Tongan fundamentalism

Press, 12 September 1987, Page 27

Tongan fundamentalism

aiww tn m 9 iwowwkul fly np9n Hau’ofa. Penguin fMZ 153 pp. $17.99 (papeAeck). (Reviewed by Gfyn Strange) "Ma’s out. Pa’s out — let’s talk rude —Pee-Po-Belly-Bum-Drawers!” sang Flanders and Swann. “Kisses in the Nederends,” by Tongan academic, scholar and man of letters, Epeli Hau’ofa, is inspired by a similar philosophy: that of a raspberry-blower. Quite a few South Pacific institutions have fun poked at them in this novel which traces the progress of Oilel Bomboki, a man with a pain in his nether end.

A number of experts — witch doctor, acupuncturist, psychiatrist, and so on — examine the problem at its seat, but fail to get to the bottom of It Babu the wise man gives by far the best treatment While counselling Oilel to learn yoga in order to be able to kiss his own anus better, Babu administers kisses that provide interim relief. He is however, rejected as being unwholesome and perverted. Finally the local veterinarian diagnoses fistulitis, and Oilel is sent to the Dun Mihaka Memorial Hospital (well, where else?) in Auckland for what degenerates into a transplant operation. This is not the end of the matter, however, because after several donations have been rejected, Oilei’s own organ is sewn back into place. Unfortunately it has expired in the process, but Babu is on hand to administer the kiss of life, whereupon Oilel, like most of the other characters in the novel, is converted to the sage’s creed — pressumably a kind of fundamentalism. Now that A.N.Z.U.S. is dead, what will ensure peace in the South Pacific? One answer is to take the Z

out — for Babu believes that men can learn to love each other only by first learning to respect their own anuses. Acceptance of the lowest and most despised part of oneself makes it possible to rise to higher things. Summarised thus, Hau’ofa’s novel seems taut and purposeful, but in fact there are times when his enormous sense of fun seems to get in the way of both his craft as a novelist and his consistency as a satirist Still, one hopes he does not curb his greatest gift too much. It would be nice to see him, as a pioneer of Tongan literature, inspire a whole tradition of sunny, high-spirited fiction that offers pure entertainment to a starved world. If he does achieve this, he will be able truthfully to say that he started from the bottom.