P.M. and nuns’ freezer door

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 4

P.M. and nuns’ freezer door

By

KENT ATKINSON

NZPA chief political reporter Apia Having political contacts in high places may open doors — but it doesn’t seem to help much in shutting them.

At least, that was what the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, found when he went bush to visit an agricultural training centre carved out of the Western Samoan jungle by three New Zealand nuns.

“I used to work in a freezing works — I’ll show you how we close a freezer,” he told the Samoan Prime Minister, Tofilau Eti, various Samoan V.I.P.S, and members of the New Zealand delegation. But in spite of Mr Lange’s vigorous swing and a resounding “thunk” the door gently popped open again, and the official party was treated to a running commentary from Mr Lange as he and his High Commissioner in Apia, Michael Mansfield, put their shoulders to it. "Well ...It’s come off,” said Mr Lange. “That's the latch. “We’ll get it closed now. “I’ve got it - but only just,” he said, wrestling with the catch. “You’ve got to push that part there.” The chiller was one erected by a Palmerston North Lions Club at the Tailemataolevai Agricultural Training Centre in rough hill country at Vaiaata, on the island of Savaii. The agricultural centre was set up six years ago by Sister Mary Laurence, of Frankton. After long

negotiations with the Samoan government, Sister Mary Laurence’s order, Our Lady of the Missions, was given 80ha of extremely rough land without road access.

The nuns cut a path to the site with bushknives, and later had a road bulldozed along their trail. The training centre is now a neat development of basic accommodation for the nuns, a traditional fale or open-sided house, used as a dormitory by their pupils, and machine shed, pig shelters and other outbuildings. The centre, run by Sister Mary Laurence, the daughter of a Frankton railway worker, Sister Adrien, of Hamilton, and Sister Miriam, of Eltham, is the only one of its type in Western Samoa.

Up to 20 boys a year are

offered a three-year course at the centre, which teaches them not only farming but skills such as carpentry, welding, motor mechanics, and blacksmithing. The pupils pay $lO a term, but each is also credited with a share of the profits from the sale of the centre’s produce and it is banked for them to collect on graduation. Mr and Mrs Lange visited most parts of the centre and inspected a solar-powered electric fence given by the New Zealand High Commission and installed by the Palmerston North Lions Club to control the pigs. Although the nuns butcher some of their pigs, they are also trying to breed a “long” Samoan pig, and their piglets are sought by other breeders.

On visiting the student

dormitory, where the young men sleep on the traditional woven mats spread on the floor, Mr Lange quipped to his wife, Naomi, that it was just like Wesley College in New Zealand “but without the beds."

Mr Lange and his party were given morning tea by the nuns, and Mr Lange spent some time talking with Sister Mary Laurence, who is described by other New Zealanders living in Western Samoa as a remarkable woman.

They said she had spent several years in Vietnam setting up a rattan furniture factory to provide work for villagers, and at one stage had been captured and interned by the Viet Cong.

Released after extensive interrogation and evacuated from Saigon, she returned to the city in its last days to

get out two other nuns she realised had been left behind. The rescue completed, Sister Mary Laurence was herself taken out by the last helicopter to leave the grounds of the United States Embassy in the fall of Saigon. Sister Mary Laurence moved to Samoa on her return to New Zealand from Vietnam, and started work on her training centre by herself studying agriculture at the University of the South Pacific’s school of tropical agriculture at Alafua. And that troublesome freezer door? Sister Mary Laurence was confident she could handle anything that was beyond mere politicians or diplomats. “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it,” the little nun told Mr Lange.