BOUGHT FOR A FEW PIGS

Waikato Independent, Volume XLIV, Issue 6172, 12 November 1948, Page 2

BOUGHT FOR A FEW PIGS

WOMEN IN NEW HEBRIDES IN OLDEN DAYS “Women used to be bought for a few pigs, buried alive in their husbands graves and generally lived in fear of evil spirits,” said Sister Alice Townrow at the Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union conference in Wellington. She was describing a recent visit to the New Hebrides and contrasting conditions today with things as they were 100 years ago, before the coining' of the first mis-.ionav-ies.

A great deal had bem achieved in that 100 years. People had been changed from eannibles to Christians.

Sister Townrow watched one of the missionaries <administer “stick medicine,” the native way of describing the injections they received for yaws and which quickly healed the sores.

Now that missionary work in the New Hebrides was entering its second hundred years, Sister Townrow said, the need to support the work was as great as ever, for much remained to be done. Sister Townrow is P.W. M.U. organising secretary in New Zealand.

MAORI MISSION WORK

“The work of the missionary today takes much courage, endurance and faith, as in the pioneer days,” saia Miss E. M. Kinross, principal of the Turakina Maori Girls’ College, Marton, when addressing the conference. Speaking of missionary work in the pioneer days, Miss Kinross said many Maori schools had closed because they had been without teachers. She had applied and had been accepted as a teacher at a school at Pipiriki, up the Wanganui River. Today, in every Maori village, there were up-to-date schools which were well staffed. “Missionaries had to be nurses doctors, dentists, everything,” Miss Kinross said when referring to the retirement of ‘ a missionary, Sister Anne, and the fact that a football club was associated with her farewell function. “I don’t know whether Sister Anne was coach to the club or what she was,” Miss Kinross said. The work of the missionary among the Maori people was different today. The people were different. Old tapu and superstitions were going. “The temptations which the Maori has to face today are much the same as the pakeha—drinking and gambling and the worship of wordly things. No matter what the Government or the State may do, the Church must continue its work of teaching the people the Gospel,” said Miss Kinross.