Sister Estelle Field

Southland Times, Issue 25306, 8 June 1935, Page 16

Sister Estelle Field

LETTER TO RELATIVES. The following are extracts from a letter written to relatives in Invercargill by Sister Estelle Field who returned recently 'to Fauabau _ after spending her furlough in this city. . The Hospital, Fauabau, April 22, 1935. I had a good passage across from Australia, but Pam glad to settle down here again. It is Easter Monday and I am longing to get the mail, it should be here early in May, it seems ages since I left you all, but the time flies; fast. On Sunday the church was beautifully decorated and we did oqr best for Easter, but it was hard not having a clergyman to help with the service and no communion. (The last clergyman fell and broke his leg a few months ago, and is in a Sydney hospital). I thought of the churches at home (N.Z.) with so few people in them, and I thought if only one of them could be whisked off to Melanesia how crowded it would be and how the natives would love the organ. I have had several good walks and wanderings through rivers up to our waists in water, quite a thrill with the thought that a few crocodiles might be lurking in the shadows. We have been quite gay since my return and have had no less than three boats in. Five white plantation owners have had to do their own recruiting for boys for their plantations, owing to the low price of copra, they cannot afford to pay recruiters which cost nearly £2OO. In each case they had dinner with us and fold us all the Island gossip. One of them brought us a large round of corned beef, we did enjoy it. He has been out here twenty-five years and has one son. He told us of a strange custom the natives have on the Island. They walk into a swamp waist deep, chanting to charm the crocodiles, who come out and the natives gradually retreat then they tie them up with rope and kill them when required. This is quite true, as one of the Orderlies who comes from there, says, it is quite true, but only some of the natives are able to do this, the secret is handed down from father to son. I have hired a lad to dig a garden for me and he is very busy, he found some fine netting lying up at the doctor’s which they had left and he is netting it in, so as soon as it is dug, in go tomatoes, cabbage, com, cucumber, French beans and water melon. I am going to stay up to-night with a 1 little sick picaninny girl, she is a dear ■little pet, one I brought back with me from a village. I do hope she does not die. I have another that sister Piggott and I are very proud of. It was nearly dead just skin and bone when we got it. I think it must be about 4 or 5 months old, only weighed 51bs when it came and now its condition is much improved and it weighs over 71bs, gaining like one thing, a little heathen of course and it may mean the village becoming Christian if it lives.