleep in the streets or build crazy shacks on the hills, pester 
the life out of decent people with their begging and then move away. 

But Guv'ment tossed and turned that night in 1952. He wasn't so sure 
this was just another temporary swelling. For a long time, now, reports 
had floated across his desk: Thousands over the border every week. 
Squatters filling the valleys and pushing away up the mountains. Soup 
lines beseiged. Seven hundred huts go up in flames. Woman found dead; 
cause, starvation. The fact was plain. This crowd was not moving away. 

"'Looks like I'm stuck with them," he commented in the dark to where 
he hoped his guardian angel was. "Well, nothing to do, I suppose, but to 
roll up my sleeves and take care of them." 

"That's a good idea, Guv'ment," said his angel wryly. "Now I'll let 
you get some sleep." 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 159 

"But things are so different in England, you know," Guv'ment mut- 
tered. The angel smiled and tucked him in. 

"You're here on Her Majesty's Service, my boy. And England expects 
every man to do his duty." 

Old Guv'ment made no reply. He turned over, sighed mightily and 
dropped off to innocent slumber. 

He was early at his desk the next morning. Carefully, he cleared the 
papers off, laying them on far tables. Then, on his empty desk top, he 
made plans to help those ant-like people. He had done a little already, 
in 1948 and again in 1951, to get squatters to move out into the country. 
But most of them did not want to move so far from possible jobs. 

There were many missionaries and volunteer workers already at work. 
He enlisted their aid, let them go ahead with their projects and gave 
them a boost with money and authority. Then he got into the game him- 
self. This solution of Hong Kong's refugee problem makes the world 
take off its hat to Good Old Guv'ment. 

The first thing to tackle was space. Kai Tak Airport, for instance, had 
always been famous for being hard to get at. Pilots had to land and take 
off on a dime. The only way to get in or get out was through a narrow 
valley between mountains. Planes swooped through this valley, made a 
sharp right turn and dropped like a ripe coconut on to a field hemmed 
in by mountains and often covered with fog. Once aground, they had to 
stop fast or they kept right on dropping, this time into the harbor. Jets 
certainly needed more elbow room. Seven years ago, less than 5,000 pas- 
sengers landed at Kai Tak; last year, 186,000 stepped off planes there. 

But Kai Tak airstrip has been stretched out into the harbor. Good 
Old Guv'ment knocked a couple of mountains into the sea and built a 
jetty out to accommodate the big birds. Coming from the Philippines, 
Mother and I came down over the sea and slid on to the airstrip as gently 
as an ocean liner edging into a pier. 

It was a good introduction to Hong Kong where they make a specialty 
of pushing mountains into the sea. "Space! More space! Give me room!" 
is the cry from those three million people jammed on the island of Hong 
Kong and the strip of mainland known as Kowloon, an area of forty 
square miles. The New Territories, some three hundred and seventy six 
square miles, hold less than one-sixth of the population on its farms. 

In Hong Kong, Guv'ment decided, land is not found; it must be made. 
He makes it by pushing mountains around, lopping off their tops, taking 
a slice or two from the sides, hollowing out a niche and half-burying a 
twenty story building into it. There is a new building downtown where 
you can go into the front door at street level, take an elevator to the seven- 
teenth floor and go out the back door also at street level. Places far from 



160 HONG KONG 

the waterfront, wildernesses before, are apartment beehives now. Apart- 
ments run up fifteen and twenty stories high. We have a new school on 
Blue Pool Road, "away out of town" three years ago; today, the Sisters 
have a hard time to keep the neighbors from prying into our fifth-floor 
convent. A new building is going up right behind our Kowloon school. 
I said to Sister Clement who has rolled up thirty years in Hong Kong, 
"Too bad. That new building will spoil your view/' "Not at all," said 
Sister Clement. "We never had any view. A mountain used to be there/* 

One has no trouble disposing of mud in Hong Kong. When you dig 
your foundation or shear off your hill, Good Old Guv'ment is right be- 
hind you to collect all the mud you don't want and drop it into the sea, 
He sneaks around Fido when he buries a bone to catch the mud he 
scratches up. He's that avid for land. All the mud from the foundations 
of our Maryknoll School's new building was hustled right over to Kai 
Tak to build up that airstrip jetty. So much land has been thrown into 
Hong Kong Harbor that the ferry trip from Kowloon to Hong Kong is 
cut from fifteen to seven minutes. A bridge across the harbor has often 
been projected; it will be possible to walk across, perhaps, before the 
bridge is built. 

It's the Space Age in Hong Kong. Everyone is space conscious. More 
than one school is built with movable walls which slide away to make 
a church for Sunday mornings. School desks for the week fold down to 
make kneeling benches. 

Laundry seems to be Hong Kong's great outdoor sport. Rags are out 
drying on every bush and tree. Washlines and bamboo poles canopy the 
streets; the resettlement blocks, huge buildings of one-room dwellings, 
look like the Royal Navy out with all flags flying. Because the city is one 
mountain jostling another, retaining walls are everywhere. Bamboo poles 
are stuck into the drainage holes in these walls and each pole is strung 
with somebody's wash. Often when poles stick out over half the road, 
buses, taxis, cars and pedestrians go single file on the other half with no 
complaint. Everyone knows that laundry is important. 

It all boils down to Government facing up to *the situation. They're 
here. They need help. What can we do? And still refugees flee from Red 
China, slipping into Hong Kong, it is estimated, at the rate of one 
hundred a day. 

Most of these go directly to the heart of the colony, the cities of Victoria 
and Kowloon which hem in the harbor. A better chance for jobs is there. 
As a result, in twelve square miles, more than two and one-half million 
people live to a density of four thousand per acre. This means that if 
they all lay down at once, there wouldn't be room for them if each person 
used a space six by two feet. Some would have to stand up. Obviously 
housing must be in stories. The early types of relief housing were "cot- 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 161 

tages" to replace the shacks which clung to mountainsides. But there 
isn't enough land for everyone to have his own front door. Cottages take 
care of only two hundred per acre. Thus the "Resettlement Estates." 

That word, "estate"! Webster says of it: "Individually owned piece 
of land containing a residence. It is usually large and maintained by great 
wealth." In Ceylon, it means a plantation for growing a cash crop. In 
Hong Kong, it means a seven-story concrete building, H-shaped, The two 
long sides of the H consist of sixty-two one-room dwellings connected by 
the balcony outside. In the central bar of the H are common toilets, 
washing tubs, showers, etc. 

Each room, some ten by twelve feet, must house four to five adults; each 
child under ten counts as half an adult. Thus a father, mother and six 
youngsters under ten may rent a room. But if Grandpa and Aunt Susie 
and her baby come to live with them, they cannot get another room be- 
cause the group counts only seven and a half. They need eight for two 
rooms. During the years Government has experimented with different- 
sized rooms, and has different regulations and different rents. The ten-by- 
twelve rooms, however, are typical. 

Rent is $14 HK a month or about $2.43 US. If you can afford electricity, 
that is 530 US extra; water is 170 US a month. These charges, small as 
they are, loom large in a family budget that starts off if Papa has a 
steady job with $20.87 US a month, the usual salary for coolie work. 
Small wonder that Mama and the children make plastic flowers, knit 
socks and mittens, paste up cellophane bags, embroider handkerchiefs 
or make rattan things. If ever you went calling on a family on its "estate" 
you would be hard put to it to find room on the floor to place your feet. 
I have often thought, "They must sleep like birds perched on things/* 

At Wan Tai Sin there are twenty-five such housing blocks already 
built; eight more are on the way up. Some 71,000 people live on "the es- 
tate." 

Elsewhere thirty or forty such blocks, each with a population in the 
thousands, comprise one "estate." They don't have street numbers or 
names for they are built one behind the other up a hillside with only 
stairs or footpaths connecting them. One lives in Block A or Block B and, 
when the alphabet runs out, in Block AA to Block Z2L 

Nevertheless, every woman has a permanent wave; wrist watches are 
common; and the blocks are alive with aerials for something they call 
"Rediffusion," a type of radio service. The company installs the receivers 
and you get music and talk from 7 A.M. until midnight. Price? The first 
month $2.55 US; the second month $1.73, and the succeeding months 
only 85^. Why anybody would bother to pay it is beyond me. In our 
convents near the "estates," we miss nothing that is broadcast, don't pay a 
cent, nor even have to give the receiver houseroom. 



162 HONG KONG 

Here I met Precious Peach Blossom, eight years old, with solemn eyes 
and a Dutch haircut. Eight years old, with a little sister and brother, and 
a mother who ran off with somebody else two years ago. Eight years old, 
and housekeeper for their father who painted ships when there were ships 
to be painted and tramped the streets when there were not. 

Peach Blossom cooked the food when they had any, wiped little sister's 
runny nose, carried little brother on her back when she went for water 
from the common taps where sixty-two families on her floor filled their 
tin cans. She took time out two hours a day to walk to Maryknoll Boys' and 
Girls' Club. Here Sister Marie Thomas guided her dirty hand over the 
paper for writing and figuring, put the tattered book before her solemn 
eyes and tried to bring a smile to play around the sober little mouth. 
Peach Blossom, like so many other ragamuffins in Hong Kong, learned 
to read and write, but never mastered the smile. 

Small wonder. The inside of her cheek, her teeth and gums were a 
putrid mass of infection. One day she came to "the club," as such schools 
are called, with her right cheek so puffed that she talked out of the corner 
of her mouth. Sister Marie Thomas pronounced "Mumps!" and took her 
to Sister Maria Fidelis, a doctor. Sister took one look into her mouth and 
shuddered. The teeth had decayed straight through to the roots; the 
whole mouth was a shambles. 

Peach Blossom winced as the medicine rolled over those ugly sores but 
gave no whimper. A bottle of milk went down fast, but we saw the grimy 
hand stow all the cookies in her pocket. "For Sai Lo," she said. 

"Little brother can have others/' Sister insisted. "You take those." 

"No, for my sister," she countered. 

"You eat those," Sister insisted. "You'll get something else for your 
sister." 

She was sick all over from the infection. Definitely green around the 
mouth. We hired a taxi and took her home to the Daai Ha (Big House, 
as the Chinese call the resettlement blocks). The father is a good father; 
certainly the children cling around his legs when he stands and climb 
on his lap when he sits down. But he is no housekeeper. Peach Blossom 
had done her best. She had no strength to clean the room, wash the clothes 
and the children. Enough if she could get fuel and water to cook the rice. 

We put Peach Blossom to bed. Very simple; we just laid her on the 
rags in the corner. Then we asked the woman next door to look in now 
and then until the father got home. At the end of the week, we thought 
the infection would be down and she could go to a dentist. 

That was Wednesday. Next day, before we could bring her clean bed- 
ding and a replenishment of food, the whole family came to see us. Peach 
Blossom was greener than ever. She sat on the table in our convent while 
Sister Maria Fidelis explored her mouth, too apathetic even to wince 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 163 

now. Another bottle of milk, another penicillin injection in the lean 
buttock and she turned to go home. 

But not this time. Sister talked to her father. Then she phoned Kowloon 
Hospital, imploring space. This is another of Good Old Guv'menf s proj- 
ects. 

On Friday, the chart at the foot of her bed said, "Acute leukemia/' 
Sunday she had a blood transfusion. Tuesday she hemorrhaged. 

"Do you want to be baptized?" Sister whispered. 

"Chungi" (I want) was the last word she spoke on earth. 

When I get to Heaven, one of the first things I'm going to do is to get 
Peach Blossom to laugh for me. Believe me, it will be worth waiting for. 

Roughly one-third of Hong Kong's three million people are under fif- 
teen years of age. What about schools? Back in 1954 Government put on 
far-sighted glasses and made a plan. "In the next seven years, beginning 
in 1955, we will provide at least 215,000 more places in primary schools." 
With one year to go, the Board of Education can report, "We are well 
ahead of schedule with 262,000 created already and 91,000 in the making 
before April, 1962." 

This means, in plain English, that a newly-built school has been opened 
every seven days for the past five years. This does not include schools 
opened in adapted premises or extensions to existing schools. Every pri- 
mary school has one group studying in the morning and another in the 
afternoon with ten minutes or so between to let them get in and get out. 
You can also see little muffins trailing home from school around nine 
o'clock at night. A good start in life for night watchmen, nurses on night 
duty, airplane pilots, cloistered Sisters who pray at midnight, burglars 
and second-story men, as well as young husbands with cantankerous 
babies. However, as the Board notes, "We do not accept evening schools 
as a permanent state of affairs. We want our schools in the evenings for 
adult education/' 

Then, there are the "clubs" such as Peach Blossom attended. They give 
twelve thousand children a bit of reading, writing, figuring and handi- 
work. Eighty thousand others have no chance at all. One sees many small 
boys on construction jobs helping plasterers, bricklayers, carpenters. "They 
are apprentices," a foreman told me. 

"We thought at first that the refugees would use Hong Kong as a 
jumping-off place for greener pastures elsewhere/' Dr. Douglas J. S. 
Crozier, Director of Education throughout this period, told me. "But in 
1954 we decided they were here to stay. At least, until the children grew 
up. So we drew our plan and we kept to it. Even bettered it by some 
138,000 places in primary schools, 

"That was an effort, to be sure, but it was easy compared to what lies 
ahead of us. Secondary schools are the rub ? now. Only one cJbu!4 in seven 



164 HONG KONG 

Is able to go on after primary years. Fd like to see that cut down to one in 
four, at least. The cost of secondary schools is overwhelming to our poor 
little budget. I don't know how we are going to be able to do it. But 
we shall!" Ah! That's the sort of thing Old Guv'ment likes to hear. 

Plans like those take care only of normal children. The old gentleman 
hasn't forgotten the others. "We have very much at heart the need to ex- 
pand our meager facilities for handicapped youngsters. Also, adult educa- 
tion is a 'must* to help those who missed out on schooling entirely. 

"In all these plans and their fulfillment, Government has leaned 
heavily and let me say gratefully on religious and welfare organiza- 
tions. We have three teacher-training institutions turning out 1,700 
teachers a year, but even so we could not have staffed the primary schools, 
let alone the secondary schools which need teachers of higher qualifica- 
tions." 

In the Resettlement Estates, schools are either Ground Floor or Roof 
Top. Nobody lives on the bottom floor of a block; that is reserved for 
stores, or a clinic, day nursery, noodle factory, or some other welfare 
project. Quite often it is a school with eighteen classrooms, each used 
twice a day. Eighteen teachers and one principal work in the mornings; 
a similar crew mans the ship of learning for the afternoon. The whole 
project is under a general director. Maryknoll Sisters are responsible for 
four such schools, and we conduct three Boys* and Girls* Clubs as well. 

Sister Famula's school is in the Ground Floor of Block U at Kun Tong. 
I don't envy her the job. It's a brand new Block. She will have on her 
hands twelve First Grades of forty to forty-five children each. Eventually 
the school will iron out to six "streams" of six grades that is, thirty- 
six classes in eighteen rooms used morning and afternoon. But right now, 
she has five hundred First Graders to lead upward and onward to wisdom. 
Try it sometime on a dull afternoon! 

I was there for the registration. First come, first served. Long before 
dawn, the line formed. Many a mother did without a day's work to make 
sure her child got a place in that school. This meant, probably, that they 
did without food that day, too. Jade Flower stood in line for hours to 
register her little sister. That done, Sister Famula said, in Chinese of 
course, "What about you? Aren't you studying?" "Oh no," said Jade 
Flower in a very matter-of-fact tone. "I have to work." 

Many times a mother asked, "How much is the tuition?" And when 
Sister said, "87^ a month," she turned away. This is a government school; 
we merely run it. Fees are set and we cannot make exceptions. But, if I 
know Sister Famula, she will dig up 87 from somebody's pocket. 

Anyone who yearns to live dangerously can do it by putting a sign 
in his front window: "School Here. Registrations Tomorrow." He will 
find himself torn limb from limb the next morning by eager pupils and 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 165 

their mamas. We had a near riot at M aryknoli Convent School during 
a two-day registration for Grade One and a few seats in Grades Two and 
Three. Well, they had to call out the police with tear gas bombs. You 
might think somebody was giving out gold bricks or guaranteed Sweep- 
stakes tickets. 

The mob surged around Waterloo Road and Boundary streets. Some 
stayed all night; others came at 3 A.M. and found the place jammed. By 
9 A.M., street and schoolyard were in a state of riot. More than thirty 
policemen and women descended on the mob, sorted them out, put them 
in line and stood guard with billy sticks poised for action. Some of these 
people were able to pay handsomely for their darlings* education. They 
brought the darlings and anybody who might have influence like the 
second cousin of a former Maryknoll pupil. Well-dressed women stood 
in line for hours or shuffled forward under the eye of the police while 
amahs and chauffeurs brought them mid-morning tea or a bit of lunch. 
It was something! 

And what was the result? Thirteen hundred were registered. They could 
come back, take an examination (for First Grade!) and in the end only 
three hundred and twenty would be accepted. Our schools are good let 
me not deny it but they aren't that good! 

One feature of the Hong Kong school system was a bit too rugged for 
a peace-loving soul like me. That was the annual Music Festival. It had 
all the sweetness of a bullfight and the festive spirit of a knock-down, 
drag-out prize ring. The idea behind it is good. All the little girls and 
boys, according to their grade in music, practice a certain piece all year 
long. Then a prominent musician is invited to come from England and 
hear them all play that piece. He decides which one plays it the best. 

When the big night comes, Eddie Tze and Phyllis Lee and Reggie 
Wong and fifty or sixty others appear before the dread judge. Like the 
hangman's noose, a lone piano fills the stage. The Great Man sits in the 
audience surrounded by a table full of papers and the dread instrument, 
a small bell. Eddie mounts the scaffold; the Great Man tinkles the bell; 
Eddie plunges into THE PIECE OF THE YEAR, let us say Chopin's 
Etude, Op. 25 #9, G flat Major. Eddie finishes. He wobbles off the plat- 
form. Winifred Wu takes his place on the piano bench. The Great Man 
tinkles. Winnie plunges into Chopin's Etude, Op. 25 #9, G fiat Major. 
Winnie finishes. She all but collapses over the keyboard but gathers 
strength to leave, passing Phyllis Wing on her way up. And so it goes. 
After forty-five renditions of that Etude, you are either stiff stark staring 
mad or you subside into imbecility muttering "Shut it off. Please, please, 
shut it off." But the deadly bell tinkles once again and little Reggie has 
taken the plunge. Even if he weren't there, I think the piano, like the 
old fire horse It Is, would start right in. 



166 HONG KONG 

The last contestant has returned to his place in the hall, wading through 
blood, sweat and tears. His own sweat and tears but Chopin's blood. A 
hush falls over the house. 

The Great Man fumbles with his papers, coughs into the microphone 
and begins the judging. Jacqueline Ko was heavy with the left hand. 
Dorothea Chui used the pedal a mite too much but her grace notes were 
effective. Phyllis Yung's trills earned a full fifteen percent but her left 
hand was six percent harsher than her right. Jacqueline Ko and Reggie 
Wong are exactly even; her tone was warmer., but Reggie's staccato was 
better. In the end Winnie Wu with ninety-three percent wins the British 
Council Trophy because she maintained the legato so well. Runners-up 
are Pamela Chong with ninety-one percent and Eddie Tze with ninety 
percent. The other youngsters can go home and have a good nervous 
breakdown all to themselves. 

This preoccupation with marks springs from what Dr. Crozier pointed 
out. Only one child in seven will be able to go on to Secondary School. 
His chance depends on examinations, just as gruelling as this Music 
Festival. We do our best to have the children take these hurdles in stride, 
but more than one ten-year-old has had hysterics over examinations. It's 
not only impoverished children who suffer from school shortages; those 
who can afford to pay find themselves left out because there simply aren't 
enough school desks to go around. Little Sybil Ching may pass Sixth 
Grade with fairly good marks, but she cannot go on to Secondary School. 
In Hong Kong's patter, she had "passed" but not "placed." 

Good Old Guv'ment has asked us to do other odd jobs for the refugees, 
A new hospital has just opened near the Kun Tong Estate. Only sixty 
beds, it is nevertheless a large project; the out-patient clinic carries most 
of the burden. This is one of the poorest places in Hong Kong. People 
there cannot afford to spend time in bed; they much prefer to come back 
and forth every day. The hospital, right in the middle of them, is the only 
medical help for some distance around. 

In Kun Tong, too, we have an apartment convent. It was still in the 
plaster and steam-fitting stage when I saw it. Only two rooms and a kitch- 
enette, it was to hold four Sisters. They walk down five floors to Mass in 
the morning; up five floors to breakfast; down five floors to the school 
or clinic or catechetical center for the morning's work. Up five floors for 
lunch; down again for the afternoon; up again for supper and, please 
God, to stay the night, unless there are evening sodality meetings or such 
goings on. 

And at Wan Tai Sin a day nursery for two hundred toddlers. It's a 
pilot project; Government wants to see how it goes and then make others 
like it, if possible. The youngsters get practically three meals a day and 
are there from 8 A.M. until 6 P.M, It costs 50^ HK a day (about g<* US) 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 167 

but the mother would have spent that much for baby's food anyway. This 
Wan Tai Sin Community Center is a three-ring circus of good works all 
day long. Just a glance at the daily bulletin board leaves one gasping. 
Tailoring classes, folk dancing, Chinese shadow boxing, ping pong tour- 
naments, a movie, baseball practice, classes in Mandarin language, a 
Fathers' Club party, instruction for deaf mutes, literacy classes for adults, 
flute band practice, hygiene and home-making classes for mothers, and 
a group to practice Yoga, the meditate-while-you-stand-on-your-head re- 
ligion. A library with ten thousand books is also going full-steam ahead 
every day. 

And who are the people who play basketball on the courts, read in the 
library, leave their children in the day nursery, or go to the Fathers' Club 
party? All sorts of people. The ragpickers, for instance. 

We went out to see our neighbors in that interesting occupation. A 
ragpicker works hard and gets little. Mama, Papa and the whole family 
scavenge the town for cloth of any kind old jute bags, torn pieces 
thrown into trash barrels, stuff soiled with unmentionables and, if Provi- 
dence is kind that day, perhaps something lifted from a clothesline when 
the owner was looking elsewhere. This is one reason why Chinese women 
prefer a bamboo pole to a rope line. They put the pole through both 
sleeves of a shirt or through one leg of pants and put it out the window 
on wire racks saying, "There, steal that, if you can!" 

The ragpickers have only begun their job when they get the rags. They 
hustle them home, wash them after a fashion and spread them out to 
dry. Often they need space for spreading so they pre-empt the public 
road. I don't know how often we pushed over to the wrong side of the 
road because our side was covered with rags out drying. Once dry, they 
are carefully stacked and soaked in paste. Then dried again. Use? Well, 
shoe factories stiffen the tops of cloth shoes with them. Collars in women's 
saams are stiff, too. 

It seems a sad end for cloth that once (who knows?) was the seat of an 
upholstered chair or a brocaded tablecloth In the Governor's house. 
The ceaseless work, work, work of the Chinese goes on endlessly. Not 
even a piece of cloth can retire from active duty. 

Sad stories in Hong Kong are a dime a dozen. They become all the 
sadder when you realize that these people were not always poor. Many 
were teachers, government workers, army men, merchants who had a 
little more than their envious neighbors. Ah Keng was typical. I met 
her behind a cafeteria counter at Blue Pool Road. 

Born in Vietnam, she married at seventeen and went to live in China, 
rather well fixed in life. When Communism spread, the family started 
to move toward Hong Kong but were caught in a small town near the 
border. Several years ago, Ah Keng managed to slip over the border; 



168 HONG KONG 

her husband, son and daughter stayed behind. It is far more difficult for 
a man to get out. Ah Keng has steady work and saves almost every cent 
she makes. Every couple of months she gets a permit from Hong Kong 
to go to the border, and another to get her into China. Then she takes 
to the family anything she can. 

On her latest visit, Ah Keng reports that her husband broke his arm 
working on a reservoir. It healed indifferently and he cannot lift heavy 
things. So he is a Class 2 worker. His work is to grind oyster shells so as 
to make lime for construction works. He really doesn't know what his 
salary is. He works on the "merit system," as they call it. At the end of 
a month, the paymaster gives him $3.00 or $4.00 HK (between 55 and 70^ 
US) and says, "This is what is left of your salary after food, light, rent, 
etc. have been deducted." He must take the man's word for it. 

He is allowed, each month, thirteen catties of rice (about seventeen 
pounds), less than a pound of sugar, and two ounces of oil, a black oil 
nobody can stomach. But he never sees it all at once; it is served up to him 
and other workers at the rate of five ounces a day. Men and boys get 
this ration; women and girls get four ounces a day. Boiled vegetables 
come with it. Not fried, nor steamed, nor flavored in any way. To a 
Chinese, boiled vegetables are the last stage of destitution. The workers 
also get one set of clothes a year. 

Ah Keng wants to take food and clothing to them but she finds that 
customs men at the border commandeer any large supply. So she takes 
only small amounts. At that famous border, Hong Kong Chinese and 
Communist Chinese match wits. It used to be that Hong Kong people 
could take in clothing for their relatives. Then the customs men com- 
mandeered extra clothes. So the Hong Kong people began to wear many 
layers of clothes across the border and shed them when they saw their 
relatives. To counter this trick, the customs men counted the layers 
of clothes on each person crossing the border and insisted that he wear 
the same number of layers going out. Not to be outwitted, the Hong 
Kong Chinese now wear many layers of new clothing across the border 
and come out in layers of rags. They have changed clothes with their 
relatives. Just what the next move in this game will be is anybody's guess. 

Ah Keng is trying to get her little girl out of China. She has no hope 
that the husband and son will escape. Others in the same situation have 
resorted to this trick. They kidnap a child in Hong Kong of the same 
age and sex as the child they hope to get out of China. Then one fine 
day, they go across the border with the kidnapped child, leave the poor 
waif there to fend for himself, and come out with their own child. Many 
cases have occurred in refugee areas where our Sisters are working. Peo- 
ple will do anything to get their families together in Hong Kong. 

"Virtuous Dragon' 1 let us know just how people on the other side of 



A PORTLY OLD GENTLEMAN IN CUTAWAY COAT 169 

the border feel about Catholic doctrine they cannot openly proclaim. 
This virtuous dragon is a young man twenty-two years old only twelve 
when Sister Ignatia was forced out of China. She had instructed his fam- 
ily for Baptism. Now he is an office worker in the Communist govern- 
ment. Every now and then he manages to get a letter over the border to 
let Sister know how things are going. 

'Dear Sister Wheat/ he writes. (Sister's name in Chinese, 'Muk/ means 
'wheat.') 

'I hope you are well. Sister, the education you gave us we always feel 
peaceful with. My mother has gotten to Hong-Kong; I hope you will see 
her for she is lonely by herself. I and my sister and brother believe your 
education with our whole hearts. Your great help to us, we will remember 
forever. 

Wish you long life and good health! 
Virtuous Dragon/ 

Typhoon warnings were posted in the city, as I landed at Ho Man 
Tin one day. Gusts of wind tore around the small cottages near the road 
and shacks which mounted up to the mountain top. Some are canvas lean- 
tos; some cardboard shanties; some piano crates or refrigerator boxes; 
others are caves dug into the clay hillside; the palatial residences are 
of real, genuine wood, dug up from heaven-knows-where. Rain came and . 
went in torrents or in dribbles. Nevertheless the lines were full Women 
pulled rubberized sheets over the babies on their backs and crowded up 
on the porch of the clinic. As many as possible jammed inside. At the 
school, 1,080 children were in the classrooms, unable to go outside to play 
during recess. But not one had missed school that day. No indeed, Chinese 
children never get prizes for perfect attendance records; their policy is, 
if the school building is standing, I ought to be in it. 

The biggest crowd, however, was in front of The House Of A Million 
Noodles. You'd never look twice at the place ordinarily. It's just one of 
the huts which line Nairn Road. In more respectable Kowloon City, the 
Road is a street of middle-class apartment houses. But it slinks behind 
a market and emerges as the main street of Ho Man Tin. A stiff climb up 
the mountain is slowed by the traffic pouring down from side paths, 
tumbling down from the shacks on the hillsides. 

Twisting among the water carriers, the school children, the men and 
women carrying laden shoulder poles and the toddlers wobbling down 
the street, you might very easily miss The House Of A Million Noodles. 
But then you have to leave the sidewalk and go into the street, for the 
sidewalk is massed thick with people. They all face the same direction 
toward the inconspicuous door. Everyone holds a bucket or basket or 
shopping bag. Some old, some young, some women, some children, some 



170 HONG KONG 

gossiping, some too quiet. These are the people who love that House 
Of A Million Noodles. 

Outside is a sign, Catholic Relief Services, a branch of National Catholic 
Welfare Conference in Washington. The door swings open and Number 
One in the line steps up with her bag opened. Sister Moira picks up a 
large tin can of still-wet noodles and dumps it into the shopping bag. A 
smile passes over the woman's face. "Thank you!" she says and runs home. 

This noodle deal is the brightest idea in relief work. It used to be that 
when good flour was sent to the Chinese for relief, it was practically use- 
less, for refugees had no ovens for baking. Then Monsignor Romaniello, 
in charge of the distribution, harking back to a childhood of spaghetti, 
thought of making the flour into noodles, something the Chinese can't 
get enough of. Now, in eight noodle factories, wheat flour, corn flour, milk 
powder, vitamins and Multi-Purpose Food are combined into the tasty 
noodle. It slips down very easily. I tried a plateful myself. It does. 

At Ho Man Tin, Sister Moira supervises the making of 8,900 pounds 
of noodles every day. That much is given out every day, too. In fine weather 
they are dried, but in rain there is nothing to be done but give them out 
wet. They are usually cooked and eaten that day, anyhow. Every one 
of 6,350 families in the area gets six pounds every two weeks. In a year, 
1,068,000 pounds of noodles are used. Even in typhoon weather the line-up 
for noodles always jams the sidewalk. 

Back at our convent, we found a woman with her little ones dripping 
and cold on the doorstep. Her house had blown down, she said. Of course, 
we admitted her. By early afternoon, the lower floor was full. Some 
Sisters from the center house in Kowloon came over to help us move 
furniture around and make room upstairs. By 10:00 P.M. some five hun- 
dred women and children were sheltered in the convent and four hundred 
and fifty more were to spend the night in the Primary School up the hill. 

As they poured in Sister Moira said to each one, "You know, there's 
no room to sleep." But they all said, "We don't mind, Sister. We just 
want to be in a safe place." They either stood up or sat upright all night. 
But the little ones had a place to sleep each step of the two flights up was 
a crib for the night. 

No electricity or phone service, of course, that night. In the wee sma* 
hours, a woman started the pangs of childbirth. It would not be an easy 
birth. How to get her to a hospital! Luckily, a private car was passing 
the front door and Sister hailed it. The poor woman was having a hard 
time. The shock of her collapsed house, the terror of trying to get the 
children to safety, the dread of returning the next day and probably 
finding all the family possessions smashed under the debris it all added 
up to a most difficult delivery and the baby died. 

However, that night, five other mothers were sturdier. I never saw so 



PIGS' HOUSE, DOGS' HOUSE AND FIRECRACKER FACTORY 171 

many babies born In one night! They sat happily on the floor with their 
newborns until we could get things organized a bit. Then we had benches 
put together to make five beds in a separate room. 

Next morning, of course, with the typhoon going off, the families were 
out in the wet putting their shacks together again. For several days, we 
had two thousand rolls made up out of relief flour and gave them out. It 
would take time to get cooking pots again. In a week, however, the 
typhoon was not even a memory. 

If Jonah had been a Hong Kong refugee, he would have spent a very 
comfortable three days in the whale's belly. I can just see him irritating 
the poor beast to boiling pitch, cooking his tin can of noodles over a 
heated artery, and cutting himself a good slice of tasty whalemeat from 
the inside to put a little flavor into the pot. 



14 ^ Pigs' House, Dogs 9 House 
and Firecracker Factory 



ONCE, in those dear dead days now blissfully beyond re- 
call, I was a heedless youngster in a parochial school beside the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad. I don't know if the school was there first and, some 
foul night, the railroad sneaked up and parked behind it. Or whether 
some sadistic mind, knowing full well that four railroad tracks lurked 
behind the fence, planned to torture generations of innocent children 
and hundreds of angelic nuns. However it came about, the school and 
the railroad were cheek by jowl all during my youth. 

We got used to it; even learned to profit by it. Classes stopped auto- 
matically when a locomotive rounded the bend; often it gave us a chance 
for a furtive peep at the book before we had to answer. The pastor, too 
for the church was alongside stopped in the pulpit, took time to clear 
his throat and rearrange his thoughts. 

Whether the Sisters of Charity got used to it, I can't say. It would take 
heroic virtue to make spiritual profit out of the sight of one's nightie, 
newly washed and out on the line, being sprayed with soot from an 
overly busy railroad. But they bore it with equanimity if not with joy. 
Their white collars, sleeves and head pieces were always spotless; they 
thanked a merciful Providence that the rest of their clothes were black. 

Old Sacred Heart School in Pittsburgh, Pa., now long dead, haunted 
me in Hong Kong. History repeats itself. Our Kowloon school stands 
vis-a-vis a range of mountains. Between the school and the mountains 



172 HON 7 G KONG 

right in that valley the world's airlines swoop to rest at Kai Tak Air- 
field, not ten minutes away. The jets scream, the engines roar, the land- 
ing gear trundles out. They come so close, the Sisters say, they can read 
newspaper headlines in the passengers* laps. I don't go so far as that, but 
certainly the swoosh from the jets slammed my bedroom door shut more 
than once. And soot sprinkles our plates in the refectory. Soot from 
Thailand, Burma, Manila and Ceylon tastes no better than soot from 
the Pennsylvania Railroad did. 

It's one of the things you get used to. When the Tokyo Express or the 
Canton Local bears down so that sound waves crumple the roof, the 
Sisters don't notice it any more. And they drive through Hong Kong and 
see the ludicrous signs without even a smile. Over an expensive store 
front was: 



And on a side street: 



LE FAT 
LADIES' GIRDLES 



JOSEPH NO SQUEAK 
SHOE REPAIR 



A billboard speaks in bold letters of a medicine "perfect for everything 
from pimples to cholera/' 

Traffic signs have the British flare: 

DEAD SLOW for "stop." 

DIVERSION for "detour." 

DUAL CARRIAGEWAY for "four-lane highway." 

Drivers get a homily for character-building now and then: 

BETTER DRIVERS GET INTO THEIR CORRECT LANE 
IN GOOD TIME TO REACH THEIR DESTINATIONS. 

Or BETTER DRIVERS GLANCE IN THEIR REAR-VIEW 
MIRRORS AND SIGNAL THEIR INTENTIONS, 

The buses are long-winded, too: 

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM TALKING TO THE DRIVER. 
IT IS LIABLE TO ENDANGER PUBLIC SAFETY. 

Best of all is the British version of Hail Hail the Gang's all Here! 

Cheerio, cheerio, 
The multitude has assembled! 
Why should we concern ourselves? 
Why should we concern ourselvesf 
Cheerio, cheerio, the multitude has assembled! 
Why should we concern ourselves at the present 
moment? 



PIGS' HOUSE, DOGS' HOUSE AND FIRECRACKER FACTORY 173 

Hong Kong, to put it into British understatement, is "quite nice, you 
know; very nice indeed." The harbor is as lovely as God made it and 
as picturesque as the Chinese have made it and as dignified as the English 
have made it! The water is so clear and green one can read the labels on 
beer cans at the bottom. Views are unparalleled from the Peak; roads 
magnificent throughout the colony; food not to be equalled in Chinese 
restaurants. It is the City of Split Skirts, the City of Streets of Steps, the 
town cut in two by the harbor so that every day hundreds of thousands 
cross from Victoria to Kowloon or vice versa on ferries. 

In Hong Kong is the Street of Ten Thousand Fragrances. You think 
it is a perfume factory? Oh no. The fragrance comes from fish and pickled 
cabbage and glazed ducks and salted pig's snout and kerosene lamps. 
The street starts in a most inconspicuous manner, between two shops 
opposite Block A of the Tai Hang Estate. It is wide enough only for foot 
traffic, but here is where two Maryknoll Sisters live and work. Of the ten 
thousand fragrances, they say the first nine thousand are hardest to get 
used to. Here live Sister Margaret Marie and Sister Doretta, both Ameri- 
cans, but one a Chinese born in San Francisco, the other an Irishman of 
the Brooklyn Irish. 

We took a walk around the area. Past the tattered canvas awning 
propped up on four corners by poles, where mahjong goes on day and 
night. Past the outdoor barber shop. Past the house where seven families 
live, each in a tiny room. Past the woman selling pickled turnips and 
Chinese worm medicine. Out on the main street where a fish store dis- 
plays a six-foot eel. An old woman with bandages over her eye a recent 
cataract operation bows and invites us into her one room of the daai-ha. 
Magnificent use of space 1 Her son, daughter-in-law, and their children 
live here with her. Inventory is simple. One double-decker bed; one cot; 
one single burner for kerosene; dishes stored below this, a bowl for each 
inhabitant; boxes under the bed neatly stacked. A girl, ten, sat on the 
cot sewing up the fingers of knitted gloves. She earns 7^4^ US for each 
dozen pair. The color black. And she works under the single fluorescent 
bulb in the room. Just 7%^ for sewing one hundred and twenty fingers 
on black gloves. Think of that the next time you buy a bargain pair. 

Then up the hill surmounted by the new Police Headquarters which 
dominates the whole region. The Sisters don't come up here often. 
Crowds gathered. The children gawked; the grown-ups talked together. 

"Who are they? Men or women?" 

"Men, silly I Look at their big feet." 

They soon made friends with us. Then a woman called from the 
edge, "Is there a Catholic Church around here? I'm new; I was looking 
for one." We walked slowly along and half the crowd followed. A woman 
edged up to Sister Margaret Marie. 



174 HONG KONG 

"My son is in America," she said. "Fall River, Massachusetts. He sent 
me this." It was 14.00 taped to a Christmas card. "What should I do 
with it?" 

"You can get $35.00 HK for it," Sister said. "That ought to pay some 
bills." 

The woman did not believe her. "Ah, no," she sighed. "It is only a 
souvenir." 

"You're crazy!" Sister said with vehemence. "Here you are starving 
and you hang on to an expensive souvenir? Don't be silly." She took it 
and changed it for her. 

"It's unbelievable, just unbelievable," the old woman muttered to her- 
self going off. 

Sister Doretta waved her hand to the mountainside, scrofulous with 
huts and shanties. In the dusk, small pin-points of light began to appear. 
"No electricity. All kerosene oil lamps," Sister said. "People up there 
are in dread of fire. And yet, in a way, hoping for it. As fire victims, 
they could get White Cards from the government, and thus be eligible 
for a room in the Estate." 

On to church for Good Friday services. To our way of thinking, these 
people live Calvary every day of their lives. Flies, heat, physical pain 
they walk a bitter path like Our Lord's, even to being pushed out of their 
own city to die on the doorstep of China. Perhaps that is why they love 
Him so much when they come to know Him. 

Crowds surged up to venerate the cross spread on the floor before the 
high altar. They jammed the aisles until a Chinese priest called over 
the microphone like a traffic cop. I knelt in a front pew watching the 
faces of those who knelt and kissed the cross. So many women with 
sleeping babies tied to their backs came forward. As Mama bent over to 
the cross, the baby's head bobbed forward as if to ratify the act. There 
was an old woman beside me saying the rosary, I tiptoed out after a 
half hour; I don't think she even knew I had gone, so intense was her 
meditation. On that Street of Ten Thousand Fragrances, many a holy 
soul adds a special fragrance of her own. 

Bathed in the Paschal moon, we walked home past the mahjong table, 
now under a pressure lamp. Searchlights at the four corners of each 
daai-ha lit the path after a fashion. Moonlight was kind to the shacks. 
Children played in the evening coolness. The church glistened in the 
bright air. A Maryknoll Father talked to his parishioners. It was Tai 
Hang Tung, home, sweet home, to thousands. 

Things are better out in "the country." Chai Wan used to be a fishing 
village on Hong Kong Island. Government pushed some mountains 
into the little harbor for fishing boats and built on it several Resettle- 



PIGS' HOUSE, DOGS' HOUSE AND FIRECRACKER FACTORY 175 

ment Blocks. The squatters in huts reaching to the sky will have to move 
down into the Estate. 

No place in Hong Kong is level, but Chai Wan really stands on its 
ear. Steps are the usual streets. Sister Rose Bernadette and I had just 
come down a most impressive set of steps when we met, at the bottom, 
a woman carrying an older woman on her back. She had just trudged 
up a hilly street from the government clinic. Now she eased the old 
lady down so that her feet touched the ground but the younger woman 
bore most of the weight. She wanted a breather before she began carry- 
ing the older woman up the steps to their home. 

"She's my mother," she explained. "She has a bad heart, so I carried 
her to the clinic this morning." 

"And where do you live?" Sister asked. 

The woman twisted her head back and pointed far up. "Near the top," 
she said. "Nice and quiet when you get there. But It won't be long 
now. Government says we have to move to one of those/* Her hand ges- 
tured to the seven-story blocks where three thousand people pushed and 
squirmed, slept, ate and washed together. 

She wasted no sympathy on herself. She bent over, pulled her mother's 
arms tight around her neck, hitched the old lady's legs around her waist 
and started to mount to her aerie near the sky. 

"Three hundred and twelve steps to the top," Sister said. "I counted 
them once." 

And that means, we figured, that our friend carried her mother up 
the equivalent of fifteen floors in a walk-up apartment. 

Sister Maria Teresa took me to the prison. She goes every Sunday 
morning, so that, now, old offenders welcome her as an enjoyable part 
of prison life. The three hundred Inmates are divided among three 
small enclosures downstairs and "the big room" upstairs. Below are the 
infirmary where often two patients share a bed, the "new place" where 
new arrivals are kept until they have been checked for disease and 
cleaned up, and the Good Behavior Quarters. These are palatial dwell- 
ings in Chinese eyes. Each woman has a small private room painted 
bright blue, a bed, chair and table. If she needs it, she has a crib for 
the baby or small child. But we went upstairs to "the big room." 

Sister Maria Teresa Is Chinese, with Catholic ancestors who stretch 
back five generations. She knows her Faith and she knows her Chinese 
people perfectly. "Cho San! (Good morning!)" she called out. Imme- 
diately about two hundred women in coarse but clean white saams surged 
toward her. They got as close as the iron bars would permit, climbing 
up on the double-decker beds or sitting on chairs or the floor nearby. 
There were six or seven pairs of legs swinging from each upper deck. 



176 HONG KONG 

Most o these women were caught selling heroin. One can understand. 
Here is a woman working like a horse indeed, doing a horse's work 
and getting less than $1.00 HK or 17^ US a day. At the same time, she 
is worrying about the children in the shack at home for she cannot stay 
with them. Then, along comes the chance to sell heroin and make $30.00 
a day without even leaving her shack. All she has to do is to keep quiet 
about it. 

The women listened with riveted attention. One seemed very young 
just a teen-age girl with bangs over her eyes and a full pony-tail. Another 
had a worn face. While her eyes stayed on Sister, her lips and cheeks 
constantly caressed the baby sitting on her folded-up legs. A wild-haired 
creature sat alone on the upper deck of a bed far off. Her cheeks were 
gaunt; her eyes encircled with darkness; her mouth half open. Her 
gaze never left Sister Maria Teresa. How much of the good tidings fell 
into her mind? Two others on a distant bed were very busy indeed. They 
were plucking eyebrows and pinching blackheads for each other. It wasn't 
long before they, too, edged their way over to the crowd. 

Sister Maria Teresa will never see sixty again, but she has the vigor of 
twenty young Sisters. She asked me to go down to Macao to see "the pigs' 
house," that is, a former pig-breeding place where she and Sisters Patricia, 
Beatrice, Corazon and assorted others had maintained an orphanage 
for five hundred boys during World War II. 

Macao is forty miles from Hong Kong. A Portuguese colony, it is just 
a tiny peninsula on the coast of China. It advertises itself as "The Monte 
Carlo of the East with round-the-clock gambling." Boats ply back and 
forth, making the three-hour trip several times a day. 

On the way down, Sister Maria Teresa sat on deck and told me about 
the old days in Hong Kong and Canton. 

My Aunt Mary, oh, she was the one! In the old days, you know, not 
so many Chinese were Catholic. People didn't know how to take us. My 
family lived in a big old ancestral home in Canton. A new family moved 
opposite us and when they learned we were Catholic, they put up a mirror 
and a rooster on their house, so as to send the bad luck right back to us. 

But to get back to Aunt Mary. She didn't want to marry and yet there 
were very few Sisters in China, And all we Chinese are matchmakers. So 
my grandfather said, 

'All right, you don't want to marry. But I'll not have you sitting around 
doing nothing. If you don't marry, you will have to spend your life 
working for the Church.' 

'Just exactly what I want to do!' Aunt Mary returned. 

So grandfather gave a big party. Invited all the friends and relatives. 
There Aunt Mary made the announcement. 

'I don't want to marry/ 



PIGS' HOUSE, BOGS' HOUSE AND FIRECRACKER FACTORY 177 

Then she vowed her virginity to the Blessed Mother and combed up her 
hair. This combing up the hair was the sign she was a consecrated virgin. 

And she worked for the Church. Oh, how she worked! She knew all 
the dialects Mandarin, Cantonese, Swatonese, all o them. For thirty 
years she worked in Canton. Then my mother died and left six of us. 
I was the youngest, just born. In fact I killed my mother. Aunt Mary 
came to take care of us. Then we all moved to Hong Kong with her. My 
father remarried but we all preferred to stay with Aunt Mary. 

In Hong Kong, Aunt Mary kept on with her work for the Church. 
When she was eighty-six, while the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, a bomb 
exploded behind our house. She wasn't touched, but the fright killed 
her. Oh, Aunt Mary! We loved her. The Goddess of Mercy's motto could 
be hers, *No son, no daughter. I sit in the lotus flower of purity." 

Sister Maria Teresa's uncle, Quincy Wong, was adopted by an Eng- 
lishman and studied in England. He returned to Hong Kong and became 
chief detective for the city. One famous murder he solved in a typically 
Chinese way. The culprit had been free for more than a year. So Quincy 
Wong put on a pilgrim's disguise and haunted the Chinese temples. He 
knew the Chinese habit of praying out loud. One day he saw an old 
woman praying in a small temple off the street. "Thanks very much," 
she told the gods, "my son has not been caught yet." Quincy Wong 
followed her home and arrested her son. 

Macao is a bit of old Portugal, crossbred with China. Pink, green and 
yellow houses line the harbor and are embedded in luscious dark gardens. 
Hong Kong thinks it intolerably slow; Macao thinks Hong Kong is in- 
tolerably fast. We by-passed the old churches, the cozy restaurants, the 
conducted tours, the hotels where floor after floor is devoted to gambling, 
and made our way out near the border to "the pigs* house-" 

It's a pigs* house once again. The odor told us that long before we 
saw the high brick walls built solidly around an entire block, enclosing 
a center court where the pigs roamed at will. Sties for the sows lined the 
wall on the inside. In this place, four Sisters kept five hundred boys 
picked off the streets of Macao during World War II. 

You see, as it is now, the colony was a place of refuge. Thousands 
millions poured into Macao, colony of neutral Portugal. They died 
on the streets and children were left to survive as best they could. Even- 
tually the government took over this pigs' house for boys. Girls went 
to "the dogs' house," a kennel for racing greyhounds, sadly defunct in 
those war years. A firecracker factory across the street was taken as a 
sort of Poor Farm for those picked up in the streets starving. 

Sister Maria Teresa talked a blue streak walking around the pigs 1 
house. 



178 HONG KONG 

Such a time! Such a time! Five hundred boys and only a pig pen for 
them. Oh my, the dirt! We clean and clean and still the bedbugs are 
awful. Father, mother, grandmother bedbugs! 

And no meat for the boys! We caught sparrows. The boys were good 
at it. They had done it on the streets. Then a Chinese woman married to 
a Portuguese soldier she called him Number Five Foreign Devilcame 
to us. 'The only way to raise money/ she said, 'is to raise pigs. I'll show 
you how/ So she gave us four pigs of her next litter. Showed us how to 
feed them, take care of them when they're sick, and keep them clean. 
Oh, my goodness! You know Sister Patricia. Nothing but clean, clean, 
clean around her. Our pigs were so clean we could eat off the floor. Sister 
Corazon, our doctor, gave the best obstetrical care to the mother pigs. 
One time when fifteen piglets were born, she gave some to a mother 
dog to nurse. 

Government gave us a plot next door and we went in for farming. 
Had chickens, ducks, goats and rabbits. I had twenty mother rabbits. My 
heavens, multiply so fast! Every forty days more rabbits. But it's good. 
We had meat for the children and could sell for what we needed. And 
turkeys. Thirty of them. Saved for Christmas dinner. One got very sick. 
*I know what's wrong with him!' and Sister Patricia took a knife, cut the 
craw of that turkey, pulled out something he ate and sewed him together 
with plain thread. He had a special pen that night but was okay in the 
morning. 

Very hard to get soap. I was in the market one day. 

'What you want, Sister?' said a market woman. 

'Soap/ I said. "We're desperate for soap/ 

Tou're foolish to try to get soap these days. Try these/ She showed me 
leaves from a spiky plant. I bought them fifty leaves for three cents. 
We pounded them with a stone and soaked them for an hour. All soft 
and soapy. The string inside makes rope or you can use it to scrub tables 
with. Excellent! We never used soap again. 

No fuel. All these boys to cook for and nothing to burn. We sent the 
boys out to get grass. But they spent their time fooling in the mountains. 
So we said, *The boy who brings lots of grass, eats much; he who brings 
less, eats less/ It worked! I weighed each boy's grass when it came in. 

We were outside the pigs* house by then. All of a sudden Sister put 
her hands to her face. "That was the place!" she said. "Oh my, the poor 
boy! One of ours, Chung Lu, was a big boy when he came to us, sixteen 
years old. Had been on his own too long. Always going out over the wall 
at night and often stealing something from the house when he did so. 
He'd be gone three days at a time. Well, we didn't run a prison, so we 
tried to get him to stay through kindness. One day he was missing, and 
the next and the next. Also some of the boys' spoons and some rice. 
After a week, the other boys complained of a bad smell in the tall bamboo 
which arched over the wall at one point. We thought it might be a rat or 



PIGS' HOUSE, DOGS' HOUSE AND FIRECRACKER FACTORY 179 

a dog. But it was Chung Lu. He must have fallen off the wall. And there 
were the spoons. The only way I knew him I recognized the coat I had 
patched for him. Poor boy, poor boy! I pray for him often/' 

"Many people in Macao were very good to us. We got help from kind 
ladies, and government gave us rice. Many boys had eye troubles. Sister 
Corazon, our doctor, took care of our boys but she needed an eye special- 
ist. Small wonderl Boys three to eighteen years, all eating very bad or 
not at all. A doctor, specialist in eyes, said to her, 'Sister, I cannot come 
by day but I will come by night/ So good! Often 10:30 at night, the 
doctor came after his busy day and treated our boys." 

We went around the corner. "Ay ya!" shouted a hearty woman from 
her doorstep. She all but smothered Sister Maria Teresa. She was Wu 
Tai Kao, the woman who had helped them to raise pigs. Such a re- 
union! One would think it was the Battle of the Century; there is no 
language that can equal the Chinese in sounding like a fight no matter 
what is being said. 

We went toward the border where Red China begins. In Hong Kong, 
there is a wide expanse of No Man's Land where no one is permitted 
to wander. But in Macao, only a few hundred feet of road separates the 
two countries. Sentries those smart, black policemen from Angola, re- 
splendent in red fezzes and brass buckles, stopped us. A funeral procession 
was passing. The leader showed a pass; the sentry nodded. All the 
tintinnabulation of a Chinese funeral paraded by the sedan chair bear- 
ing a large picture of the deceased; the tree-hewn coffin on the shoulders 
of eight men; another chair with the ancestral tablets of the deceased; 
and finally the mourners with white bands around their heads. They 
coolie-trotted by. We watched them down the block and through the 
gate. Another Chinese was going back home dead. 



TAIWAN 

^ 




TAIWAN 



15 )J Nylons, Plastic and House- 
Cleaning Day 



TAIWAN is really hard to figure out. Like Saturday night's 
soup which has something of all the week in it, Taiwan is a potpourri 
of all Asia with a dash of western influence to pep it up. 

The aborigines are Malayan. In their dances and clothes, they remind 
one of the semi-civilized tribes of the Philippines the Igorots and 
Benguets. The "Taiwanese," mostly Hoklo-speaking, came from China 
hundreds of years ago and consider themselves a nation distinct. The 
Japanese occupied the island for fifty years and left traces; also, they 
brought many westernized ways with them. So much so, that Taiwanese 
think they are speaking Japanese when they say "towelu" for towel; 
"trucku" for truck; "tomahto" for tomato; and "isucreemu" for ice 
cream. The last migrants into the island are the "Mainland Chinese," a 
million strong, who poured over the China Sea ten years ago. Small won- 
der Taiwan has less elbowroom than all of Asia even Japan. Only 
Holland and Belgium keep the human family in closer quarters. Con- 
necticut and Vermont combined have about the same area with less than 
one-fourth the people. 

However, the aborigines are pushed up into the mountains where 
their corn and sweet potato fields are so steep that they say at a funeral, 
"Poor fellow, he fell off his field!" The Taiwanese cultivate the river 
beds with rice and vegetables. This leaves room in the cities for the 
mainland Chinese. Taiwanese look at them in the same kindly light as 
the Southerners did the post-Civil-War carpetbaggers. 

Such a welter of languages! Spellings and pronunciations are any- 
body's fair game. There are so many right ways in Taiwan that any 
one of them is the wrong way to millions. Each city and town has a 
Mandarin name, a Taiwanese name, an old Japanese name and, in the 
mountains, an aborigine name. In the Miaoli area, a Hakka name as 
well. This makes letter writing or travel a fascinating sport. Even the 
name of the island is vastly under dispute. You can whip up a bloody 
battle by calling it Formosa. Protagonists for Taiwan or Free China 
see red. 

183 



184 TAIWAN 

The Old and New are so mixed up, East and West so confused, that 
one hardly knows just where he is in time or space. A woman working 
in the fields pours fertilizer from buckets on her shoulder pole; as she 
waves to you the sun glints on her wrist watch and she smiles through 
her lipstick. 

You ride in a bus on good roads in the lowlands and note many urns in 
the rice fields large pottery vases about three feet high. They hold the 
bones of someone's parents. After several years in the ground, the bones 
are placed in such an urn. The idea is that the spirit will protect the fields 
he used to work. Later, when the gods give a propitious time and place 
for burial, they will be put into the ground. 

As in Japan, personal cleanliness is such a fetish that Clean-the-Teeth 
sinks in private homes may be six feet long and elaborately tiled. The 
Wash-the-Body room is always large, too, and well appointed with buckets, 
soap dishes, towels and maybe even a showerhead. Bedbugs are un- 
known, the Sisters say, but cockroaches are immense and plentiful. Clothes 
are usually clean; women get on the bus with pretty dresses, nicely fitted. 
Yet the sanitation problem is staggering. Sewage flows through the streets 
in open ditches; fields smell to Heaven for vengeance. Hookworms, tape- 
worms and round worms flourish and their tribe increases daily. 

According to ancient tradition, dog meat is considered a spring tonic; 
around March and April the number of people advertising for lost dogs 
is alarming. In shops, it is sold as "Fragrant Meat." Every now and then, 
there is a scare in the newspapers about something far worse. The China 
Post issued a warning against eating sausages; they have been found in 
local shops made of rat meat. 

The rat meat items ran for several days. Then, as a service to readers, 
The China Post gave instructions on how to tell good sausage from the 
other. I quote: 

You can tell by the taste. Rat sausage tastes better and has a stronger 
flavor. But it is hard to chew. Pork sausage can easily be ground by a 
set of good teeth. 

The prevalence of such sausage in the shops has sent the demand for 
sausage plunging. Our reporter interviewed many owners of meat shops. 
'It's so terrible/ complained one, 'that I had to exhaust all my eloquence 
before I could persuade a customer to buy my sausage/ 

Sugar cane farmers of central and southern Taiwan get $5.00 NT per 
catty (1% pounds) for dead and dying rats. Rat population exceeds human 
population according to agricultural experts. After sugar-cane farmers 
apply rat poison, great numbers of huge rats can be picked up in the fields. 

In spite of odds, the Nationalist Government seems to have plunged 
ahead with plans to make Taiwan a going concern. One of the things 



NYLONS, PLASTIC AND HOUSE-CLEANING DAY 185 

it can be proudest of is the East- West Highway ($1 1,000,000!). It cuts across 
the island where formerly only coastal roads ran north and south. Over 
the years, headline readers got a quickie on the story: 

WORK BEGINS ON EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 
LANDSLIDES DELAY WORK ON EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 
FUNDS NOT AVAILABLE TO CONTINUE EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 
And finally: 

EAST-WEST HIGHWAY NEARS COMPLETION 

TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW FOR TRAVEL ON HIGHWAY 

WHEN COMPLETED 

BEST TO TAKE FOOD AND CLOTHING FOR SEVERAL DAYS 
DUE TO POSSIBLE LANDSLIDES. 

DIGNITARIES PLAN CEREMONY FOR OPENING 
EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 

CEREMONY POSTPONED DUE TO LANDSLIDES ON HIGHWAY 
At last: 

GOVERNOR CUTS RIBBON TO OPEN EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 
and next day: 
THOSE WHO BOUGHT TICKETS FOR EAST-WEST HIGHWAY 

MAY HAVE THEIR MONEY REFUNDED BY APPLYING AT 
GOVERNMENT OFFICE. LANDSLIDES, WASHOUTS TO REPAIR. 

Penetrating to the interior, I went over most of this famous highway. 
We could see what they meant; the maximum speed is posted at 16 miles 
an hour. In several places we took to the riverbed. What was meant to 
be the road swarmed with young soldiers pressed into duty as highway 
repairmen. There were no cranes, bulldozers, steam shovels, that we could 
see. If a pile of dirt was to be taken from there and put here, it went in 
wicker baskets at the end of a shoulder pole. Stones were lifted one by 
one; cement was stirred up in little masses and shoveled between stones 
to make retaining walls. But there were no footings or foundations for 
these walls. When the next floods come and eat away the dirt at the 
bottom, the whole wall will crack again and fall away. Already the river- 
bed was strewn with huge pieces of former retaining walls. One bridge 
has been built three times within as many years. 

Most are suspension bridges for single-lane traffic, so named because 
they keep you in suspense. You should see a bus go across one. The road- 
bed sags under the weight like a Beauty Rest mattress in motion, and the 
whole bridge gives a wiggle of delight when the bus leaves it. 



186 TAIWAN 

Taiwan Is a land of contrasts, indeed. Up in the mountains, I found 
Obin. She was an aborigine woman squatting at the door of her mud hut. 
Even from a distance I could see her tattooed face a bluish streak which 
spread from mouth and chin right out to her ears like a five-o'clock 
shadow. She watched my coming without emotion; her attention was 
elsewhere. Her hair was "pahmanetto"; that is, it had a permanent wave, 
or rather, a permanent frizz. Eye has not seen, nor imagination conceived, 
the country wherein the "pahmanetto" is unknown. Obin was listening to 
a hi-fi playing in the mud hut behind her. Schubert's Unfinished Sym- 
phony, I recognized it. No connoisseur could have enjoyed it more than 
Obin; whether she enjoyed the music or just the thrill of owning a hi-fi, 
I couldn't say. 

Obin, as a woman, has a fairly happy berth in this world. In Taiwan, 
as elsewhere, women make news. The China Post, handed out in the plane 
as we neared Taipei from Hong Kong, gave an idea of what to expect of 
Free China's women. I read that the wife of the mayor of Taipei beat up 
one of her husband's administrative assistants because he took the mayor 
out on a spree. Evidently the country is ripe for women's rights, for the 
mayor's chauffeur's wife next attained fame by "getting hold of another 
chauffeur and biting his neck." Then she "dashed to the victim's home 
to scratch the face of his wife/* So often, man-bites-woman is not news; it 
is good to know that woman-bites-man is. 

I suppose the ladies feel that something must be done to relieve the 
boredom. The government forbids mahjong as gambling. Technically, 
the whole country is at war. For that reason, all official buildings are 
painted grey. Pill boxes and air raid shelters bristle in rice fields and al- 
most on every corner. Women are supposed to wear subdued colors. Stu- 
dents in middle school, at an age when most girls are experimenting with 
all sorts of feminine foibles, are constrained to wear khaki blouses and 
black shapeless skirts. Their hair is bobbed and dragged back from the 
face by ancient bobby pins. What can one do to relieve the tedium? 

In a humble way, I too struck a blow for women's rights. Often, with 
other women, we stood in the hot sun patiently waiting in line for a bus. 
Being first (and the Taiwanese queue up for a bus) there might be the 
ghost of a chance to get a seat. As soon as the bus arrived, a crowd of men 
would give up loafing in the shade, swarm forward and knock us women 
out of their way to get in first. 

We were first in line one hot day in Kungkuan when the bus finally 
careened around the corner. It stopped right in front of me. Out of no- 
where, a horde of men pressed forward. I let an old man get away with it. 
Then a young fellow, no more than twenty, pushed ahead, thrusting his 
ticket into the conductress* hand as she stood by the door. This was once 
too often. With a firm but ladylike gesture, I planted my hand on his 



NYLONS, PLASTIC AND HOUSE-CLEANING DAY 187 

chest. This stopped him. Then I took his ticket from the conductress 1 
hand and gave it back to him. In a voice o Infinite Disdain, I said, "Par- 
don me, Sir/' at the same time appl}ing pressure on his chest. 

He was stunned. Silent. I mounted the steps and entered that bus like 
Queen Elizabeth entering Parliament. The poor boy didn't know what 
hit him. Several others of my Downtrodden Sex made hay while the sun 
shone and slipped in. Luckily, he was a young man with a sense of humor. 
He came to with a laugh. Halfway to Miaoli, as we bowled along the high- 
way, I saw him across the bus; he smiled in good humor at me. 

As elsewhere in Asia, one runs across many mementos of the Japanese 
Empire, not only in roads and buildings, but in the people's outlook. 
In fifty years, 1895-1945, the energetic Japanese did much. Telephone 
and telegraph service is good; mail is prompt and safe, delivered by post- 
men in natty green uniforms who ride a bicycle to your door. They are 
so conscientious about Special Delivery letters that they wake you in the 
middle of the night to thrust them into your hand with a polite bow. 
Trains run on time and are clean; buses careen down the roads wherever 
there is road enough to go on; the bicycle flourishes as the family carry-all. 
Papa operates it, mama sits behind with two children and the baby has 
a special wicker basket in front where he can grab the handlebars and 
pretend he is running the whole works. 

Irrigation is marvelous. One never sees the old Chinese methods a 
boy or woman foot-pedaling water into rice fields, or two women swing- 
ing a bucket between them. No indeed. The ditches are straight, the 
water flows freely, the sluices open and close, and the rice gets water 
without wearing out human beings in the process. 

Every scrap of land is cultivated. The riverbeds are a maze of vegetable 
gardens. Farmers move in as soon as the floods have gone. "So long as 
the river isn't using the space, let us use it," they say. Sometimes, the river 
reclaims it in a hurry and takes the farm along with it, but those are the 
chances when one borrows the river's bed. 

The Nationalist regime carries on with these agricultural improve- 
ments. Faced with the densest population in Asia, Taiwan "redistributed" 
its land in 1950. Anyone owning untilled land had to give it up. This 
put much of it into the hands of independent farmers. The irrigation 
system was enlarged. As a result, northern Taiwan produces two crops 
of rice a year and southern Taiwan, three. 

National Spring House-Cleaning Day is another breath of Old Japan 
wafting around its former colony. We were in Changhua, April gth, on 
this Great Day. For several days before, roads and streets were clogged 
with tatamis, cupboards, tables, chairs, straw rugs, blankets, all airing in 
the bright sunshine. Women and men were armed with brush and soap; 
table tops and kitchen things were scrubbed. On the day itself, inspectors 



188 TAIWAN 

came around to see each house. They pasted a report card on the door 
lintel for all the neighborhood to see. A guest coming to see you takes 
warning. If your lintel has a blue card (very, very Sub-Standard), he stays 
a short time and eats nothing. If the card is white, the house has passed 
but is not commended. Everyone strives for the pink card of a Superb 
Housewife. How happily she beams as the guest commends her; how she 
smiles as passers-by note the gay color! Besides inspection, every house 
is DDT*d twice a year. 

Taiwan is a land of bicycles. It's a poor man indeed who cannot pile 
his family on a bicycle for a family outing. For ricepaddy travel, the bicycle 
has all other transportation beaten to a frazzle, for the dikes between 
paddies are around eighteen inches wide. The Sisters are all experts. They 
sail down the lanes with umbrella, catechetical charts, books and woman 
companion balanced nicely. Of course some of them are young, not far 
from the "Look, Maw! No hands!" stage of life. But I remembered with 
bitterness the last time I rode a bicycle twelve years ago. Trying to show 
off, I ended up as a tragic humiliation at the Bishop's feet. Never again! 
Now, I'd as soon try to steer a rocket around the moon. But more than 
one Sister keeps her trusty bicycle at the foot of her bed in the dormitory 
at night. 

Plastic has taken Taiwan by storm. The pedicab men wear a sheet of 
plastic for a raincoat; little fans come wrapped in plastic; purses are 
woven of plastic strips; the oxen have bridles of gay plastic green, yel- 
low, purple, pink. Even the water buffalo have bright plastic nose-rings. 
Women use plastic clotheslines; school youngsters have plastic pencil 
cases; toddlers wear plastic shoes. Plastic garden hose is used all over the 
country instead of pipes. Our convent in Kungkuan has no water piped 
into it. Instead, the Sisters arranged to chisel in on the water supply of 
the man across the street. He has a green garden hose hanging near his 
faucet; then it swings over the street taped to a bamboo pole, and runs 
around our house to the back window. When Sister wants some water, 
she calls across the street and our neighbor connects the hose to his faucet. 
We can watch the water coming through the translucent hose over the 
heads of street traffic. In another convent all the pipes are outside the 
house. This is not so bad but, to turn on the shower, you have to put 
your dripping hand outside the window to manipulate the faucet. Yet 
in both these places, natural gas is piped in abundance, cheap and de- 
pendable. 

Taiwan is comparatively a land of plenty. Next to Japan, the standard 
of living is highest in Asia. Workers seem happy and content in spite of 
the long hours they work and the pittance they receive. Their working 
conditions would make a social worker shudder; safety precautions just 
don't exist. We visited a glass factory in Miaoli making thermos bottles. 



NYLONS, PLASTIC AND HOUSE-CLEANING BAY 189 

It was a most hit-and-miss affair. I came out aged by thirty years. Young 
boys wandered around a built-up earthen platform swinging long pipes 
at the end of which were red hot bubbles of glass. Now and then they 
blew through the pipes and made the glass balloons bigger. They waved 
them here and there, missing each other (and me) by a hair, sauntering 
up and down the platform as if out for a summer evening stroll in the 
park. Then at just the right second, they were at the edge of the platform, 
gave a final puff and plunged the glass bubble into a contraption of iron 
operated by a little girl not more than ten years old. She shut the mold 
on the red hot glass and threw on it a dipper full of water from the bucket 
beside her. Another thermos bottle was made. The ground was so hot 
it burned through my shoes and bits of broken glass were all over, yet 
everyone in that factory was laughing, joking, friendly and content at 
work. 

At a weaving mill amid the deafening noise of machines, the girls 
smiled and waved happily, in spite of their standing twelve hours a day 
on an earthen floor. 

At a silk stocking factory a shack no bigger than fifteen feet by fifteen 
feet fourteen girls and women, working as many knitting machines, 
laughed and talked under a single fluorescent light hung from the low 
rafters. Here, too, a social reformer would have fainted dead away at 
working conditions. A galvanized iron roof warded off rain, sunshine, 
falling caterpillars and leaves, as well as inquisitive spiders. It also held 
in every ounce of heat and every scrap of air breathed out by those 
fourteen women. The earthen floor was damp and uneven. The "powder 
room** smelled out in the back. Ideas of the 4O-hour work week, the cof- 
fee break, social security, old-age benefits, were as far from their thinking 
as the formula for atomic fission. Yet Madison Avenue workers probably 
have more ulcers than these girls. A spirit of cooperation and even gaiety 
hung around the factory. It was a family affair with a few neighbors 
thrown in. The Boss-Lady went from machine to machine, stepping over 
the workers and their babies in a helpful way. When they saw us at the 
doorway, a great shout of welcome went up. Not a single stitch was dropped 
and the knitting never slackened, yet they let us know we were welcome 
indeed. 

With pride, Boss-Lady showed us the finished products filmy nylon 
stockings shaped, folded and wrapped in cellophane stamped MADE IN 
JAPAN. 

"Made in Japan?" I protested. "They're made right here in Taiwan." 
Boss-Lady smiled. "The stockings are, but it's the cellophane wrapper 
that's marked MADE IN JAPAN." It was, too. People here will pay more for 
what they think are Japanese products. 

Workers are happy, no doubt about it. They ride to work; bicycle racks 



190 TAIWAN 

in factory yards are full. Old mlssioners comparing Taiwan with main- 
land China will tell you, "Nobody is hungry on Taiwan; they wear good 
clothes; they eat meat usually once a day. On the mainland, they were 
lucky to get meat once a month/* 

The children show the results of a good diet. Two fairly poor families 
near our Miaoli convent have each twelve children, all of them living 
and healthy-looking. 

Taiwan is intensely religious. Temples adorn every street corner; small 
shrines dot the roads; each field has a corner cut off and offered to the 
gods. Every house I went into had a shrine pagan or Christian facing 
the front entrance. Temples are swept and kept clean. The smell of joss 
permeates the air; you can wander in and find worshippers "bai-bai-ing" 
putting their hands together in front and then tapping their elbows, 
begging for the gods to help them over some rocky spot in life. 

Small superstitions flourish and grow fat, inherited from the past or 
made up on the spot. At parties for children we never give out four 
pieces of candy. "Never tell a patient to take four pills, nor to take one 
pill every four hours, nor four times a day/' a Taiwanese doctor told 
Sister Antonia Maria when she hung out her medical shingle on the 
clinic at Changhua. "Give out three or five pills; otherwise the patient 
will think you want to kill him outright." Four is unlucky for them, just 
as thirteen is for us enlightened Westerners. Hospitals and hotels have 
no fourth floor as we have no thirteenth floor. This little quirk of Taiwan- 
ese human nature came from Japan. In Japanese, the word "shi" means 
"four" and also "death." Any combination of four 14, 40, 44, etc. using 
the syllable "shi" is under suspicion. Nobody marries on the fourth of 
the month; nobody serves four cookies; a hospital horrors! would never 
have four patients in a ward. 

Up in the mountains, we come across not-so-harmless religions. The 
Duck Egg Fast religion for example, so called because they do not eat 
duck eggs on certain days. It's a secret society condemned by the gov- 
ernment and suspected of being Communist. One of its major objectives 
seems to be to throw a monkey wrench into the Church. A group of 
aborigines, for instance, will be studying Catholic doctrine. Along come 
the Duck Egg people and say, "Horrible things happen to Catholics when 
they die. The priests cut off your head and turn it around, and pull out 
your eyes and send them to America for medicine. Then they wrench your 
legs up and tie you Into a knot and cut your heart and liver out. They 
won't let you be buried in your clothes, either." Well! Nobody wants to 
be treated like that, for sure. Even when old Catholics who have seen 
many Catholic funerals tell them it's not true, the poor aborigines are 
shaking in their boots. 

Taiwan is a land of hostesses. Every train, every bus, no matter how 



NYLONS, PLASTIC AND HOUSE-CLEANING DAY 191 

lowly, has a young girl as hostess, decked out In an airlines hostess uni- 
form, somewhat shabby perhaps, but neat and clean. On the trains 
diesel-powered! running from Taipei to the south, you are smothered 
with courtesy. The hostess comes around proffering magazines and news- 
papers, English or Chinese. Every hour or so she hands out small towels 
soaked in perfumed water so that you can refresh your sooty face and 
hands. Around noon, she asks if you want a box lunch; how about buying 
some cookies or salted watermelon seeds? Nobody goes through the train 
bawling out his wares. This is a personal sales pitch. 

Another functionary, as soon as the wheels make their first turn, goes 
up and down the aisle pouring hot tea into a glass set conveniently into 
the wall beside you. He replenishes it often, pouring out the cold and 
pouring in the hot. The bell-hop appears with broom and dustpan, sweep- 
ing up candy wrappers, cigarette stubs, bits of paper, and grains of rice 
which may have fallen from box lunches. 

On buses they do not coddle the passengers like this, but the girls are 
very efficient. They pick up the tickets, help children up the steps and 
squeeze in the last sardine very graciously, 

I watched one of these girl conductors on a fairly long trip. Between 
stops, she slumped on the hard little seat near the door she can call her 
own. It snaps up against the wall when she is not on it; when she is, it 
bars the door. Her "pahmanetto" was just about grown out; her natty 
coat was ragged; the shoulder-strap purse they all wear to carry money 
and tickets, was only a canvas bag frayed and worn. She seemed just a 
child half-asleep on the jolting, racking bus; her head almost snapped off 
several times when we went over rough boulders. But she is envied by 
many others. These bus women are the "career girls" of Taiwan. They 
have two weeks' training and get good money. 

And stones! I never saw so many. Rounded stones tumbling down from 
mountain heights, rolled along by floods and left behind in dry river- 
beds. Ox carts go to the riverbeds and men fill them to the top with these 
stones. Hundreds, millions of ox carts have gone to the riverbeds for 
hundreds and thousands of years, yet there are billions of stones left. You 
see them used everywhere. They make the foundations of houses, they 
build up rice paddy dikes, they line the irrigation canals. They make up 
roads, huge retaining walls, railroad embankments, bridge supports and 
stepping stones across the wide shallow rivers. Piled up like cannon balls, 
they give a Stonehenge look to the fields. But they really take a toll of 
your patience when they are made into cobblestone streets. After an 
hour or two on such a street, your ankles wobble even on a polished floor. 

Ah yes, if you want to live dangerously, come to Taiwan! If you like 
the chances to be less than 50-50 that you will die in your bed, come to 
Taiwan. The country is prepared for war; soldiers swarm everywhere. 



192 TAIWAN 

Air-raid shelters ornament every street corner not only in Taipei but in 
the provincial cities, too. And if the Communists don't get you, the traffic 
will. 

Ah yes, you who scorn security, come to Taiwan! Life starts out reck- 
lessly. I have seen a premature baby in a cooking pot over a slow fire, as 
an incubator. At one month, baby's hair was to be cut shaved off clean. 
What do they use? An inch-thick spike filed down to a chisel-like blade. 
To see that going over the baby's soft skull can give a nurse delirium 
tremens. When the child gets to be any age at all, his fingernails and 
toenails are trimmed with hedged ippers. He goes to kindergarten in a 
little cart pulled by a man on a bicycle, out in a welter of buses, trucks, 
oxen, and private cars all skimming past each other. And he spends the 
rest of his life sidestepping army jeeps and trucks, bicycles, and "iron- 
cows," little tractor-like affairs with two small wheels in front designed 
to go through a cultivated field. Worst of all are the three-wheeled trucks 
made in Japan, with only one wheel in front. They tip drunkenly as they 
swing in and out to get ahead. But why bother about it all? Taiwanese 
can expect to live to the ripe age of fifty-five; most other orientals have a 
life expectancy of about thirty-five! Come to Taiwan! You have twenty 
more exciting years to live! 



I O )^l A Lot for Seven Cents 



THE pastor is pope in his own parish. So when the Pope 
of Towfen, Father James McCormick by name, not only told us we ought 
to see Chinese Opera but said he would pay our way, we gave in with 
very little struggle. 

He backed his invitation with good reasons. "You will never know good 
costumes," he told Sister Paulita, "until you see the Chinese theater. You 
think the Three Kings in your Christmas show are gorgeous? You should 
see the merest servant boy on the Chinese stage. As for you," and his finger 
pointed at me, "if you want to know the theater Shakespeare wrote for, 
you will have to see Chinese Opera." 

He was talking to three Already Convinced. Sister Luella had a good 
reason, too; she would chaperone the two of us. The advertisements out- 
side the theater were horrendous enough to send whole legions of devils 
cowering back to Hell, but Father paid his $3.00 NT (about 7%^ US) 
for each of us without a murmur. 



A LOT FOR SEVEN CENTS 193 

The show was well started by the time we found a bench in the dark and 
sat down. But no matter. It had been going on for hours and would last 
a good many more. Four hours was our quota, but then we tried to fol- 
low the plot. That's a mistake; it tires one out. 

"It's like a soap opera," Father explained. "A company of actors comes 
for eight or ten days and keeps the story going that long. There are sev- 
eral episodes every night like the old Perils of Pauline. They get one 
going strong and stop in the middle of it. The suckers come back next 
night, of course, and get involved in another episode." 

It was all in Hoklo dialect, although Towfen is a Hakka-speaking town. 
But language had little to do with understanding the action. Any words 
from the stage were purely incidental to the clatter of cymbals, whine 
of music, murmur of audience getting soda pop or water ices, and so on. 

So far as I could make out, there was the Good Guy and the Bad Guy. 
In this case, two brothers. The Bad Guy wanted to get the Good Guy's 
wife and also discredit him in their Aged Father's eyes, so as to nip on 
to the inheritance as well. The Good Guy's wife was somewhat averse to 
this but the Bad Guy's wife was all for it. The two ladies got into a friendly 
bit of hair-pulling over the situation and for this a servant reported them 
to the Mandarin in Red. 

We now got into the realm of officialdom. The Bad Guy bribed the Red 
Mandarin so that the Aged Father was beaten with bamboo sticks and 
the Good Guy toted off to Jail. The Good Guy's wife then appeared with 
incense sticks in her hair, weeping into the long sleeves of her gown. 
The incense sticks denote that she was going to Peiping to appeal to the 
Emperor. On the way, however, she met a really high Mandarin in a natty 
green outfit with roses in his hat. This Green Mandarin persuaded the 
lady not to go to the Emperor. In righteous indignation, horrible to be- 
hold, he swore to punish the wicked Red Mandarin. Sad to relate, no 
sooner did he meet the villain than he accepted hush money. The last we 
heard of the Good Guy and his wife was this Green Evildoer saying "Off 
with his head!" about him, and "Lock her up!" about her. 

There was a Do-Gooder around at the time, identified by a white flow- 
ing band around her topknot. She got to the Green Snake in the Grass 
as he sat in the Emperor's court and upbraided him. From that point on, 
the plot was a shambles. The Emperor's sister was in love with somebody 
condemned to death. The Emperor commuted the sentence to a duke- 
dom; both Green and Red Mandarins got into it somehow. A girl wearing 
a long grey beard and a hat like a Patriarch of the Malabar Rite floated 
on and off. The spirits took a hand with firecrackers going off; the stage 
darkened several times while the character who happened to be on stage 
at the time took a flyer at the end of a wire, sailing up into the air. The 
spirit of the Do-Gooder's mother came on stage trying to bring order 



194 TAIWAN 

out of chaos. She failed. Several battles ensued; men and women bran- 
dished spears, clubs, bolos and swords, did some neat footwork and 
weapon-twirling and turned somersaults and cartwheels to indicate bloody 
carnage all over the stage. When things got too hot for anyone, he stood 
on a stool at the side of the stage to indicate that he was invisible. Minor 
characters were busy between stints on stage, shooing off the youngsters 
of various ages who wandered onstage in their underwear or without it. 
They were children of the actors coming on with innocent prattle to talk 
to mama or papa. One never knew when a character came on whether he 
was there to help the plot along or merely to collect a child for baby- 
sitting offstage. 

The musicians were in undershirts at the side of the stage with a whole 
jazz-band around each one. He would pick up a cornet, or ancient Chinese 
zither, or an affair like a triangle, or cymbal, drum, trombone or bass 
violin (but minus the violin part), interchanging them a hundred times 
in one piece. The smartest trick of all merited a salvo of applause but 
passed unnoted. The small son of a musician came up to his father de- 
manding a nickel for a bottle of pop. The harried musician reached into 
his pocket and got the nickel, and kept his zither going with the other 
hand. 

Soda pop played a large part in this show. The back curtain and valance 
were of deepest black decorated with brilliant gold Chinese characters. 
In the center was a circle with rays. 

"What do they say?" I asked. 

"Oh, the characters? They say 'Drink our new soda pop, the Sun-Moon 
Drink. Made by the makers of Black Pine, the best in Taiwan!' It's an 
ad. Black Pine paid for the curtain so they could use it for advertising. 
The circle in the center is their bottle cap." 

I could see what Father meant about Shakespeare. The show was con- 
tinuous. When one scene ended, the curtain with the golden bottle cap 
fell and more actors ran out in front to carry on with another scene. 
Nobody talked long; nobody stayed on stage long. The rule was, "Dash 
in, say your piece and go." Everybody in the house knew how the thing 
was going to end; they had come to see how well the actors did it. The 
stage manager came on and off, putting on a chair in time for the Bad 
Guy to hide behind it, or for the Good Guy's wife to faint into it. No- 
body minded him; like a good head waiter, he went unnoticed. 

This gives little idea of what it was like. As Father divined when he 
had to pay seven cents each for our seats, this was a highly successful com- 
pany. The actors wore the most flamboyant satins and sequins. Their 
faces were painted dead white with red cheeks and eyelids. They had built 
up their noses with putty so they stood out like Chinese War Gods' noses. 
Servants walked with big steps; the rich people minced. All officials wore 



A LOT FOR SEVEN CENTS 195 

stiff belts, far too big for them, like hula hoops around their knees. 
Pompons, flowers, gauzy wings lifted the hats right off the heads. And 
sequins dazzled the whole stage. "I'm ashamed of my Mass vestments, 
now/* Father said. "I'll have to get something more colorful if my 
Catholics are to be impressed with the solemnity of the Mass." 

These acting troupes spring up and die down quickly. In a village when 
the rice crop is poor, somebody says, "Lef s put on shows for a living/' 
They get a fellow who can read to dish up a play, to coach them and make 
the business contacts. They rehearse for a couple of weeks, rent the cos- 
tumes and set out. If successful, the troupe stays together until a main 
actor dies or the manager runs off with the money. If not, they disband 
and go back to peanut-growing to live. It's mostly a family affair; nobody 
has sharply defined roles. If one of the men goes on a strike for more pay, 
or takes the day off, one of the women can put on his costume and beard 
and play the part just as well. Who's going to mind if the Green Mandarin 
speaks in a squeaky voice? Shakespeare's audiences never did. By the time 
that happens, the customers have paid their seven cents and who cares? 
"Did you notice two men at the box office?" Father asked. "One repre- 
sented the actors; the other was for the theater. They both checked on 
the girl who sold the tickets." 

Father McCormick is a whole show in himself. He started out in life 
in Pennsylvania, was ordained at Maryknoll, and came to the Chinese 
thirty years ago. Twenty years were on the mainland working with Bishop 
Francis X. Ford who died in a Communist prison, and ten years on Taiwan 
with the same Hakka-speaking people, now re-established in and around 
Miaoli. 

Bishop Ford, says Father McCormick, always believed that the Hakka 
were one of the lost tribes of Israel. It sounds fantastic, but the very name 
Hakka, "guest," indicates that they are strangers from afar. They may 
have come from beyond the Gobi Desert with Genghis Khan. Many 
words in Hakka are like the Turkish which, itself, has some Syro-Chaldean 
in it. Hakka people, too, have many Jewish characteristics; they love edu- 
cation and will sacrifice anything to get their children through school. 
They are excellent business men and go to foreign parts to set up com- 
mercial contacts. On the island of Mauritius, for instance, nearly all the 
Chinese are Hakkas. Also they have larger noses than most Chinese. 

Father McCormick got to know many of the old French missioners in 
his early days in China. One was known as "Find-the-Water Priest" and 
now villages for miles around come to Father McCormick, asking him to 
find a likely place to dig a well. The trick if you can call it a trick is 
very simple; Father doesn't know how it works, but it does. He takes a 
Y-shaped branch of live wood, preferably willow, and pulls it as tight 
as he can, stretching the arms apart and holding the stem downwards. 



196 TAIWAN 

When he is over water, the stick will turn in spite of anything he can do. 
Villagers say then that Father is consulting the wind and water spirits. 
It gives a good opening for teaching Catholic doctrine. 

He has done well at that too. Seven years ago, there was one Catholic 
in Towfen; today, there are two thousand. This is the story pretty much 
all over the island. So many Chinese-speaking priests and religious were 
expelled from the mainland, that Taiwan enjoyed a boom in personnel. 
In eight years, the number of priests went from one hundred and sixty- 
three to more than six hundred. They found a receptive people. Whereas 
in China of the old days the average priest made around twenty converts a 
year, in Taiwan the average is thirty-four. 

Everyone on Taiwan worships Ti Kong, the grandfather of all the gods. 
It is not too difficult, the Sisters say, to transfer this veneration to the 
One True God. Small wonder then that the twenty thousand Catholics of 
1953 find themselves engulfed in the present Catholic population of two 
hundred thousand. Not many among a population of ten million, but 
we're getting there! 

Father McCormick has another claim to fame. When he was a high 
school lad at The Venard, Maryknoll preparatory seminary near Scranton, 
Pa., a certain young teacher from Wilkesbarre, Pa., decided to be a Mary- 
knoll Sister and came with bag and baggage to start her training at The 
Venard, too. The McCormick lad carried her trunk up to the attic in 
that dear old farm house which was our convent. Now he, as pastor (not 
to say Pope) of Towfen, welcomed Mother Mary Colman to his territory. 

He did it up brown. He routed out his parish band replete with high 
hats and gold braid and had them at the bus station when we came in. 
Our bus was early, but they hastily gathered their instruments and gave 
a royal blast of welcome. Then they formed a line in front of the parish's 
1948 Hudson (Father calls it a Huddleson), struck up "Seeing Nelly 
Home/' and we were off down Main Street. There's a bit of P. T. Barnum 
in every good missioner! 

Maybe it's not so much Barnum as the precious gift of enthusiasm. 
Missioners need it Bishop James E. Walsh, whose enthusiasm for God 
has brought him to a Communist prison in Shanghai, once wrote: "A 
missioner is sent to a place where he is not wanted; to sell a pearl which, 
although of great price, is not recognized; to a people who are determined 
not to accept it even as a gift." 

Sister Luella and Sister Paulita, who sell the Pearl in Towfen, are 
seasoned. They add up some twenty-five years with Hakka-speaking Chi- 
nese. Both were expelled with fireworks from Red China; both were 
marched through towns in disgrace. Sister Paulita witnessed the trial of 
Father Au, her pastor, since then a martyr for the Faith in Communist 
work camps. She was liberally plastered with mud and garbage en route. 



A LOT FOR SEVEN CENTS 197 

But it hasn't dampened her enthusiasm either for the Faith or for the 
Chinese. 

The Sisters live in a small house like every other house in town. At 
the parish center they are all things to all men; since nobody in the 
parish has been Catholic for more than eight years, everyone has a lot 
to learn. An "old Catholic" here counts six or seven years in the Faith. 

Next day we were off to Houlung, half an hour down the coast. Here 
in the evening we heard Mass in the Village of the Eight-Cornered Forest 
figure that one out! It is situated at the mouth of Eyebrow River. 
Eight or ten fishing families call it home. We walked down the country 
road in pitch black; Sister Paul Therese had a feeble flashlight in her 
hand but it shed no light on the mud-puddle situation. Even so, I don't 
think we missed any. Nobody was around. Small wonder they were all in 
one large courtyard looking at Father Murphy's slide-talk on doctrine. He 
threw the image on a sheet tacked up against the brick house. When 
Adam and Eve appeared on the sheet a sea breeze ruffled it. The snake 
coiled and slithered; Adam and Eve shuddered and tried to edge away. 

Since I know the story of Adam and Eve fairly well, I left the group 
and went around the house to the sea. A wisp of a moon had come up 
giving just enough light to glint the waves a bit and to show the nets 
drying on racks on the beach. Missioners feel a kinship with fishermen; 
the reason is obvious. 

Back at the house we found the whole family preparing for evening 
Mass. We went under the doorway strung with papers left over from New 
Year, and passed the large pagan shrine just opposite the entrance. The 
grandmother and some of her sons are pagans here. They are hospitable 
but, of course, they aren't going to pull down their pagan shrine for us. 
In another room one of the men was setting up for Mass. He cleared off 
a table, hung up a drape with a crucifix attached to it and unrolled two 
scrolls to hang on the wall. A single electric bulb with a cord looped over 
the rafters to the main plug, glared over the makeshift altar. 

It was a large room with earthen floor and brick walls. A single window, 
no more than two by three feet, was shut so tightly I don't think it had 
been opened in years. The inside of the tile roof was lined with bamboo 
slats. These and the sturdy rafters made a sort of storage place. I looked 
above me as I semi-squatted on a low bamboo stool six inches or so from 
the floor; oars, large pieces of driftwood, old sails, parts of nets for use as 
patches, some floats tied together they all hung from or lay upon the 
rafters. 

Father, when he came in, took off his motorcycle helmet and put it 
carefully on the nearest rafter. This annoyed an old lady of the house. 
As the oldest Catholic there, she appointed herself hostess and worked 
hard at the job. "Now Father," she said, bringing her 4/1 o" up to Fa- 



198 TAIWAN 

ther's elbow and tugging at his sleeve. "Don't be putting your helmet 
there. You'll forget about it and go off without it. Reach it down for 
me and I'll put it away right." She toddled off with the helmet and where 
did she put It? She hung it over an ancestor tablet on the pagan shrine 
next door. 

There were soldiers there from an army camp nearby; there were fisher- 
men, too, and boys and children of the house. They sat on wooden 
horses, on small bamboo stools like mine and on their own heels. The old 
pagan grandmother-matriarch took a stool and held the youngest in her 
arms. She was not going to miss any goings-on in that house. Some of the 
daughters-in-law sidled in or out, until the doorways became so jammed 
they were caught either in or out and had to stay that way. 

Father vested and bent over the table. Mass began. A cloud of Taiwan- 
ese chant lifted from that motley group. Soldiers and fishermen, most of 
them not yet baptized, poured out the Mass prayers. It was so stuffy, so 
crowded, the smell of hard-working bodies was so thick in the air, it 
seemed as though we were underground in ancient Rome while one of 
the apostles celebrated exactly the same Mass. "Do this in commemora- 
tion of Me." The words quivered in the dank room. 

Tahu is a forty-minute ride up into the mountains. It's a forty minutes 
close to eternity. The bus ducks through twelve natural rock arches, some 
of them deep enough to be tunnels. When you see a truck piled high with 
hay or scrap paper or sacks of rice or bamboo poles when you see such 
a truck whizzing into one of these short tunnels, you hold your breath 
for the workman you know is sleeping on top of the load. More than 
one poor fellow has been scraped off and smashed on the road. 

Sister Magdalena and Sister Rita Clare live in a tiny Japanese house 
in Tahu, surrounded by a dog, two cats, many plants and more mountains 
than you can count. Tahu's commercial reason for being is a silkworm 
factory where millions of the beasties eat their way to an early death in 
a silken shroud. 

The silkworm starts life as one of many little black dots on a card, 
filed in a deep freeze at five degrees below zero. Everything is tidy. The 
eggs are arranged in circles all laid by one moth whose file number is 
imprinted on the card. There are thirty-two eggs from each moth in one 
circle. We saw a messy card on which several worms had been permitted 
to lay eggs any old way they wanted to. Most disreputable exhibition of 
unrestrained instinct! 

On each 8% x n-inch file card, exactly sixteen thousand eggs adhered. 
The efficient administrator took several from the shelves in a walk-in 
freeze compartment. A single card of silkworm eggs, he estimated, would 
produce twenty kilos (forty-four pounds) of silk thread. 



A LOT FOR SEVEN CENTS 199 

People who want to give the worms a happy home life for a while can 
buy a card or so of eggs and take them home. Three thousand worms, 
one woman told me as we watched her, can yield Si ,000 NT (about 
125.00 US) in about a month. But what a month it is! As another woman 
expressed it, "I used to keep silkworms but I don't have that many arms 
and legs any more." 

Six times a day the wicker trayfuls of worms need attention. They must 
have fresh mulberry leaves; they must be transferred, one by one, from a 
dirty tray to a clean one; the brown paper underneath must be changed. 
The thing most to be avoided is wetness. Mulberry leaves must be picked 
after the dew has dried around 10:00 A.M. Then they should be cooled 
off down in the cellar or in some cave. At the factory, humidity is checked 
every hour of the day. 

They eat voraciously; you can almost see them grow. Six days and six 
nights they eat, eat, eat. On the seventh day they rest and shed their little 
skins for new clothes. Within a month they are as big as your little finger. 
At last they stop eating and begin work. The mere thought of work 
blanches them; from a pale green they turn oyster white. They come to 
the edge of the tray and stretch their necks over the rim, searching some 
good place to go to sleep in. The haggard worm-tender pops each drowsy 
worm into a little hole in a straw mat and leaves him to weave his own 
shroud. Round and round and round he goes, up and over his head, down 
and under his tail. At the end he has spun out eight hundred yards of 
filament, so fine that the eye can hardly see it. Yet, later when the cocoon 
is bobbing around in nigh-boiling water, the sensitive fingers of girls can 
feel the slender filament. They lift five or six strands on to a bobbin 
twirling above and the patient work of the pampered worm is all unwound. 

One of the neatest tricks I ever saw was that of a woman who trained 
silkworms to weave fans for hen When one of her little pets began to be 
sleepy, she made a frame of bamboo sticks spread fan-wise. Then she put 
the sleepy one between the sticks and moved him up and down until he 
had covered the spaces with his fine silk. The befuddled worm ended 
up with not even a shroud to cover his naked self. He died in the open. 

Four thousand years ago, Lui Tzu in China discovered the voracious 
worm and the magnificent thread he spun. He learned how to feed the 
monster, keep him clean and dry, and let him spin out Ms shroud in 
comfort. Old Lui Tzu no doubt chuckled to think that the cocoon would 
cover not only the worm's lowly torso but the great ladies of all the world. 

With Sister Marion Cordis, once from Chicago, I went out to Hap- 
piness Village, not far from Miaoli city. It had been a rainy morning, but 
the sun cleared in time for the regular Tuesday afternoon catechism class. 
After the bus let us off, we had quite a walk single file across the rice 
paddies. Any boys or girls aspiring to Maryknoll would do well to practice 



200 TAIWAN 

on railroad tracks or, even better, on a picket fence. We headed for a nest 
of houses set on an island surrounded by watery fields. 

"How good is your heart!" The greeting came from Lai Mo, in the 
rice field. She was on hands and knees in the mud, pushing up the goo 
around each rice plant's roots. Only in Taiwan have I seen people work 
on hands and knees, dragging their feet through the mud. The idea is, 
they say, that you can do three rows at a time. In other countries, they 
work the mud with their feet, one row at a time. More than any other 
factor, this work habit accounts for the infestation of hookworm. But Lai 
Mo was not thinking of hookworm as she straightened and came toward 
us. "Don't start without me!" she called. "I have to change my clothes 
but 111 be there." 

She had plenty of time. The other women, too, had thought we weren't 
coming, due to the rains. As we walked on to solid ground, they swarmed 
around, setting out chairs in the "big room," putting the table against 
the wall, clearing up the baby's things and the baby as well from the 
cement floor. Sister stood on a chair to hang the catechetical chart right 
in front of the unkempt pagan shrine facing the main door. It did not 
seem to be used much. A picture of the Sacred Heart occupied another 
wall and an oil painting of a Chinese woman, matriarch of the family, 
still another. Near this was something that haunted my dreams for months. 
A wall clock had been installed. A girl's face, lifted from some calendar 
or candy box, smiled from the bottom section. The eyes were cut out and 
they were pasted on the pendulum behind. At every tick of the clock, the 
eyes moved back and forth, back and forth. I tell you, after three hours 
of this, you are ready to jump into the fields and pull the rice plants 
up over you. 

In all, eight women and their numerous progeny sat on the wicker 
chairs while Sister and the catechist talked. Men of the family helped with 
the setting-up and leaned in at the doorways to listen. When it came time 
to read the charts, one of them who had more learning than others pro- 
nounced the words slowly and distinctly. 

All these people were so straightforward and direct. Their questions 
pertained to the basics: rice fields, money, sex, worship, ancestors and 
children. Like Lai Mo, just in from field work, most of their toes were 
caked with mud. Some had wooden shoes, but most were barefoot. A 
few wore Chinese saams, many had western dress, and nearly all had 
"pahmanetto." They had everything they needed security, family, solid 
background. The seed was falling on good ground. 



1L( 17 



Bound Feet and an Unbound Mind 



MOLIN'S eyes are keen, even though wrinkles distort the 
blue tattoo over her chin and cheeks. Molin's teeth are strong in spite of 
the receding gums. For Molin is only in her forties; aborigine women 
look much older than they are. Molin's memory is accurate on her tribe's 
doings. And I was a stranger in Busia. She longed to acquaint me with 
the fine points of history there. 

I listened to Molin tell of her father, chief of Sakura, a hamlet of good 
size not far from Busia, which is the end of the line for most buses. On 
a winding road, Busia is sixty miles from the coast and, since Taiwan is 
only eighty miles wide, it is just about dead center in the island. As with 
most primitive peoples, one village wars against another. It was so with 
Sakura. 

When I was small, Molin said, it was always a gay evening when the 
men returned from head hunting. They would put the heads in the center 
of the village and prepare a feast. We children who served the wine always 
were told to serve the heads first. This was to accustom us to the sight of a 
severed head so we would not be afraid of them. 

My mother never knew her father. When she was two days old, her 
father said to her mother, 'You gave birth two days ago and you will be 
resting today. I also will not work today. I will go hunting, instead/ How- 
ever, he never came back. Probably someone from another village was 
out hunting, too. 

The Japanese were masters of the island; we knew that. But for the 
most part, they let us fight out our little squabbles by ourselves. Perhaps 
our chief enemies were people from Mastoban. About thirty years ago 
things came to a head. There was a Mastoban woman married to the 
Japanese chief of police here in Busia. Many Japanese officials negotiated 
for an aborigine wife in order to keep their heads on their shoulders. 
The government recognized this and took care of the wives and children. 
When the father went back to Japan, Ms wife was supported and the 
children educated. This Mastoban woman was so cared for. 

At the same time, a woman from my tribe at Sakura had also married 
a Japanese. He was only a common policeman and the marriage was not 
arranged for by the government. When the policeman went back to 
Japan, the Sakura woman was left to fend for herself. This was too much 
for my tribe to take, especially since the Mastoban woman's husband, as 
chief of police, had jurisdiction over our village, Sakura. 

So my father and others planned vengeance. There was to be a children's 

201 



202 TAIWAN 

athletic meet at Busia, a general picnic day for all the families as the 
Japanese like it. Men from Sakura had knives under their belts. When 
we all stood for the National Anthem that was the signal. They lashed 
out right and left. They went into every house in Busia and killed every 
last Japanese in the place. Then we all ran down to our villages to await 
reprisals; we knew they would come. They came, and in far greater number 
than we thought. Not only Mastoban people, but tribesmen from Losan 
and Taocho joined up against us. The Japanese too were to send troops 
after us. When we heard that, we knew the goose was cooked. We could 
fight our own, but the Japanese would be too much for us. 

At first, we thought there would be no escape; enemies were all around 
us. We were all to die. My mother then said, 'Well, if we are to die, let 
us sing first.' She had a lovely voice and sang the songs of our tribe for 
half an hour. Just then, someone rushed in to say we could escape. My 
father and brother would not go. "We will commit suicide/ they said. 
*We are responsible for the tribe. You and the children go.' So my mother 
took us out into the forest. Thus, we lived. 

Did you see the stone memorial tablet at the entrance to town? That 
was put up in memory of the massacre. The reading on it is new. In the 
old days it said In memory of the brave Japanese officials who died at the 
hands of aborigine terrorists/ Now it says, Tn memory of the aborigines 
cruelly massacred by the Japanese/ The Japanese paid for it and now it 
commemorates us! 

Molin laughed. How she laughed! She bent over double on the skimpy 
folding chair we have in our doctrine-teaching room. Other women in 
the class joined her. Molin's hand reached over and patted the hand of 
Omrad next to her. They were great friends. Later Sister Louise Marie 
said to me, 

"Do you know who Omrad is? She's the daughter of the Mastoban 
woman who married the Japanese chief of police. At first she and Molin 
weren't so friendly, although both wanted to become Christians. We had 
a little heart-to-heart talk with each. After all, Christians shouldn't be 
looking daggers at each other over the catechism books. They're great 
friends now/' 

Busia is a very, very small town. It's the jumping-off place for Aborigine 
Territories, something like our Indian reservations in the States. The 
census takers credit it with a population of three hundred but they must 
have come on a good day. The number goes up or down according to the 
arrival or departure of army camps working on the road, lumbering 
parties, aborigine families come to town for a while and traders going 
in or out the Aborigine Territories. 

The whole town consists of two blocks of Wild West store fronts. Our 
convent hides behind the Golden Prosperity Lumber Company office. The 
church is a store front between the bus depot and the Thousand Happi- 



BOUND FEET AND AN UNBOUND MIND 203 

nesses Rice Store. The sign on the outside proclaims not the virtues of 
Three Excellences Dried Ginger or the Singer Sewing Machine, but the 
fact that the Lord of Heaven Religion has invaded Busia. In spite of 
such boasts, the church is extremely poor, with fifteen or so benches ar- 
ranged to face the rear wall. This wall slides back to reveal the sanctuary 
for Mass and closes during the day to make a small doctrine room. A 
stairway at the left leads up to Father's quarters above. 

Busia's Public Works Department is one old man who sweeps the entire 
town at 5 A.M. each morning. The Sisters call him Ojii San (Honorable 
Grandfather). He's always there bowing and smiling as they walk down 
the deserted street to Mass each morning. 

Sister Louise Marie is a doctor, a Japanese. Older people are delighted 
that she can talk to them in the language they learned in school. In spite 
of the massacre of 1930, the Japanese were respected in Taiwan and put 
through many good measures. Sister Marie Bernadette is a nurse from 
Hawaii and is of Japanese extraction. The two Sisters operate a clinic 
in another store front on Main Street. Up to September, 1959, Acre had 
never been a resident doctor in Busia. There is no hookworm up here 
because there are no rice fields. Sweet potatoes, corn and millet are the 
staples. "Everybody has round worms and tapeworms," Sister Louise 
Marie says. f *Also T.B." 

These aborigines take to Catholic doctrine like ducks to water. They 
don't have many superstitions. So free are they of ancestor worship that 
they don't even know where their parents are buried. The custom is to 
bury the body without a coffin and place no marker on the spot. Our task 
now is to get them to show respect for the dead and to remember them 
in prayer. 

Rugged women, these missionersl At Busia, as elsewhere, the day started 
at 5 A.M. We met in the combination refectory, community room and 
parlor to say Prime, first stint of the Divine Office for the day. The cat 
met us there, already curled up in front of the small shrine to Our Lady. 
As we recited the ancient psalms, kitty rose, yawned, stretched herself 
and lay down with a sigh right on my feet. I let her stay; Busia's mountain 
air is chilly. 

Then down the street to the store-front church. Half an hour on the 
benches talking to God, Who lives so unknown in this frontier town. 
Father Knotek clumped down the wooden stairs from his upstairs rectory, 
and we left for Mass in Sakura, We climbed into the jeep and were off, 
without breaking the silence. The time before Mass is sacred to all re* 
ligious; we don't chatter then. 

The mountain road clings to the cliff like a frightened child. At one 
spot there is a bridge built up of bamboos tied together with rattan, and 
planks placed on top. The bamboos look rotted at the base. Father passed 



204 TAIWAN 

this up, preferring to go the long way around the mountain curve. But 
even with four-wheel drive, we had trouble in the mud. 

Near ing Sakura, Father Knotek leaned his full one hundred and sixty 
pounds on the horn. "What's the idea?" I shouted to Sister Louise Marie. 
"There's no traffic on this road/* 

"He's waking the people up for Mass," Sister called back. "We don't 
have a church bell in Sakura." 

Sure enough. As we came closer to the church, men and women emerged 
from the cabins with a good-natured yawn and waved to the jeep flying 
past on the road. 

We opened the church and Father went to the confessional. A line 
soon formed. Outside, a bugle tuned up. The sun had not yet topped the 
eastern mountains. Sakura, deep in the valley, gets no early nor late sun- 
shine. But the sky was luminous and the boy bent backwards to give full 
blast to his music. It was Silent Night blazing away. Soon a trombone 
joined him as an older man put forth his early morning vigor. They 
swung into an Ave Maria which must have pierced Heaven itself. 

Again I had to speak. "Why play music now?" I asked. "And why so 
loud?" 

Sister Marie Bernadette smiled patiently. "In Sakura everything is 
loud," she said. "They have to play loud so that people won't hear the 
confessions going on. They're usually loud, too." 

By this time the church was fairly full. Father began the Mass. It's 
always a High Mass in Sakura; the people like to sing. They have good 
voices if you accept their definition of a good voice. "She sings good!" 
means that you can hear her a long way off. The Mass of the Angels, that 
tried-and-true sturdy of every parish choir, rocked the mountain chapel. 
On less solid ground it would have started a landslide. 

And home to breakfast. As we got near that wisp of a bamboo bridge, 
Father hunched his shoulders and called out, "Pray!" as we went flying 
over it. When we resumed breathing, Sister said, "You never did that 
before, Father." 

"I know," he shot back with a sigh of relief, "but that road is so 
muddy. I figured if the bridge has stayed up for several months now, it 
just might be good enough to stay up today, too." 

Busla mission has ten outstations, most of them within the Aborigine 
Territory. Police stations dot The Road (there is only one) and travelers 
must check through these points as they go along. Eleven miles and four 
heart attacks from Busia is a sort of platform, eight thousand feet above 
sea level. It's a level spot achieved by cutting the very top from a moun- 
tain. On all sides the ground slopes straight down. I felt I stood on top 
of a giant orange-squeezer. A bus, once a day, makes the passage over the 
mountain road, a service just a month old. On the first bus rode the 



BOUND FEET AND AN UNBOUND MIND 205 

mayor, school principal, postmaster and Catholic priest; it was a gala 
affair. Up to that time, aborigines had had to walk miles into town. 

As we stood looking at valleys and mountains on every side, the Sisters 
pointed out towns where they go for several weeks at a time to prepare 
people for Baptism or First Holy Communion. 

"There's Mastoban," and they pointed straight down into a deep valley. 
"It's five thousand feet down. You have to come up here and then slide 
down the five thousand feet. There's no road to take on the level." 

"How do you get back?" I asked. 

"It's a six-hour climb, but we make it. And over there/' sweeping widely 
to mountains lost in the mists, "is Father Stratham's parish/' They pointed 
out the vague location of many other towns, but the entrance to all of 
them seemed to be a long slide downhill and a stiff climb for several 
thousand feet, up. 

Let me say it again rugged women, these missioners! 

Poli is fifteen treacherous miles downhill from Busia. Father insisted 
on taking us in his jeep, saying it wouldn't cost a cent since he could 
coast all the way. And besides, he was fairly sure of getting a good dinner 
out of it once he delivered us at the Poli convent. These Maryknoll 
Fathers are brilliant men. 

On the way the Sisters gave me the sightseer's tour. 

"Isn't this the place where Father Bauduin went over the bridge that 
wasn't there?" asked one of them. "You see, he was in a jeep just as we 
are now. It was quite dark. The bridge had broken but there was no 
sign or anything, of course. Fortunately, it had broken on the other side, 
so Father just rollercoasted down to the riverbed. It was dry; that was 
lucky too." 

"And I think it was here that Father Carbin lost his motorcycle," 
chipped in the other. "He made the mistake of looking at the scenery 
and missed a curve in the road. He was lucky, too, for he saw where he 
was heading in time to jump off the motorcycle. It went over the edge 
and plunged down several hundred feet." 

How deep-rooted is the desire to contemplate God! Away out here on 
this mountain road indeed, long before there was a road is the Mon- 
astery of the Awakened Soul where for centuries Buddhist monks have 
lived. It's a great pilgrimage place for all of Taiwan. 

We found Poli in the throes of a wedding slated for the next morning 
at one of the outstations. 

"I have to go out this afternoon and fit the bridal gown," Sister John 
Maureen said. So we went together. 

"This is a hurry-up wedding," she explained as we walked through 
town to the bus station. "The bridegroom's grandmother died yesterday. 



206 TAIWAN 

The young couple have to get married before she's buried. Once the old 
lady is put underground, there must be no festivity for one hundred days. 
That will land us into the rice-planting season and nobody can take 
time out for a wedding then. So they pushed the date up a month. 

"A friend of mine sent me her bridal gown for such occasions. It makes 
the sacrament more solemn; we keep it on hand to lend around to brides. 
I only hope it fits, for we have so little time to do anything on it. We 
ought to clean up the church a bit too for tomorrow." 

I knew I was elected for the cleaning; my prowess as a seamstress is 
limited. 

I have wedged into some mighty crowded buses in my day, but never 
into the jam which filled this small bus out to Lai Be Na (Village Within 
the Forest). As the last person squeezed in I found myself clutching my 
camera bag with one hand and grasping the bar along the ceiling with the 
other. A basket of cabbages knocked my knees inward behind and twenty 
people's feet pushed my toes in front. Just before me was a woman in 
worse straits than I. She had a baby several months old on her back and 
a child around two in her arms. 

The women who were lucky enough to have seats offered to take the 
two-year-old on their laps, but he bawled lustily whenever it was tried. 
So the women took my bag on their laps and with my free arm I tried 
to help the woman's thin arm to hold that cantankerous child. The baby 
on her back, feeling neglected, put himself in the limelight by pulling 
his mother's hair and tugging at her ears. This was no fun, so he flung 
his head back and stared into my face. Good! He gurgled and put up one 
grimy hand to paw all over my face. Then he stuffed his fingers into my 
mouth. This was excitingl Baby reached up quickly and jerked my glasses. 
They were firmly anchored, thanks be to God and the religious habit. 

Meanwhile the bus swayed from side to side, slid over tremulous bridges 
and grazed water-soaked rice fields. We passed many people waving for 
us to stop but the driver called out, "Get the four o'clock bus. We're full!" 
Believe me, when a driver in Taiwan says the bus is full, it is! 

The bride-to-be was thrilled with the dress. She would have had to rent 
a gown otherwise. It fitted perfectly, except for the length. Her mother 
and assorted aunts and cousins set to work. They stood her on a bench 
and with mouthfuls of pins turned up the hem. 

I went over to the chapel only a few doors away and swept the floor. 
Father comes out here once a week to say Mass. The bride's sister and 
brother came along to help. Christianity is so new in this village that there 
had never been a wedding in chapel before. The bride's family had been 
baptized only six months before; the groom's a year earlier. 

Next to the chapel was the groom's house. Here the body of the grand- 
mother lay. She had died a pagan, although she was a very kindly woman. 



BOUND FEET AND AN UNBOUND MIND 207 

Her son, the groom's father, took us to see the huge coffin. It was sealed 
with bright blue plastic tape, three inches wide. A plate of rice was of- 
fered to the matriarch's spirit and joss burned steadily. Outside the 
house, tables were spread for the old lady's funeral scheduled for late 
the next morning, after the wedding. A sort of shabby canvas was draped 
over bamboo poles to shield guests from the sun. The groom's father 
had his hands full. Besides preparing for his mother's funeral, he was 
busy about his son's wedding. A carpenter, he was working on saw horses 
making wall boards when we came. "These are for my son's matrimonial 
room/* he said. Then he showed us the special place in the house re- 
served for the new couple, a part screened off from the general large 
room of the house. 

We hired a "haya," to attend the wedding next morning. "Haya" is 
pronounced as Bostonians pronounce "hire," and that's what it means, 
a "hired car," an English word transmitted through Japanese into Taiwa- 
nese. You soon find that haya drivers are not being especially polite when 
they leap from their seats to open all doors as soon as the car stops. It's 
a necessity; there is no hardware that works to open doors or windows in 
these cars. Ancient jalopies, turned in for ten dollars or so in the States, 
are shipped over to Taiwan to serve as taxis. The upholstery is in rib- 
bons, the springs long dead, the windows cracked or missing, the paint 
no more. But they are elegant equipages in Taiwan. 

Four of us Sisters, plus dusters, brooms, several vases and flowers for 
the altar, drove out in the haya. It was no more than one hundred feet 
from the bride's house to the chapel, but Sister offered the bridal couple 
the use of the haya to drive to their wedding. They were delighted. The 
bride stepped into it as Cinderella mounted her pumpkin coach, and at 
the end of the short ride she emerged glowing with pride, 

It was the very first Catholic wedding anybody in that chapel had seen. 
The men sat on one side; the women on the othen Kerosene lamps lit 
the scene since there is no electricity in town. Before the Mass, the catechist 
coached the people on what to do. Then he became altar boy for the Mass. 
Once he flew down the aisle in surplice and stole to bring a chair from 
the confessional so that Father could sit down during the Gloria. He 
surely earned his salary that day. For him, too, it was a culmination of 
many months of work. With the first couple united in the Sacrament of 
Matrimony, he knew this group of converts started on the way to becom- 
ing a parish of stable Catholics. 

From Poli to Changhua is not long in mileage, but several centuries in 
time. For Changhua is the "Dispensing Culture Place"; it has much more 
of old China about it. At Changhua I met Lim Sui Sam, a great lady. 

She is utterly dignified even when sitting on the cross bar of a bicycle 
with her bound feet sticking straight out into traffic. Thus she rides to 



208 TAIWAN 

Mass on Sundays, with her daughter Margaret Theresa pedaling. Bound 
feet make it impossible for her to walk from their house in the country. 
Lim Sui Sam makes a procession out of what could be a humiliating ex- 
perience. I think the angels go before the mother and daughter, like 
motorcycle police, clearing a way for them in Taiwan's hectic roadlife. 

The great lady was born seventy years ago at Lu Kong (Deer Harbor), 
a rich town of artisans, specialists in idols and temple gods. The town is 
noted for carving and gold leaf work. At five years of age, little Lim 
Sui Sain stretched out her feet and they were bound tight in long bands 
which twisted the toes under the instep. Her feet hurt, of course, and she 
grew up hobbling on bound feet as a well-born Chinese lady should, but 
all the poorer girls in town envied her. 

She married welL It's on record that her husband rode a horse. Certainly 
his family owned most of the land around Changhua. He rode the horse 
to supervise his vast estates. They had six sons and a daughter. Most of 
them did well. The eldest son is a Government official, the second is a 
doctor. The third died of his intensive studies; his memory is sacred in 
this scholarly family. The fourth son keeps the rice fields; the fifth is the 
black sheep; his wife left town and he disintegrated. The sixth is in the 
Department of Fisheries. 

The daughter too promised well. She was good in school and outstand- 
ing in athletics, which the Japanese regime emphasized. But one day she 
threw her hip out of joint. She became twisted and it was agony to walk. 
They consulted many Chinese doctors, but nothing could be done. On 
top of that misfortune, the father died. Then, the Chinese Nationalists 
took over the island and declared the Land Distribution of 1950. In the 
shuffle, the family lost most of their property. 

Still they lived in the big ancestral home with three wide wings of 
stone and a beautiful moon gate at the entrance. Across this gate was the 
family motto, "The money and goods we own must be used for all man- 
kind/' Lim Sui Sam regretted her losses no doubt, but she did not pine 
over them. She was well loved in the neighborhood. A strict Buddhist, she 
ate no meat nor animal products butter, cheese, milk, etc. "She lived on 
vegetables/' everyone told us. 

The crooked daughter, Jade Flower, went to Sister Antonia Maria's 
clinic about six years ago. Sister was able to put her hip back into the 
socket correctly. She walked, she leaped, she rode a bicycle! She invited 
all the Sisters out to her home and spread a picnic for them. She was 
then, and still is, manager for the entire estate, overseeing the workers, 
collecting rents and so on. Lim Sui Sam was the soul of Chinese hospitality 
to the strangely-garbed American women, guests of her daughter. 

Jade Flower became interested in the Faith. A few others in that town 
thought they would like to study, too. Lim Sui Sam offered a room in her 



BOUND FEET AND AN UNBOUND MIND 209 

big house as a doctrine hall. Then the fun began. People started stoning 
the house. They said to Jade Flower, "Who are you, a young person and 
only a woman, to introduce a new religion into our village?" The per- 
secution never fazed either of them. We withdrew after a few months 
lest they suffer more on our account. Jade Flower went on and was bap- 
tized Margaret Theresa in 1959. Her mother found it hard to give up her 
beautiful Buddhist shrine, treasured for so many years. But a year later, 
she too was baptized. They never fail to appear on Sundays for Mass; the 
crippled girl pedals her dignified mother along the crowded streets to 
church. 

If ever we put out a compilation of Valiant Women, Sister Antonia 
Maria is going to be near the top of the list. Anyone who has seen the 
places where she has put in her twenty-three years in China and Taiwan, 
would start canonization proceedings. As a medical doctor, I suppose she 
has seen more "interesting diseases" and cured more "impossible cases" 
than a hundred practitioners in her native Massachusetts. 

Jade Flower is only one of hundreds she can tell about. And yet it has 
all been done in little makeshift buildings, enlarged with lean-tos and, on 
occasion, expanding to under the nearest tree. Over twenty years I have 
seen her in Kweilin, Hong Kong and several places in Taiwan. The 
pattern of "Do the best you can with what you have," has never failed. 

On a Saturday in Changhua, we saw her at work in the amalgamation 
of lean-tos she used as a clinic for a waiting line of about one hundred and 
fifty patients a day. She is working on a hookworm project, the scourge of 
this region. The parasite enters the body when the farmer is crawling 
on hands and knees in his rice field. As a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, 
Sister was awarded the Mary P. Dole Fellowship to work on the project. 
She can study the pest well and perhaps will be able to help remove this 
one single factor which accounts for so much of Taiwan's physical trou- 
bles. 

,On Sunday, Sister's new clinic was dedicated. Not quite finished, of 
course (nothing is ever perfectly ready for us!), the new clinic rises amid 
rice paddies. Sister Antonia Maria beamed all afternoon, "This is the 
laboratory; this is the treatment room. People await their turn here, pro- 
tected from wind and rain. My examining room is here; this will be a 
consultation room. Over here is the X-ray room, ready for when we get 
the X-ray." Marvelous, wonderful, top-notch! 

On Monday I visited her in her glory. She seemed a bit saddened. 'Tin 
lonesome," she admitted. "I'm so far away from the people." She is so 
used to working with the patients breathing down her neck, that she 
can't appreciate peace and quiet yet. 

Another valiant soul in Taiwan is Brother Albert. For forty years, his 
good strong buildings have delighted eye and body in China and now in 



210 TAIWAN 

Taiwan. Probably, the Communists in Red China today are rubbing their 
hands together in glee when they take over another o Brother Albert's 
mission buildings. 

Brother Albert's modus operandi is simple. He builds himself a little 
hermitage and stays with the job day and night. Every shovelful of sand, 
every bolt and screw is put in right, or it comes out again. Vital statistics 
are simple: born and brought up in Switzerland, he came to America, 
entered Mary knoll in 1917 and came out to China in 1921. Now and then 
he visits his family in Switzerland but he has not been back to the States 
in twenty years. 

In his small room at Pou Tau he has his drawing board at the end of 
his bed and plans for new buildings are thumbtacked onto it. When we 
saw him, his left arm was still paralyzed from a stroke six months before. 
He kept muttering "Patience!" because it fell helpless at his side as he 
sat on his bed. 

"It won't even hold my papers down," he complained to Sister Antonia 
Maria. 

"Never mind, Brother/* she told him. "Remember how you were when 
this first happened." He grumbled but had to admit that life had come 
back to his legs and no doubt the arm would come along in time, too. 

But so much to do, so many churches to be built, so many rectories, 
clinics, schools, converts! With the Church "bustin' out all over/' it 
was hard for Brother to keep to one room with only a drawing board to 
vent his creative genius on. 

The four thousand miles of the Taichung Prefecture (jam-packed with 
mountains) had, in 1951, only three priests and four thousand Catholics. 
Dominicans from Fukien had done magnificent pioneering work here, 
but many places were visited only once a year. Now, ten years later, 
Maryknoll has fifty-five priests and three brothers at work. The four 
thousand have expanded to twenty eight thousand. Besides us from 
Maryknoll other Sisters have pitched in. Providence Sisters from St. 
Mary-of-the- Woods in Indiana came here and rented a house. In ten 
years they had Providence English College with three hundred and seventy 
five students from all over the island in a three-year college course. The 
set-up is impressive, with dormitories, classroom buildings, auditorium, 
convent and a brand new library of substantial stone. At work in the 
Prefecture are Taiwanese Sisters, too, and Mandarin-speaking Sisters, 
refugees from Mukden, Manchuria, Also, a new community drawn from 
the locality who are being trained by Mercy Sisters from Hungary. And 
away out in the rice fields, is a Chinese house where live the Little 
Brothers of St. John the Baptist, a contemplative order founded in China 
by Father Vincent Lebbe of blessed memory. Recently, the Holy Father 
sent them a candle as "the most austere religious order on the island of 



BOUND FEET AND AN UNBOUND MIND 211 

Taiwan/' But austerities certainly don't deter avid postulants. The Little 
Brothers have growing pains all over. 

Everywhere in Taiwan there is a sense of urgency, a "Let's live while 
we can" point of view. Taipei especially seemed a city not sure of tomor- 
row. It's a drab place, definitely a capital-in-exile, with neither the ancient 
beauty of China nor the bright commercialism of Japan. It's a city hang- 
ing in the balance. Something's bound to happen sooner or later to change 
its status. If the Reds leave mainland China, the capital will shift back 
there; if the Reds take over Taiwan, Taipei will be an outpost of China 
again. Every day in Taipei, I was reminded of Manila during the three 
long years of Japanese occupation in World War II when the question 
palpitated in the very air: Are the Americans coming back or aren't they? 

While Free China waits for the answer, children are growing up. Our 
work in Taipei is with university students; certainly some are brilliant. 
For Sister Ann Mary teaches English in both the National Taiwan Uni- 
versity and the Taiwan Normal University. Both of these have highest 
ratings. In 1961, for instance, thirty thousand high school graduates took 
examinations to fill some ten thousand University freshman places. Of 
these, the fifteen hundred best will be permitted to attend National 
Taiwan; the high school graduate has one chance in two hundred of 
"placing" at this great university where eight thousand students are 
enrolled. A small percentage of the rest will go to Taiwan Normal. About 
one-fourth of these crack troops of Free China's intelligentsia are women. 

Campuses are in the city behind high walls, but they are not the rolling 
green lawns we imagine. Instead, as befits the most densely populated 
country in Asia, the lawns have yielded to vegetable gardens and minia- 
ture rice fields. Experimental agriculture is a most popular course at the 
University. Classrooms are shabby for the most part; halls are unswept; 
windows bleak and bleary. But the education the students get seems to 
be top-notch. And, after all, that's what they come for. Perhaps as a 
reaction to Communism, perhaps as a flash of enlightenment, perhaps as 
both and for other reasons as well, University students account for more 
than half the conversions to Catholicism in Taiwan. There are well over 
one thousand members o the Catholic Students Association at these two 
great universities. 

Certainly, there are no rah-rah boys on campus. Life is too serious for 
them and for their country. All they have to do to get settled down to the 
stern business of life is to walk outside that high walL There they will 
see immense bulletin boards on which the city's newspapers are posted 
under glass for all the world to see. The headlines there are guaranteed 
to make any Chinese young man resolve with grim determination to do 
his best to make Free China stay free. 



KOREA 




PUSAN 



KOREA 



18 )J Elizabeth, Eulalia, Ephrem 
and Assorted Others 



THERE may be, somewhere, a person who can stay un- 
touched by the Korean people. If there is, I don't want to meet him. No, 
not ever. 

The Land of Morning Calm has been anything but calm for the past 
sixty years. And there is more of mourning there than of morning. Some- 
times it must seem to Koreans that black night has closed in. Their little 
peninsula has been conquered, exploited, mowed down by tougher neigh- 
bors and occupied by whoever feels like sitting on it. The African 
proverb says: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Korea has 
furnished the grass for a good many years now. But according to a 
Chinese proverb: Have patience grass soon becomes milk. 

Koreans have learned patience. Rice fields, bare mountains, donkeys 
and carts, men in white and women in dainty pastel colors you can't 
imagine anything more peaceful. Barley grows in shaggy rows; rice seed- 
lings spread like velvet; wheat waves in greenness. Far in the distance, 
barren hills rim the skyline and new thatch on village roofs dots the 
slopes. Orchards are in bloom apples and pears. Here and there children 
in gay colors spread over the fields on school picnics. Pink, yellow, lavender 
and light green, the women's dresses and parasols contrast nicely with 
the white gowns of men, walking along the roads, or treading the narrow 
rice paddies. The farmer trails his ox, with the good earth breaking before 
the plow as the sea parts before a ship. Work is slow, not to say pre- 
historic. To repair a rice paddy dike, three men man one shovel; #1 
pushes on the handle, #2 and #3 pull strings attached to the shovel blade 
to lift the dirt and toss it on top of the dike. 

It's hard to believe that thirty-three thousand American boys died here 
less than ten years ago. The countryside tells you nothing. But talk to 
those three men at the shovel; chat with the man with the ox; stop for a 
moment the dainty-colored Korean woman who hurries along the road 
with a jug on her head. Each has a sad story to telL 

Maryknoll Sisters in Korea staff two dispensaries one in a country 

215 



216 KOREA 

town, Chong Pyong in central Korea; the other at Pusan, the big port city 
at the south. Country or city, the work is endless. 

You should see the line-up on the roadway in front o the small one- 
story brick clinic at Chong Pyong any day of the week and Sundays as 
well. The favorite ambulance is a flat platform slung between two bicycle 
wheels. The patient lies on the floor; somebody in the family pushes it. 
They jolt along the roads for miles. Three or four very sick people on 
such carts are always waiting in the line, besides the mothers carrying 
babies, and young children or old people who can't afford a cart. At least 
a hundred patients every morning. What hurts is that they can't all be 
cared for. Some must turn away to return tomorrow. It is Sister Ann 
Patricia's heart-breaking job to select those who need care most. 

Sister Maria Corazon, M.D., is an old hand at relieving misery. A 
Filipina with flashing smile and quick dark eyes, she hails from the broad 
plateaus of northern Luzon. She set her heart on being a doctor and made 
her way through the University of the Philippines in Manila. Then she 
decided to be a Maryknoll Sister as well. So she came to the States. For 
twenty-three years now, those quick, experienced eyes have been sizing up 
the ravages of disease as one after another miserable patient comes to her 
examining table. In interior China, in Hong Kong, in Macao and now 
in Korea, she has seen more war-victims than one would care to think 
about. Not the battle casualties, but the innocent bystanders. I stood 
beside her at Chong Pyong as she examined a bundle of rags which en- 
closed a six-month-old baby. The mother had died; Pok Dong, aged 
twelve, brought his baby brother to the clinic practically every day. For 
a wastrel of less than ten pounds at five months, Kyo Chul wasn't doing 
so badly now. Sister Maria Corazon looked over his tiny frame and nodded 
her congratulations to Pok Dong. "Very good," she commented. "You've 
done well. Now that the worst is over" and she started picking little 
grey lice off the bundle of rags as she said this "you'll have to start 
cleaning him up. That's the next job; he gets a bath in good hot water 
with plenty of soap, today. Sister will give you the soap together with 
the milk feedings. See you tomorrowl" Pok Dong squared his shoulders 
and almost saluted. He picked up his charge and left with a big job to do. 

Chong Pyong is really in the country! The people are what the books 
call "unspoiled/* We saw that one day when we went out to a village in 
Father Coffey's "sort-of" station wagon meaning that it is really a panel 
truck with two wooden benches to accommodate passengers. (Accom- 
modate isn't quite the right word, either.) Three of us Sisters were on one 
bench talking about old friends and old times as Sisters always do; we 
couldn't see the passing countryside, anyway. Then we stopped and Father 
came around to open the door in the back. Old II Ok was walking to town 
and Father had offered her a ride. II Ok was overjoyed. She had never 



ELIZABETH, EULALIA, EPHREM AND ASSORTED OTHERS 217 

ridden in a car, let alone a handsome truck. She stood a little hesitant at 
the back door; then, like any polite Korean, she stepped out of her shoes 
and entered the compartment with us. It looked like a house to her. 
Only six miles later did she glance out over the driver's shoulder and 
realize that she was moving. A cry of anguish brought us all to a halt. "My 
shoes!" she moaned. We turned back, of course, and there were her shoes 
right in the middle of the road where she had stepped out of them. 

In talking about medical work, one is apt to slip into a morass of 
statistics numbers, cases, types of disease, laboratory tests, home visits. 
My mother once complained as she lay in a hospital bed with a pin 
through her knee and her leg up to the ceiling in traction, "In this place 
I am only a compound fracture of the tibia/* Because the physical need 
is so urgent, the broad humanities sometimes have to take a back seat. 
In mission clinics such as Maryknoll Sisters have in so many parts of the 
world, there is little danger of over-specialization. We must all be, more 
or less, general practitioners using the latest techniques often with im- 
provised equipment. It makes for the simple direct approach; it makes 
for a concept of the whole person. 

Apropos of this, in Chong Pyong, I helped a queen die like a queen. 
Queen Elizabeth she was, too. Sister Edith Marie took me sliding down 
the clay hills and over the slippery rice paddy paths to where Elizabeth 
was panting on the vestibule of heaven. 

"Marita came this morning before Mass to say that Elizabeth had died 
during the night," she called over her shoulder. "But just when I had 
made arrangements for the funeral she came back to say that Elizabeth 
wasn't really dead yet. So I don't know what shape we will find her in." 

The afternoon sun slanted into my eyes; I had all I could do to keep 
up with the fleet-footed nurse. I said nothing in reply but thought, "Ten 
to one she's dead by now." 

Sister thought so too at first when we opened the paper-thin door of 
the mud brick room, barely five feet high, which had been built on to 
Bernadette's hut. It was one of ten or twelve houses clustering on a patch 
of dry land set in the middle of flooded rice fields. Elizabeth's black tousled 
hair was up against one wall; her feet against the opposite wall. That's 
how tiny the room was. The old women and children the only ones left 
in the village on such a good working day crowded around that small 
lean-to. Sister touched the waxy cheek, lifted her eyelids, parted her lips 
and felt under the quilt for her heart. 

"She's still breathing," she said, "but the medicine Bernadette gave her 
this morning is still in her mouth. She can't last long." 

She called her, "Elizabeth, Elizabeth! It's the Sunyo. Your friends are 
here/' But she could not make connections. The hands, with black rims 
around the nails, hard and chapped, were stiff. 



218 KOREA 

As Sister Edith Marie worked at cleaning her patient, she told me the 
Queen's story. Just before Christmas, 1960, Elizabeth came to the clinic 
at Chong Pyong, walking four miles from Mugi Village (Beyond Com- 
parison Town). Sister Corazon diagnosed cancer of the uterus. She came 
several times for treatment; then, the last time, she asked for Baptism. 
Although she was a second wife, she was obviously a terminal case and her 
husband knew it. Baptism was given and she went away very happy 
indeed. 

She walked home that evening to Beyond Comparison Town. She 
knocked at the door of her home. The husband and wife # i had had a 
conference; they realized that Elizabeth would be a burden from then on. 
So they told her to get going and stay gone. It was late December at the 
37th parallel such as southern Missouri but she slept that night under 
a tree. 

Next morning she had a showdown. "I'll take my two daughters/' she 
said. They were ten and eleven, children of her first husband, killed in 
the Korean War. They were freely given her. 

"I'll take my things, too," she said. 

"What things?" 

"My extra skirt, the white rayon one. My two towels. My winter jacket. 
My comforter. My chopsticks and spoons." She tore around the room grab- 
bing them up as she spoke. There were more than twenty pairs of chop- 
sticks and many long-handled spoons. In past days of glory, Elizabeth 
had operated a tea shop. A nice one, too. 

The two girls helped her stow the stuff into a compact bundle. She 
lifted it on her head and walked out. Straight to an orphanage. "I'm 
dying," she told the superintendent. "Take my children." She would not 
stay herself. 

Where to go? In Chong Pyong, the homeless always go to the railroad 
station. At night they let you spread your quilt on the floor. Elizabeth 
selected a corner and set up housekeeping. During the day, she went out 
begging food. But she became steadily weaker, hemorrhaging constantly. 

Then she struck up a friendship with Pyong II. He was just a tramp 
himself, but he had a shack down against the railroad embankment. 
Pyong II took Elizabeth off to his shack one day when she was too weak 
to get up. He was goodhearted. He kept her for a month, and one day 
he carried her on his back to our clinic. That's how we had contact with 
her after a space of three months or so since her last visit. 

Sister Edith took her on as a patient for house calls. Elizabeth then 
earned her title of Queen; she craved the nice things she had had once; 
how she hated drabnessl Sister always brought food as well as medicine, 
and fed her lying there on the quilt unable even to sit up. Once she 



ELIZABETH, EULALIA, EPHREM AND ASSORTED OTHERS 219 

brought some rice. Elizabeth took a spoonful. Then she put up her hand 
protesting at a second spoonful. 

"Who cooked that rice?" the Queen asked. 

"Why? What's wrong with it?" 

"Did you American Sisters cook that rice?" 

"No, it was a Korean woman. One of the Catholic women of the 
parish did it for you." 

Elizabeth sighed. "Ah, she should know better! She didn't put enough 
salt into it." 

The old tramp, Pyong II, was kind, even self-sacrificing. But his lan- 
guage was rough, his manners uncouth. Eventually, Elizabeth's frayed 
nerves added too much suffering to her worn-out frame. One day, Sister 
Edith Marie found her face set and her body rigid. "I can't stay here," 
she stated. "He doesn't understand. I must have a woman take care of 
me." 

Sister Edith Marie went house hunting. It isn't easy in any country to 
find someone willing to take in a dying woman who needs a lot of care. 
But Bernadette, a widow, agreed. 

"You may find things hard there," Sister told the Queen. "Bernadette 
is a good woman and kind. But she is not educated as you are. Sometimes 
she may say things that seem, rough to you." 

"Oh, I don't mind now," Elizabeth said. "I've lived two lives. I've been 
rich and now I'm so poor." Silence for a time. 

"Sister?" 

"Yes, Elizabeth?" 

"I'll try, Sister. Ill try to be patient at last." 

Eather Coffey brought Elizabeth in his jeep as far as the jeep could 
go. Then a man carried her across the rice fields. Sister followed with the 
quilt, the bundle and the box of chopsticks and spoons. 

Bernadette had three children and a house. She did her best to earn 
the small money she got for taking care of Elizabeth. But Christian charity 
urged her to do more. Her house had only two rooms; she gave the tiny 
one to Elizabeth, and she and the three children crowded into the other. 
Every day at crack of dawn, she went out to work in the fields. Before she 
did, she fixed up Elizabeth, to make her comfortable for the day. Marita, 
her oldest, stayed close by all day to be of help should the patient call. 

So! This seemed the end. I knelt just outside that small door. The 
neighbors knelt too; the children crouched quietly. We said a rosary in 
Korean. I confess my mind was not on it. I was thinking of the people, 
all over the world, dying at that moment while friends said the rosary in 
French, Spanish, Quechua, Kiswahili, Italian, Tagalog, Hakka and Hoklo, 
Dutch, Finnish, and the rarer Equimaux dialects. Elizabeth was not the 



220 KOREA 

only one edging close to those eternal gates. I hoped that our Korean 
rosary would spread over the world and help them all; that their rosaries 
would ease Elizabeth's way. The Church mothers them all. 

There was just the slightest breath as we finished. Sister bent over. 
Yes, she had gone. Sister rose and took a small black lacquer box from the 
bare shelf over Elizabeth's head. In it were her identification papers and 
a snapshot. Two little girls. 

"Her children," Sister said. "That was her only regret these last few 
days. Yesterday she said, 'They will never know if their mother is alive 
or dead/ I promised to tell them." 

She opened her nurse's bag to put the papers in. 

"Oh, I forgot!" She took out a huge pear. "Marita, do you want to 
have this for yourself and your brothers?" Marita needed no second 
invitation. 

"I always bring Elizabeth a pear," Sister explained. "She liked them so. 
She told me why, once. It's because they're expensive. A queen to the end, 
she was." 

We left the village, passed over the spiderweb of dikes over the rice 
paddies, waved good-bye to the women and children and began scram- 
bling up the rocky path to Chong Pyong mission. The Queen is dead; the 
Queen lives forever! 

And, just to show you that tragedy and comedy stalk around together 
like twins in Korea, as elsewhere, it was that night I met Eulalia. You see, 
Queen of the Martyrs parish in Chong Pyong put on a program to wel- 
come the "No. i Sunyo," meaning Mother Mary Colman. But even if 
someone lesser had come or even if nobody had come, we would have had 
a program. Eulalia was ripe for one. 

The first hint that this was to be a really big affair, however, was this: 
Jacobe, the parish handy man, repaired the steps to the parish hall. That 
is, he tacked a board under the sagging second step and even went so far 
as to put a brand new board over the third step which has been missing 
for months ever since the night last winter when somebody in town 
needed fuel for his stove more than the parish needed that third step. 

The next hint was that the performers put on their lipstick around 4 
in the afternoon, even though curtain time was set for 7:30 Korean time, 
which isn't at all what American watches register. This meant that the 
performers ate no Evening Rice lest the lipstick be smeared. 

At 7:30 when will we ever learn? we Sisters made an entry and found 
things in turmoil. So we backed out again and stayed looking at the re- 
mains of the sunset until we got the high sign to re-enter. The parish hall 
was once the church. The rough floor boards have been smoothed by wear. 
Wicker chairs were set out for the Fathers and Sisters and the Honorable 
Catechist. On the right was Ladies' Row; on the left the Gentlemen's 



ELIZABETH, EULAJLIA, EPHREM AND ASSORTED OTHERS 221 

line-up. They all sat on their heels. The children toddled back and forth 
filling in the middle with a shifting population. One took a flying leap 
to Mother's lap and stayed there for the evening. 

The Honorable Catechist stood up in his stocking feet and read a long 
scroll, unrolling it as he went along until it fell like broad ticker tape 
in a heap beside him. Then he bowed, rolled it all up again and presented 
it to Mother. A girl in lovely Korean dress brought a bouquet to present to 
Mother. She shook her head several times to make her long black braid 
twitch from side to side. 

"She seems proud of that pigtail," I commented. 

"She ought to be!" said Sister Corazon. "She rented it for this occa- 
sion. See? She has braided her own short hair into it to keep it secure." 

Preliminaries over, the performance began. The curtain had an odd 
design. Then I recognized it. The whole thing was made of flour sacks 
sewed together. The writing was upside down: 

STOOH ON asn 

vonranv 10 saxvxs aaxiMn 3HX 
mx AS 



Suddenly a small boy ran across the room pulling the curtain aside. 
The stage stood revealed and we were off. Drills and dances, duets and 
solos. A shabby young man sang about How Bends the Willow; a robust 
girl bent our ears back with O Susanna, Don't You Cry translated into 
Korean. Every now and then Sister murmured, pointing out some moppet, 
"That's Eulalia's grandchild." After the fifteenth grandchild had jerked 
a quick bow and run off stage, I asked, 

"For Heaven's sake, who's Eulalia?" 

"She's that old lady in the fur-lined jacket, clapping her hands like mad 
over there. She's dying to be asked to perform herself/' 

Sure enough, she was asked to sing a song with Dolorosa, about her 
own age. Much giggling, much coaxing, far too much protest to fool any- 
body. Then she permitted herself to be lifted to her feet and the two old 
ladies stood up to perform. 

Dolorosa was no match for Eulalia. She sang mildly, but not the same 
song nor the same key as Eulalia. She began to feel outdone and snickered. 
Then she succumbed to the giggles entirely and sat down. Eulalia carried 
on alone. During the song, she felt the impulse to do a wee bit of dance. 
That went over well; she took on new and daring steps. They too got 
applause and Eulalia was off for the evening. Once she crumpled and 
started to retire to her place among the women on the floor, but the 
intoxication of a multitude's approval roused her to her feet again. A 



222 KOREA 

high pitched song, made up on the spur of the moment, went with the 
dance. How she ever had breath enough to do both is beyond me. Only 
when the boy raced across the room with the curtain, shutting her off from 
the admiring public, did she subside. 

I glanced at the line-up of men watching this old woman and enjoying 
her so. Not in any sneering fashion, but to applaud a good job well done. 
There was Anton, a soldier home for a few days from patrolling North 
Korea at the 38th Parallel. And Joseph, the clinic's Laboratory Tech- 
nician, better educated by far than most of Chong Pyong. And a lad who 
calls himself in new-found English, "College John," because he is the 
only young fellow in town who ever went to college. He came up to 
Mother and introduced himself in English. "Good evening, Mother. I 
am College John. I would like to strike up with you a Long-Lasting 
Friendship. It is a Beautiful Evening; do you not think so?" 

The Honorable Catechist, very dignified in spotless light grey coat 
and pantaloons, restrained himself to very moderate applause during the 
performances. But at the program's end, he advanced to the middle of 
the room, laid aside his high horsehair hat denoting the scholar, and led 
the assembled multitude in a rousing Banzai! in triplicate for Mother. 

And then, there was Ephrem. In his late 70% pretty far gone with 
tuberculosis, he came to the clinic from quite a distant town about a 
year ago. He was well-educated and keen of mind. "Why do you do these 
things for us? Why don't you stay in the Beautiful Country, America?" 
he asked. Of course he got a catechism to read and several books. "Thank 
you! Thank you!" and off he went. 

A year later he came back. I saw him on the bench, an old scholar with 
quiet dignity, a radiant face and short cropped white hair. No, he didn't 
want any medicine. Not even an aspirin. He wanted to go to Confession, 
that was all. He had read practically memorized the little book. He 
loved this God of Mercy Who was so anxious to forgive his past misdeeds. 
And now that he felt stronger, he came to be forgiven. He had written 
down the prayer before Confession on a small piece of paper and there 
he sat memorizing the words as nervous and excited as a child. 

Sister Carol has stopped by to visit Ephrem since then. His family is 
just as friendly; even the dog accepted her without a yelp. Most unusual 
in Korean dogs. Ephrem is all apostolic fire. He tried to coax his wife to 
go out and preach this new doctrine to their neighbors, but she, a shy 
old woman without a tooth in her head, is not the St. Paul her husband 
is. "I won't live long," says Ephrem, "but I hope to live long enough to 
bring my whole village to the God of Love. Then I can rest in peace." 

It was delicious in Chong Pyong. Nevertheless, we were always conscious 
that when three guests step in the front door of a compact convent, three 
little mission Sisters must set up beds in the doghouse or under the stairs. 



ELIZABETH, EULALIA, EPHREM AND ASSORTED OTHERS 223 

But they seem to have a good time doing it. There's no protest from any 
of them, saints that they are, not even at the fantastic methods they must 
use to take a bath. Someday, when I need a Ph.D. to tack behind my name, 
I'll write a masterly thesis on "Baths of the World, and How They Are 
Taken." Chong Pyong has, in a space no bigger than the bottom of a 
good-sized bathtub, a wood burning stove and a pile of fuel beside it, a 
fifty-gallon oil drum filled with cold water, a crock about three feet high 
embedded in cement with a fire roaring under it, a shower curtain, several 
dippers, assorted hooks for hanging clothes and a bench. There is just 
room left for a very slender bather. 

We liked to see smiling faces at our departure, so Mother or I managed 
to do something at each mission to make the parting easier. If not posi- 
tively joyful. In Ceylon I broke one of their two kerosene lamps; in 
Hong Kong, Mother dropped twenty or so dress hangers on the floor at 
2 A.M. In Africa, it was beet juice spilled on the tablecloth. The Sisters 
saw us off with radiant faces. I forget just what we did at Chong Pyong 
but the jubilation at the railroad station was unforgettable. It must have 
been something pretty terrible to make them so happy to see us off. 

The one-hundred-fifty-mile trip south to Pusan was eventful too. It 
started out mildly enough, with the train slipping through terrain that 
rivaled a travel poster. All of a sudden from the seat behind us came 
shouts, yells, slaps, grunts and scuffling. A fight. And a good one too 
between two men. Thief! Blackguard! Robber! Villain! He stole my 
money! Liar! and that most awful of insults, Turtle! There was no slug- 
ging with fists. Rather, each tried successfully to slap the other's face. 

By the time I looked around, the Complainant had the Defendant by 
his very handsome necktie. He clutched the poor fellow around the neck 
pulling the tie tighter and tighter. Trainmen hurried down the aisle. 
Tchl Teh! Such goings on! This sort of thing happened in Third Class 
coaches, but never in Second. 

They soon had them separated. They hustled the Accused into a small 
space at the end of the coach where the switch boxes and other para- 
phernalia were installed. While the car reverberated with shouts from 
Money Loser, I could see that the trainmen had the Suspect pretty well 
pulled apart, searching him. He did look like a City Slicker young, 
impeccably dressed, with wavy hair and Injured Innocence all over his 
face. However, nothing was found on him. They took away his identi- 
fication card without which no Korean travels abroad, just to insure his 
staying aboard for further investigation. 

Then the man who seemed to be the chief trainman came over to 
Sister Augusta with the identification card, written on one side in Korean 
and the other in English. It was odd, indeed. The Korean side identified 
him as Kim Chyong; the English one as J. K. Chung. The head trainman 



224 KOREA 

straightened in puzzlement. As he did, I saw his armband giving his official 
position. On it was written in English letters: JANITOR. 

While the Janitor was still scratching his head, the Prisoner-at-the-Bar 
had hopped off the train and was gone. "What will he do without an 
Identification Card?" I asked. "Don't worry. He probably has six others 
he can use," Sister said. 

The incident started a little conversation between the Janitor and 
Sister Augusta. It began with the usual question: 

"How old are you?" said the Janitor. 

"Why don't you guess?" Sister countered. 

He thought a while. "I would say, 35." 

"Thank you very much indeed!" Sister bowed. 

"I am 35 and my wife is 32." 

"Yes?" 

"We have three sons and a girl." 

"Very good indeed. I congratulate you both." The preliminaries over, 
he got down to business. 

"Were you brought up to be a nun, as our Buddhist nuns are, or did 
you choose the life yourself?" 

Sister sighed. She has been through this so often she has a stock reply. 
"Sit down and I'll tell you all about it." They were off for a half-hour's 
Korean conversation. It ended with his handing her his business card 
and asking if he might bring his 32-year-old wife to visit the 35-year-old 
Sunyo. Sister Augusta, who bade farewell to 35 some years ago, graciously 
acceded. 

I don't know if they ever arrived, for as soon as we landed in Pusan, we 
were embroiled in so many different activities all going on in the same 
compound, that a loo-megaton bomb could have gone off at one end of 
it and I would never have been the wiser. The compound itself stands 
practically upright against a hillside. Any rocks or stones started from the 
top make a fine splash as they hit the muddy street at the base. As do any 
children, peddlers, garbage cans, small carts, bicycles with or without 
riders and shacks with or without inhabitants that get a push to start them 
downhill. 

The only access to this hill is Harmony Alley. At the bottom it is 
nearly ten feet wide but it slims to about six inches away up in the heights 
above the city. I know. Sister Dolores and I followed Harmony Alley to 
its logical conclusion standing on a ledge of thin air overlooking Pusan's 
magnificent harbor. Our Maryknoll Sisters' Clinic was directly below. One 
false step and we would have landed on our own dinner table, through the 
roof. 

My room faced Harmony Alley. Looking out the window was a study 
in Korean types. I could see myself an International Scientist looking 



ELIZABETH, EULALIA, EPHREM AND ASSORTED OTHERS 225 

through my microscope at a laboratory slide of Korea's blood stream. I 
should have come away with something very profound about the funda- 
mental psychology of the Korean people, but I found every last one of 
them an individual. To tell the truth, I have a hunch that the funda- 
mental Korean isn't much different from the fundamental anything else. 

My window faced the mid-section of a Z-curve on Harmony Alley, and 
since the whole street is really a roller-coaster slide, people came around 
the upper bend as if catapulted into view. They half ran, half slid down 
the mid-section and twirled out of sight where the alley took a sharp 
left turn directly under my window. Going up was another matter. This 
was a steady climb. If heavily burdened and they all were a rest be- 
neath my window was a "must." 

It was around 8 A.M. The first to come around the upper bend was an 
old man in battered Korean horsehair hat, tied under his chin. He edged 
his way along, afraid of slipping and starting a terrifying roll to the street 
below. Children with school bags fastened between their shoulder blades 
ran past him. Several men in western clothes hurried by, A woman with 
a bundle on her head, a bunch of green vegetables on top of that, a baby 
on her back and a toddler by the hand, came by more cautiously. The 
whole cargo twisted as she turned slowly to watch the old man. He had 
gone to the side to peer into the deep gutter by the side of Harmony 
Alley. All night long the rain water had rushed down these gutters from 
the hill above. The woman spoke. It might have been, "Looking for 
something, Grandpa?" But he did not answer. She shrugged as best 
she could, burdened as she was, and went on. 

Still huffy, she passed a tinker with his box of stockings, neckties, old 
bottles, used clothing, odd bits of candy, a few combs, etc., staggering up 
the hill to make what sales he could in the huts which clung by their 
eyebrows to the hill above. He is not above trading wares. A good tin 
can, some wire, a used but usable electric bulb, or an empty bottle 
preferably with the label intact was legal tender. Oh, why the label 
intact? So he can fill it with water or something and sell it for the genuine 
article, to be sure. The tinker, as all tinkers in Korea do, was clinking 
together a crude pair of scissors to advertize his wares, just as the Good 
Humor man tinkles his bell, or the junkman of my youth used to string 
old bells on his cart. The tinker paid no heed to the old man in white 
coat and pantaloons peering into the gutter. He trudged to the upper 
bend and disappeared, seeking the Golden Fields of Commercial Enter- 
prise up yonder, 

A young soldier in dapper khaki almost barged into him as he shot 
around the bend. Behind him was a "jiggy man," a stocky fellow with the 
A-frame on his back loaded with small branches. Not a heavy load, but 
horrendous in size. He would sell it all in the market below. Several girls 



226 KOREA 

in billowing velvet skirts and pastel jackets hurried past him. They had 
slept the night before probably on a ragged rice straw mat in a shack of 
old lumber and tin; they had cleaned those pretty white teeth this morn- 
ing over a brass basin outside their front door and tossed the water over 
the cliff where it would land on our roof. If we were lucky, that is. Yes- 
terday, they had carried baby brother strapped to their backs, and to- 
morrow they would be beasts of burden cooking over open fires and 
scrubbing sooty crocks beside the river. But today God bless them! 
they were young girls off for a day in the town below, dainty, sweet and 
gay. Their laughter was delicious to hear. 

Halfway down that mid-section of the Z-curve, they stepped aside to let 
two men who had drunk not wisely but too well, stagger past them. 
They were on the verge of that condition Sister Augusta means when she 
says "they feel no pain/' Arms entwined, the chums held each other up. 
They had spent what was left of the night huddled against our clinic wall. 
But the first patients arriving with the dawn had started them on the long 
climb home to bed and probably a good excoriation from the wife. 

There's a shack built up against our wall, right under my window. The 
family is poor and has no place to go, so we let them stay. As the two 
drunks weaved past, the woman in this shack emerged with a basin of 
soiled clothes. She went back in and brought out a bucket of water. Plainly, 
she was all set for laundry day. She saw the two ex-revelers, put her hands 
on her hips, called something to them to which they paid not the slightest 
heed, bit her lip and went back into her shack. The two pals saw the old 
man poking in the gutter and staggered over to chat with him. 

A fairly well-dressed workman now shot around the upper bend and 
started down the street at a run. He pelted along. Suddenly, he saw the 
bucket of water beside the soiled clothes and pulled up short. He glanced 
back. The inebriates had their backs to him. The old man did not raise 
his eyes from that gutter. Suddenly, the well-dressed man knelt on the 
street before the bucket of water, leaned over and took a long drink as 
a horse drinks. He rose hurriedly, glanced at the three again, and dashed 
off wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Why he did it, I don't know. Perhaps, 
he figured that every drop of water in his home had to be hauled step by 
step up that hill, and here was a bucketful of it unguarded. How could 
he answer on Judgment Day if he had not at least made some use of it? 

The woman came out again with her laundry bats short, heavy clubs. 
She began the endless job of beating her husband's white coat clean. She 
wet it, soaped it, placed the sodden mass on some stones nearby and beat 
the living daylights out of it. Her own clothes could be grimy, but her 
husband's coat ah, that was different! 

The two happy gentlemen gave up such an unprofitable conversational- 
ist as the old man, and left him to continue his gutter inspection. Sud- 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 227 

denly the old fellow went down on his knees and reached down into the 
drain. Farther and farther he bent into it. Head and shoulders disap- 
peared entirely. One leg kicked wildly and I thought he was head first 
in the muck. But no, he slowly emerged. First the shoulders, then the head, 
then the arms, finally the hands. What did he hold in them? It was squar- 
ish and flat and small, maybe ten inches by three inches. He tottered in 
triumph across the road and placed it on a small pile there, something 
I had not noticed before. His prize was a piece of wood, part of a carton. 
Use? Well, dried out, it could be coated with Japanese lacquer as part 
of a piece of a little box or a drawer, or a Korean inlaid screen. Or he 
might sell it for a patch over a knothole in somebody's hut. At the very 
least, it would bring something as firewood. The old man placed his 
treasure tenderly on the pile. He toddled back to the gutter and peered 
once again. Wily old boy. He knew that last night's rain would wash many 
things down hill. Finders keepers; losers weepers. 

But the real reason why I watched Harmony Alley was not to spy on 
opportunists like Grandpa. Around the lower bend, just beside the woman 
who was beating her husband's coat to dazzling whiteness, were the lines 
of patients for the Maryknoll Sisters* clinic. 



K 19 S No Time for Tears 



AFTER plunging downhill for more than a mile, Harmony 
Alley meets Tae Dong Street as a flood washes up against a slow freight 
train. People coming down more leisurely slopes are on their way to 
market. The market itself strings along up Tae Dong Street for a ways 
a few peanut stands, a couple of casual sellers of cotton cloth laid out on a 
tarpaulin or displayed against our grey stone retaining wall. Perhaps, a 
wheeled bookstall parked for the morning where the gay comic book 
covers can attract children. 

There is selling advantage to this juncture of Harmony Alley and Tae 
Dong Street. Here congregate the people who hope to get into the Mary- 
knoll Sisters' clinic. There are hundreds every day. No one is there merely 
for a sore toe; everyone needs care and has probably needed it for a long 
time. More than one lies on the street; many are propped up against the 
wall; so very many hold sick children. At that time of the year tuber- 
culous meningitis raged while I was there. Harmony Alley was filled with 
the querulous wailing of unconscious children held tight in someone's 



228 KOREA 

arms, or sprawled on a blanket of some sort on the street. Harmony Alley 
at this point is paved with misery. 

The gate opens at 8 o'clock. The children are carried in, the wives with 
sick husbands and the husbands with sick wives lean on each other's 
shoulders, the tarpaulins are picked up from the street and four-cornered 
through the gate. Then the waiting benches are full, the floors are 
crowded, and the daily task of relieving as many as possible begins. 

We have four Sister-doctors in Pusan and several Korean doctors are 
employed full-time. Fifteen Sister-nurses and many Korean nurses, labora- 
tory technicians, pharmacists, aides, physiotherapists are everywhere, both 
Sisters and lay. The difficulty is space. I took a prowl around the treat- 
ment room, perhaps 30' by 40', in one of the "temporary buildings" which 
have lasted ten years. 

In the corner are four tables. On one was a man, a heart case, brought 
in a blanket by his two brothers and wife. Sister Ann Veronica, a doctor, 
was examining him. On another, a girl, ten years old, with chills. Trem- 
bling shakes the blanket. Jaw set, teeth rigid, color greenish. Her mother, 
small and frail, had carried her two miles to the clinic. She sat beside the 
table, waiting. On the third table, a boy three years old with severe mal- 
nutrition. Skin darkened and peeling; is getting dextrose piped into his 
thighs from a bottle hung from the rafters. On the other half of this table 
is a baby with bandaged head. He has tuberculous meningitis. Uncon- 
scious for more than a week. His young mother stands staring down on 
him with the saddest face. I brought a stool for her but she would not sit 
down. On the last table is a terribly thin man, thirty-four, with malnu- 
trition and terminal T.B. In a coma, he was brought by his brother and a 
friend; his old mother is hovering around. He has two children; his wife 
is working to support them all. 

Nearby is a little girl getting a spinal tap. Wailing and fussy, poor 
child. Probably another meningitis case. Her father holds her tight so 
that Sister Gilmary can work on her spine. Behind a little screen are two 
men sitting on a bench with tubes in their abdomens, while fluid flows 
into a bucket between them. Calm and studious, they are reading maga- 
zines and newspapers. Next is a boy, maybe three years old, paralyzed 
from the waist down. He came in with sores all over his buttocks and 
legs; the flesh has broken down because he sits all day in one position 
while his mother is out working. During the winter, his feet were frozen. 
His mother is a good, hardworking soul; she brings him in every day for 
the bandages to be changed. Yet the Sisters cannot get her to understand 
that the boy's position should be shifted from time to time. 

In the center of the room is the injection table. Here four nurses are on 
duty all the time giving one injection after another. Mothers get the 
little ones ready exposing their buttocks and coming up all prepared for 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 229 

the shot. As you can imagine, much yelling and squalling come from here. 
What took my eye was a boy about ten trying to get his little sister (six 
or so) ready. He tried to hold her and get her undraped at the same time. 
She screamed, wriggled, pushed and kicked. Big Brother was most busi- 
ness-like; he grabbed her by the neck and tried to get her over his knee. 
She went limp and sprawled on the floor. He put a knee on her shoulders 
and tugged at her clothes. She held on firmly. I watched it for a while, un- 
willing to get into what was evidently a family affair. The nurse stood by 
with injection needle poised. They were both getting exhausted, so I took 
a hand. I lifted the Conscientious Objector over my knee and held her 
firm. Brother did the job and the nurse moved in with the needle. In 
three seconds it was all over. By the fourth second, brother and sister were 
going out the door hand in hand, big smiles on both of them. All's well 
that ends well. 

One of the most ingenious people here is Sister Maura Therese with 
her Flaw-da accent. She is in charge of the Physiotherapy Room, if you 
want to dignify her tidy little hut with the name. You'd be amazed at 
what she can do with an old corset. I visited a man with tuberculous 
meningitis away up in the crags behind our clinic. He lay on a blanket 
and pad on the floor and he wore a lady's corset. Some months ago, 
sleepwalking, he stepped off his front path and fell eighteen feet straight 
down. Friends took down the door of his hut and carried him on the 
door to us. At first, they thought his back was broken but the X-ray said 
no. Sister Maura Therese adapted the corset, which had come in a mission 
shipment, into an excellent support for him. 

She uses plaster of Paris, of course, and surgical bandage, but also a 
welter of junk sent by well-meaning people in the States. "We got a lot 
of belts one time thin ones and thick ones/* she said. "Some were made 
of dress materials, some of leather, plastic, metal just about everything. 
They made the best straps and buckles yo-all can imagine. Then one time, 
we got some really beautiful shoelaces. I use them for the corset laces be- 
cause they're so much stronger." 

Many physiotherapy patients are old timers. Coming for years and 
years. Children who have had T.B. of the bone when they were very small. 
Sister makes a wax mould of the child and fits the braces to it. She likes to 
use wax because she can scrape the wax down as the hump an shoulders 
grows less and less every month. What a joy to whittle down that humpl 
One girl came in completely bent over; her hips would not straighten. 
Week by week, month by month, the cast pulled down those legs until 
now there's just a bit of a bend at the hips. She can't stand straight yet, 
but give it another year and she'll be almost normal. 

World Medical Relief in Detroit sent some colored plastic. Sister makes 
gay casts, soaking an undershirt in it and fitting it to the little body. The 



230 KOREA 

children in braces love their bright green, yellow and blue outfits. Help 
comes also from United States Overseas Mission; while I was there, I 
helped unpack and store away a large shipment of INH, Pas and strep- 
tomycin and X-ray film. And through the years, Catholic Relief Services 
has been the mainstay. Besides medicine and supplies even a mobile 
clinic outfitted a steady stream of clothes, toys, money and encourage- 
ment comes from their projects, such as the Thanksgiving Clothing Col- 
lection, the Laetare Sunday and Bishops' Fund. God bless them all! 
We can use every button of the clothes, every pill, every inch of adhesive 
tape, every last word of "We're 100% behind you" encouragement. 

No patients on Sunday. That's the rule. But how is one to enforce it? 
Our Lord Himself said something about getting an ass out of a pit. True, 
there are not the crowds swarming over the compound, but emergencies 
are always cared for. One Sunday morning I passed a lone boy, perhaps 
eight years old, sitting on those benches beside a bundle of old blankets. 
Not doing anything. Just sitting and watching everybody going by. I 
wondered why he was there. Maybe waiting for somebody in the treat- 
ment room. I went in to see what was going on. 

A man gasped and groaned on one of the treatment tables. Wife, 
brothers, and friends had carried him in on a blanket, shifting and 
stumbling, pulling and dragging him down the impossible paths. "Heart 
attack," said Sister Ann Veronica. "Probably won't pull out of it." 

On the next table was a two-months baby with empyerna. Sister Gilmary 
had a huge syringe poked into the tiny baby's chest. Ever so gently, she 
was extracting pus from the pleura while the young mother held the baby 
immobile. "In the States," Sister said, "we'd never work with this sized 
syringe on such a small baby, but it just might do the job here. We have 
nothing smaller." 

I turned to go. A stifled sob came from a dark corner. A woman was 
there with her head turned against the drab wooden wall. Her hair was 
disheveled, her clothes ragged and dirty, her bare toes twisted under the 
bench, I went over to her and sat beside her, holding her shoulders close. 
I could say nothing in Korean. In a few minutes the sobs stopped; she 
took my hankie to mop her face. 

Sister Maura Therese told her story. "She came here two days ago with 
a baby, two years old. It wasn't her child, she told us. Her husband had 
another wife and told this woman to take care of the other wife's child. 
She did. But, day before yesterday she was putting the baby on her back, 
trying to tie the sashes around him, when he slipped off. He fell on his 
head. She brought him here unconscious. We did our best for him. She 
brought him yesterday too, still unconscious. And this morning, she was 
at the door around 6 A.M., frantic because the baby had died. 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 231 

"She's afraid to go home, she says. Her husband will accuse her of killing 
the baby because it is not her own." 

The woman was calm now. She stood, bowed ceremoniously to Sister. 
"Thank you for your trouble to unworthy me." Then she went outside, 
picked up the tragic bundle on the bench, took the boy's hand and went 
home to take her beating. 

This is just one instance of troubles from carrying a baby on one's 
back. They are tied so tightly that, especially in winter, they sometimes 
smother. Or circulation in the legs is interfered with. More than once a 
woman has come in with a dead baby on her back, not knowing it has 
been dead for hours. Sister Gilmary wages war against the custom, "Above 
all, don't carry a sick baby that way. You can't see him/' she tells the 
women. 

But when one sees women going uphill to their homes what else can 
they do with their babies? Bundles in their hands, a five-gallon can of 
water on their heads where else is baby to go? 

We have a sort of Death House (or is it a Life House?) here at the 
clinic. Anyone not likely to get well meets Sister Maria Agnes or Suzanna 
Chong and hears the Glad Tidings. You can talk right out to these people; 
they are used to the idea of death. They know it is stalking them. "Do 
you wish to be baptized?" they are asked. Some say yes, some say no. 

One morning I baptized Jean, a woman dying of malnutrition and 
heart disease. When I finished, she broke into tears. She had been begging 
her food in the streets. Her ankles were swollen from the heart condition; 
her face and arms from the malnutrition. I brought her into a tiny room 
and, over a small flame, cooked a cupful of cereal. It was packed with 
nutriment high protein and glucose and everything I could think of. 
It tasted good to me. Jean was brought into the room and sat patiently 
on a stool while I made up this treat. I gave her the bowl with a spoon, 
thinking she would take it eagerly. Instead, she very daintily took several 
small spoonfuls and gently pushed the rest away. She explained in Korean 
that because I had gone to the trouble of cooking it for her, she had 
tasted of it, but she could not eat more. "It sticks right here," she pointed 
to her throat. She was too sick to eat. 

"Maybe you can eat it tonight, or at least some of it/' Sister Joan 
Celine, the nurse with her, suggested. 

Jean looked at the dishful. "Yes, I will try tonight, thank you." I 
put the gruel into an empty tin can and she bent over to receive it in 
polite fashion. She bowed again and went away, shuffling on those 
swollen feet. I looked after her a long time; I don't know when I have 
been so "cut down to size." It was she doing me the kindness, as she 
waited so patiently for me to stop fussing with that cereal. It was she 



232 KOREA 

who was gracious and kind enough to take a little of it, so that I would 
not be disappointed. She put up with me because she knew I loved her. 
St. Vincent de Paul's cryptic statement rang in my ears; the idea is: The 
poor will never forgive us the bread that we give them unless it is given 
with love. I am glad I loved; how it would have hurt her if no love 
were sprinkled on that bowl! 

Jean, I found out later, did not die. The Sisters were able to get her 
into a hospital for her heart condition. Six months later she came back 
to visit, looking one hundred percent better and well on the way to 
permanent recovery. I never had the heart to ask her if she ate that 
cereal or gave it away to the first hungry child she met. I know she didn't 
throw it away. 

All is not stark tragedy in Korea. Even poor women seem able to 
have one beautiful dress stowed away for grand occasions. In the market 
are gay toys of plastic candy, stronger in color than flavor, small plastic 
bags with colored water to drink, live goldfish in water done up also 
in plastic bags, and bright cellophane envelopes of peanuts. Down by 
the wharves you see fish for sale on small stands; the women behind 
laugh and talk among themselves with grand good humor. Each of them, 
no doubt, has a sad story but none of them inflicts her sorrow on others. 

The Maryknoll Sisters' clinic has been with these people through 
thick and thin. For five years, while war raged all around and immedi- 
ately afterwards, the crowds outside the gate on Harmony Alley num- 
bered two thousand and more every day. It was, newspapers said, "the 
longest charity line in the world." In those days, everyone of the two 
thousand was a whole five-alarm fire in himself. Things have eased a 
bit. The clinic is able to do some long-term planning. The emphasis 
now is on stamping out tuberculosis. Patients are isolated in so far as is 
possible in a one-room hut. The family learns how to avoid infection 
and how to care for the patient. If necessary, money is given to support 
the family until the patient is well. House visits check up on conditions. 
Every afternoon Sister Dolores scrambles up the most impossible moun- 
tains and ducks into the lowest doorways on this little job. 

"Our Gang" is a living reminder of the two~thousand-a-day years. Ko- 
reans were never known to abandon their children before, but in the 
frenzy of war and destitution, many left babies on the clinic steps. 
Timmie was found wrapped in newspaper on Christmas day; his par- 
alyzed legs are much improved and he gets around very well on crutches. 
Bundo, who did not smile for two years after he was taken in, is a bundle 
of smiles now. He serves Mass every morning standing on tiptoe to get 
the Missal, tripping over his cassock en route to the other side, and making 
a great to-do about the cruets. Clara, Teresa and Augusta they are the 
happiest, homiest, nicest children you can imagine. 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 233 

Engrossing as it is, medical work is not all the activity here. As I said, 
a three-ring circus goes on practically every day of the week; the thirty 
Sisters involved turn their hands to any good work you can think of. 
There are nine small houses dotting the hillside from the main clinic 
building near the street, up umpty-ump steps to Regina Coeli dormitory, 
which scrapes the sky with its roof. 

I investigated a light in a window one evening and stepped into a 
Credit Union meeting in full session. This was the first ever organized 
in Korea. Sister Gabriella, who has been in Korea off and on since 1926, 
started it a little over a year ago among the clinic's employees. There 
must be some unifying bond among the members either all in the same 
business, or the same family, or the same neighborhood. In this case, 
they all work for the clinic in some capacity, from a doctor down to the 
clean-up boy. There was great jubilation the night I broke in among 
them. It was First Anniversary night, and a dividend of twelve percent 
was declared. It could have been more, but Sister Gabriella cautioned 
them against wild dividending. What it amounts to is this: the members 
are their own bankers and collect their own twelve percent. For the 
Indians of Bolivia and Peru, for Philippine fanners, for any class ridden 
by money lenders, the Credit Union offers a way to borrow money on 
short term loans and to invest what little savings they have profitably. 

Not long afterwards, Sister Gabriella took me to a newly organized 
Credit Union all members of the same parish. We set out around 8 P.M. 
All Pusan's electricity was off that night; the streets were black. You 
felt, rather than saw, people moving up and down the street. Every now 
and then a car tore down the hill with lights blazing. We caught one of 
these, a taxi. It was a converted jeep, a very neat job. We swerved through 
the crowds. It was like a Hitchcock movie; where were all those people 
going in the black night? Why were there small candy and peanut stands 
out there in the dark? What was the use of those tiny wicks floating 
in oil? It was as if God had suddenly turned off the sun in the middle 
of a busy market day. 

Our jeep left the main street and started to bound up a hillside. Head- 
lights showed shacks on either side. Then we stopped. Sister Gabriella 
got out and paid the man. "This is it," she said. 

"What's it?" I countered. "There isn't even a shack here/' 

"Exactly." She was imperturbable. "There was a church here; they 
pulled it down to rebuild. The meeting must be some place on this 
site," With misgivings, I saw the jeep headlights go bouncing back down 
the hill. If people were meeting on this site, they were mighty quiet 
and dark about it. Amalgamated Hush-Hush Men, Local #6, maybe. 

Sister had a flashlight. Don't misunderstand me. It was one of those 
fountain-pen affairs you use to find the key hole when you come in late. 



234 KOREA 

All of a sudden there were no crowds. Only a dark hillside plowed up 
like a battleground the night after the fight. Sister Gabriella started 
down. Steps, loose stones, muddy spots, a bit of wall. "Now, let me see, 
where was the basement? Probably here. No, maybe over there. Let's 
see farther down. ..." A man loomed out of the dark. "Do you know 
where the Credit Union meeting of Cho Ryang parish is being held?" 
asked Sister Gabriella. "A hundred to one/' I thought, "that he never 
heard of Cho Ryang parish, much less the Credit Union." 

I was wrong. The hundred-to-one shot came in! "Sure!" said the man, 
"it's over there/' pointing vaguely far away. "I'll take you." And we 
were off. Through alleys, along paths, out on the main street for a while. 
Past houses and shacks and shops and fields. Up steep streets and down 
through gullies. Once we passed a huge crowd standing around a dim 
light in the middle. As we passed behind them I wondered what they 
were looking at a snake charmer? A medicine show? An accident? A 
street fight? Our Angel Raphael ran on ahead; we pressed in hot pursuit. 
Up and up, several times over a vegetable patch and once, it seemed to 
me, straight through somebody's cellar, in one door and out the other 
side. We called out to him; we shouted out protests. "Never mind! We 
don't want to go to the meeting anyway!" But Raphael kept just in sight 
but not near enough to hear us. 

Suddenly he stopped at the head of broad steps and let us pant up to 
him. He was before an impressive iron gate and heavy stone wall rem- 
iniscent of a Japanese War Lord's feudal castle. "This is it!" he said. 
We were stunned. "Oh no," said Sister Gabriella, "you must be wrong. 
This house was the American Embassy the last time I saw it." But she 
talked to thin air; the Angel Raphael had disappeared. 

Sister sighed. "There are lights here, anyway/' she said. "Let's go in 
and ask somebody to call a taxi for us. We'll go home." We opened the 
iron gate and trudged up the driveway. All of a sudden, the front door 
flung open and men and women ran out to meet us. The Angel Raphael 
was right; this was the parish Credit Union meeting. It seems the house 
had been bought by the Bishop and lent to this parish until their church 
was built. We felt like two Tobiases coming home after seven years' 
wandering. 

About thirty-five men and thirty women sat on the tatami flooring. 
Mostly poor or middle class. Taxi men who owned their own cabs, small 
store owners, dressmakers, office employees, construction laborers, those 
with a market stall of some sort. Members must have a steady income. 
Nobody, for instance, like a jiggy man who depends on chance employ- 
ment. The members sat before a purple curtain pulled before the Blessed 
Sacrament in this improvised church-meeting hall. One could see the 
sanctuary lamp flickering behind, almost as if Our Lord Himself took 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 235 

part in the meeting. Leading the proceedings was a man in grey coat, 
baggy white pantaloons tied around the ankle with grey bands to match 
his coat. Tortoise-shell glasses and a stringy beard made him look like a 
very substantial citizen indeed. He talked much and well; good natured 
laughter greeted his sallies. Evidently, they wanted him to be president 
and he pleaded other commitments. They won, in the end, of course. 

A tea kettle with a cup over the spout passed around freely from 
the men's to the women's side. The women spoke some, not much, but 
they seemed to be making their own business decisions. Unity and good 
fellowship prevailed through the room. A really democratic meeting. 

"Well call a taxi for you," the pastor said afterwards, leading us into 
his scholarly living room and winding up the telephone to get Central. 
I wondered how a taxi could get up those steps in the street. "Must be 
some other way for a car to get here," I thought. Then the taxi was at the 
door. We got in and bumped down each step carefully to the main street 
below. Home to bed. I spent the night dreaming of Raphael and Tobias, 
and the old Mack Sennett comedies where Model T Fords scaled any 
height and braved any stairways their zany drivers set them at. 

The clinic heals the body; the Credit Union spares the pocketbook. 
Man has a soul and mind as well. On a Sunday morning, the nine houses 
turn into classrooms and some sit outside as well. Sister Suzanne Marie 
has literacy classes for women. The Korean alphabet devised five hundred 
years ago has twenty-four strictly phonetic characters. Once these are 
bedded down in the mind, the student can puzzle out anything written. 
It used to be that time was spent to teach religion by rote to illiterates. 
But now two birds fall to one stone; the woman learns to read and can 
teach herself the catechism. She is enabled also to delve much deeper 
into religion on her own. 

Their alphabet makes it so easy to read that Korea is eighty percent 
literate. Compulsory education laws prevail but the schools are so crowded 
it is often impossible to get in. Magazines and newspapers, books and 
pamphlets are in great demand. 

Religion classes are in session all over the place. Pupils perch on the 
examining tables, sit in the laboratory, kneel on the tatami floor, crowd 
the sewing room, fill the medicine distributing room, and jam into the 
pharmacy. More than two hundred are distributed here and there every 
Sunday morning. Some have known the Sisters for years before they 
inquire into Catholicism; others get the grace on their first visit. 

This is just a small part of the surge toward the Church in modern 
Korea. In nine years Catholics have tripled in number, from 166,000 in 
1 958 to 500,000 in 1961. Among Korea's population of 23,000,000 this 
is not impressive, but it shows progress. 

I went with Sister Andre out to a leper colony where she has classes 



236 KOREA 

every Thursday. We went out past railroad yards, vegetable patches, rice 
fields, and army depots. Beyond the blue harbor to the high green hills 
where you can look across Korea Strait and see Japan one hundred miles 
away. Sister Andre is a cheerful little person, very business-like, very 
young looking in spite of thirty years off and on in Korea. She handles 
baggage lists, shipments o medicine, ticklish customs officials, and ob- 
durate porters much of the time, but her joy is to watch the Faith grow 
in the eyes of pagan women who have never known the God of Love. 

That's just what she does at Five-Six Islands, the leper colony. The 
name comes from the odd fact that at low tide there are six islands 
visible; at high tide, only five. A run-down quonset hut surmounts the 
highest hill in the colony. This is the quasi-church and instruction hall. 
Sister rang the bell in the bell tower such as it is, and the pupils arrived 
maybe thirty women with their babies and children. They sat on the 
floor and Sister began. These people were not horrible yet. Most were 
in the stage where they have lost their eyebrows and the women had 
painted eyebrows on their very attractive faces. A few had watery eyes; 
others had the beginnings of "crab hands." Some noses had begun to 
fall back. But they were all friendly and happy. Babies born in the 
colony are not separated from their parents. The babies were passed 
from one lap to another until only Sherlock Holmes could have told 
which baby belonged to whom. 

Director of all these multifarious works at the Maryknoll Sisters' 
clinic is Sister Augusta, who is a book all to herself. She was nurse in 
Meadville, Pa., when, as they say, she "ended it all," took the veil, said 
good-bye to the world, hied herself to a nunnery in other words, she 
entered Maryknoll. Her life since then shows how well she has succeeded 
In escaping reality. In 1934, she went to Kaying, deep in the interior of 
China where she spent fourteen years tramping rice fields, talking to 
Chinese women and teaching them. The Japanese swarmed all over 
South China but they never bothered the Kaying district. Then she went 
to the Philippines to help care for sugar cane workers on Negros Island. 
Five months later she was sent to Korea and arrived just in time for the 
Korean War to begin. The army evacuated her with the other Maryknoll 
Sisters in Korea at the time, and she spent nine months in Japan straining 
at the leash, trying to get back to Korea where people were suffering so 
much. She did get back. She's been back for ten years now, a one-woman 
army for good if ever there was one. 

Sister Augusta is "involved," as the psychiatrists say, with everyone 
at the clinic patients, Sisters, Korean lay assistants and all their kith 
and kin. I came across her one day at her desk. 

"Worried?" I asked. "Why?" 

"It's Cheng Lucia/' she said. 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 237 

It seems Cheng Lucia is having a hard time getting a husband. It's 
not that she isn't pretty for she is, with a longish oval face. And she's 
capable, a clever office worker. Well educated, able to read English as 
well as Korean. Good family, too. What's wrong, then? Well, Lucia was 
born in 1942, the Year of the Horse. That's the whole sad story and her 
long face reminds people of it. 

The year you were born in means a lot in Korea, as all over the Orient. 
Following the Chinese custom, the years are named in twelve-year cycles. 
The year of the Tiger is followed in turn by the years of the Rabbit, 
Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, Pig, Rat, and 
Cow. Then the Tiger takes over again. Years of the Tiger are 1962, 1950, 
1938 and so on back. 

The Horse is strong, masculine. His is a lucky year for boys, though 
not for girls. But in winter he can get no food, so those born in Horse 
years have hard luck in winter. Now, a tiger can eat a horse as well as 
all other animals on the list. So a boy born in Tiger years is lucky in- 
deed. But a girl? No indeed. She will never, never get married. When 
the two families get together to talk things over, negotiations fall through. 
Who wants a Tiger girl to marry a Rabbit boy? Or a Sheep boy? Who 
wants a Tiger girl in the house, anyway? 

A Pig and Rat combination is very good; they're natural buddies. A 
Cow and Cock wedding will work out well; the cock gets to work in 
the morning and rests in the afternoon. If Lucia had waited a few weeks 
she would have been born in a Sheep year. That would have been a 
wise move for her. Everybody wants a Sheep daughter-in-law gentle, un- 
complaining, soft. The Rabbit can't get food in the day; he must scurry 
around for it at night. Nobody wants a Rabbit marrying into the family. 
As for me, I was born in the Year of the Monkey ambitious, cunning, tin- 
dependable, tricky. Well! Who wants me? It's a sobering thought. Worse, 
I'm a twin. There were two monkeys in our house, growing up. 

Sister Augusta, as well as everybody else on the compound, awaits Der 
Tag that is, Moving Day, when their clinic evacuates its small houses 
and moves up the hill to the new hospital. I went up there myself to 
see the finishing touches put on and to see at work "the world's gentlest 
and daintiest construction man/* as one writer put it. Sister William 
Marie, in other words. 

The stories on her are legion. Told in her own very precise and gentle 
diction, they are priceless. Not many girls, especially not Margaret Vill- 
hard of St. Louis, think when they enter a convent that they will be 
overseeing cement mixing, knocking out walls to accommodate boilers, 
trading steel rods for crushed gravel. Especially not half-way around the 
world where construction work is still done to a large extent by pick, 
shovel and shoulder pole. Yet Sister William Marie graduated in Build- 



238 KOREA 

ing Construction Technology, went to the Philippines to erect Maryknoll 
College, and then came to Korea to supervise the construction of a 165- 
bed hospital high on the hills of Pusan. 

Her business associates are Army men, either Americans or Koreans. 
One of the lasting benedictions left by our Army was a series of hospitals 
operated by voluntary agencies of one type or another Baptist, Pres- 
byterian, Seventh Day Adventist and others. The Army supplied materials; 
the agency bore the costs of construction and equipment. 

Sister's cement is famous. "She pours the best cement in Korea/' is 
commonly heard. One time a young Korean officer working with Army 
engineers in putting up a building came to see Sister at her desk in the 
little construction shack. He needed help to understand the English of 
the plans and technical details. But he took a good look at the then half- 
finished building. Back on his job, he called his workers together. "To- 
morrow," he told them, "we're going over to Maryknoll Hospital and 
learn a lot. We will have to make many changes. For I am determined that 
no woman in Korea is going to pour better cement than the Korean 
Army. Ours is going to be as good." 

Sister used to sell the cement bags. They are very valuable. Often, 
more than one group would compete for them. One morning a group 
of Koreans came wanting to buy sacks. 

"How much?" Sister asked. 

They offered 50 huan a bag. She knew the market sold them for 60 
to 65 huan each. 

"I'm sorry/' she said. "55 huan is my price." 

They shrugged and went out. Hardly were they gone when another 
group came in. They offered 55 huan without a murmur. Sister was just 
ready to close the sale when in came Group #\ again. They saw how 
things stood and offered 56 huan. "No," Sister said in that precise way. 
"You had your chance. I will sell to these men for 55 huan." 

They argued. "You have so many cement bags to sell. Why not sell 
some to us and some to them?" 

Such a commotion ensued! Such yelling, such fist shaking! Now, if 
there is one thing Sister William Marie cannot abide, it's yelling and fist 
shaking. "Now listen," she said to them all. "You have to thrash this 
thing out, I know. But you must fight like gentlemen. Decide yourselves 
on a price, and I will sell some to #1 and some to #%. But please discuss 
the thing like gentlemen." 

They were contrite. "Of course!" they murmured. Forthwith they all 
took off their hats and held them against their chests. This is the posture 
of a gentleman. They then fell to yelling just as loud, hurling all sorts 
of hard names, screaming imprecations. But with their hats against their 



NO TIME FOR TEARS 239 

chests, they were fighting like gentlemen. In the end, she sold two-thirds 
of the bags to Group #2, one-third to Group #i. All for 55 huan. 

We were standing by an unfinished doorway as she told me this story. 
Sister rubbed her hand over the raw building. "Isn't it beautiful?" she 
asked. "This is real architectural cement. I love it." 

She paused a little, just savoring that cement. 

"I've found it true in Korea and also in the Philippines: the men want 
to be held to a high standard of work. At first, they were so used to 
mixing up some sand and blowing a little cement into it, that I had 
to show them what proportions were best. I had to mix it and put it 
into place myself. Then I had to check continuously. Not that they 
wanted to do things wrong, but they were so used to the old way. 

"After a wall was up, I'd come around and tap each block mostly 
with my Profession ring. Just knocking it against the block. It should 
have a good solid sound to show that it is really set. The men stood 
around and watched my face. At first they thought me just odd, but 
soon one or two would take up nails and help me tap the blocks, learning 
the right sound. If my face was pained they were so cute! Tou're not 
happy over this. Not happy?' Several times they put me out of the room 
while they took out the hollow-sounding blocks to reset them. All they 
need is someone to praise good work and be sorry about bad work. Just 
like people the world over/' 

Construction work has infinite detail. Especially a hospital. In a large 
quonset serving as warehouse, I was Alice in Wonderland aghast at the 
variety of stuff sterilized water, steel window frames, shovels, motors for 
the refrigerating plants, student chairs for nurses' classes, an iron lung, 
door knobs, flour sacking to insulate steam pipes, garbage cans stacked 
up, an X-ray machine in house-sized crates, screws, nails and brads in 
neat bins, rolls of steel cable for the elevators when they come, and 
steps for telephone poles. These last are the little iron supports you find 
sticking out of poles so the lineman can mount easily. They're precious 
to Sister William Marie. 

"We got wooden poles to bring in the electric wires for the hospital but 
none of the cast iron steps to go with them. We used ladders, however, 
and managed to string the electric wires all right. But the South Korean 
Electric Company would not approve the job until we had cast iron tele- 
phone pole steps. It's a safety measure. Try to get them! We asked every* 
where in Korea. Everywhere in the Orient. We shouted in letters to the 
Army. Months of delay. Then, at last we got them. And life goes on." 



JAPAN 



|HOKKA1DO 
omakomaijji 




JAPAN 



f( 20 )J The Principle of Just Enough, 
No More 



I LAST saw Japan as a country of bicycles. I came back 
to find it a nation on roller skates. And each roller skate takes five to 
seven passengers. One must be half pussycat and half snake to wriggle 
in or out of a Japanese automobile. But millions do it every day. 

I cannot imagine that Japan was ever a nation on foot. Since the 
invention of the wheel, I suspect, they have been on the move. Away 
back in 1938, three of us went from Yokohama to Kyoto, and in every 
railroad station were swarms of children out on excursions, sometimes 
for days and weeks at a time. "They go as far as Manchuria," we were 
told. "This is to make our children empire-minded/* Even then, a crowd 
of war widows in somber kimonos stood outside Tokyo's railroad sta- 
tion awaiting the urns which contained the ashes of their dead, killed 
in the Sino-Japanese war that began in 1957. In later years, during the 
Japanese occupation of the Philippines, I often thought of those war 
widows. How their number increased when Japan bled from a hundred 
wounds! 

In 1949, when I next saw Japan, the people were desperate for food. 
Wheat grew between the railroad tracks all the way from Tokyo to Kyoto. 
Wheat grew in stone pots on people's front steps. Every inch of ground 
was used for food. 

Now the winter wheat stands high in the fields. Patches of rice seedlings 
grow nearby waiting for the wheat harvest so that they can take over the 
fields. There is still poverty in Japan, of course, but even in Anfs Town 
where the ragpickers live in Kyoto, the TV aerials make a network in the 
sky. Sloshing through the muddiest alleys where each family has only a 
dank dark hole to call its own in each of these you find the omnipresent 
TV set bought on the installment plan. Someone has estimated six million 
TV sets in Japan today. Also one radio for every six people. 

After World War II, the Japanese had no money to travel on and no 
empire to travel to. But the children are on the march again, now. Swarms 
of boys and girls hang out of windows in chartered buses or special trains. 

243 



244 JAPAN 

They all carry cameras; all have transistor radios in their pockets. Their 
luggage is plastic cheap, light, durable and new. Every temple you visit, 
every palace, every park or reserve, every "national treasure" is overrun 
with boys in somber high-collared suits and girls in middy blouses and 
pleated skirts. Some are in their late teens; some have swarmed out of 
kindergartens. They all have that cohesive unity of a Japanese group 
out to appreciate nature, or history, or religion, or duty. I'd as soon buck 
a battalion of army ants as try to break through a crowd of Japanese 
children bound for a spot of aesthetic relaxation. 

Much has happened to this dynamic nation, but the national flavor 
remains the same. Railroads are clean and on time; kimonos, although 
seen more rarely, are glorious in color and material; rock gardens are 
exquisite; flowers and vegetables without parallel; the people, wondrously 
polite. 

In 1949, it was fun to decipher the katakana signs advertising foreign 
things aisukureemu (ice cream), biru (beer), hotto dogu (hot dog), syeda 
(cider), ueesuki (whiskey) and so on. But now the katakana speaks of 
coresoteroru (cholesterol), ueekuendo (week-end) and supahmaketto 
(supermarket). Hoteru (hotel) signs are now moteru (motel). Terebi 
is everywhere short for television. Neon signs advertise washing machines, 
electric rice cookers and instant foods instant soups, beverages, baby 
foods, fruit juices, gravies. One may even get an instant obi that wide 
sash which Japanese women wear on kimonos. It sounds impossible but 
I asked a friend how she fixed the elaborate bow in the back. "Do you 
do it in front and then push it around to the back?" 

"No," she said. "I used to get my husband to help me, but now I use 
an instant obi. The whole thing is made up in the store and I zipper it 
up the back." 

Compared with the post-war era, the Japanese are well-dressed and 
well-fed. Their life expectancy is sixty-six; the rest of Asia can hope to 
live for thirty to thirty-five years, and Americans to seventy. I noted the 
taxi drivers in small towns as well as in Tokyo. They have no frayed 
collars or cuffs, no patches on their trousers. The last time I was in 
Japan, they were afraid to leave their seats to open the door for passengers. 

The train from Tokyo to Kyoto was cleaner, swifter and more luxurious 
than anything I ever rode on in the States. Besides the usual modernities 
adjustable seats, air conditioning, acoustic ceiling, picture windows, ash 
trays, carpeted floor, etc., there was a radio connection in each seat. The 
weary traveller could hook the device around his ear and enjoy news or 
music. Also, each seat had a detachable desk arrangement. And two boys 
appeared every hour or so; one went ahead and gathered up all papers, 
cigarette stubs, bits of rice from lunch boxes, etc. The other followed 
with a vacuum sweeper for the carpet. 







It's hard to imagine from this that Taiwan has the densest population in the Orient. 



TAIWAN 




The temple is ancient, but the girl wears toreador pants, the oxen have plastic bridles 
and balloon tires finish off the wooden farm cart. 



The Japanese baby buggy solves the baby-sitting problem for this Taiwanese 
mother. The toy zebra, too, is a legacy from Japan. 





Rice fields, temples and mountains that's Taiwan for the photographer. 



The bicycle school bus takes the toddlers off to kindergarten. 





Lim Sui Sam's feet were bound according to old 
Chinese custom; her daughter, Jade Flower, rides 
her to church on a bicycle. 



The nylon -stocking factory girls are 
crowded but happy. 





This Japanese Sister-doctor has a store- 
front clinic for the aborigines high in 
Taiwan's mountain area. 




Quiet beauty at a leper colony near Pusan. 



KOREA 




Malnutrition accounts for the rough, dark skin; 
meningitis brought on the coma. 



Catholic Relief Services NCWC gave this mobile 
clinic for use in Korea's war-ravaged village. 



Harmony Alley is paved with misery, flowing down 
from the hill behind. 






Mother Nature and Japanese artistry have made a serene and fruitful marriage. 



JAPAN 



This substantial farmer's wife is as proud of her concrete 
stove in the kitchen as she is of her TV in the parlor. 



A Japanese Maryknoll Sister teaches the blind by braille 




Seventy-six years old and a Buddhist pil 
grim! I loved her. 




Japanese students ponder Hokkaido's steel factories and busy harbor. 



She's as modern as tomorrow, but she 
likes the old way of carrying the baby. 



Organized outings to Japanese "national treasures" fill every 
railroad station with schoolchildren, each one equipped with 
plastic bag, new shoes, camera and intelligent questions. 






Iringi, chieftain's wife in Tanganyika. 
She retains her tattoo and filed teeth; 
as a Christian the ear plugs and brass 
arm coils are gone. 



Ah Sam, school janitress in Hong Kong 



Nishimura San, who cleans the public park in Kyoto 





Hortensa on Yap with flower crown and 
betel blackened teeth 



THEY ALL SAID CHEESE! 



RIGHT. Pyong II, maker of Korean 
horsehair hats 



Wong Mel Lin, farmwoman on Taiwan 




Eulogio, homesteader in the Philippines 




ABOVE. Negros, Philippines Her country has not 
forgotten World War II. 



UPPER RIGHT. Tanganyika, Africa Imps of the 
altar! 



RIGHT. Hong Kong Brother does his share of 
baby toting. 



BELOW. Ise, Japan Tug-of-war in fancy kimono 






THE YOUNGER GENERATION, GOOD FOR 
PICTURES WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM 





ABOVE. Yap, U.S. Pacific Trust Territory Small fry 
at the end of the dancing line. 



LETT. Kundasale, Ceylon They'd stand on their 
heads if you asked them to. 



LEFT. Miaoli, Taiwan "He? Oh, he doesn't know you!" 



BELOW. Pusan, Korea Young sceptic 





Draped in flowers, Mother sits with Jesuit Father Condon on the stone platform to 
watch the dancers on Yap. 



YAP 



The "bank" where Yap's stone money is stored. Steal it if you can. 





Harbor and causeway as seen from our front porch. The woman is a stranger from 
Ulithi and wears her own skirt of lave-lave, bark cloth. 



"Hold still!" A mother makes up her son for 
the dance of the Joyful Mysteries. 



This girl in the bamboo dance became a Sister a 
month later. 






KOROR 



The Abai or town hall on Koror. Pictures tell 
the island's history. 



Hulks of big machines like this remind one 
constantly that Koror was once a great Japa- 
nese naval base. Sister wears a raincape; it's 
a bit of precaution, wise on Koror. 





Christopher and his grandfather grate a fresh coco- 
nut for the chicks. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUST ENOUGH, NO MORE 245 

The boys were pudgy, cheerful youngsters dedicated to the task of 
sparkling up that train. No doubt, they dreamed of owning the railroad 
someday. There's an Horatio Alger quality about the Japanese, refreshing 
in this cynical world. They honestly believe that the road from Rags 
to Riches opens to hard work, cheerful service and thrifty living. 

A news item on TV one evening was that the Tsubome (The Swallow), 
a crack train, was twenty-five minutes late arriving in Tokyo. It was 
such terrific news that television cameras were hustled down to the station 
to record the event. Passengers were shown coming off the train in a 
daze. Our Sisters, as well as all Japan, were shocked. "What? A train late? 
And twenty-five minutes off? It's incredible!" 

Even out on farms, the Japanese woman has refrigerators and deep 
freezes. Before going into the fields, the farm wife puts the rice for dinner 
into an electric cooker which turns itself on and off. Washing machines 
they look like toys are in every home. Propane gas eliminates fuel gather- 
ing. I went to many a farm in Japan. From a distance, you would certainly 
think they were sunk back in the Kamakura Shogunate, completely out 
of touch with our world. But don't let them fool you. Electric pumps 
bring up water; chemical fertilizers produce bumper crops. The farmer 
may still slosh through mud to plant his rice, but he has small machines 
to harvest and thresh it. 

We went out to the Nakamura farm near Ueno. A long dusty bus 
ride, a walk over rice paddy dikes, and finally we were in the large court- 
yard where they dried rice and beans, fruits and grains in the sun. The 
house roof was massive wood, thatch and tile at least eighteen inches 
thick. Heavy beams and posts had held it up for centuries. We found 
Nakamura San herself in the kitchen. She, at least, had no electric rice 
cooker. Her kitchen range was cumbersome concrete with deep holes for 
the heavy iron pots. She stoked it with wood from a pile in the corner* 
She showed off her ancestral shrine, a big affair strung with white papers 
and ropes. Shinto offerings of cakes and rice wine, a bit dusty and fly- 
specked, lay before the ancestors. 

"Ah, old Japan!" I exulted. "Nothing can penetrate this bastion of 
the old civilization," 

Grandma Nakamura was beckoning at the door to their main room. 
"Dozo! Please step into our humble living room." We took off our shoes 
and stepped. Nothing was in it, neither table, chair, ashtray nor spittoon. 
Tatami, rice-straw matting, on the floor, and in the corner, a TV set. 
Grandma, atwitter with delight, went on her knees and fiddled with the 
buttons. For some minutes, she sat on her heels in utter contentment 
while animated cartoons glorified "Instant Coffee," "Aspirin," and Some- 
body's Superior Garlic Powder. Grandma never turned to us again. After 
a few minutes we tiptoed out, disillusioned women. 



246 JAPAN 

The best TV story, however, happened in Nagahama, a town on the 
shore of Lake Biwa. Here the Catholic Church is a former bank building 
in the heart of town. Part of it is a recreation room where young people 
can play ping-pong, listen to TV or read magazines. One evening two 
brawny young fellows wanted to see the ballet, "Swan Lake," on the TV. 
A dear little old lady, with many apologies, would not let them change 
the channel. So sorry; so very sorry! Father intervened; why couldn't 
the boys see an artistic presentation such as Swan Lake? The eighty- 
pound Japanese lady bent over double with politeness. Oh, so very very 
sorry! But unfortunately, if they saw the ballet she would miss the base- 
ball game broadcast at the same time. 

I wonder if it could have happened twenty years ago. Would any 
woman have stood her ground then? Which brings us to the subject of 
women's liberation or is it a new enslavement? The bus girls and factory 
girls are symbols of the New Woman, Japanese style. 

"They make wonderful money," people tell you about the bus girls, 
"but they don't last more than a year at the job." Looking at the dapper 
young women in their cocky hats, you doubt that statement. However, 
take a ride in a city bus and you see why they wear out so fast. 

The bus girl chatters in a squeaky voice every minute. She hops out 
at every stop to collect tickets and possibly to shove the last sardine into 
the can. She flings open the heavy doors; she goes through the bus col- 
lecting fares; she gives the driver an idea of what's coming behind him. 
When he has to back up, she's right there tweetling her whistle to clear 
a path behind him. The driver needs only his two ears to hear her and 
his two eyes to look in front; the bus girl does everything else. 

Her high whine is in the very best Japanese, but ten hours of it a day 
must do things to her vocal cords. I listened attentively for five minutes 
of it once. It ran something like this: 

We're going to stop at Sanjo Street next. I'm afraid you will experience 
a bit of a jolt but don't let that disturb you or knock you off your feet. 
So here we are at Sanjo Street. Anybody who wants to get off may do so. 
Be sure you take all your bundles with you. Be careful where you put 
your feet; there's a mud puddle just under the step. I'll open the door 
now to let you out. There's quite a crowd waiting at this bus stop. Please 
excuse us for keeping you waiting. Let the others out, if you don't mind. 
Please enter quickly. One more can get in, I'm sure. Just one more. There 
now, let me get in too and we'll be off. All right, driver, you can start now. 
Everything is clear on the right but there's a fellow trying to pass us on 
the left. We'll be going around a curve soon so hang on to the straps. 
I'll have to bother you now to give me your money for the tickets. Thank 
you very much. Thank you very much. Go ahead, driver; everything's clear 
around. We'll be going over a bump soon; don't let it knock you off your 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUST ENOUGH, NO MORE 247 

feet. And now we're nearing Takano Street, our next stop. Anybody off 
at Takano Street? Be sure you take your bundles with you. I'm afraid you 
will experience a jolt . . . 

I got off at Takano Street, went into a store and bought ear plugs. 
Small wonder these girls last no more than a year. They live in dormi- 
tories run by the bus company; moral conditions are often very bad in- 
deed. Recently, a bus official, concerned about this, asked Sister Therese 
Martin to give a class in morality to the girls. He said he had ten new 
girls signed up but hesitated to put them in the dormitory until things 
are better. All very good. But the few classes will not clear up a con- 
dition caused by long hours, exhaustion and lack of good companionship. 

Factory girls, too, get good money. Recruited from farms, they are 
herded into dormitories, perhaps one thousand in each. Nearly all have 
finished ninth grade and may be as young as fifteen. They sign up for 
a three-year period. Except for $4.05 a month for board, all expenses 
are paid. Women mill hands at the rayon spinning factories get $32.27 
a month; clerical workers get $87.76. This is about half what men get. 
They have five p?> ; holidays a year and two free days a month. Clinics 
and a company hospital care for any ills; many factories are completely 
air-conditioned. An eight-hour work schedule gives more free time than 
these girls have ever had before. The company gives culture classes and 
offers athletics, but many of the girls find the Catholic Church near their 
factories and wander in. The difficulty is that when they return to their 
farms they are caught up again in pagan households, unable to practice 
their Faith. 

Factory girls are given three weeks off-duty before and after the birth 
of a baby. But with legalized abortion and government clinics all but 
forcing contraceptives on women, there isn't much call for this type of 
vacation. Among poor women, the ravages are most noticeable. 

I went with Sister Marie Elise into Ants* Town where the "Fourth 
Class People" live. These Untouchables of Japan are relegated to certain 
sections; they are restricted to the meanest of jobs. The Japan Tourist 
Bureau says nothing about them, but they are as distinct a Second-Class 
Citizenship as are the Negroes in our own South. The outcasts look, act 
and speak as do any other Japanese; three million of them live in six 
thousand strictly segregated communities. For the past three hundred 
and fifty years, as a result of wide-spread Buddhism which forbids the 
taking of any life, their stigma has come from their occupation butcher- 
ing and allied work such as leather curing, saddle making, boot and 
shoe manufacturing. By extension, those who make wooden clogs are 
also outcasts. This is why they are called Fourth Class; not that there 
are three higher classes, but they deal with four-footed animals. Outcast 



248 JAPAN 

women especially find it hard to get honest employment; they have to be 
factory hands at sweat labor wages, waitresses in cheap eating places, 
or attendants at "pachinko" slot machine gambling joints o which 
there are hundreds in any city. Modern, large-scale industries will not 
employ them; thus ninety-nine percent have no welfare insurance, na- 
tional health insurance or unemployment pay. 

Since the schools are not segregated, outcast children get as good an 
education as others. More than one young girl cuts ties with the past 
and passes into normal society. But she rarely gets involved in marriage; 
it's too dangerous. The fiance's family always does detective work on 
the intended. If she were discovered ever to have lived in an outcast 
section that would be the end of her dreams of any sort. 

The outcasts of Ants' Town live under feudal rule. They are in the 
pay of various junk dealers who provide barracks for them and require 
that they bring in a certain amount of junk each day. The barracks are 
of plywood; no cool tile roof, no smooth tatami, no sliding doors such 
as make a Japanese home a pleasant oasis. Even the factory dormitories 
have these things. The door of each one-family room opened out into 
a corridor so narrow that the open door blocked it entirely. Several times 
as we talked to Nobechi San, we had to close the door to let someone by. 
Once it was a drunken man, all but carried home by his pals; most often 
it was a neighbor woman hauling her buckets of water from the well 
downstairs to her bare plywood room at the end of the corridor. 

Nobechi San was in pain. Physically and mentally. She had had an abor- 
tion four days before and was still bleeding. She rubbed her stomach 
again and again as the tears rolled down her face. 

Nobechi San is one of two million women who had abortions performed 
and registered in Japan in a year. Dear only knows how many were 
not registered. Birth control and abortions have cut the national birth 
rate in half; it was thirty-four per thousand in 1948, seventeen per thou- 
sand in 1960. Japan will be a nation of old people not long hence. Al- 
ready schools find their primary classrooms too big. 

A woman who wants children has to fight for them. Relatives and 
friends pressure her; if she goes to a clinic for help, she is handed the 
name of an abortionist. What is desperately needed is a place where 
such women can go in peace and have their babies. For once a baby has 
contrived to get himself born, he Is loved to distraction. His troubles 
vanish from that point on. 

Japanese women have earned a fairly comfortable way in life. Sister 
Rose Ann and I came by train from Ueno to Kyoto. Across the aisle in 
a double seat were four middle-aged women with careworn faces and 
knobby hands. They wore their best kimonos of handsome light-weight 
wool in subdued colors. Snow-white tabi, those two-toed Japanese stock- 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUST ENOUGH, NO MORE 249 

ings, fitted into gaeta (wooden clogs) on the floor or were tucked under 
them when they sat on their heels on the seat. They were coming from 
Osaka where a temple celebrated the seven hundred and fiftieth anniver- 
sary of the founding of Zen Buddhism. It was a pilgrimage for them 
and a picnic, too. One carried a furoshika with small boxes wrapped in 
it probably lunch boxes with the fragments thriftily saved. Another 
carried a plastic net shopping bag. The third had gathered quite a bunch 
of flowers wrapped in newspaper. Number Four carried a PANAM air- 
plane bag. 

They really enjoyed themselves on their day off. Chattering at times 
and lapsing into silence, they were neighbors on a long-planned outing. 
They all had "pahmas" permanent waves; they all had wrist watches. 
Probably during the week they wore Western clothes, a skimpy cotton 
dress or those long dark slacks working women go in for. But for a picnic? 
No, they wore a real kimono which cost each one maybe $20 to $25 US. 

It was raining as we pulled into Kyoto. Two got ready with bright 
Japanese paper umbrellas. The youngest reached into her PANAM bag 
and brought forth a plastic tablecloth. She wrapped it around her like 
a shawl. Number Four liked the rain; she refused shelter for herself or 
her flowers. They stood in the aisle ahead of us chattering and laughing, 
glad to have had the outing and glad to have come to the end of it. To- 
morrow they might be knee-deep in mud in the rice fields, or pulling 
a cart in the streets, and tourists would cluck in dismay at the hard lot 
of women in Japan. 

Japan puzzles me. It won't stay still. There's no country so rooted in 
tradition, so immobile in the past like a prehistoric fly in amber; and 
none so fluid, so sensitive to every passing fad. No country has more 
restrained taste, lovely soft fabrics of subdued patterns, paintings in 
black and greys, table arrangements of a few dry twigs. And yet gaudy 
pinwheels, cheap statues, crazy plastic toys from Japan flood the markets 
of the world their own included. At times, it seems their Westerniza- 
tion happened around 1910 and froze there; at other times, we see them 
whizzing away ahead of us, streaking past 1980 right now while we dawdle 
along in the Go's. 

The Teddy Roosevelt era lives on in Japan. Hiking, field days, setting- 
up exercises, all the trappings of "keeping fit" are "great stuff." Turkish 
baths and massage are still all the rage. Yogurt which plagued my puny 
childhood is advertised everywhere. The children run around catching 
butterflies. The clothes often look like something from your mother 
and father's honeymoon album. It's as if the germ theory of contagious 
diseases just hit Japan; street cleaners and housewives wear gauze masks 
over their noses like operating room nurses. Black, high-collared suits 
such as German university students wore before World War I, are still 



250 JAPAN 

standard for schoolboys; middy blouses and pleated skirts, for girls. Little 
boys wear long stockings and high button shoes. 

Yet the slickest brochure I ever saw is put out by Toyo Rayon Com- 
pany; a beautiful print job, luscious photography, models in tomorrow's 
fashions, and all put out, not for foreign, but for Japanese trade. Madison 
Avenue has arrived in Japan! 

Still, even those Japanese girls, modeling extreme fashions, have only 
put on Westernization. The hard core is Japanese through and through. 
No matter how good the veneer, the wood remains the same. 

Haruko was a student in a large public high school. She had her camera, 
played American records, danced Western dances and had, indeed, worn 
a kimono only two or three times in her life. One day, at school, she 
found that 3,600 yen had been stolen from her. Worth about $10.00 US, 
it was quite a loss. She reported the theft to the police. An investigation 
followed. Teachers and principal were incensed. They called her on the 
carpet. "You have given our school a bad name because you reported 
the theft to the police. You must apologize publicly to all the students/* 
Haruko did. She humbly implored pardon for having cast a slur on the 
school's reputation. Then she went home and committed suicide. 

Suicide is still the honorable way out of any difficulty. At Kujo I met 
Sadao with this story: He was a soldier stationed near Kyoto. A good 
Catholic, he came each Sunday to Mass and often during the week as 
well. One day, Sister Marie Elise found him white and tense in the last 
pew. Sadao was in love with a girl with a propensity toward suicide. The 
first time, she took sleeping pills because her stepfather was making ad- 
vances to her. But she survived them. Then she met and fell in love 
with Sadao. The stepfather forbade him the house; the girl went for 
the sleeping pills again. Again, she survived. The stepfather relented a 
little but said she could not marry until she had repaid him for board 
and lodging for ten years. Seeing years of hard work ahead of her, the 
girl reached once more for sleeping pills. She was in the hospital now. 
What should Sadao do? 

"Go away and forget her," Sister advised. "If she goes in for suicide 
at every hard spot, you will soon find yourself a widower, anyway." 

The idea fell flat; he could not forget her. 

"Then, you will have to change her views on life. Bring her here 
to the church, and if she becomes a Christian, you stand to gain a wife 
who is willing to live long enough to overcome her difficulties." He did 
and she did. 

Many old customs survive. For instance, it is most unlucky for a hearse 
to back up, because then the spirit of the dead man will return to his 
house to plague his relatives forever. Likewise, a car bearing a bride 
must never back up; the marriage will go on the rocks and the bride 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUST ENOUGH, NO MORE 251 

will return to her father's house. Well, one day on a very narrow road, 
Father Murrett was accompanying a corpse to the cemetery and the 
hearse met another car. There was a bride in it. Both cars stopped; the 
drivers haggled. Neither was willing to back up. 

"Why can't you let the bride sit by the road while you back up?" one 
asked. 

"It would be better for you to take your corpse out and let him lie 
on the roadside while I pass/' urged the other. They argued for some 
time. Then Father Murrett's party gave in. The man he was burying had 
no near relatives. Furthermore, he had been such a good man nobody 
would mind his spirit being around for ever and ever. 

Years ago when Sister Gemma and Sister Rose Ann were assisting 
Japanese Sisters in Tokyo, one of the girls there brought them a half- 
dead cat. Her heart was touched; if Puss could not be healed, he should 
at least have tender loving care for his last days. Sister Gemma struggled 
with his malady for a week or so. Then she told the girl, "I don't think 
he is going to recover. Will you take him to the veterinarian and have 
him disposed of? Whatever the fee is, we will pay it." In due time the 
following bill came from the vet: 

NAME OF ANIMAL Pussu 

PRICE OF INJECTION 450 yen 

FOR BURIAL IN BUDDHIST CEMETERY 

WITH APPROPRIATE PRAYERS 500 yen 

This was pretty awful a convent cat gets a Buddhist funeral! 

In Japan, religion has three main streams Shintoism, Buddhism and 
Christianity and any number of offshoots. Shinto is the old Japanese 
state religion; it embodies the best in Japanese character. Simple living, 
unadorned temple in a word, love of the Just Enough, No More. It's 
dangerous to propound theories about any nation, but it seems to me 
that the truest thing about the Japanese is that they hate excess. The 
snug fit that's their dish. Clothes wrap around neatly; no billowing 
skirts or ruffled top pieces. No excess room in cars; just enough to fit 
the human person. Doorways permit the normal-sized Japanese to pass 
through; Westerners can bump their heads, if they insist on growing 
so high. Lunch boxes are crammed with rice, fish, vegetables. Just enough 
for one meal, compact and convenient. The whole lunch fits into a pile 
of school books like just another book. On the road, too, they love the 
tight squeeze. Why miss a truck by three inches when a half-inch still 
leaves your paint intact? Maybe this principle is why the Japanese don't 
use chairs; think of all the space wasted beneath you. It's why they de- 
light in little boxes that fit into little boxes that fit into little boxes ad 
infinitum. Affection is deep but it never overflows into kisses in public. 



252 JAPAN 

Flowers in a vase, too, are never profuse. A dry branch, one blossom, one 
leaf that's enough to bring about beauty. Why be opulent? 

Shinto temples are simple little houses with steep roofs. No bright 
paint, except a bit of gold on the crossed rafters. The subdued coloring 
of weathered wood is nicer. Shinto temples aren't meant to endure. You 
never find anything like the ancient Hindu or Buddhist sanctuaries of 
India, China or Ceylon. Rather, Shinto sacred places are built of wood, 
torn down and rebuilt every ten years or so. 

Buddhism came from India through Korea in the sixth century; the 
two religions achieved a very happy marriage, each going its own way 
and yet taking on something of the other's personality. 

The aoi, Hollyhock Festival, brings out hundreds and thousands to 
Kyoto's streets. This ancient capital of Japan (Tokyo has been capital 
a mere hundred years) boasts more than three hundred temples. Some 
are massive buildings, built of mammoth stones and added to through 
the centuries. Others may be just a torii gateway opening on a set of old 
steps to a pagoda-like summerhouse set under venerable trees. The smell 
of incense pervades the streets of Kyoto; head-shaven Buddhist nuns ride 
in her trolley cars and buses; many pedestrians nod respectfully as they 
pass a temple or a sacred place. The entrance to a shrine is ornamented 
with a thick rope strung with longish whisk brooms. The idea is that 
brooms brush off the world's dust as a worshipper enters the temple. Some- 
thing like our idea of holy water fonts. 

Small wonder, then, that Kyoto's very modern streets were packed to 
watch the Hollyhock Festival procession. We found ourselves behind 
rows and rows of children, the lucky ones in front sitting on the curb. 
Across the street were electric advertisements for cigarettes, whiskeys, 
banks, toys, toothpastes, automobiles and "pahmanettos," now further 
reduced to "pahma." A jeepful of policemen cleared the street with 
walkie-talkie loud speakers. Once they had gone, ancient Japan took over. 

First the priests. Their long robes were a bit rumpled; their faces, tired; 
but the straw sandals paced deliberately as they had been doing since 
nine that morning and would keep on doing until six that evening. Each 
walked quietly with plenty of clear space around him, as if contemplating 
in isolation and yet as one of a group. Like the Cistercians each alone 
in his cell and yet with the feeling of others doing the same thing nearby. 

Several, most handsomely dressed, rode magnificent horses. Bulls fes- 
tooned with orange silk ropes and tassels were led by; and girls, rep- 
resenting princesses, passed. Many walked. On the white painted faces 
were lines of weariness and I saw more than one turn impassive eyes 
from right to left and back again. But they stepped steadily forward. 
Others, in glorious white and gold kimonos, were mounted on horses. 
The Imperial Princess herself was borne by on a high palanquin on the 



THE PRINCIPLE OF JUST ENOUGH, NO MORE 253 

shoulders of six men. They looked exhausted after five hours' marching. 
As they passed me, a new man exchanged places with one of the bearers, 
slipping up behind him and easing his shoulder into place. Throughout 
the hour-long procession, deep religious feeling kept paraders and the 
crowd silent. 

During centuries-old pageantry, light green papers fluttered down on 
the tightly packed streets. One landed on my gadget bag. I took it home, 
loath to profane the silence of that hallowed procession. "What is it?" I 
asked Sister Sabina later. 

"I'll read it for you/' she said with an odd smile. "It says: You can 
win a transistor radio with three hundred wrappers from our Lucky Buy 
Ice Cream sticks." 

Christianity is a late-comer, brought by St. Francis Xavier in 1549. For 
a short time it flourished, but before long smiles turned to frowns. By 1638, 
headlords were going around with nails and hammer posting proclama- 
tions such as the one we have on a wooden board preserved in Tsu. For 
being three hundred years old it has a very modern flavor: 

The Christian religion has been prohibited. Therefore, if anyone is 
suspected of being a Christian he should be reported. The rewards are 
as follows: 

To the accuser of a priest 500 pieces of silver 

To the accuser of a brother 300 pieces of silver 

To the accuser of one who has abandoned his faith and 

then repented 300 pieces of silver 

To the accuser of a Christian or his servant 100 pieces of silver 

The above list of rewards will be adhered to. If the accuser is a believer 
himself or a servant of a Christian, then he will be pardoned because of 
his own accusation and rewarded with 500 pieces of silver. If a Christian 
is hidden and found out by an outsider, then chief of the Five Persons 
Group which hides him, and every member of the Group, will be punished. 

(signed) Todo Daigaku no Kami 
Headlord of the Tsu clan 

The technique of punishing every member of a group for the mis- 
deeds of one is powerful, especially if the group has nothing much in 
common. Thus the "Neighborhood Groups" operating in Manila during 
World War II were designed so that the non-heroic would make sure no 
American or Filipino guerillas were harbored in their neighborhood. In 
certain prisons, ten men were executed if one escaped; this perfects a 
spy system operating among the prisoners themselves. 

In ancient Japan, the "Five Persons Groups" gave each Christian four 
potential traitors. Paying tattletales is still In very good standing in 
certain quarters. Also the old bait, "Get yourself out of hot water by 
putting someone else into it." What with communists holding much of 



254 JAPAN 

Europe and all of China, the Christian who dies in his bed must feel a 
bit odd about it. Why anyone thinks it peculiar to die for the Faith is a 
mystery to me. Not so long ago, we saw Mexican Catholics lined up and 
shot. In this world of the sixties, without putting it into words, many a 
death sentence is levied for the Faith. Indeed, a Maryknoller who can't 
talk about his prison days, is considered sort of underprivileged. 

The latest religion to sweep over Japan is the Sokagakkai, a combina- 
tion of politics and health-prayers with a large dash of aggression. "You 
will recover from your illness/' the proponents tell a victim, "if you get 
three more to join Sokagakkai." Telephone calls, personal visits, button- 
holing people on the streets anything is done to secure another adherent. 
We come across Sokagakkai when we instruct people who want to become 
Christian. "If you go on with this/' they say, "your child will die or you 
will be killed." The Sokagakkai run out the back door when we come in 
the front. And vice versa; they come in the back door as soon as we leave 
the front. As a political party, Sokagakkai has elected one candidate to the 
Diet; they claim they will take over the entire country in twenty years. 
Well, we will see. 



!( 21 )! Two Chips off the Old Heart 



OF course, I fell in love. There are bits of my heart left 
all over the world, but two very considerable chunks fell off in Japan. 
One fell at the feet of an old Buddhist pilgrim; the other I put into the 
dying hands of a saint. "When you get up there/' I asked her, "tell God 
we love you because you love Him." 

Oddly enough, I met both of them just after seeing the fabulous Toyo 
Rayon Company's Shiga plant in Ishiyama "fabulous" in the Hollywood 
sense. This one plant employs seven thousand five hundred people, of 
whom two thousand are girls averaging twenty-one years of age; it pro- 
duces about twenty-five thousand tons of rayon thread a year. If you ever 
held two hundred thousand feet of spun rayon hanging easily from your 
little finger, you would realize that it takes a lot of rayon to add up to 
twenty-five thousand tons. Toyo Rayon is one of the biggest and best of 
the great post-war factory system which is changing Japan's social grades. 
The idea is: How are you going to keep them down on the farm after 
they've been factory girls? 

Three of us asked to go through the factory. We did not expect VIP 
treatment but we got it. Scarcely through the front gate, we were bowed 



TWO CHIPS OFF THE OLD HEART 255 

at by the uniformed policeman. Then the receptionist bowed too, and 
took us to what must have been the Board of Directors' room huge soft 
chairs with a low table. Another girl appeared with hot perfumed towels 
and bowls of green tea. We sank almost out of sight in the cushioned 
chairs and, on coming up for air, saw four men enter the room. They 
bowed; we bowed. One of them handed out lush literature coated paper, 
rich pictures, modern lay-out, sophisticated writing in English, and yet 
obviously intended for Japanese trade. They too got towels and hot tea. 
Naoyuki Minai, possibly twenty-six or so, formerly employed by the US 
Air Force at Tokyo's Flight Control Tower, was our guide. His English 
limped a little but there was no mistaking his American accent. 

This Shiga plant is only one of eight such factories of Toyo Rayon Com- 
pany. A reservoir holds water from Lake Biwa; the plant uses one hundred 
thousand tons a day, to operate three mills, a hospital, a research institute, 
a power plant and living quarters for 2,750 men and women in separate 
dormitories. The other half of the employees are "commuters" as Naoyuki 
called them; they live outside the plant but can buy their meals at com- 
pany cafeterias. The company is owned and operated entirely by Japanese, 

We went to South Dormitory where 623 girls live under the wing of 
Kasuko Utugi, twenty-three, a graduate Social Worker. All the "mothers" 
at Toyo Rayon must be graduates in Social Work, she said. The mill runs 
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The girls work in eight-hour 
shifts from 6 A.M. to 2 P.M., 2 P.M. to 10 P.M., and 10 P.M. to 6 A.M. 
They are recruited from country districts, but unlike many factories, Toyo 
Rayon does not bring them from distant islands. Most of their girls come 
from central Honshu, close to the factory. Applicants are tested, Kasuko 
said. 

"What kind of a test? Intelligence test?" I asked. 

"No," she said slowly. "For just common sense, I think you would call 
it." 

They sign up for three years and many renew. The average girl at Toyo 
Rayon stays five years. 

The dormitory itself, we would say, is a barn a big wooden building 
with bare corridors wide enough to drive a fire-engine through. But when 
you know the furniture-less Japanese homes, you know the girls would 
want nothing else. At the entrance is what the British call a "tuck shop." 
The girls can buy odds and ends candy, chewing gum, pencils, shampoo, 
slippers, laundry and toilet soaps, combs, letter paper, etc. The woman 
behind the counter was a cheerful, motherly type. She operated two such 
stores for the company. The girls at South Dormitory now were working 
in the morning shift, so the store was open in the afternoon. East Dormi- 
tory girls worked afternoons; they bought in the morning. 

On the first floor were huge "common rooms" for washing and ironing, 



256 JAPAN 

a beauty parlor, a ping-pong room, a bathroom more like a steamy swim- 
ming pool. Like all Japanese, the girls first wash themselves and then soak 
all together in a tank of very hot water. The Company provides all sorts 
of free-time activities. A cooking class occupied one room; a flower- 
arrangement class, another. Although every girl must have finished ninth 
grade before she can be hired and that is an excellent education by 
Asian standards she has a chance to continue her studies while she works. 
She may be short on Kanji characters (the complicated ones from China); 
she can learn more of them here. English, history, fine arts many cul- 
tural courses are open. At the end of her three years, she may get a di- 
ploma. Not equal to a secondary school diploma, nevertheless it is worth 
something in Japan's education-hungry society. 

Sleeping rooms were upstairs. Miss Utugi ran ahead to see if we might 
visit a room; the girls' privacy was not to be violated. Seven girls to a very 
large room; each roomful responsible for keeping some part of the house 
clean. The young "mother" came dancing down that long bare corridor. 
Yes, we could visit one of the rooms. She slid open a door and we stepped 
out of our shoes on to the tatami floor. It was very large and lined with 
sliding doors. Out of sight were shelves and cupboards and rolled-up mats 
and all the paraphernalia of living. The outside wall was really a series 
of picture windows; the room was bright and airy. Two girls sat on the 
tatami before a low table with a mirror, intent on the age-old feminine 
business of improving on nature. They leaped to their feet and bowed 
nicely. The low table, I saw then, was a knitting machine. Many girls 
make nice things for themselves or to sell to others. A light blue sweater, 
half done, hung from the machine. "It takes me ten days' spare time to 
make one/' the girl said. "Smart people can do it in one day if they work 
hard at it. But I'm slow and lazy." 

Further down the hall, Miss Utugi slid open another door. "This is to 
give the girls a feeling of a small home." It was a typical Japanese vesti- 
bule leading to a number of small rooms; a complete Japanese house, 
"The girls can come here at night to study or to chat when the light or 
noise would disturb others in their dormitory rooms." 

Factory girls at Toyo Rayon get about $20.00 a month to start with. 
They pay no rent, light, heat or electricity; $4.00 a month for meals and 
a trifle for insurance completes expenditures. Each year, they get $1.50 
to 3.00 a month increase, depending on how efficient they show them- 
selves to be. There are twenty-five work days a month but there is no day, 
such as our Sunday, when they are all free. 

"Toyo Rayon is unusual," Sister Therese Martin told me. "The girls 
develop poise, independence and yet they keep the gentleness of the true 
Japanese woman. You can tell the difference between them and those 
from other factories. They are not so shy. They respond to friendliness. 



TWO CHIPS OFF THE OLD HEART 25? 

We have asked if we might go through other factories, but have been 
refused. I think the management thought we would see things they would 
prefer to keep quiet about." 

En route to the mill, we passed the gymnasium, auditorium and swim- 
ming pool. Landscaping was perfect. "Gardens keep the dust down, and 
the morale up/' Naoyuki said. 

Jinken (man-made silk), in spite of its name, seems to be made without 
man's help. We wandered through the huge air-conditioned rooms as 
through deserted cathedrals. An attendant here and there glanced through 
glass windows which let the eye in on the mysterious processes going on 
in the machines, but he was a supernumerary. One could almost hear 
the machines say, "Get along out of here! We are doing all right by our- 
selves/' Nevertheless, we saw the blocks of wood-pulp from Canada as 
they are ground up, mixed with caustic soda, mushed, squeezed, rolled, 
shredded, churned, dissolved, filtered, until the poor stuff looks like Karo 
syrup on a chilly day. Then it is thinned and poured out of a tiny sieve 
with holes .07 mm. in diameter. You can punch 131,500 such holes in 
a single inch. Forty streams of liquid rayon are solidified at once in the 
sulphuric acid. All forty of them are caught up on the bobbin to make 
a single rayon thread. 

It was a relief to get into the washing, drying, Inspection and packing 
rooms where human beings made a comfortable shuffle and human hands 
were at work. Girls and men were swathed in coverall aprons; their heads 
covered by white caps. But they looked up and smiled at us and graciously 
let us see their work. Shipments were going off to Bulgaria, Pakistan, 
Canada, South Vietnam, not to mention India, China, the United States 
and Australia. Yet, only forty percent of Toyo Rayon goes out of the 
country. Most of it is destined for the socks, underwear, shirts, curtains, 
kimonos light and dark, simple or gorgeous of little old Japan. Syn- 
thetic fibers are a godsend to a nation so squeezed into its four little 
islands that there is no land left for cotton plantations, silkworms, sheep 
ranches and other means of producing natural cloth. 

Naoyuki brought us back to the "main office" and we sank once more 
into the vastly overstuffed chairs. Hot perfumed towels again, and green 
tea; he bowed, we bowed; the party was over. 

On to Ishiyama temple where I met one of the major loves of my life! 
I have learned by now that pagan gods never live on the level. Maybe 
that's why the Old Testament abominates the "high places." Ishiyama 
temple is very old nine hundred years. I felt every bit that old myself 
when we reached the street again. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. 
Through the trees I saw a strange apparition. An old woman in wooden 
gaeta, with a pack on her back, a long stick in her hand and a black rosary 
twined around her left wrist. She was hobbling down the graveled path, 



258 JAPAN 

very, very tired. She too stopped dead at the sight of us, far stranger than 
she in old Japan. 

She smiled; we smiled. She was very ready to talk. Seventy-six years old. 
From Nagoya. Had never been on a pilgrimage before, but started off four 
days ago to tramp around from one temple to another. "Why?" she re- 
peated our question. "Because I love God and this is how I can tell Him 
so." 

She had a family. "Indeed, they gave me the chance to make this pil- 
grimage and I'm praying for them as I go along." 

She turned to me. "And how old are you?" I laughed and owned up 
honestly. She beamed at me like my long-lost grandmother. "Now live 
long," she urged, patting my shoulder. "Live long and make lots of con- 
verts. Teach them to love God." 

We walked out to the street with her. "Where will you stay tonight?" 
we asked. 

She sighed a little. "I asked that young man in there (referring to one 
of the monks) and he told me that there's another temple in town which 
has rooms for pilgrims. I'll go there." 

"But that's on the other side of town/' Sister protested. "You can't walk 
that far." 

The old lady looked a bit disheartened. After all, she was seventy-six 
and had never been a pilgrim before. Home and her own roll of bedding 
looked pretty good to her at that moment. 

"Why don't you take a taxi?" Sister suggested. "Here's one coming 
right now/* 

The dear old face brightened. "It's not exactly right," she demurred, 
"but I'll do it." 

We put her into it pilgrim stick, straw hat, bundle, rosary, angelic 
face and all and waved her off. Then we caught the bus home to Otsu. 
My heart has never been the same since. 

That was hard enough, but Hirayama Sensei stole a bigger piece. When 
I saw her, she was lying on the tatami of a small house near the Tsu 
church. The room was cleared of furniture, as usual. Only an exquisite 
flower arrangement lay before a shrine where Hirayama Sensei's dying 
eyes could see Our Blessed Mother and tell her she was coming. Her white 
hair flowed over the small pillow. Her frail body made hardly a mound 
beneath the clean bedding. Her good friends and "children in the Faith" 
were always there, one or two of them sitting silently alongside, to tend 
her and pray for her. 

For Hirayama Sensei was a catechist. Sensei means teacher; Teacher 
Hirayama had told people about God all her life. In fact, it was her life. 
As she lay dying for many weeks, her spiritual children practiced on her 



TWO CHIPS OFF THE OLD HEART 259 

all the virtues she had taught them. Surely as she looked at them, her 
thoughts went back to the time she had deliberately put aside the chance 
of having natural children. 

In 1893, she had been born Little Lady Unwanted, the seventh girl. 
When a boy was born after her, she was given away to a Catholic orphan- 
age in Kyoto, and there saddled with the baptismal name of Pelagia. She 
was three at the time. Some years later when she was pretty well grown 
up, a childless couple named Hirayama adopted her with the idea, not 
unusual in Japan, that she would marry and her husband would take 
the Hirayama name. By this time she had conceived a great devotion to 
St. John Vianney, the Cur d'Ars, who spent his life as a parish priest 
in a humble corner of France. She used her confirmation name of Jeanne 
Marie, in his honor. 

When it was time to marry, the girl threw a monkey wrench into the 
whole Hirayama plan. She refused to marry. "I intend to spend my whole 
life working for the Church," she declared. I can imagine how chagrined 
the Sisters at the orphanage were. The Hirayamas were even more em- 
barrassed. They turned her out of the house. It was understandable. 

From that time on, she was known as Hirayama Sensei Teacher Hi- 
rayama. She used to go to Catholic families, preparing children for First 
Holy Communion and Confirmation, and instructing adults as well. She 
was a private tutor for religion subjects. At Tsu, I met Mrs. Yakota who 
remembers her very well. 

"When I was around eleven," she told me, "Hirayama Sensei used to 
come to our house. We children were enthralled with her old-fashioned 
hair-do. We knew her as 'Auntie/ and were a little afraid we would break 
her. She seemed so frail, even then. There were few Catholics in Kyoto 
then and we all knew one another. My parents and grandparents knew 
her; my children too were instructed by Sensei. In my family, she has been 
a beacon of Faith for four generations." 

Had she lived in Europe in the Middle Ages, Sensei would have been 
an anchorite, living in a stone cell up against the church wall with a win- 
dow cut into the sanctuary. As it was, she lived in a tiny house, as neat as a 
pin, next door to the church. Father Barry and the Sisters knew much that 
she would never have made known to anyone else. Every night, she made 
a visit to the Blessed Sacrament; every noon, she and Yamaguchi San, 
a hunchback and a cripple, said the rosary together in church. They chose 
that hour because no one would be around to hear them. She was con- 
stantly making things for the church little things like finger towels, altar 
linens, small cloths. She never gave vestments; she could not have afforded 
the materials for one thing and she was so Japanese 1 they would be 
seen and admired and people would say "Hirayama Sensei gave them." 



260 JAPAN 

She never kept money she received for private teaching; she gave it and 
most of her monthly salary as catechist, to the poor. 

Had you passed Hirayama Sensei on the street, you would never have 
looked twice. Yet a second look would have been rewarding. She made 
her own clothing, exquisitely; her manners were perfect; her language 
without flaw. Her gentility was Japanese to the bone no fanfare, no 
publicity, just devoted service. 

She was wonderful in hospitals. She slipped in and out quietly, stopping 
by a bedside here and there, saying a few words and leaving whatever 
she had brought for that particular patient. When they were dying, she 
stopped to pray. Nobody could ease a parting soul as Sensei could. 

And what a person for writing letters! She kept in close contact with 
any new Catholics she had taught. Some of them fell away; most caught 
her spirit of staunch Faith. Hirayama Sensei kept them all in her prayers 
and correspondence, no matter. 

She was a silent worker, a lone ranger. She ferreted out the lonely, the 
old, the unfortunate. She found more than one leper hidden in a spare 
room, afraid to show his face; she brought sunshine and calm endurance 
to them all. 

Her crowning achievement but she would have called it, her best gift 
from God came a few months before I saw her. Some years before, she 
had befriended a school boy, a brilliant student who could not study in 
the racket which went on in his home all the time. She suggested that 
he come to her house to study. He did. She never disturbed him, just let 
him use the light and the table as he wished. When he grew up, he asked 
to be a Catholic; later he asked her prayers to enter the seminary; and in 
1961 he was ordained. 

I took my turn with Sister Pastores and Sister Amelia at Tsu, watching 
beside the dying Sensei. The doctor who cared for her, the women who 
also took turns tending her, the youngsters who came in after school to 
see if they could do anything for her they all were her spiritual children. 
She confessed once that when she made her great decision, what cost her 
the most was the thought that she would die without any family to love 
her. "And see!" she said, weakly waving to the people around her. 

She made a will, she who had nothing to leave: 

Dear Father, 

You told me to write my will for after my death. I started but I have 
nothing to write. I am passing every day in gratitude for God's love. In 
spite of old age and inability to work, I have lived until now, thanks to 
the mercy of Jesus. My only wish is to thank God and continue loving 
Him until I die. 



B-R-R-R! IT'S COLD UP HERE 261 

She died on a Sunday morning after I left Tsu. It just happened how 
can anyone use that phrase, "It just happened'? that the Papal Inter- 
nuncio to Japan, Archbishop Enrici, was in Tsu that morning. It just 
happened, too, that Bishop Furuya of Kyoto was there too. They bent 
over the wisp of a person as she lay on the clean tatami floor and gave 
her every blessing possible, from the Pope's on down. Possibly, she had 
even higher blessings. The night before, she stretched out, full length, the 
arms which had lain helpless for months. Her weak voice became strong. 
"Maria Sama, Maria Sama ah, how beautiful!" 

Maybe, up there with Maria Sama (Mary Queen), Hirayama Sensei is 
still working. Maybe by this time she has met that sweet old Buddhist 
pilgrim who stole my heart at Ishiyama. Maybe the two of them have had 
a good talk. Maybe, by this time, the pilgrim lady has learned that God 
loves her even more than she loves Him. I hope so. 



22 >J B-R-R-R! It's Cold Up Here 



THE Japanese are old hands at split-level living. Levels 
are split into a hundred parts in every house. Two steps up to the bed- 
room, one step down to the bath, dive down into the kitchen, take a 
ladder to the storage space. Not only steps, but half-steps and step-and-a- 
halfs lie in wait for the unwary. 

Walls are non-existent. That is, as walls. Or is it that doors are non- 
existent as doors? But it all makes for gracious living. Walls slide away; 
rooms merge; a cozy bedroom turns into a wide-open balcony by sliding 
papered wall sections together like the blades of a Japanese flashbulb re- 
flector. Very convenient. For instance, you are in tedious company. There 
is no need to start edging toward the door to make your escape. Every- 
one knows your wicked intent, that way. No. You merely slide a section 
of the wall open and back gracefully away probably into a cupboard or 
down three steps to the bathroom. 

I love Japanese living from the ankles up. Quiet, serene, simple. No 
pictures on the walls; no tables, chairs, sofas, coffee tables, to fall over or 
walk around; instead, cushions to kneel on, tea to sip, gardens to view. 
But is life complicated below the ankles! You have shoes to walk the 
street wooden gaeta in wet weather. At your doorway, you shed the shoes 
and step into slippers for wooden floors and corridors. But before you 



262 JAPAN 

may tread on the sacred tatami (rice mat floors) you must shed the slippers. 
Only bare feet or stockings are permitted. Reversing the process, to go out 
you don slippers for wooden floors, take them off at the front door and do 
your best to get into shoes gracefully for the street. Heaven help you, if 
you try to leave the house by the back door when you came in the front! 
I tried to have shoes and slippers posted at every door, running around late 
one night to get them just where I'd need them. But by evening of the 
next day, five pairs were at the front door and none anywhere else. A 
shoe horn is standard equipment when you go out. Small wonder the 
Sisters go in for elastic shoelaces! 

And the church problem. In the States, the worthy pastor estimates 
Mass attendance by a glance at his parking lot. In Japan, all he has to do 
is to count the shoes in his church vestibule. After Mass, doorways are 
clogged. Each parishioner has to step from the church floor into his shoes. 
What a hubbub! Who has stepped into whose shoes? Why aren't mine 
where I left them? 

In the Philippines, during my ten years as a teacher there, we Mary- 
knoll Sisters used to shake hands with one another when we read school- 
management magazines from the States. Thank God, we didn't have to 
provide lockers for coats, rubbers, galoshes, mittens, ski-pants. Goodie! 
Our kindergarteners did not have to be buttoned into their snow suits. 
The worst we had to put up with was the racket of wooden shoes running 
upstairs in typhoon weather, when nobody in his right mind would wear 
his one and only pair of sneakers, much less his Sunday-go-to-Mass leather 
shoes, if he had some. 

But due to this complexity below the ankle, Japanese schools are not 
so easy. You should see the shoe rack room at the Muroran Catholic School, 
just put up by Benedictine Sisters from St. John's, Minnesota. Eight 
hundred girls attend. Each must have her locked compartment to store 
her outside shoes for the day. 

Muroran, by the way, is just about the last place on earth that one 
would expect to find a Catholic girls' high school dominating a moun- 
tain and equipped with the latest gadgets for science labs, Home EC 
kitchens, sewing classes, athletics and dramatics. For Muroran is a city 
on Hokkaido which was, until recently, something like Siberia. In other 
words, a place of bitter winters, few people, tremendous scenery and a 
wealth of natural resources frozen stiff. 

Throughout Asia, it seemed to me, people were on the move. In Ceylon 
the Indians were being pushed out. In the Philippines, vast numbers of 
homesteaders were ripping up their roots to resettle in the wastelands 
of Mindanao or up in northern Luzon. In Hong Kong, five out of every 
six on the streets had fled from ancestral homes in China. Taiwan was 
full of Mandarin-speaking "mainlanders" who had been driven off the 



B-R-R-R! IT'S COLD UP HERE 263 

continent. And now in Japan, I met the restless ones again, seeking jobs 
in new factories, new fields to plow, new horizons to follow. 

There is even a new mountain to play with. In December, 1944, the 
land near Muroran began to rise, oddly; helped along by earthquakes, 
the vegetable fields rose nearly eight inches a day. By July, 1946, things 
started erupting, and in February of the next year a new active volcano 
was formally recognized. They had to recognize it; it was right there. The 
government gave it a name, Showa, in honor of the Emperor's family, and 
declared it a "national treasure." This last alone will make sure that the 
baby mountain will be accustomed from its infancy to being visited, 
photographed, exclaimed over, wondered at, and tramped around, by 
thousands of school children who roll up in busloads to appreciate duti- 
fully Japan's national treasures. 

It takes most of two days to reach Hokkaido by train and ship. But we 
went in about four hours from Kyoto to Tokyo and on to Sapporo's air- 
port in a very modern plane. Everything seemed as drably Western as a 
tourist might want. Hostesses in pert caps and suits; passengers slumped 
behind newspapers and nearly all in Western dress. But a young Jap- 
anese woman, attired in glorious zebra-striped kimono, was not satisfied. 
She surveyed the tourist seat with mistrust. Then she stepped out of her 
"zori" and, tucking her feet under her, sat on her heels up on the chair. 
For all her poise, she might have been on a tatami mat pouring tea. She 
made sure her obi would not be wrinkled on the chairback, rearranged a 
jeweled pin in her hair, and settled herself to enjoy modern transporta- 
tion. 

It was not for too long. The distance in mileage as well as in climate is 
like a trip from Wilmington, N.C., to Portsmouth, Me., or Toronto, 
Canada. Or from Los Angeles to mid-Oregon. Or from the northern edge 
of Mississippi up into Wisconsin. The air was chilly, even at the end of 
May. Trees were just beginning to bud. Snow stays on the ground for six 
months a fine, powdery snow the Japanese are not wasting. Enthusiasts 
by the chartered plane-load come to ski and toboggan. In summer the 
crowds come for hot springs; a famous spa at Noribetsu attracts thousands. 
Hokkaido is a great honeymoon spot. In a railroad station, we walked be- 
hind a young couple getting off on the right foot for happy married life. 
He carried the camera and guide book; she, attired in her trousseau finery, 
walked behind with the suitcases. 

Besides pleasure, Hokkaido has industry. Coal and iron mean steel; 
there are two huge steel plants at Muroran. Coal brings ships to refuel, 
even in this diesel age. Two-thirds of the island is covered by forests; that 
results in papermills and sawmills aplenty. More than seventy percent of 
Japan's newsprint comes from one mill in Tomakomai. What isn't forest, 
is good grazing land. So cattle, horses, pigs, goats and sheep flourish. The 



264 JAPAN 

Emperor's white horses come from Hokkaido, they say. Not so beautiful 
but more interesting to common people are the island's sardines and her- 
rings. For a while, after the war, Japan hoped that farmers would rush up 
there to stake out homesteads, but few like the idea of only one crop a 
year. Japanese don't like cold countries. The only inducement to make 
them settle in Manchuria in the old Empire days, was the double wages 
paid for almost any type of work. Hokkaido is as far north as Manchuria. 

So five million people rattle around on the island. But they have big 
ideas for the future. Seven of us wedged into one of those itsy-witsy Jap- 
anese cars and whizzed along sixty miles of magnificent road from the 
airport to Muroran. Forty of them were along the beach; the waves prac- 
tically washed us out to sea. Practically, that is. From Tomakomai to 
Muroran is a strip of ocean land which, they tell us, will be the industrial 
center of Japan in twenty years. The two towns will be merged into one 
great population center of more than a million something like the 
Tokyo-to- Yokohama area, or the Kobe-Osaka district. Or, to translate it 
into our own megalopolises, like Chicago-Gary-Hammond-East Chicago; 
those in California around San Francisco and Los Angeles where one 
town runs into another with nary a cow nor a tractor to separate them; 
and of course the biggest of them all, which sprawls intermittently all the 
way from Boston to Washington, B.C. 

It's hard to see, right now, that projected city of one million spread 
along this virgin seashore where tall grass waves on the undulating sand 
dunes. Fishermen's huts, nets drying, boats pulled up on beaches, seemed 
the only signs of life. But every few minutes we passed a new factory with 
a cluster of company houses around it. Not so many workers as one 
might think come with the company. Maybe eight hundred technicians 
from Honshu, the Japanese main island, and a few local helpers. Machines 
are run by automation, which doesn't help the local situation much. But 
the two steel mills near Muroran were erected before automation times. 
They employ eight thousand and four thousand people which helps a 
lot. Later, when we went over it again by train, the whole area reminded 
me much of the stories I have heard of Manchuria; drab paintless houses, 
sometimes mere shacks, roofs of galvanized iron or tar-paper shingles, rail- 
road tracks with factory sidings, a few soot-covered bushes, men and women 
in boots and dark clothes. Unlike Manchuria, however, a TV aerial sprouts 
on each shabby roof. There isn't always a TV inside the hut, the Sisters 
say, but keeping up with the Joneses demands at least the aerial. This strip 
in Hokkaido has the highest TV rate of Japan. In spite of this, there is a 
rawness in the civilization to match the rawness of the wind. 

This is what amazes one in Hokkaido. It is so unlike Japan. The rice 
fields, the mountains, the ancient temples, the farmhouses bowed down 



B-R-R-R! IT'S COLD UP HERE 265 

under the weight of huge roofs in other words, the national flavor is 
not here. The houses have doors on hinges, built to withstand biting 
winds not the casual sliding walls one is used to. There are not even 
tatami floors; one can hardly imagine a Japanese being happy without 
tatami. A fire hazard, so they say. Borrowing an idea from Siberia, to 
heat a house they build a furnace in a chest-high brick wall between two 
rooms so that the hot bricks heat both sides. That's for comfortable rooms. 
Most people including us! have small iron stoves and a pile of fire- 
wood. After all, Siberia is only 250 miles away an icy swim over the 
Japan Sea which will get you nothing but a whopping good cold. 

You have to pinch yourself from time to time, not only to keep the 
blood circulating, but to convince yourself you are not in Pennsylvania 
Dutch territory. Farms around Sapporo, the capital, are nothing like typi- 
cal Japanese homesteads. Wide fields, red-painted barns, apple orchards, 
metal-topped silos, broad American-type farmhouses can this be Japan? 
Back in 1871, President Grant sent one Horace Capron to Japan to teach 
American large-scale farming. Capron was then United States Commis- 
sioner of Agriculture. He resigned to take on the title Agricultural Ad- 
viser to the Japanese Government. He stayed in Hokkaido for four years. 
From where he is today, Horace can look down and see how faithfully his 
pupils still carry out his lessons. Evidently, sharing American technical 
knowledge has been going on for nearly a century. 

Our Sisters are at work in both Muroran and Tomakomai. They have 
Girl Scout troops, choirs, English classes and even cooking classes which 
bring them in contact with the people. Their projects are varied. Any- 
thing and everything to make the Church known. One year they put on a 
fashion show of wedding gowns in Muroran's biggest department store; 
this was to emphasize the sacred character of marriage. Another time, they 
staged a Maypole dance; the Japanese love such outdoor festivals. Of 
course, it ended with crowning Our Blessed Mother. Father Alfred E. 
Smith tells about the time Sister Hostia made a huge rosary of ping-pong 
balls to hang behind the altar for October. Unwilling to pierce the balls, 
she put them together with scotch tape, which was fine for overnight. 
Then they started to fall apart. During Mass and sermon, ping-pong balls 
were bouncing all over the sanctuary. Not so good for devotion. 

Bishop Benedict Tomizawa, a bundle of energy, governs the Church 
from Sapporo. Besides, he teaches in a large secular girls' school and 
seems to have a finger in every worthwhile pie in the city. He has four 
thousand Catholics in the city, less than one percent of the population, 
but great hopes flood his breast as he notes progress in the last few years. 
In 1954, he had but nine Japanese priests; he has twenty now and more 
than twice as many foreign missioners as were in Hokkaido before. He 



266 JAPAN 

ordains at least one priest every year for his diocese. The Bishop put his 
long lean frame behind the wheel of his small car and took us out to the 
ball park, the imposing City Hall, the TV tower in the center of town, 
the track stadium and his own very modest cathedral. The city was two 
hundred thousand in 1946; it is half a million now. Somebody with fore- 
sight laid out the side streets, the plazas, the landscaped public parks. 
Then we sat down to a good simple dinner with the most energetic 
Bishop I have ever broken bread with. 

The Bishop himself took us to the air terminal but he kept glancing 
at his watch. "I have to leave now/' he apologized as the plane was de- 
layed. "My classes, you know. I have to be at school to teach/' I smiled 
to myself. Thus might St. Paul have said, "I'm sorry, but we expect an 
important customer at our tent-making shop and I can't afford to lose 
the sale. I know you'll excuse me/' 

As Bishop Tomizawa waved his apostolic hand in farewell, I thought I 
saw on it the prickles made by pushing a needle through heavy canvas. 

Back to Tokyo. The 1960 census places the population at more than 
nine million three hundred thousand, the largest city in the world. As 
you might expect, it is a welter of new and old, rich and poor, East 
and West. 

Modern Japanese talk just about half in English now. But hearing the 
English words is like seeing your own face in a Coney Island mirror. It's 
a nasty shock to a language student to look up some obscure Japanese 
word and find that it is English, after all. Sister Deborah was on a TV 
show and the director said, "We have a nation-wide tie-up for this." It 
was all Japanese except the word "tie-up." Poor Sister spent hours poking 
through a Japanese dictionary until someone told her that tie-up means 
tie-up. 

Reading English words is even worse. Katakana characters were devised 
in a kindly attempt to spell foreign words. The mistake was that they 
consist mostly of one consonant and one vowel ka, po, yu, te, etc. Some 
consonants are missing; "b" stands for "v," "r" for "1." The short "u" 
sound doesn't exist. It comes out as a soft Italian "a." I learned Katakana 
during the war years, and tried to read the advertising signs. What a thrill 
when I could make out turansisutoru for transistor, durai cureeningu for 
dry cleaningl A taxi is a takusi; a bus is a bahsu; a truck a turaku and a 
tire is a tiya. 

They have a thrifty habit of shortening words. In 1949 I spent some 
time deciphering pahmanetto waybu for permanent wave. Now I find 
the beauty shops advertising a simple pahma; I suppose it saves much on 
neon lights. Television is down to terebi; and a demonstration is just a 



B-R-R-R! IT'S COLD UP HERE 267 

demo. Apartments are merely apahto and a department store is a depahto. 
These are real Japanese words in common use. You have to use English 
this way if you want to be understood. 

Phrases too have been lifted bodily into the language. Rezyah tymu 
(leisure time); Rahsu awa (rush hour); Beeru haru (beer hall), are seen 
on every billboard. No U tahn (no U turn); Uan ue (one way); cahbu 
(curve) and burayki (brake) are on every highway sign. Everybody uses 
"How about?" In a train away up in the wilds of Hokkaido, a girl comes 
through the coaches selling food, "How about some ice cream?" she calls. 
"Ah ri' " for "all right" is a favorite of the bus girls. "Ah ri' hidari; ah ri' 
migi" (all right on the left; all right on the right) they sing out to the 
bus driver telling him it's safe to go ahead. 

Why modern Japan keeps on using the Kanji or Chinese characters is 
beyond me. They make the reading of even a newspaper a colossal task. 
Even educated Japanese are stumped by lettering on memorial bronzes 
or on gift wrappings. "I don't know this or that character so I'm not sure 
just what it means/' they say. The Japanese typewriter, although greatly 
simplified, still has banks and banks of keys which must be shifted into 
correct position before you can strike a single character. Operating one 
makes you feel that you are getting tangled up in an IBM machine. In 
Muroran a printing shop is down our street. The walls are lined from floor 
to ceiling with tiny boxes, each containing a different character in type. 
The old printer putters around the room, shuffling from wall to wall to 
find the exact character he needs. He has only three fonts of two thousand 
characters each, a pitiful collection. "Calling cards, wedding invitations, 
thank-you notes are about all I can do," he told me. To set up a news- 
paper, he needs 8,200 characters. He can't use a linotype nor even a type- 
writer. Each character must be hand-set into the press. When once the job 
has been run, he must study each character with a magnifying glass and 
file it back in those small boxes which line his walls. Poor fellowl I felt 
I had been talking to Ben Franklin in his printshop in Philadelphia along 
about 1750. But Ben had to wrestle with only about 100 characters in a 
font, counting upper and lower case, figures and signs. 

In spite of this difficulty, the Japanese are great readers. The literacy 
rate, at ninety-eight percent, is highest of any in Asia. Traveling book 
shops and newsstands ply their trade up and down the streets. The na- 
tion reads in buses, streetcars, trains and planes as well as at home. Every- 
thing from comic books to somber tomes comes out in Japanese. With this 
in mind, the Church is spouting out reading material constantly. Maga- 
zines for all ages, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, all well done and beautifully 
illustrated, are seen everywhere. Catechisms for every grade, and even in 
braille, spread the truth everywhere. Legion of Mary workers canvass 



268 JAPAN 

every home with literature; they visit hospitals, old folks' homes and 
country poorhouses. The Sisters do the same. Japan is plentifully watered; 
it's up to God to give the increase. 

Japan has always been a puzzle to me and to more astute people as 
well. No other people love beauty so much. They diffuse it through every- 
thing. Vegetables in the market are laid out temptingly. Cheap plastic 
toys are displayed in charming strings. In the rest of Asia, a market 
woman may have her peanuts put up, twenty or so at a time, in little 
cones of newspaper piled in a drab heap on her stand probably banged 
together of an old carton and rusty nails. She sits impassively behind, 
more occupied, it seems, with nursing her baby, making up more news- 
paper cones, peeling the vegetables for dinner, or arguing with her neigh- 
bor for more space. If you want desperately to buy her peanuts, she will 
take time off to accept your money. But don't expect fraternization. In 
Japan, on the other hand, the market woman is all smiles and bows. She 
dances around her pretty little bamboo cart eager to forestall your every 
wish. Her radishes are tied together with red string; her apples are pol- 
ished and the bad spots turned away from the customers. She is a past 
master at Mr. Woolworth's policy: bright lights, music, gay crepe paper, 
fiesta spirit will wheedle the dimes out of your pocket. 

Keen commercial instinct, yes, and a deep-rooted love of Mother Na- 
ture. It is hard to figure out whether the Japanese have bent themselves 
to Mother Nature, or whether they have bestowed Japanese citizenship 
on the great lady. I tried to think it out as our airliner slipped through 
the clouds to soar away to Manila. 

Japanese love nature so much they are unwilling to efface her handi- 
work. Their houses and shrines are unpainted because well-weathered 
wood, dark and rough, is marked by the storms and sunshine, wind and 
snow of years. Why cover that beauty with paint? Stones should not be 
chipped and polished; that results in raw colors, unnatural glare. Old 
faces are lovely grey hair against dark skin, all the wrinkles that living 
has pressed into them. In fine old Japanese houses, posts are not cut 
straight up and down; rather, the tree grows as it was, from floor to ceiling. 
My bed was beside a lovely trunk; the wall was made to fit around it. 
Rather than carve a banister, a Japanese will search the world over for 
a tree which bends to suit his staircase. 

On the other hand, there's nobody like a Japanese to twist nature to 
suit his own ideas. Dwarf pines, odd shapes, hybrid flowers are everywhere. 
Children wear cosmetics up to their eyebrows. And black hair dye is a 
very salable item for both men and women. Nobody will have salt and 
pepper hair; it must be all black or all white. 



B-R-R-R! IT'S COLD UP HERE 269 

So, which is the right theory? Perhaps this is right. The Japanese and 
Mother Nature are like man and wife. Each gives in to the other on 
some points. Long association and deep love have welded them into a 
happy marriage. Long may they reign! 



TRUST TERRITORY 

of the PACIFIC 



Victor 
weather station 



V O cean 




Total island population 75,836. 

Inhabited atolls and islands -97. 

Ocean area 3,000,000 square miles. Land area 700 square miles. 

2J41 islands. 



TRUST TERRITORY 
of the PACIFIC 



23 )J The Grass Skirt Has My Vote 



"AN island," wrote the boy on his examination, "is a 
body of land entirely surrounded by water, except on top." 

Flying over the Trust Territory in the Pacific, one gets the idea that 
it would not take much to put these islands under water. One good wave 
ought to do it without half trying. You fly so long over blueness before 
you see even a tiny spot of green, that every dot of an island seems mighty 
precious. More than half the world's water is in the Pacific. It doesn't 
seem possible that there is any at all left for the rest of the world. 

One of the nicest of these dots is Guam. Just about dead center in 
what might be called the Asiatic Pacific, it has always been a way station 
to anywhere you might wish to go. If a swimmer were to start south from 
Tokyo, another to swim east from Manila, a third to struggle north from 
Australia, they would, after fifteen hundred miles or so, emerge dripping 
on the beach at Guam. They might be joined by another foolhardy young 
fellow who had swum fifteen hundred miles west from Wake Island. 

Guam is a steppingstone to some place else. Such is her fate. Even 
the people who live there are always popping off to Saipan or Rota or 
up to Okinawa. The Chamorros, who form ninety percent of the stable 
population of around thirty-eight thousand, are themselves late-comers 
in racial strains. They are a blend of Filipinos, Spanish and the original 
Chamorro of the Mariana Islands. Their language is half Spanish; their 
color is light; the men play guitars; the women wear long skirts and 
blouses with the typical Filipino "butterfly sleeves." Ever since 1900 Guam 
has been a U.S. territory; the Chamorro is educated, sanitary, and well 
able to hold his own in any situation. Yet he retains the gentleness of his 
racial background. 

I am thinking in particular of Sister Callista, a Mercy Sister. Twelve 
years ago, I stopped on Guam for two weeks, awaiting passage into the 
Trust Territory. The Mercy Sisters then were two, living with thirteen 
novices in seven quonset huts much the worse for wear. One, I remember, 
had been picked up by a Navy crane and moved twenty feet or so across 

273 



274 TRUST TERRITORY 

a road. In the process, the quonset had buckled badly. There was still a 
dent in the curved roof, so bad that it knocked many a harmless nun in 
the head as she walked back and forth inside the hut. At that time they 
were the only Sisters ever to inhabit Guam. The thirteen novices were 
local girls, thrilled at the chance to begin religious life after years of 
waiting. One of them was Sister Callista, with rounded features, steady 
eyes and a devastating smile. 

The years have dealt kindly with Sister Callista. She is Superior of the 
main convent now, winner of several college degrees in the States, and 
former principal of a one-thousand-pupil school. She is still calm, steady, 
humorous and not in the least hurried. She drives the convent car in the 
same leisurely way. It has a leaky radiator, so she keeps a gallon jug of 
water on the floor in the back seat and a box of black pepper under the 
rear window. When she fills the radiator, she sprinkles black pepper into 
the water. Why? Well, a service station attendant told her it would help 
the situation and it does. 

Manila to Guam is fifteen hundred miles. We covered it in little over 
three hours, seven miles up in the sky. That's what everyone does 
rushes into Guam, so as to sit around and wait for transportation else- 
where. While we cooled our heels, I could note what twelve years have 
done to this tiny island. 

Guam fell to the Japanese three days after World War II began. It was 
bought back with blood in August, 1944. Even five years after that, it was 
mostly a shambles of broken coconut trees and pulverized buildings. Busi- 
ness was done by jeeps chugging from one shabby quonset hut to another. 
But now! The new post office, the government buildings, the replanted 
parks and ocean driveways are a joy to behold. The cathedral, once a 
tattered patchwork of woven bamboo mats covering what was left of 
the old Spanish framework, has been rebuilt, gloriously. Enshrining Our 
Lady of Camelin, Guam's beloved patron, it is the religious center of the 
island. A hospital with the latest equipment dominates an escarpment 
overlooking the sea. Schools for girls and boys, secular and religious, are 
impressive. One is a large school for boys named for Father Duenas, a 
Guamanian priest shot during World War II for his part in leading the 
resistance movement. School Sisters of Notre Dame from Milwaukee are 
on the island with three schools; Franciscan Sisters from La Crosse op- 
erate a clinic with four doctors employed full time. Spanish Mercedarian 
Sisters from Kansas City make the island the center of their extensive 
missions in the Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls. In 1946, when three 
Mercy Sisters stepped off an Army transport, they were the strangest crea- 
tures ever to set foot on Guam. Fifteen years later, the island is generously 
sprinkled with religious habits on both Americans and Guamanians, 
There are no fewer than seventy-four Mercy Sisters. All in all, the Church 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 275 

in Guam, under the guidance of the Capuchin Bishop Baumgartner, seems 
to be forging ahead at a great rate. 

Most of the heel cooling and heart fluttering is done around the 
Transport Office. One plane, seating perhaps fifteen people, makes a trip 
once a week to Yap and Koror. Usually, the plane stays overnight on 
Koror and returns the next day. Therefore, if you are not chosen to be 
one of the fifteen that week, you must wait on Guam to try your luck 
for the next week. The issue is always in the balance for, at the last mo- 
ment, someone "more honorable than thou" may get the seat assigned 
to you. Priorities are terribly, terribly important. 

While we cooled the heels and fluttered the heart, Mother and I went 
shopping on Guam. That meant a trip to Moylan's. If ever there was a 
fabulous General Store in an outpost of civilization, Moylan's is it. Quite 
soon, I hear, Moylan's will put up a new store, air-conditioned, boasting 
even an escalator the first escalator ever to pervert the Guamanian peo- 
ple. One more step in the you-don't-hafta life. You don't have to walk; 
you ride in your car. You don't have to heat water over the stove; you 
turn on the water-heater. You don't have to wash dishes; or clothes; or 
even play the piano. Machines do it all for you. And now Moylan's escala- 
tor enters the picture of decadencel 

But all of that was blissfully in the future; we saw Moylan's in its native 
charm. The floors were of ancient wood, pretty well splintered. The show- 
cases were Edwardian, if not Victorian. The merchandise is piled up to 
the ceiling. Every time you breathe, you knock something down. Signs 
are posted everywhere, lettered by a haggard hand: 

ADULTS WHO BREAK THINGS 
MUST PAY FOR THEM, AND 
ALSO THE THINGS THAT THEIR 
CHILDREN BREAK. 

So, you try to be careful. A partial listing of all the stuff Moylan's sells 
would give a case of severe frustration to Sears Roebuck's catalogue: school 
bags, cameras (from 114.00 to $679.50), buckets, hair ribbons, toys, type- 
writers, clocks, cosmetics, business machines, cake mixes, Japanese socks 
and zori, power tools, seeds, refrigerators, ladies' hats, cornflakes, lawn- 
mowers, greeting cards, plastic dishes, lamps, candy. An organ with a 
pricetag of $2,995 stood right beside a box of chiclets priced at 5^. The 
candy department was doing a rush business in chocolate bunnies and 
marshmallow eggs although Easter was two months past. Even Valentine 
boxes of candy were going well. The shipment for those two fiestas had 
arrived only a few days before; Guam's sweet tooth did not care about 
dates. 

One of those miracles which punctuated this trip fairly often happened 



276 TRUST TERRITORY 

on Guam. Instead of making one flight to Koror that week, the powers- 
that-be decided to make two "turnabouts," meaning that the plane would 
make a round trip on Thursday and another on Friday. The Transport 
Office listed us among the lucky thirty for the week. Our hearts were 
young and gay once more. We rose with the larks; Sister Callista and her 
Sisters sat us down to a hearty breakfast and out we sped to the airport 
to board our Albatross. 

It's a bulky awkward plane, more like a ship, built for dependable 
service on land or water. We were a motley passenger list a few Ameri- 
cans, a writer for the National Geographic Magazine and his wife, some 
island men going back home, Antonio, seven years old, and his big sister 
going home after a year of school on Guam. A thermos jug of coffee and 
a pile of paper cups beside it provided refreshment for anybody wanting 
it. The door to the pilot's cockpit swung open most of the time. Once up 
in the blue there was little for anyone to do but watch the watery miles 
goby. 

After two hours or so, the blue-green reefs and dark palm fringes of 
Ulithi passed underneath. A long curving string of yellow sand in the 
sea. Only ten feet above sea level, Ulithi is practically washed out to sea 
with every hurricane. Yet it is the center of Father Walter's parish; and 
any parish with Father Walter in it is solidly established. 

The only trouble with being Ulithi's pastor is this: Once you leave the 
atoll on business, it's awfully hard to get back on it. The planes do not 
stop; the ships call infrequently because there is no real harbor, and often 
they are in no mood to take passengers. There are only two ships, any- 
way, serving the Trust Territory. Father Walter is the classic example of 
frustration in that line. He had to go to Truk to see his Bishop six hundred 
miles away. He got a boat to Yap, then took the plane to Koror and from 
there, another boat to Truk, thirteen hundred miles in all. This was rare 
good fortune for him. At that point Lady Luck flew off on other business. 
For four successive weeks he was bumped from the plane which would 
have taken him as far as Koror or Yap. So he persuaded some friends to 
let him hop aboard a Coast Guard plane to Anguar; from there, he took 
a native boat to Koror; from Koror to Yap he managed a seat on the 
plane; the home stretch from Yap to Ulithi was made on the Errol, one 
of the two trading ships. At Ulithi, after several months' absence, he had 
long been given up for dead; his loyal parishioners would have had a Mass 
said for the repose of his soul if there had been a priest to say it. 

It would take more than that to do away with Father Walter. He is a 
big man, hewn out of rock with a hatchet, it seems. He feels most com- 
fortable in lumberjack plaids, preferably up on a building repairing the 
grass roof. Still, he recognizes that the island people are better in such 
work, so he takes for his part cooking the meals for the workers. He likes 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 277 

to talk about it on the few occasions when he can visit us Maryknoll 
Sisters on some island or other. 

Don't know just how I got into kitchen work on the missions, he says. 
Was no good at it at home, I know. My mother always said, 'Get out of 
here. You're all thumbs in a kitchen/ Couldn't stand me around. Well, 
now I'm in great demand at cooking. When the men of my parish are 
working on a building, I always cook their dinner for them. Have a good 
time doing it, too. Guess I'm just a natural-born cook, but a case of 
arrested development. It didn't show up when I was little, that's for sure. 
The men all like what I cook. In fact, I have an idea that's why they 
show up so regularly on parish projects. Or maybe I flatter myself, and 
they only like it so's they can appreciate home cooking when they get it. 
At any rate, they work hard and I feed them as best I can. They call it 
'happy labor' when they work for the church. That's nice of them. 

Americans too like my cooking for their cats and dogs, that is. We 
have two American families on Ulithi, the Buhls and the Dongans. Mrs. 
Buhl had to go to Guam to get her teeth fixed and she made me a proposi- 
tion. 'You can live in my house, Father/ she said, *if you feed my cats/ 
She's got six of them. Or rather she had six when she went away. Two of 
them succumbed to my cooking. Only, you'd hardly call it cooking; she 
left twenty cans of cat food and twelve of tuna fish. All I had to do was to 
open them and dish it out. Very uninspiring work, I must say. When I got 
into the house after a bout with a sailboat getting to one of the outlying 
islands for Mass, there were the six cats looking at me with six deepening 
shades of contempt. 'Get going, bus boy/ they glared. 'We've been waiting 
quite a while for you/ 

Then, while I was still tangled up in cats, the Dongans went off, too. 
They left me with their dog to feed. He was to get Frisky dog food. He 
couldn't wait, either. The cats just glared their contempt; they could do 
it so well they didn't need to speak. But the dog yelped all over the place, 
howling and whining, leaping up and getting in my way. I had to defend 
myself with the can opener and he got the point after meeting the business 
end of it a couple of times. 



I was still enjoying memories of Father Walter and his menagerie when 
we circled preparing to land on Yap, 461 miles from Guam. Yap is one o 
those geographic names you can't forget. Like Hohokus, N.J., Tugue- 
garao in the Philippines, Zamboanga, Timbuktu or Zanzibar. Kokomo, 
Ind., is another. Some forty years ago, Yap was a name bandied across 
the Versailles Treaty table. The question was, would Japan get it or 
would it stay with Germany? Of course Japan got it. And with it virtual 
control of the trans-Pacific cable. In 1905 the Germans had built an im- 
pressive cable station on Yap; here the main cable divided into three. One 
branch went to Japan, another to Shanghai and the third to Manila. Yap 
was a real war prize for Japan. 



278 TRUST TERRITORY 

The people on Yap had nothing to say about the transfer. They were 
used to foreigners coming on their hospitable island and doing odd things 
with cement and steel. The Spanish came in 1884; the Germans took over 
in 1898; the Japanese were puttering around from 1917 until 1945. Now 
Americans were here and there with jeeps, motorcycles, trucks and Coca 
Cola. The Yapese takes them all in stride. The only incident that ruffled 
his calm came when the Japanese tried to make him and his good wife 
wear clothes. Western clothes, that is. For the Yapese are, in a sense, fussy 
about what they wear. For women, a grass skirt and possibly a black string 
around the neck to indicate married status are enough. The string might 
be an old typewriter ribbon, a shoelace or, more stylish, strands of black 
embroidery thread. To this scant apparel, the well-to-do add a wrist 
watch, a few bangle bracelets, or some bright plastic wire. Men are con- 
tent with red loincloths, ornamented for gay occasions with strips of 
tree bark slung casually between their legs and pulled up before and be- 
hind into a series of loops like a badly- tied Christmas package. Others 
the young fellows wear gay bands of red, white and blue which fall down 
to their knees. Not a few have strings of flowers in their thick curling hair. 
Little boys supplement the red loincloth with a rosary around the neck; 
little girls wear the grass skirt held up, it seems, only by the grace of God. 

Mother and I fell in love with the Yapese people. Knowing them you 
can well understand why Robert Louis Stevenson buried himself on 
Tahiti. If I had money to live without working, I too would set up a 
shack in little old Yap and watch the rest of the world go by. No, not even 
watch it go by. 

Intelligent and deeply religious, the Yapese are so matter-of-fact about 
it that we needed no adjustment to their grass skirts and no blouses. It 
seemed a very practical outfit on an island where one moment it rains in 
torrents and in the next the sun toasts you crispy brown. And it's not 
realistic to say that a woman in a grass skirt is not dressed. Indeed, each 
skirt weighs something like five pounds. When you have five pounds of 
grass, weeds, coconut fibers and assorted flowers hanging down to your 
ankles, you are really wearing clothes. No woman is happy with only one 
grass skirt; she has several different kinds. The * 'working skirt" is of grass, 
wound around and knitted together with a coconut fiber rope at the top. 
Such a skirt takes about two days' full-time work to make; it lasts only a 
week or ten days. The "dancing skirt" is of hibiscus fiber, not the hibiscus 
so common in Hawaii, but a small tree with yellow-pink flowers. The 
inner bark is stripped and soaked for a week in the sea, weighted down by 
stones. The fibers come up from this a lovely creamy white, but the custom 
is to dye them various bright colors. The finished skirt is colored in stripes 
running up and down. When the dancing really gets going, the swirl of 
bright skirts is thrilling. A hibiscus skirt is prized; it may last a year. 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 279 

"Where do you get the dye?" I asked Amalia (of whom more later). 

"Oh, down at the Yap Trading Company/' she said, indicating the one 
General Store on the island, established since the Americans came in. 

"What did you do before there was a Yap Trading Company?" 

She was puzzled, thinking back into the far-gone past, although she 
is old enough to remember that far back easily. "I don't know," she said 
slowly. "We forget those things fast." 

On the whole, the grass skirt has my vote. There is no laundry problem; 
it pioneers in the field of Disposable Clothes. Again, no need for perfume; 
the sweet smell of new-mown hay wafts at every step. And one carries a 
soft haymow everywhere, ready to sit on at a moment's notice. Not only 
that, but Junior cuddles up on Mama's haystack and drops off to slumber 
while Mama sits on the floor during Mass. Also it is made with a generous 
bustle around the hips. This is convenient; it gives baby quite a footing 
when Mama carries him on her back. Older children get a free ride just 
by standing on the bustle and hanging on to her shoulders. 

Properly speaking, Yap is not one island, but four, with the engaging 
names of Yap, Map, Rumung and Tamil-Gagil, so named because it is 
divided into two "counties" so to speak, each with a population of about 
four hundred people. Once, Yap and T-G were a single island but the 
Germans dug a canal between them to facilitate traffic to Map and 
Rumung. 

The Japanese too were busy with stones and mortar. They built a rail- 
road to bring lumber down from the interior. They made causeways and 
even, although it is hard to believe, are credited with constructing a bridge 
over the harbor so high that ocean-going vessels could go under it. Not 
that this is an impossible feat, but one can't imagine what there was on 
either side of the harbor to make such a bridge a good investment. 

All four islands in the Yap group, it is estimated, had less than 2,500 
people during Japanese times, although historians say there were 40,000 
Yapese before the Spanish came. They judge this from the number of un- 
inhabited villages found everywhere. These villages all retain their names. 
In any census count they are listed with a simple zero after them, as if a 
presage of better times to come. I remember twelve years ago, many people 
told me the Micronesian races were dying out due to diseases the white 
man brought and to abortions the Japanese taught them. Men who 
traveled from island to island reported very few children on some. One of 
the Sonsoral group had fourteen adults and one child. 

The trend is reversing. The Yap group has well over three thousand and 
babies seem to be all over the place. And all very healthy. Mrs. Patrick, 
administrator and only American on the hospital staff on Yap, says that 
ninety-nine percent of the babies are born in the hospital. The only ones 
not born there are the impatient ones who could not wait. 



280 TRUST TERRITORY 

Americans, so far as I could see, are doing a splendid work in the Trust 
Territory. They seem to be dedicated, conscientious workers who keep 
the island people's good in mind. Quite a few are Hawaiian-born or have 
lived there a long time; this gives them a common feeling for all South 
Sea islanders. In fact, more than once I thought, perhaps not too ac- 
curately, "Twenty-five years ago, when I first knew it, Hawaii was like 
Guam is now. Koror probably is like Guam then; and Koror then was 
like Yap, now. They form stepping stones in history." 

Mrs. Patrick is administrator of the hospital on Yap. It is a most un- 
prepossessing building just a one-story brick structure erected on the 
foundations of a Japanese fort which in turn was built on the founda- 
tions for the Spanish administration building. The whole is painted black 
as a cure for the bricks* predilection for letting rain pass through. Al- 
though of solid structure, it looks like a tar shack, but is neat and clean 
on the inside. 

Mrs. Patrick is sold on the Trust Territory policy of passing on re- 
sponsibility to native-born people as soon as it is prudent. She administered 
the hospital on Truk and trained a Trukese to take over. Then she 
started out afresh on Yap. Now, she is the only American on the staff. 
"Like you missioners," she tells us, "my job is to work myself out of a job. 
When the Church can get Yapese priests and Sisters here, you feel happy 
to go. It's the same way with me. Many a time, it would have been ten 
times easier for me to do something myself, but I knew that it was more 
important to get the native to do it right, than to rush ahead on my 
own." 

Besides running the hospital Mrs. Patrick keeps a wary eye out for 
diseases coming from afar. For instance, last year, she heard of several 
cases of flu in the Marshalls. Marshalls? Why, they are two thousand miles 
away over the water! "The flu will be coming here/' she told the District 
Administrator (known as Distad in common parlance). "We ought to 
round up the people and give preventive injections. But we can't do it 
free; we haven't that kind of money in our budget. So ask the chiefs if 
they will subscribe the funds." They did. The people were inoculated. 
And when the epidemic struck, there were many mild cases but only three 
deaths one of whom was a child and another an advanced TB case. 
However, hundreds died on less fortunate islands. 

She has done much for the babies. Each mother gets a booklet telling 
of supplementary foods, proper care, and so on. That is why one sees on 
Yap what one never sees in Korea, Formosa, the rural Philippines, China 
or anywhere else in Asia that is, babies with diapers (often disposable 
ones) and nursing bottles filled with milk formulas. They go even further, 
and this amazes Mrs. Patrick. "The women trot down to the Yap Trading 
Company and buy strained bananas for the babies," she says. "Strained 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 281 

bananas! On Yap! With all sorts of native fruits here which can be used 
and not cost a cent." So she makes lists of these for the prospective mothers. 
As a result, Yapese babies are gurgling pictures of health. 

Her two greatest enemies, Mrs. Patrick estimates, are T.B. and intestinal 
parasites. T.B. accounts for half the patients in her fifty-bed hospital. It 
will be a long, slow process to rid the island of T.B. But only ten years' 
education through schools and the training of native doctors, nurses and 
technicians, she feels, should put an effective bite into the ravages of in- 
testinal parasites. Mrs. Patrick has sighted her guns at the worms. I have a 
feeling they are done for. 

Trust Territory officials are pushing the education program. Young stu- 
dents have top priority in transportation. More than once we have stood 
aside to let a student take our place on the weekly plane. I once went by 
launch out into Yap harbor to where the plane bobbed on the water. It 
was pouring as usual; I found myself hiding under a tarpaulin with a 
student. He was bound for Guam and the great wide, wonderful world, 
not to return until he had a nursing diploma to hang on the clinic wall. 
I sat on a carton; the student sat on his cardboard suitcase. He wore a 
white shirt embroidered in gold around the collar and down the front. 
His trousers were pressed or rather had been pressed. The luscious waves 
of his black hair shone with hair oil. He wore, no doubt, the family for- 
tune on his back. I did not recognize him, but I am sure that at least once 
in those days on Yap I must have passed him on the road, attired in red 
loincloth, with a bolo slung through a belt, looking like the Noble Savage 
of romantic fiction. "Good luck to him!" I thought. "I only hope that in 
the process of education he does not lose his pride in being one of a truly 
noble people." 

Yap has many customs, some good, some bad. Family life is often broken 
up. The wife has to return to her mother's house for four to six months 
after a child is born. Further, the men all sleep in "the men's house"; the 
women and children are left in their own home. A rigid caste system 
disheartens the lowly. Stanislaus Kameng took us across the harbor once 
in his boat. He is of the slave class, and his sense of degradation, they say, 
is the basic cause of his constant drunkenness. He knows he can never be 
anything but the lowest class. All of one class live together in a village; 
that is, a village may be first class, second class or slave class. No one may 
move out of his village to advance to higher class; similarly, he cannot fall 
lower. 

Stanislaus is not poor, however. He owns his own outboard motor and 
has a good job in the Yap Supply Department. However, he is still held in 
contempt. "After all," he told Sister Fidelis, "we're not much better than 
animals; we aren't really people." 

Much of Yap history and customs I learned from Amalia, now thirty- 



282 TRUST TERRITORY 

seven years old, who is, so to speak, everybody's sister and everybody's 
mother rolled into one very helpful person. 

When she was a child, back in Japanese times, Amalia came from her 
tiny village in Gagil to the main island, Yap, to enroll in the school. She 
was bright, industrious and entirely pagan. But one day between classes, 
she slipped into the church, a big white building overlooking the blue 
lagoon. It got to be a habit. Then Padre Juan noticed her, the slight 
young girl sitting in her grass skirt on the cement floor. She always wore 
western dress to school the Japanese insisted on it. But after class, she 
found it easier to run around without it. Saved on laundry, too. 

Padre Juan instructed her. She was baptized after several years to test 
her constancy. For her baptism, Padre Juan gave her and her eyes shone 
as she told me twenty-five years after yes, he gave her a white dress, a 
rosary and a harmonica. 

"Why the harmonica?" 

"He liked to hear me play it. He taught me how/* 

"Do you have it still?" 

"Ah no. I lost it in the war. So many sad things happened then!" 

"Would you play for me if you had one?" 

Her plain face lighted with a flash of joy. "Yes! I could still play one. 
I know I could!" I made a memo to myself: Send Amalia a harmonica when 
I get to the States. 

In 1944, she was twenty-one. She could read the letters of our alphabet 
and the Japanese characters as well. She was a teacher in the school and 
a catechist in the church. Padre Juan had left Yap some years before; he 
was on Truk as superior of the Jesuits in the Carolines and Marshalls. 
Padre Bernardo and Padre Luis were on Yap with a Brother. The war 
was on. Bombs demolished the church; then the two priests and Brother 
were taken away and executed. Their rectory, now our convent, was oc- 
cupied by Japanese soldiers. All the Yapese, men and women, were or- 
ganized as work squads to repair roads, put up new barracks and most 
urgent clear the ground for an airfield which was never finished. Life 
wasn't easy for the Japanese; it wasn't easy for the Yapese, either. 

"Why don't you marry?" everyone asked. Her parents, most of all. They 
had picked out a man high caste, friendly family what more could a girl 
want? There was no priest on Yap to marry them; to quiet them all she 
went through the tribal ceremony. But she knew he had another woman 
and needed her not at all. Years later, when the unnatural marriage had 
long ago broken up, he came down with T.B. in the Yap hospital. Amalia 
dropped everything, went to his side and took care of him until he died. 

After the war, she worked for many American families on Yap. Her 
place, as she sees it, is always to help other families, never to have one 
of her own. She showed me snapshots of this or that American baby she 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 283 

had cared for "before" and "after" pictures often, where a puny fretful 
child grows strong as he is held tight in her slender brown arms and 
pulls the curly black hair down over her laughing face. Now she turns 
her helpfulness to Angeline, a widow with four children, who works in 
the hospital laundry. Amalia makes clothes for the children, takes care 
of the old grandfather, keeps an eye on baby Carlos. Many Americans 
have offered high pay; Amalia feels this is her work for now and turns 
them down. 

She was the first Yapese woman to own a sewing machine. She paid 
fifty dollars for it, shipped from Guam. Many Yapese women wear west- 
ern dresses when they work in the Trust Territory offices, and slip into 
a grass skirt when they get home. 

"What do you charge for a dress?" I asked. 

A cloud of incomprehension passed across her face. It was not that she 
did not understand my English. After all, she reads American magazines, 
uses an English missal and speaks the language quite well. But the idea 
of taking money from another Yapese was incomprehensible. We talked 
about property rights. This is how she explains them: 

"If you want to go fishing and you do not have a canoe, you can borrow 
anybody else's canoe. You don't pay for anything, but you should leave a 
present of a fish or two to thank the owner. If you want to borrow his 
motor boat, you should use your own gasoline." 

"What if the owner wants to go fishing too, and he cannot because you 
have his boat. Does he get mad?" 

"No. He realizes that you needed the canoe or you would not borrow 
it." 

"Suppose you borrow it and wreck it on the reefs?" 

"Too bad, but that could happen to anybody. You do not have to pay 
for the canoe. Not money. We just don't." 

The very idea of money is hazy to our way of thinking. Many things 
serve as money. The value has nothing to do with the size or commercial 
worth. It is measured by the care taken to make it or the trouble someone 
went to to obtain it. 

First there is Mmbul which is a length of lava-lava, the cloth used for 
loincloths, three or four feet long and two feet wide, wrapped up in a 
betel nut sheath. 

Then there is Gau, a necklace of shells, two to four feet long. The shells 
come from Canet, an island near Ponape, from Ponape itself and from 
Euripik. Since these come from a distance, Gau is worth more than 
Mmbul. The first pieces of Gau, ninety of them, were brought by a man 
named Angumang; these are the most valuable. 

Yar is money made of shells about eight inches long, pierced and tied 
on a coconut rope. They come from afar, New Guinea, Palau and Ponape. 



284 TRUST TERRITORY 

Yar is commonly used for marriage money but it is also good to buy a 
canoe, bananas or a fish trap. 

Reng is the name of money made of turmeric, the yellow root of the 
guchol plant. The dried root is ground and mixed with water and the 
paste shaped into a ball. Turmeric as a dry powder is dusted on shoulders 
and palms for dancing. It is also, incidentally, the source of curry powder. 

Most valuable of the Yap currency is the stone money huge rings of 
stone with a hole in the middle. Each separate piece of Yap money has a 
name. Everybody on the island knows where it is and who owns it. Used 
chiefly for the sale of land for a sweet potato patch, there is no need for the 
new owner to take the great stone from "the bank" a stretch along the 
shore where the stone money is set up leaning against rocks or trees. How- 
ever, some nouveaux riches like to have their money arrayed around their 
houses, much as suburbanites in the States put wagon wheels all over 
their lawns. 

This brings us to O'Keefe, who made a fortune making stone money. 
He was a shipwrecked sailor who landed in Yap around 1880. At first, he 
contented himself with trading coconuts and such. But eventually, as the 
Yapese charitably put it, he "borrowed*' an island in the middle of Yap 
harbor where he set up business on a large scale. He grew quite rich, 
went to Hong Kong and bought a sea-going junk. Making sails from jute 
sacks, he brought it back to Yap. Commissioned by various chiefs and with 
a crew of Yapese, he organized expeditions to Palau, two hundred and fifty 
miles away, to make the huge discs of stone money. That type of stone 
does not exist on Yap; ergo, the money is valuable since making and 
bringing it to Yap over many miles of water was a very tricky job. One 
piece fell from O'Keefe's boat as it was being brought to shore. It is still 
at the harbor bottom and still negotiable. Everyone knows it is there, 
like the gold bars in the treasury at Washington. In fact, as security, 
it is safer there than in a bank vault. During German times, O'Keefe's junk 
went down in a hurricane and O'Keefe with it. His daughter and son-in- 
law tried to carry on the business but nothing is left on O'Keefe's island 
now but the foundations of his brick buildings. 

The largest piece of stone money is twelve feet in diameter; most of 
them are around six or eight feet. Far from being cumbersome, stone 
money is handy. It's so big you can't lose it. A thief would be at his wit's 
end to hide it. As one of our pupils on Yap wrote: 

Yapese money is very hard to move from place to place. As you know, 
it is too big to put into your pouch. If you have a piece of money and 
you can't move it to the place where you want to put it, you ask some 
people to come to carry your money for you, or they can put it in a canoe, 
boat or raft. These are the ways we move our money. 

Yapese money is very good because we cannot steal the pieces because 



THE GRASS SKIRT HAS MY VOTE 285 

they are so heavy. Even those small enough to steal, we cannot hide in 
our clothes. It is also good because you will not have to keep it in a safe 
place or in your wallet. You can keep it any place you want, in the house 
or outside. 

Yapese money has some disadvantages because we cannot take it from 
store to store to buy things. Also, we cannot buy American things with it. 
The people who were born recently don't like it very well because they 
don't know anything about it. They depend on American money. During 
the Yapese dances, many people give money to other people. They do 
not want to buy anything. They are just happy. 

Things are changing now fast. Ideas are penetrating the island, soaking 
in like rain. The mail-order catalogues are passed from hut to hut. Out- 
board motors, sewing machines, fish nets and clothes come every time 
the trading ships stop by. That is, every two months or so. Copra is the 
main money crop. A man can earn five dollars a day drying copra. An- 
other cash crop, not faring so well lately, is trochus shells. For two weeks 
of the year, the trochus a sea animal with a cone-shaped spiral shell 
swarms on the beaches. Everything stops school, work, play while whole 
families go after the trochus. The shells used to be sold to Japan and 
Germany for mother-of-pearl buttons. Of late years, the sale has gone 
down. The poor trochi, so rudely evicted from their shells, retaliate by 
smelling something awful in horrible piles on the beach. Once Sister 
Fidelis wrinkled her nose at the smell. But Julita in Grade Two set her 
straight. "Yes, it smells bad, Sister," she said solemnly. "But I like it. It's 
the smell of money." 

As elsewhere, there is a breaking down of the old morals. "In former 
times," said Amalia, "when a man said he would do something, he did it. 
When he took something that was not his borrowed it it was because 
he really needed it. That is why we did not mind. But now . . ." her 
voice trailed off. 

Parents come to us, too, with their woes. "I can't do anything with my 
children," we hear on Yap as everywhere else. Adoptions from one family 
to another take place for no reason at all. If a lad doesn't like his adoptive 
home, he hies himself back to his real parents. And vice versa, playing 
one off against the other. If school gets oppressive well, the door is open 
and out he goes. 

Drink is becoming a major problem on Yap. Every bomb crater with 
its stagnant water, is alive with tadpoles and beer cans. "When do the 
boys start drinking?" I asked Father Bailey who has been here since 1946. 

"At four or earlier," he said. "At Yapese banquets I have seen toddlers, 
sitting right beside their fathers, down a can of beer in practically one 
swallow. Their fathers did nothing except to open another can and 
place it before the child." 



286 TRUST TERRITORY 

But let's not end this chapter on the dark side of the ledger. Angelina 
shows the bright side. She is a little woman who would be quite pretty 
i her teeth were not solid black. To see her gums so red and teeth so 
black is a shock. This comes from betel-nut chewing; everybody does it. 
Angelina works in the hospital laundry, ironing and folding up sheets. 
Her husband died a bit oddly. He had a serious heart condition and one 
day became very angry at his sister. He started to say something and 
dropped over dead. That left Angelina with four children. So she moved 
back with her father, a grandfatherly type big, easy-going, kindly, the 
sort of old man children adore and will not obey. And she went to work 
in the hospital laundry. 

She rose to be a leader among the women workers. At the beginning of 
1961, Trust Territory officials decided it would be a good idea to organize 
the women into a club so that they would have the thrill of hearing them- 
selves express an idea now and then. Angelina was elected first President 
of the Yapese Women's Club. They meet every first Monday of the month 
in the living room of what might pass for the Executive Mansion. That 
is, the modest but comfortable home of the Distad, under the hospitable 
care of Mrs. Roy T. Gallemore, who is teaching them how a women's 
club works. 

Besides her civic duties, Angelina takes her domestic chores very seri- 
ously. When she comes home at night, she rescues the children from 
Grandpa's benevolent anarchy. They help her prepare the tapioca and 
taro and fish for dinner. Then they spend an hour or more under the 
kerosene lamp studying tomorrow's school lessons. This is something un- 
usual for Yapese parents. And Angelina's youngsters, Christopher, Timmie 
and Juliana are "tops" in our fourth, third, and first grades respectively. 

One evening around nine o'clock, a gentle knock brought us to our 
door. Outside in the velvet night were Angelina and Chris. Angelina was 
in her grass skirt and black typewriter ribbon about her neck, smiling 
her betel-blackened smile. Chris wore only the barest bit of apron fore 
and aft. They carried an American flashlight and a covered dish of 
delicate Japanese china. It was a gift for Mother, a chicken boiled with 
curry. Angelina had made it after her work in the laundry. 

"But Chris caught the chicken," she said putting her hand on Chris* 
curly head. At this point Chris should have pulled on his necktie or dug 
his hands into his pockets, but having neither of those things, he could 
only twist his toes on the ground. "Yes," his mother went on with real 
pride, "he put some grated coconut on the ground and made a noose of 
rope around it. Then, when the chicken stepped in, he pulled the noose 
tight very quickly." 

Mothers and sons don't change much from country to country, nor 
from age to age. 



i.( 24 )J They Dance the Bible on Yap 

the use of taking those?" I asked, pointing to 



rubbers and raincoat. 

"Standard procedure on Yap/* said Sister Irene Therese. "We never 
leave the house without rubbers and raincoat." And she rubbed more 
sunburn lotion on her face. 

We started out to Tamil Island in blistering sunshine. Twenty minutes 
in an open boat across the harbor, an hour's walk on the island to the 
church and Mass on a treeless plateau in the late afternoon such was 
the schedule. We would be baked a fiery red, there seemed no doubt, 
since God has provided us with no built-in sun tan. 

But ... As we waited on the shore for Stanislaus' boat, dark clouds 
gathered. We stepped into it and the heavens opened. They stayed open 
until we returned four hours later. Rubbers and raincoat? Pfff ! As well 
try to stop Niagara with an umbrella. Soaked to the skin after the first 
five seconds, I would not have missed it for the world. 

The dock if you want to call it that at Tamil is a long mound of 
coral covered with slippery moss. But we managed to leap ashore and 
start the walk through virgin forest. The path is wide a roadway, really, 
started by the Japanese for their projected airstrip on the island, begun 
in a rush during war years and never finished. The road has only big- 
stone foundations. Now covered with mossy slime, they are hard to nego- 
tiate. Also sharp. But at least they gave solid footing. 

It had been a steady climb all the way from the sea. Now we emerged 
on a flat headland overlooking sea, sky and green jungle. A quonset added 
to on front, back and sides, served as school for the area. Domingo, the 
teacher, is a graduate of the Jesuit school on Truk and before that he was 
one of our boys on Yap. 

Nobody seemed to mind the rain (I told you that grass skirts are 
practical) and certainly we were too wet to get any wetter. So we sat on 
a bench under a tree or roamed around talking to various groups and 
reveled in the scene. People were coming to the galvanized iron hut that 
served as a chapel, congregating in small bunches, exchanging gossip, 
greeting neighbors, while the children chased around. The women wore 
only grass skirt and black string; the men were content with very little. 
Rain ran down their hair and coursed in rivulets down their bodies, yet 
they conversed in polite groups quietly. Martina, a little charmer in a 

287 



288 TRUST TERRITORY 

sodden grass skirt, ran over to Mother on the bench, cupped her hands 
on Mother's lap and looked into her face. The white skin, the eyeglasses, 
the religious veil she took them all in. Then she sighed contentedly and 
leaned up against this strange creature. 

A few months before, a typhoon had whipped away the chapel; a gal- 
vanized iron hut was a wretched substitute. Mass, planned on the flat 
headland, had to be celebrated indoors. The shed was dark inside but 
I could make out the massive tree trunks which formed the frame. Crude 
though the shed was, the Altar Society ladies had prettied it up. Hibiscus 
flowers leaned out of sections of bamboo tacked to each post, and on the 
altar Mexican creeper burgeoned from metal vases made from brass car- 
tridges of big-gun ammunition. The roof of corrugated iron pieces was 
full of holes where nails had punctured them in previous uses. Funny 
but one is much more annoyed with a drip of rain from a hole in the roof, 
than with a washout outside. 

There were no seats, of course. Some few spread pandanus mats on 
the ground. About one hundred and eighty adults and God-alone-knows 
how many children filled the shed. Their bodies glistened with rain, and 
the smell of wet grass from the skirts pervaded the chapel. 

Mass began. Father Condon, a big Jesuit with bright red hair and 
beard, began the Mighty Action. These one hundred and eighty innocent 
children of God paid strict attention. When the children stared around, 
Mama or Papa turned their heads resolutely toward the altar. There 
was no talking or whispering. Sometimes a chant was struck up, sung 
through and finished. Most of the time there was no sound except for 
Father's murmur at the altar and the swish of grass skirts as the con- 
gregation sat down or stood up. During the Creed, as Father said "Et 
homo factus est," the swish of grass skirts as the people genuflected was 
a mission sound par excellence. After all, that is what we come for; so 
that knees will bend to those words. 

At Holy Communion, the reverence of these people over-awed us. Eyes 
down, hands clasped before their bare bodies, they went forward to re- 
ceive their Lord. A strong youngish man had stood in front of me holding 
his little girl in his arms, so that her bright eyes peered at us over his 
shoulder. Tired of that, she amused herself pulling out the long curls on 
her daddy's head. After the "Domine, non sum dignus," daddy took her 
little brown hand in his and led her up to the altar with him. Her grass 
skirt hung by a thread on the very last promontory of her small torso and 
swayed with every step. Daddy looked like the very image of primeval 
man, completely bare except for the frill of hibiscus bark around his 
loins. He and she moved forward, stepping over and around the other 
men and women on the floor, the babies sleeping, the children sitting 



THEY DANCE THE BIBLE ON YAP 289 

calmly nearby. They were intent on something very important. They re- 
turned after Communion the same way. The little girl was looking at 
daddy; he was steering her by the arm through the same welter of hu- 
manity on the floor. But the very way he steered her showed that he was 
interested only in getting back to their place where he could talk to 
the God within him. He looked like Adam; like Adam too he "walked 
with God." 

The Catholic Church in these islands meaning the sprinkling of dots 
over the Trust Territory's three million square miles of water has had 
an uncertain career. The marvel is that it ever took root at all. The Spanish 
came to Yap in 1884; they went the two hundred and fifty-three miles 
further to the Palau Islands in 1891. On Yap, Spanish Capuchins built a 
good-sized church and began mission work. There are few reminders of 
the Spanish now, but high on the hill in the island's center I came across 
three very substantial monuments, evidently over graves. The writing is 
moss grown and much has been obliterated. One is unreadable. The 
other two read in Spanish: 

DON FRANCISCO [last name illegible] 

OFFICER OF THE SHIP MAGALLANES 

HEADSTONE GIVEN BY CHIEFS AND OFFICERS OF THE SAME 
1887 

and: 

DON ALONSO 

DOCTOR AND NOTARY 
DIED 1885 

When Germany bought the islands in 1898, German Capuchins took 
over the mission. When you think of the hazards of transportation in those 
days, especially in that unimportant corner of the Pacific, you realize 
there may have been months and even years when no priest was on Yap 
during interregna. In 1917, the Germans gave way to the Japanese. These 
were truly lean years. Five years after the Germans were sent away, Span- 
ish Jesuits took the missions at the personal request of the Holy Father. 
Since the Japanese used the islands for military purposes, they wanted as 
few visitors as possible, and no foreign residents. Missioners cooled their 
heels for years waiting for visas. Brother Juan, a fiery Basque now on 
Koror, waited eight years in Yokohama and would probably still be sit- 
ting on benches outside government offices, if it were not that World War 
II came to his rescue. 

Padre Elias and Padre Marino de la Cruz were on Koror during the 
war; Padres Bernardo and Luis on Yap with a Brother. Padre Elias went 



290 TRUST TERRITORY 

from town to town telling the people, "The Americans will come here. 
When they do, you should go forth to meet them and carry a white cloth 
on a stick. This do, and they will not harm you." During the war, all five 
missioners were arrested, held three months in prison and executed on 
Babelthuap, a large island near Koror. However, the people remembered 
Padre Elias' advice. There was no disturbance in the American take-over. 
On Okinawa, if you remember, waves of people rushed into the sea to 
drown themselves because they believed the Americans would massacre 
them without cause. 

For two years there was no priest, except an American Navy chaplain 
now and then or some such chance visitor. But in 1946 Father Bailey, an 
American Jesuit, came to Yap. 

"The Navy was here then," he told me. "Also a colony of Chamorros 
whom the Navy had brought from Guam. At my first Mass here, the 
Chamorros came and only three Yapese two old women and a little girl. 
I remember the little girl because she held a pet pig in her arms. During 
Mass I could hear that pig grunting and snuffling. Couldn't make out 
what it was. Then, as I turned around for the last blessing I took a good 
look all around. There was the small child with the pig in her arms. It 
was my introduction to the Yapese custom of making pets of pigs. 

"Gradually the Yapese came around. There was some feeling between 
the Chamorros and Yapese on the island, people told me, although I 
doubt that it was very severe. Anyhow, after a few months the Navy de- 
cided to move the Chamorros to Tinian. On the last Sunday morning, the 
Yapese brought a mountain of foodstuffs for the Chamorros because they 
knew they would have a hard time getting settled on Tinian. One of the 
Navy officers, surveying the pile, said to Uag, a Yapese, 'Did the priest 
tell you to bring this stuff?' Uag said, 'The Father did not. We are Chris- 
tians together with the Chamorros/ " 

Of Yap's three thousand people, about seventy-five percent are Catholic. 
Yet there had never been Sisters on Yap. Small wonder then that the is- 
land all but turned upside down when three Maryknoll Sisters arrived in 
1953 to open a school. One was a nurse, as well as a teacher. The school 
itself could be Exhibit A in a How-To-Do-It book, "How to make the 
most out of what you've got." The school occupies the first floor of the 
convent which was built around fifty years ago, plus a very run-down 
quonset hut used for second and third grades. There are no partitions 
between classes, no blackboards bigger than two by three feet, no sign 
of anything like individual seats. Of course the lighting is not perfect 
and the floor is nature's own. None the less, the Sisters are able to operate 
a good school; "our children" take top honors when they go to Guam 
or Truk for high school. Each class, for one thing, has its own collection 
of library books. For another, the pupil-teacher relationship is very, very 



THEY DANCE THE BIBLE ON YAP 291 

solid. The Sisters have the valuable help of a lay missioner who, with his 
family, has come out to Yap to give his services to the mission. 

The Church, like the Mother she is, is a true woman. She has a thou- 
sand dresses and still is ready for a new one. The body of dogma wears 
the arts and customs of all nationalities and all the ages of those nationali- 
ties. The same Church comes arrayed in medieval Spain and modern 
Japan. She can speak all languages, but even more than that, she expresses 
the same old dogma in a hundred ways in paint and canvas, stone, dance, 
poetry, drama, journalism, lithography and well, you name it! 

Thus, we were not too surprised when we were told that on Tuesday, 
the boys would "dance the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary" in Mother's 
honor. The night before, Sister Francis Xavier and I went to the rusty 
quonset for the final rehearsal. Benches and desks for the Second Grade 
had been pushed to one side. Sitting crosslegged on the teacher's desk, 
looking like an amiable Buddha, was Uag, combination catechist, pillar 
of the Church, elder of the tribe and dance teacher. He was placid enough 
under his honors, wearing his oldest loincloth, with white hair and beard, 
his ancient skin hanging in festoons on his ribs. He chewed betel con- 
tinuously. Every now and then, he opened his "betel bag" which every 
man, woman and child in Yap carries, to replenish the blood-red juice 
in his mouth. From the bag he took out a fresh green leaf of the pepper 
vine, sprinkled some white powder on it and stuffed it into his mouth, 
already filled with chewed betel nut. The white powder is lime made of 
pulverized coral. 

He seemed to have no part in the proceedings; nevertheless, everything 
swung around him. For this show, Uag was scriptwriter, director, inspira- 
tion, producer and umpire. A line of boys sat on the floor in a straight 
row with their legs in "maple-leaf pattern/' that is, with the left foot 
up against the right thigh. This is standard; no one sits otherwise for 
the dance. The line-up included boys of fifteen or so in the middle and 
tapered down at the ends to little fellows. David, in the middle, gave a 
low growl. He clapped his cupped hands and slapped his thighs in 
rhythm. The two on either side joined in; the four beside them and finally 
the whole line were clapping and slapping to David's growl. A small boy 
whom the Sisters call Joe sat behind the line-up. He began the chant in 
a high nasal voice. The boys had been joking before; there had been horse- 
play and laughter; but now they were deadly serious. 

They swayed forward and backward. Their arms, stiff afc. the elbows, 
swept an arc above their heads, the fingers fluttering fast like a humming- 
bird's wings. They clapped with cupped hands and slapped their thighs 
to emphasize points in the whining chant. 

"What's he singing about?" I asked. 

Uag told us. "The Annunciation," he said briefly. 



292 TRUST TERRITORY 

All at once David gave a blood-curdling yell. The others yelped in re- 
sponse. Then the line-up crossed left arm over chest and slapped the right 
hand over it. It was the end of that episode. 

They finished the Five Joyful Mysteries. Then they rose and faced each 
other in double file. The slow pace of the dance changed to lightning. 
Advance, step back, leap forward, spring to the side. It was a lively thanks- 
giving for God's goodness in taking a human body. Our Lord's own body 
must have been like these in His boyhood brown, smooth, perfect in 
proportion, graceful and quick. 

Beside me, on the cement floor, another lad with a white ginger flower 
in his hair had been sitting against the school desks piled up to clear the 
dance floor. He was reading. Now he slapped the book shut and sighed 
profoundly, as one coming out of a book world. I glanced at the book 
now lying closed on his slender brown legs. It was The Three Billy Goats 
Gruff, a second grade reader. He gazed with dreamy eyes at the dancers, 
not seeing them at alL It was with him as it is with an American boy who 
has just finished Kim or Treasure Island. He was lost in the world of 
The Three Billy Goats Gruff. 

Next morning practically everybody on Yap was congregating in our 
back yard. Boys and their proud mothers swarmed in the school and 
surroundings. Mamas were intent on making up their sons, smearing 
red swatches on forehead and chin, dusting yellow turmeric on shoulders 
and palms, tying palm fronds around arms and legs. Feathers waved high 
in the headdresses, supplemented with paper flowers, palm fronds and 
the glint of Lucky Strike wrappers. 

Buzzing around were most of the sixteen American families on Yap. 
With cameras. Never before had there been such a concentration of 
photographic equipment anywhere at any time on Yap. Most Yap dances 
are done at night but because we wanted to take colored movies, Uag 
consented to let his boys dance in the sunlight. The weatherman cooper- 
ated and produced a glorious sun guaranteed to last for the whole day. 
We invited others to share in this chance to get good dance pictures. The 
writer-photographer for the National Geographic Magazine came on the 
double-quick. District Administrator Roy Gallemore and his wife were 
there, Mr. Middleton brought his tape recorder for the chant; the Shug 
family their Polaroid; Mr. Goss, official photographer for the district, had 
a ball for himself; every one who owned a Brownie of whatever vintage 
was shooting all the film he had. One of the best cameras on the field was 
David's. Standing like Hiawatha in loincloth and palm fronds, he took 
expert shots of his classmates. All this flurry was so much milk-and-honey 
to the Yapese; it pleased them that their dances were so important to the 
often-strange Americans. The boys trotted on the field in single file, sat 
on the ground and chanted the Five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary 



THEY DANCE THE BIBLE ON YAP 293 

utterly oblivious of the photographers sneaking up in front and behind. 
The sun beat down; their bodies streamed with sweat. But they were 
intent on the story they told in dance. 

Later, when the people had gone and only we Sisters were around, they 
danced it again. This was "to bury the dance/' they said. After long re- 
hearsals and then the big affairs, one buries the whole business with a last 
performance. That dance will never be done again at least, not in the 
same way. 

That afternoon, Elvira a beautiful woman arranged for the women 
to dance. This was held at the village dance place, down near the shore. 

We went from the convent by truck as far as we could go, Mother and 
Sister Maura Shaun in the cab with Father who drove; the rest of us in 
the open rear. All roads led to the Dance Place that afternoon and we 
picked up dancers and friends as we went along, until the truck body was 
an immense bouquet of flowers, coconut fronds, grass skirts and black 
veils. At the end, we had to walk about half a mile. The path of large 
stepping stones brought us through "the bank" where most people keep 
their money. The great stone circles were lined up along the path, leaning 
against trees or partly buried in the mud. They have been there for years. 

We emerged to a cleared space. Practically all of it was filled by a 
"stage'* maybe two feet high, built up and filled with large stones. Here 
and there on the platform were flat stones stuck upright; these were 
backrests for people sitting cross4egged. For the audience sat on the stage 
and the dancers performed on a strip of ground below it. They needed 
no backdrop. Behind were the huge cartwheels of money, the coconut 
palms, the bright flowering bushes and the Pacific stretching beyond the 
beyond, blue and glistening. 

All Yap was having a picnic that day; the space was alive with family 
groups, coming to dance or to watch. As soon as our white habits appeared 
in the clearing, a young man ran up to sound the gong. It was a section of 
railroad track suspended from a tree; he banged it with an ordinary ham- 
mer many times. Another young fellow, quick as a wink, whacked the 
tops off some coconuts and handed them to us to drink. Mother sat on 
the stage in the place of honor; the rest of us roamed around. Sister Fran- 
cis Xavier spent the time with some of her pupils in school, who dragged 
her off to see something. Sister Irene Therese was in deep consultation 
with a couple of women under the trees. Sister Fidelis was with Elvira 
lining up the dancers for the grand entry. Not knowing much Yapese, 
I wandered around asking questions and trying to understand the an- 
swers. The Americans were out in full force again, shooting any film left 
from the morning's orgy. 

The women danced much as the boys had done, but their story told 
the Creation. The same hand gestures, the same high chanting, the same 



294 TRUST TERRITORY 

shout at the end. Their brown bodies and grass skirts, dyed in glorious 
colors, the red spots and streaks from lipstick, the yellow turmeric powder 
sprinkled on shoulders, the betel-blackened teeth these people seemed 
close to Primal Innocence as they chanted the story of Creation. 

God created heaven and earth; 
All was an empty waste, 
And darkness hung over the deep; 
But the breath of God stirred. 
'Let there be light,' God said. 
And there was light. . . . 

One on the line-up was a very pretty girl; the photographers crowded 
around her. She seemed "the type/' with her wealth of black hair, languid 
eyes, lithe body, swaying grass skirt and red and orange streaks on face 
and shoulders. One of the American women pointed out the beautiful 
dancer to Mother. "That's Francisca whom I told you about, Mother," 
Sister Fidelis said. "She's going up to Saipan to begin her training as a 
Mercedarian Sister, next month." The American woman gasped. "She? 
A nun? Well/' she conceded, "I suppose she's having her last fling now." 

Later, as the sun sent long streaks of shadow from the coconut trees 
across the dance place, the younger girls did a bamboo dance, with no 
religious significance at all. It was fast and furious. 

Then came the Yapese dinner. The Americans had all gone and most 
of the Yapese as well. Only Elvira and her friends stayed to direct the 
banquet. For several hours I had noticed four boys taking turns at waving 
branches over a number of fresh-woven baskets covered with banana 
leaves/They were keeping the flies off our dinner. Each Sister now settled 
in front of a basket and the banana leaf was removed. Inside was fish, 
chicken, boiled sweet potato, boiled taro, boiled ubi and baked tapioca, 
the latter rolled up in a coconut leaf like the Philippine suman. We ate 
with fingers; afterwards, the whole Pacific Ocean was our fingerbowl. We 
went down to the sea where the men were stringing out their nets to pre- 
pare for night fishing, and dabbled our greasy, fishy hands in the water. 

It was, as romanticists are wont to say, a night to remember. 



25 )^i Koror, the Magnificent 



THE banquet cloth was plain wrapping paper, but the 
dishes were of exquisite Japanese lacquerware. The food? Truly cosmo- 
politan. For this banquet was given by the Palau Catholic Club, of 
Palauan blood and Japanese education, for Mother Mary Colman, an 
American. On the buffet table (an American touch), serving plates of little 
strings of raw fish, balls of boiled tapioca, something like potato salad, 
seaweed in various guises, wonderful crabmeat, coconut in chunks and bits 
of squid tempted the guests. 

I found myself at table with three influential citizens, Indalecio Ru- 
dimch, formerly chief magistrate of Koror and now Vice-President of 
Micronesian Council; Felipe Bismark of the Palau Council and Sheriff 
as well; and David Ramarui, also of the Council and now Assistant Edu- 
cation Administrator. They were good examples of the Trust Territory 
policy as outlined in the 1960 Report of the High Commissioner: "The 
goal of our trusteeship is to employ and develop further the human and 
physical resources of the region for the benefit of the territory and its 
people. Emphasis is placed on utilizing Micronesian abilities in the cur- 
rent administrative, political, social and economic programs and prepar- 
ing the Micronesian citizens through education, training and experience 
for greater responsibilities." 

So here I was, eating raw fish, seaweed and potato salad, vis-&-vis three 
Micronesians high in the government offices of their native island. They 
all spoke English quite well. It was a golden opportunity. 

"Tell me," I said. "You all lived in Japanese times. Your fathers were 
here under the Germans and your grandfathers must have talked about 
the Spanish. So you are used to changes in administration. What did you 
think of all these different people?" 

The three men looked at each other. "I myself know only the Japanese. 
Many were good men," said Rudimch cautiously. "Yes, Japanese built 
up the place. They made Koror, you might say, the capital of Micronesia. 
It was the nerve center for their operation in the Southwest Pacific." 

"Koror was a Japanese city of twenty thousand," said Bismark. "The 
main road that you see now full of holes and rocks, bordered only by slim 
jim, hibiscus bushes and a drainage ditch, was then a paved street lined 
with hotels, stores, concrete homes and pleasant gardens. Gas and water 
mains ran under it." 

295 



296 TRUST TERRITORY 

"True," commented Rudimch again. "We had large ships in the harbor, 
tied up to piers a quarter-mile long. Airfields and radio towers brought 
the news o the world. Yes, one felt that Koror was alive/' 

"But I have this to say/' put in Ramarui. "If the Japanese had stayed, 
we three right at this table would not be here tonight. They were pushing 
the Palauans out. We had to go to other islands, far from Koror. Only 
six hundred remained of the four thousand who were here when the 
Japanese came." The others agreed with him. 

"Many Japanese were intelligent men with good characters," he went 
on. "Individually yes, they were good. But the policy of the nation kept 
the Palauans out of anything important/' 

"But I hear they gave a good education to everyone," I commented. 

"A Palauan child would have three years at school. If he was very 
bright, perhaps five. Only a very few went to Japan to study. Also, every 
subject was taught in Japanese; we were not permitted to learn our own 
as a written language. A meeting like this tonight would be impossible." 

He was referring to the speeches given just before. Father Roszel, the 
pastor, had welcomed Mother, giving one sentence in English and trans- 
lating into Palauan as he went on. And, Judge Morei, a Palauan in charge 
of the local court, had spoken for the parishioners. He spoke in Palauan 
and translated into English as he went along. "In former times," the three 
men agreed, "the Japanese would not have come to such an affair and if 
they ever did, the whole program would have been in Japanese." 

No doubt about it, Palauans look back upon Koror-that-was in much 
the same mood as that of the ancient Pompeians prowling around the 
ruins of their former glory after Vesuvius had finished with it. A picture 
taken in 1937 of Koror's main street shows it lined with shops, advertising 
"beer-u" and "tabaca," people in Japanese kimonos and western dress, a 
child with a school bag strapped between his shoulders, several men in 
military uniforms and a sailor arm in arm with a native girl. It was, to the 
empire of Japan, something like Hawaii was to us at the time a naval 
center firmly established among an enchanting island people. There were 
hotels, nice homes, paved streets, public buildings of dignified, if not im- 
posing, size. The sort of place that rings with joy at the glad cry, "The 
fleet's in!" 

For everything swung around the Japanese Navy in those days. The 
Western Carolines, including Ulithi, the Yap group, and the Palau group 
(of which Koror is the main island), were Islands of Mystery. Foreigners 
got short shrift when they asked for visas to the islands. On the other 
hand, Japanese colonizers were encouraged; each boat brought families 
ready to set up housekeeping, not on Koror but on the other islands, now 
practically uninhabited. I remember shortly after World War II going 
along an agonizing road to the center of Babel thuap, one of the Palau 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 297 

group of islands miles and miles from anywhere. There we found the 
bombed remains of an immense radio station and airfield. People in large 
numbers must have lived there in Japanese times. 

The Palauans saw all this, although they had small part in it. They 
were domestics and laborers. They worked in the officers' clubs, the res- 
taurants and hotels; they tended the gardens; they swept the offices. Some 
attained to white-collar work as interpreters and clerks. The milieu was 
a bustling frontier town, booming with colonists, alive with transients 
coming from ships and hurrying off to other islands. All the gears meshed 
with the Japanese genius for infinite paperwork. The Palauans stood by 
and watched it all. 

To them, American rule was a great letdown at first. To the "new 
people/* Koror was a mere backwater. Where twenty thousand Japanese 
bustled along Koror' s paved main street, fifty Americans now run their 
jeeps up and down the country road it is now. The iron inlets to the 
gas and water mains below the street are just bumps to be jolted over. 
A plane bearing twelve to fifteen passengers comes once a week to land 
in the harbor and waddle up a ramp to shore. Two ships, the Errol and 
Gunners Knot, ply among the islands bringing food supplies, parcel post, 
household things from mail-order houses, and the most outlandish foods 
to stock the empty shelves of the commissary. But the ships must anchor 
out in the harbor; the quarter-mile piers have not been rebuilt. 

Still, there is a bustle about Koror you don't find on Yap. The one big 
project you can't help seeing was set up by Paige Communications, a 
$7,000,000 maze of radio antennae, iron scaffolding and lights that go on 
and off. Also the Court of Justice is a nice looking building, called "The 
Taj Mahal" by some Americans. The one and only hotel bears a sign 
almost as big as itself proclaiming its name, The Royal Palauan; rain and 
wet salt have robbed it of its pristine glory. Some one hundred and fifty 
jeeps are on the island, one bus, and forty-some trucks. Most of the build- 
ings including our own school are ex-quonsets. Even American per- 
sonnel live in quonsets adapted to family life. No doubt about it, Koror 
is shabby. 

Some of the best buildings on the island are the Catholic mission works. 
We were lucky. We inherited them from the German regime and they 
were not destroyed in the war. New ones have been built too Maris 
Stella School where six Mercedarian Sisters three Spanish, two Palauan 
and one Saipanese teach three hundred and fifty children from Grade 
One through Grade Six. Our own Mindzenty School is a quonset hut 
nicely set up in landscaped grounds. Here one hundred and fifty pupils 
from all the nearby islands go through high school. Three new classrooms 
of concrete block have been erected to relieve congestion; three more are 
going up now. Then the quonset can be used as an auditorium. After that, 



298 TRUST TERRITORY 

a new church is planned; the present one holds only four hundred people 
and there are two thousand Catholics here. After that, perhaps the ancient 
rectory can be replaced. So you see the Catholic Church has plans. 

It has to have plans, if it is to keep pace with the rest of the island. 
Americanization goes on apace. Sister Loretta Marie finds that her driver's 
license is No. 567, The last year or so, even the Palauan women are driv- 
ing. The estimate is that some two hundred vehicles tear up and down 
this little island which is six miles long and only half a mile wide. One 
wonders where they are going in such a hurry. A good guess is that they 
are rushing to get under a roof before it rains again. Rain is just one of 
Life's Constant Companions here. The local newssheet makes the follow- 
ing announcement of a championship baseball game. 

Once again, the game between the Peleliu winners of the North Palauan 
League, and the Airai Champions of the South League, was postponed 
because of too much water, both on the field and in the air. At 3 P.M. 
yesterday, the sky was clear, the sun was out, the field was dry and both 
teams were ready to go at it, when a squall moved in from the north and 
drenched the field just at game time. 

The teams will have a try at it again next Friday, June 30, at 3:30 P.M.; 
if there is too much water, then they will try again, Sunday, July 2; and, 
if as usual there is rain, the game will be scheduled for the holiday, July 4, 
at 2 P.M. It is hoped that this part of the Pacific will run out of water 
one of these three days, so that the Palauan Baseball Championship for 
this year can finally be decided. 

Probably the rush and tear also is to get a little business done before 
the heavens open up again. Another good guess is that the jeeps are rush- 
ing down to Transportation Office to see Mr. Bean. "Mr. Transportation" 
on any of the Trust Territory Islands is a harried man. He is charged with 
getting passengers arranged for the Friday plane. His little job is to sort 
out the fifty-some people who want to go and to allot the ten or twelve 
seats to the most deserving, the most persistent, or the most honorable. 
This leaves us out entirely, but usually we find Mr. Transportation does 
his best for everyone. If he were not on an island surrounded by gobs of 
water, he could leave town for the three days preceding Friday. As it is, 
he must long to hide behind one of those tufty islets which stick up like 
cupcakes all over the harbor, and stay submerged until the plane is off 
ground. 

"Getting bumped" is the Trust Territories' greatest outdoor sport. It's 
dangerous and suspensefuL The rules are simple; the element of chance 
adds zest. 

We start with the assumption that you want to get somewhere. You are 
on Koror, say, and you want to get to Guam. You have no boat or plane 
of your own; it has been many years since you did marathon swimming 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 299 

and 843 miles is long even for champions. You are a lowly #3 priority, 
from which you can fall no lower. It is Friday morning and you hear the 
weekly plane going off into the blue. You rush to the telephone to be first 
on Mr. Transportation's mind for next week's plane. 

The phone is Early American. It is attached to the wall, and two bat- 
teries hang beneath it; once painted brown, then black, blue and green, 
it shows all these layers at worn spots. I asked for the phone book and 
Sister Loretta Marie with a knowing look slipped a mimeographed piece 
of paper from under the phone and handed it to me. It lists forty-six 
phones, twenty-six of them in offices the weather bureau, commissary, 
docks, public works, hotel, hospital, police and District Administrator. 
The other twenty are residential; they are listed under one name the 
first, last or in the case of Palauans the only name. 

The frustration of it is that these few people are the only ones you can 
call. There is no Long Distance nor even another City exchange. Of 
course, you see all the other subscribers several times a day walking past 
your door, but a phone is a help anyway. 

So in the Getting Bumped game, you wind up the telephone and get 
the operator. 

"Hello, Sister," says the operator. "Want somebody?" 

"Will you give me #19, please, Elise?" 

"I don't think anybody's there, Sister. Who did you want to talk to?" 

"Mr. Bean, the Transportation Officer." 

"Oh, he left some time ago. I think he's at the hotel now. Do you want 
me to try there for him?" 

Business of plugging in and plugging out several times. 

"He's left there, too. Probably at home. Want me to try him there?" 

"No thanks, Elise. It's not that important. . . ." 

"Okay, Sister. If he comes on the line, I'll tell him you are looking for 
him." 

An hour or so later he calls. He's heroic to call; he knows right well 
why you want him. He groans. "I'm awfully sorry. We have nineteen 
Priorities #i already for next week. The week after? That's full, too. 
But," with a helpful lift to his voice, "I'll let you know if anything hap- 
pens/* 

From then on, it's a chain reaction. Every day you inquire. Perhaps 
you meet Mr. Transportation in church, or Mrs. Transportation at the 
commissary, or both at a party. It's no, no, no in all sharps and flats. Hope 
rises; hope fades; hope revives; hope clings to a straw. You hear the Errol 
is coming in; maybe you can get on that? Sure you can but it's going to 
Truk, not Guam, this trip. How about the Gunners Knot; that's due, 
isn't it? No, they're cutting out the Koror stop this time. 

Sometimes the nicest things happen to #3 Priorities. Once I was defi- 



300 TRUST TERRITORY 

nitely to be bumped. The plane would go at 10 A.M. that day. At break- 
fast, I resigned myself to God's Holy Will and took another piece of toast. 
Then the Transportation Officer came bounding up our back stairs. 
''Bring your baggage down at any rate/' he said. "There's a wisp of a 
chance." I did. I walked on that plane with no one to say me "Nay." 

But most of the time, if you're to be bumped, you are well bumped. 
Sister Maura Shaun once had her foot over the plane's threshold when one 
more honorable than she came running up and was accorded the seat. 
There was nothing to do but take her little satchel out of the baggage 
compartment and go home for another week. 

On that same plane, an American from the Deep South suffered a like 
bump. He had a habit of calling anyone in religious dress, "Reverend." 
As they stood on the ramp watching the plane grow smaller in the dis- 
tance, the Southerner turned to Sister Maura Shaun and sighed. "Well, 
Reverend, all I can say is: My thoughts at the present moment are strictly 
Old Testament." 

Weight is important. Once, Brother Juan, who might tip the scale at 
one hundred and twenty, and Father Roszel, who is much larger, both 
asked for seats. "There is only one seat available," said Mr. Transporta- 
tion. "Brother may go." 

Brother demurred. "Let Father go. He is essential to the business." 

"No," said the imperturbable official. "Father's too heavy. It's Brother 
or nobody." 

Thelma was a bright young thing in the Transportation Office on 
Guam. She made an art of squeezing the last passenger in. At last Thelma 
got married. She knew so many people that she had loads of wedding 
presents for her new home on Truk. Her last act was to squeeze her wed- 
ding presents, her dog, her new husband and herself on the weekly plane 
to Truk. The other passengers were boys en route to school. The plane 
encountered difficulties on the way. The first ballast sent overboard was 
the boys 7 suitcases. Then the wedding presents went, one by one, Thelma 
pointed them out: Take the lamp. Now the table linen. And the wedding 
trousseau. The silverware. This was killing; she knew the next item would 
be the dog. But before poor poochy was dumped overboard, the wind 
abated and the plane was able to land on Truk. That's how Thelma 
started her married life with a dog and a husband and nothing else. 

Speaking of weddings, we had a very formal one while I was there. It 
was the very first wedding with wedding invitations, no less. Usually, 
you meet the bride or her mother down in the commissary, buying the 
makings for the wedding feast and they ask you to come. 

"When?" you ask. 

"We don't know yet, but you 11 see the wedding party going down the 
road, so just join in." 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 301 

Or, someone runs up to the convent and announces, "Maria is marry- 
ing Juan over at the church right now. They want you to come." 

But Bonita's wedding to Dr. Jorge was something special. The groom 
has a medical degree from the Philippines; he is the only Palauan doctor 
on Koror. The bride had lived on Truk with the Mercedarian Sisters for 
a year or more. So they knew a thing or two about the world. The wedding 
invitation was a piece of yellow Manila paper neatly folded into fourths. 
On the outside was typed: 

TO ALL THE MARYKNOLL SISTERS 
Inside it read: 

We want you to know we will be married at tomorrow's Mass 
and we want you to come and pray for us. Bonita and Jorge. 

Another milestone of civilization was passed while I was there. A 
daily newspaper was born. The Newsflash is unpretentious just two 
mimeographed sheets 8% x 13 inches but it serves the basic needs of a 
newspaper. If ever some fresh young student of journalism wants to dig 
down through the superstructure of comics, political commentators, 
household hints, gossip columns, advice to the lovelorn, sob-sister stories 
and the junk emanating from Hollywood's fertile publicity offices, to find 
the foundations of a newspaper, let him come to Koror. You editors, 
snowed under by the handouts from Madison Avenue, come to Koror. 
All ye feature writers, told to write ten inches on nothing at all, come 
to Koror. For news evaluation, succinct style, consideration of the reader's 
time, I recommend the Koror Newsflash. 

Volume One, Number One, tells us, first, that the Newsflash is born, 
says who publishes it, how often it will come out and gives a deadline 
for any items you want to get into it. Transportation news says that the 
Gunners Knot will go to Truk on Friday and will be back at Koror 
maybe in three months' time. Passengers on the weekly flight are listed. 
Meetings of the Palau Congress, the Landscaping Committee, the Fisher- 
man's Cooperative are outlined. Boat builders on the island are asked 
to come to a meeting to discuss plans to organize a Boat Builders* Associa- 
tion. Restaurant owners are to meet with the District Administrator 
and talk about a new liquor law. There will be a baseball game next 
Sunday between the people on Airai Island and Peleliu Island, if the 
Peleliu team can somehow wangle a boat to bring them to Koror. The 
weatherman reports showers are on the menu for the next few days. Three 
or four items of world news boiled down to less than fifty words finish it 
off. 

What more does anyone want to read over his coffee in the morning? 

We went shopping on Koror. Not so simple as it sounds. The day 



302 TRUST TERRITORY 

before indeed for weeks news seeped in, "The Gunners Knot is on 
the way." Then one day the cry was raised, "The Gunners Knot is in!" 
For the first time in four months, fresh vegetables and meat would be 
available. Now begin the calls to the commissary. 

"Is the ship unloaded yet?" 

"No. Too rainy/' 

Then, "Yes, but the stuff isn't on the shelves yet. Come down this 
afternoon/' 

We hopped into Father's pick-up truck and hurtled down Koror's 
main road, bent on shopping that first day or everything would be gone. 
The supply would have to last until August or so. 

The Koror Commissary is a quonset hut with additions. A paint- 
peeled sign proclaims it with no great pride. Arranged on a plan faintly 
resembling a supermarket, the shelves are not stacked high with bright 
labels. Rather, the empty spaces are dusty; the cans and packages look 
tired of waiting for customers. Only on days like this is there much 
traffic. Then the excitement centers around the lettuce and carrots; fresh 
oranges, apples, frozen meats, cauliflowers, cabbages and oh, joy! 
grapes. Soaps, detergents, steel wool, mops find quick sales. But the dusty 
cans are untouched. 

I wondered why. Then I took a prowl through the alleyways; it was 
a gastronomic tour of the world in half an hour. 

Prepared seaweed from Japan. 
Dundee cakes from Ireland. 
Antipasto -from Italy. 
Biscuits from West Germany, 
Wafers and candy from Holland. 

That was just the start. China sent dried pineapple rings; India con- 
tributed hot chutney. Hawaii was there with ready-mixed poi (on Koror 
where you grow taro just by sitting on your doorstep and twiddling your 
thumbs!). Coconut syrup from the Philippines; Irish stew from of all 
places England; crepes suzette from France; fruit salad from Australia; 
and bubble gum from You-Know-Where. Cans and cans of lobster tails, 
crabmeat, clam juice and shrimp on an island where the sea food walks 
out of the ocean and knocks at your kitchen door. 

The labels range from odd foods to the higher levels of existentialism: 
champagne jelly, whole guinea fowl in aspic, Bombay duck (which isn't a 
duck at all but some sort of fish), buffalo stew, and reindeer steak pre- 
pared in Lapland style and imported from Norway. You could buy if 
you ever wanted to, smoked rabbit from Australia or from California. 
Also cat and dog food although I can't imagine a Pal^uan.cat patiently 
waiting for somebody to open a can while juicy rats skip by with im- 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 303 

munity. Pancake flour in rows of packages showed its age in successive 
price marks 620, 430, 36^ and now 28**. No doubt, by now, the ''protein 
content" was high you know, the proteins who walk around on ten or 
twelve little feet. 

How did such exotic foods get to this rugged outpost? Possibly they 
did not go well in American supermarkets and some enterprising mer- 
chant palmed them off on the Navy for overseas commissaries. Who 
knows? As a result, a family in grass skirts can sit down to champagne 
jelly and reindeer steaks. 

On Koror, however, they don't go in for grass skirts. You see youngsters 
in shirts without pants and in pants without shirts, women in Mother 
Hubbards or in slacks, men in pajamas going down the street or in nicely 
fitted shirts and long trousers. Down on the main road is an "abai," a 
sort of community house, a meeting place or town hall, bright with 
painted symbols on the outside. The roof is tremendously high-pitched, 
and the whole building is set on large stones on the four corners. Inside, 
you can read the history of Palau painted on the transverse beams. Events 
are recorded in childlike drawings: battles among the island tribes; the 
Spanish galleons; the coming of missioners in 1887; the erection of the 
church and school; the arrival of the Germans and a peace treaty they 
signed with the islanders in 1898; then the coming of Japanese in 1914. 
Right after that is a crude picture of a Japanese standing before several 
men in loincloths and women in grass skirts. 

"What is this?" I asked, 

"Soon after they came," explained old Julito who was showing me all 
this, "the Japanese called a meeting of the chiefs and told us that we 
should wear clothes." 

"The Japanese made you wear clothes?" I asked. 

"Yes, it was their rule/' he affirmed. 

It always amuses me when writers assume that it was the missionaries 
who clamped the gay carefree natives into clothes. They paint a picture 
of the happy girls dancing on the beach in primeval innocence. Then 
along come some nuns, draped in funereal black, who smother the girls 
in corsets and Mother Hubbards, and drape a guilt complex around 
their minds. 

I would like to take these writers to Yap where, after seventy years of 
missioners of three different nationalities, the pillars of the church at- 
tend Sodality meetings in grass skirts. The piety of men and women, in 
or out of clothes, is apparent to the most jaundiced eye. As Father 
Bailey once said to a reporter from Holiday Magazine, "I don't care 
what they wear or don't wear, so long as their lives are good." 

Koror's missioners, indeed those throughout the Trust Territory, are 
American Jesuits from the New York province. The Jesuits are noted 



304 TRUST TERRITORY 

among religious orders for their extra-curricular activities, so to speak. 
The order can produce an expert in just about any special field of knowl- 
edge you could name. You will find Jesuits steeped in meteorology, labor 
relations, French cuisine, and the fine points of atomic fission. Father 
Hoar, curate on Koror, for instance, is a radio ham. 

The first sight of Koror's Jesuit rectory as you come up the hill is a 
mass of wires and poles, like a ship at sea peeping up over the horizon. 
These are the outside gadgets of Father Hoar's station, KC6AQ. KC6 
tells all fellow hams that the station is in the Caroline Islands; the AQ 
is Father's individual call number. 

He is a martyr to the cause. Radio has pushed him out of his own 
room. The wires, batteries, coils, tubes and what-not which make up 
his transmitter and receiver take up so much space he hasn't room for 
a bed. So Father "sleeps out" using any bed available in the rectory. If 
one of the other priests or a Brother is on a mission trip which is most 
of the time Father Hoar's lanky frame is laid to rest on that bed. If 
luck would have it that they are all home, Father betakes himself to 
the parish hall, usually used for meetings, play rehearsals, choir practice 
and what-you-will. 

Of course compact sets are on the market. But they cost real money. 
The kind of money Father has, helped him to accumulate the parts and 
his own ingenuity put the parts together. Not so hard for him, because 
since he was a gangling lad away back in 1946, he has been fiddling around 
with radio. As a student at Woodstock, Md., he built a station, not once 
but several times. One of his stations, I heard, is in use now in the 
Philippines. So when he came to Koror (remember? 834 miles from 
Guam, which is 1,500 miles from Wake, which is 3,000 or more miles from 
Hawaii, which is 2,500 from California) he came with his wire, rods 
and tubes under his arm. Lucky thing he did. In a few years, he has set 
up what amounts to a public utility and a private joy. 

For one thing, he keeps his mission in touch with Truk, center of this 
tremendous watery vicariate of the Marshall and Caroline Islands, with 
a water area larger than that of the whole continental United States 
(3,000,000 square miles), and a land area less than half of Rhode Island 
(516 square miles). All he has to do to talk to his Bishop is to toss a mes- 
sage up to the ionosphere and have it bounce down on the tiny island 
of Truk. That's all he has to do. Or, he might bounce it down to Majuro 
or Kwajalein where fellow Jesuits are stationed two thousand miles 
away. They're a chummy lot, these sons of Ignatius! As one remarked, 
"What this vicariate needs is a good bulldozer to push it all together." 

Father uses his radio to help Trust Territory personnel. Often a man 
on one of the islands needs beds, let us say, or shovels or tires or paint 
or you-name-it. He could write to a store on Guam, of course, and send 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 305 

the letter by weekly plane or now-and-then boat. Maybe the answer is 
"Sorry. We don't have it in stock." That takes a week or more to come 
back, and the poor man is desperate for his shovels. He writes again. But 
Father can contact Guam and, through an obliging ham at the other end, 
canvass the stores by phone in half an hour until he finds the beds or 
bolts, tents or toothpicks. 

The third use of KC6AQ is to contact a certain home in Buffalo, 
New York, where Mrs. Hoar can hear her son's report on his doings in 
his own words and in his own voice. 

Sometimes, it isn't simple to call across the watery wastes. Antennae 
have to be turned in your direction; not many people expect a call from 
the Palau Islands. When his persistent CQ, CQ, CQ (which is radio 
jargon for Seek You) fails to reach a receptive ear on Guam, Father Hoar 
shoots farther afield. He figured one night that all Guam's radio hams 
were tuned toward the States. So he overshot Guam by six thousand 
miles and had an answer in Michigan. The Michigan ham called back 
to Guam, "There's a fellow just down the block from you, who wants 
you to call him." 

They tell the story of a Maryknoll priest in the hinterlands of Chile 
who wanted to make an appointment with a dentist in Santiago, Chile. 
He could rouse nobody there, so he shot to New York where a fellow 
ham contacted a ham in Santiago who called the dentist. 

There's a radio ham Call Book, not at all unlike a telephone directory 
of the whole world. Just leafing through the 25o-page volume takes you 
off for parts unknown where many a devotee sits long hours before his 
set, shooting out signals and hoping to hear a friendly tap-tap in return. 
There is a Japanese ham down in Antarctica; several in Basutoland and 
dear knows how many in Tasmania and New Zealand. Men and women 
are listed; some claim to have been on the air since 1913. Others are 
high school lads; some are seminarians. A diligent young Capuchin in 
Hudson, N.H., has compiled a directory of clerics around the world who 
operate radio stations. There are I counted! 996 of them, including 
five Sisters. One is in Rhode Island, another in New York, two in 
Minnesota and one up in Copper Valley, Alaska. 

They're a friendly lot, these radio amateurs. They like one another. 
When the airwaves go swirling around the globe, they hate to think 
that this precious touch with another soul has come and gone. So they 
send postal cards to that lonely voice which spoke so wearily out of the 
blue. Thus it is that Father Hoar gets about seventy-five cards a week. 
They come from New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, Ecuador, the Bahrain 
Islands (know where they are?) and all parts of the United States, mostly 
Texas. 

But none from Communist-dominated countries. In the Radio Amateur 



306 TRUST TERRITORY 

Call Book, where other countries list each ham's call letters, his name and 
address, the Iron Curtain countries permit no fraternizing. Czechoslovakia 
says merely, cards may be sent to Cekslovenchi Amateur Vysilaci, Praha i, 
Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union wants all cards sent to Central Radio 
Club, Moscow. Brrrl It's a cold world behind that curtain. 

Home to Mass on Koror! You will have to get up early, of course 
maybe at 5:30. But already the night has lifted a little, the air is fresh, 
the world is quiet. You leave the house stepping on the soft green carpet 
of Japanese grass, that perfect lawn which never needs mowing nor 
weeding. You step over or on (depending on your feelings toward them) 
the giant African snails who are already up and about, intent on their 
god-given task of destroying your garden. You set out on the road, so 
strangely still. The moon, worn paper-thin after a night time of brilliance, 
is dying in the west. You walk down our rocky road, turn to the left 
and set your eyes toward the white church crowning the rise. 

Others are going with you. Children, little and big. Men who carry a 
rosary in their hands and say it as they go along. Heavy-bodied, full- 
hipped women with regal smiles proper to those who rule their house- 
holds with an easy hand. Nobody speaks to you. It's not a social time. 
Each is intent on bringing himself to God for a good-morning talk. 

You dip your fingers into the huge shell which rests casually on an 
unpainted wooden stand, and bless yourself. It's not a fancy church, 
inside. The floor is concrete, the pews are debilitated, the underside of 
the galvanized iron roof is painted blue. No one pays attention to you; 
the people slip into pews here and there or half kneel, half sit on the 
floor. One of these is Clemente, born deaf and consequently dumb, who 
speaks reams and reams to God in his heart. Someone, long ago, was 
able to put deep into his mind the idea that God loved Clemente, came 
on earth, died for him and now stays on the altar especially to be with 
him. Clemente kneels bolt upright with his hands clasped before him and 
talks to God by the hour. Outside, he is cheerful in the practical affairs 
of life, but this early morning time is dedicated to his Best Friend. 

Brother Juan, tall, skinny, wiry and very Spanish, hurries up the side 
aisle. His many-patched cassock flaps about his legs; his rough hand 
clutches the stem of a tuberose. He all but leaps the altar rail, goes to 
the altar, and thrusts the flower in among others in the brass casing of a 
howitzer shell, picked up after the war and polished to a fitting bright- 
ness for service as an altar vase. 

Then Brother retires to his shabby prie-dieu and folding chair and is 
heard of no more. This is his hour of respite. All day, he is in khaki and 
flapping straw hat, out on the site for the new school buildings fixing 
the concrete mixer, testing the new windows, telling truck drivers where 
to put a load of sand, pawing over the plans. Or he may be looking with 



KOROR, THE MAGNIFICENT 307 

pained eye at first one worker, then another, as he tries to figure out 
which of them walked off with his hammer. But all those things have 
dropped from Brother, now. He is a young man again in the Jesuit 
monastery in Spain, dressed in religious habit, kneeling before God and 
swearing that he will serve Him forever. And the Lord God says to him, 
"All right, Brother Juan, well sit together for an hour quietly. Then, I 
want you to get on with that building." 

A bell tinkles. Two altar boys walk out followed by Father Hoar. He 
looks like a high school lad, really. But there is a determined way he 
puts down his bare feet, clad only in Japanese zori, which tells you that 
this boyish-looking man has made great decisions for himself. He walks 
up the altar steps to put the chalice on the altar. The nuns in the front 
pews appraise him. Sister Margaret George's eyebrows contract; she is 
worried. "I wonder if he is getting enough to eat. Or the right kind of 
food. That boy in his kitchen could stand a few lessons, if we only had 
the time and patience! to teach him. Maybe we could send Father a 
good meal. Hmmmm. . . ." Business of leafing through missal. "Oh 
yes, Thursday this week, St. Aloysius. Isn't that his middle name? Good 
enough excuse." 

With that settled, she's ready for Mass. So is Father. He has come down 
the steps and, bending between the boys, is now reciting the Confiteor. 
He too has his thoughts, try as he might to shut them out. Last night, he 
talked to his mother in Buffalo, N.Y., which accounts for the reddish rim 
around his eyes. A kindly ham in Rochester, N.Y., got his signals loud 
and clear enough to relay the voice by telephone to Buffalo. He hadn't 
much to say; neither had she. But it was a satisfaction to repeat the 
same old inanities. "How are things?" "Where's Jim now?" "Sure, Mom, 
sure! I'm all right. Don't worry about me." 

"She's probably at Mass now, too," he thought. Then "Oh no, I 
forget. It's eight o'clock tonight, over there." 

He cleared his mind of everything but thoughts of the Great Action 
he was to perform. My own mind, I confess, was off on a tangent. This 
tiny island of Koror I knew was the final stop on our world tour. From 
here, we would go to Guam, to Hawaii, to California and back to New 
York. In less than a week, I would be back at my old typewriter in the 
Motherhouse. 

All the Masses I had heard crowded in upon me. All the holy souls in 
so many different bodies, in such odd clothes, speaking such queer 
tongues, streamed across that church on Koror. The heat at the equator, 
the chills at Hokkaido. The colonizers and the "colonized." Black, brown, 
white and yellow, with no unity among them except the one bond: That 
Christ was born, lived and died for each one. 

This is the thought that lifts a man from torpor and drives him, often 



308 , TRUST TERRITORY 

with stumbling feet and half-closed eyes, along deserted streets to Mass. 
Sleep is sweet in any land. It is no easier to rise from a mat of rags on 
the floor of a Chinese family boat, than from a warm quilt over a tatami 
floor in Japan. Look along the streets of Chicago on a winter morning; 
those people holding their hats on their heads are hurrying into a church 
for Mass. Watch the African swinging his rungu as he walks through 
grass tinged with the rising sunlight; he will turn in the mission gate and 
drop on his knees in chapel. In the high Andes, Indian women in llama 
wool shawls and derby hats, come to the ruined Spanish church. In 
Taiwan, aborigines with bells on their clothes walk the mountain paths. 
On "The Rock" of Hong Kong, a construction worker lays his shoulder 
pole along the pew where he can get it right after Mass as he goes off to 
work for the day. In the Philippines, a woman carries her wooden clogs in 
her hand as she slips quietly down the bamboo ladder of her nipa hut, 
lest she wake the other members of her family. In New York, a traveling 
salesman leaves Pennsy Station, crosses gist Street and goes into the 
Capuchin church there. 

They are all members of a strong brotherhood. They never saw one 
another; they never write; they have no idea of names. Yet each as he 
goes his often lonely way to Mass in the morning, feels the breath of 
his brothers panting beside him. He sees the sun rise behind skyscrapers, 
or palm trees, or over a limitless horizon of sea and knows that as the 
earth swings around to greet it, an army of Christ's brothers are on their 
way to start another day of knowing, loving and serving God. 



CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP 

timentality even as she tells of the toil 
and hardship that is the almost daily lot 
of their peoples and the Maryknollers 
who labor among them. 



AUTHOR 



SISTER MARIA DEL REY'S books have all 
enjoyed a large readership. She is the au- 
thor of Pacific Hopscotch, Nun in Red 
China (under the name Sister Mary Vic- 
toria) , In and Out the Andes, Bernie Be- 
comes a Nun, Her Name Is Mercy and 
Dust On My Toes. After receiving her 
B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, 
where she majored in journalism, she was 
a city desk reporter on The Pittsburgh 
Press until she became a Maryknoll Sis- 
ter. Since joining the Order, she has trav- 
eled extensively throughout the Near 
East, Far East, the Americas and now 
Africa, spending three years in a Japanese 
concentration camp in the Philippines 
during the Second World War. She is 
Director of Public Relations for Mary- 
knoll Sisters, traveling and lecturing 
widely throughout the United States. 



JACKET PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN JAPAN BY 
SISTER M \RTIN JEROME 




PUBLISHED BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




z 



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