09. Less Than Expected

Thinking back to the construction of the football park, it would be fair to say that I was quite shocked by the extravagance it represented. I know that I was naive but, at the time, I couldn’t justify in my own mind anything so lacking in obvious function. It produced nothing tangible and I don’t think that I understood what my father was telling me about having everything we needed.

After all, there were still people in the village without enough food. Even assuming that we took the extra food consumed by the Gardeners (and it was abundantly clear that they had more than they needed) there wouldn’t have been enough to feed everyone properly. You could argue – I did argue – that we should have been dedicating our energy to the basic necessities rather than to the luxury of replacing something that we already had.

I think I have mentioned that I was not much of a sportsman. As a youngster I took life very seriously; looking back, far too seriously. I was not the only one who felt that way. I think most of the village women would have agreed with me. Their view was that as long as there was a hungry child in the village, feeding it should be our first priority.

I have often wondered why men and women take such a different view of things like that but in the end, I concluded that it is really quite understandable. Think about it. For a woman, a child is a huge investment. Even if she began to have children when she was fourteen and had one every year until she was forty years old, the most children a woman could produce would be less than thirty children. Each one involves a year of discomfort and sacrifice, not to mention the unpleasantness of actually delivering the infant.

Compare that with a man’s contribution. All things being equal, there is no real limit to the number he can produce. Given willing female accomplices he can generate as many as he likes and the corresponding effort is relatively small. The theoretical lower limit is the effort required, one way or another, to persuade a woman to give him a couple of minutes of her time.

No wonder then that a man’s attitude to his offspring is somewhat more detached than a woman’s. When our grandparents lived in the forest it can be no surprise that the men were the ones who went out hunting, who were prepared to follow a wounded animal through the trackless jungle to finish it off. Women couldn’t take the risk that while they were away something nasty would happen to their offspring. Men could afford to take a more relaxed view.
Even today, one gets the impression that men are more comfortable with long distance adventures than women. They seem to be happier to take a risk. So perhaps it was predictable that they were more prepared to take on the quite speculative enterprise of building the ball-park. I don’t know.

What I do know is that their view prevailed, while the prudent idea of focussing first on the strict necessities that I thought right was predominantly a female point of view. Certainly, the arrival or The Tractor had changed things.

In the jungle, women had been responsible for gathering most of the food that was eaten every day. The hunters may have produced the odd luxury but women delivered the daily necessities so the hunters who taunted my father had a certain logic on their side. In focussing on staple needs, the Guardians were actually doing what was traditionally women’s work. The men who controlled The Tractor were breaking new ground in every sense of the word.

Each week as they pumped the gasoline from the ground, filled the jerry cans for the day and set off to plough the fields or harvest the crops, they established their control, not only of the natural world they forced to yield at their behest, but over the rest of the village.

The Americans had passed on, via Our Granny, the idea that a man should have only one wife. In practice, a Guardian who had an official wife was still seen as something of a catch, a source of some friction on the female side of the house. The Tractor had changed much more than just the way we produced food. The whole life of the village and the way people thought of relationships had changed as well.

People noticed the change, but they didn’t think about it very much. Our Granny had given us The Tractor, the Americans had left the underground tanks of fuel and drums of oil. We took things very much for granted, thanked Our Granny for her bounty and got on with our lives. Indeed, this way of thinking had become so much a part of people’s daily lives that the idea that there were limits to what was available was very difficult for them to face.

From the time that we had begun to use The Tractor, the routine had been the same. In the morning, the Guardians would pump the fuel for the day into cans and it would be taken with the Tractor down to wherever it was working. In the beginning, with only a small area under cultivation, one can was enough each day. Later two were needed and, as the work of The Tractor expands, so does the amount of fuel used.

The Guardians had noticed that, as time passed, not only did they have to pump more fuel, but they needed to pump harder to get it up. At first no one questioned this, but one day it occurred to Langanipa, the brilliant but undervalued member of the Guardians, to question why this was.
He opened the covers on the fuel store – something that no one had done for many years and quite difficult because, not only was he slightly built, but the covers had rusted closed. Looking in, he found that the level of the fuel was now some distance from the top. He thought about this carefully and then decided to measure the depth of the aviation spirit in the tank. What he found worried him. The tank was only one third full.

He discussed this with his superiors among the Guardians but they did not take his concerns seriously. Their view was that Our Granny had provided the fuel for The Tractor and that it was no one’s business but Hers how much she had thought to provide. Worrying about the fuel, they said, was no more use than worrying about the weather.

Langanipa was friendly with Bahla, the assistant to the Chief Reader, so he confided in him. Between them, they made some rough calculations. They assumed that the tank had been full when the Americans left the island and that the fuel had been used at a rate of six cans per week in the beginning and twelve cans per week more recently. By their calculations, at an average rate of four hundred cans per year, The Tractor had used twenty thousand cans of gasoline in the last fifty years. At the same rate, there was enough fuel for twenty five more years. Except that the rate at which fuel was consumed was increasing over time.

With this new analysis, and with the support of his friend, Langanipa returned to the issue and they obtained an interview with the Captain of the Guardians. As Bahla later told me, they found that they were wading in a deeper swamp than they knew. When they arrived for the interview they were taken to the Guardian’s formal reception office, where they found not only the Captain Paitor, but a group of his assistants and a delegation of Gardeners, led by the Dean of their college, a man called Tahmo Lukuni.

Not as tall as his superior, Lailavu, Tahmo Lukuni was no less broad. Yellow skinned with a sloping forehead and slightly bulging eyes, there was something that reminded one of a frog in his squat form. He wore the intricately dyed Sarong of a senior Gardener, with dark purplish patterns barely visible against a maroon background. Seated next to him, the dark, thickset figure of the Guardian Captain in his white shirt and shorts looked like his slimmer reflection in monochrome.

Langanipa and Bahla stood uneasily in front of the assembly. They had prepared themselves with facts and figures, but things took a different direction from the start as they found themselves standing before benches of important dignitaries.

“Langanipa, my son.” The Captain addressed them “It makes me very sad that you and our friend Bahla have decided to contest the Will of Our Granny.”
“With respect, Sir, that was not our intention.” Langanipa replied.
“And yet, having received an answer to your question, I see that you have returned to debate with us.”
“Not debate, Sir. We have additional information.”
“Information that you have produced yourselves?” the Captain frowned. “And that you would oppose to the wisdom of the College of Gardeners?”
“Sir, we simply wished to provide the results of our researches to the proper authorities.” Bahla interposed.
“It is more fitting that you should listen to the wisdom of Our Granny than attempt to instruct her as to how you think that she should eat her eggs in the morning.” Tahmo Lukuni studied them severely. “Our Granny has spoken. She has blessed us with Her Tractor and with the fuel for its operation. Ill it befits us to question Her bounty.”

“Your Reverence,” Langanipa tried to reason, “We do not offer an opinion, so surely we do not disagree with anyone. This is purely an issue of fact, where we have measured the amount of fuel...”
“Silence!” the Gardener’s shout cut him off in mid sentence. “I see that what I have been told is true. You are insubordinate. You place your own views ahead of the accumulated wisdom of those who have served Our Granny for fifty years. Who have heard her daily inform us of what is true and what is not true; of what is done and what is not to be done.
Captain.” He continued looking around for support to the benches of dignitaries. “I see that these men are in need of a lesson. I propose that they should be taken out and each given ten lashes. Unless there is anyone who would like to speak in their defence?”
The benches remained silent.

“Hearing no response; let it be so decided.” Tahmo Lukuni glared at the men in front of him.
“I hope your realise,” he continued, “that I have been extremely lenient with you this time. You will remember this lesson and I would like you to promise that never again will you have the insolence to act against the Our Granny’s Will.”

“But...” Langanipa began to speak but his friend Bahla interrupted him before he could articulate his thought.
“Of course we promise, oh Reverend One. It was never our intention to lack respect and we would never act against Our Granny.”
“I am glad to hear that. Now Captain, they should go to the place of punishment.” And rising to his feet, he gathered his sarong about his bulky figure and strode from the room.