16. Public works

Our island of Morakeewa is formed of three parts. To the south, it is a broad, fertile plain. In the middle is the forest, stretching up the mountain and at the northern end, beyond the mountain, is a mixture of impenetrable swamps and forest.

The Americans began the process of clearing the plain and, in the last fifty years, almost every area that can be cultivated has been cleared and planted. An isolated hill emerges from the flat land and it is here that the people now live. This place is called Morakeewa, the same name as the island, but mostly we use ‘Morakeewa’ for the whole island and we simply refer to the built up area as ‘The Village’

When the Americans left, our people occupied the few houses that they had built alongside the air base in the place called Morakeewa and it was truly a village. Later, as more land was cleared and more people from the forest began to live there, the community came to expand and today the word ‘village’ hardly does it justice.

At the top of the hill is Our Granny’s house and gardens. Surrounding it are the houses of those who have been there longest, the families of Gardeners, Guardians and Readers. Around this area, the Village has grown downwards towards the plain. At first the land was easy to build on but, as more and more people came in and began to erect their huts and tents, increasingly difficult areas have been occupied so that, now, in each valley and ravine that cuts into the hill, even the steep sides have their growths of constructions, makeshift affairs, clinging to the hillside like moss to a rock.

These late arrivals, displaced from some newly cleared area, are ill equipped to live a civilised life in the Village. Their forest skills of stealth and cunning are no use to them in earning a living. They often still have the weapons they used for hunting and little respect for life – animal or human – so that they make dangerous and unpredictable neighbours. Living close together requires more restraint and a different set of rules from what is needed in a small band in the forest. If it had not been for the wisdom of Our Granny, translated into laws that regulate behaviour in Morakeewa, the Village would long ago have torn itself to pieces.

Thus it is against the law of Our Granny, for anyone but a Guardian to carry a weapon within the Village. To control theft, those who do not live in the officially sanctioned part of the village may only visit that area with an explicit invitation and anyone who wishes to employ a house servant must obtain a permit from the Guardian’s office in the village to allow them to come to their house on a daily basis or, if there is accommodation for them, to remain there in the night time.

Within the Official Village, the Guardians keep a watchful eye on the streets, stopping any suspicious looking characters to ensure that they have a legitimate reason for being there. Outside in the shanty areas life is much less regulated. They are sometimes dangerous and unruly places where the inhabitants must learn to defend themselves and even the Guardians must take care and rely on strength in numbers to defend themselves.

The whole of the Village, however, is directly or indirectly dependent on The Tractor for survival. The wild forest that has been cleared and planted could never have supported even a tenth of the people who live in the Village today. The food and other goods produced by virtue of farming and The Tractor is distributed to those who work the fields.

They pay taxes and give gifts to Our Granny, which the Gardeners then use to pay for help – often from the unofficial village – in cultivating their lawns and gardens. The families who live in the Official Village employ servants and workers to maintain their houses and streets. Skilled people in the unofficial areas trade woven cloth, sandals, woodwork and so on with the Official Village and, each year, a few people from the unofficial areas manage to acquire property in the Village itself. These dependencies are very complex and we should not forget that even theft serves to provide food and goods that originate in The Tractor to the unofficial population in the shanty areas.

Naturally this gap between the Official and the unofficial residents sometimes causes discomfort on both sides. The Guardians behave as if they have complete control of the unofficial areas but privately they know very well that they could not retain it if an organised rebellion were to take place. The Great Football Riot illustrated very well the limits of what they could achieve.

Although I had not thought it a good idea at the time, I had to admit later that Lailavu’s decision to construct the football stadium had been inspired. The work lasted nearly five years, beginning with the digging of drainage channels in the swampy area next to the river so that the reed beds dried up. The surrounding banks were terraced and the tons of spoil were moved on barrows and carts to provide a flat playing surface. Finally, tree trunks were cut up-river in the forest and floated downstream to the building site where they were split and dressed before being used to construct fences and seating.

The Gardener’s ceremonial dais was built on the centre line, high above the crowd and offering both a splendid view of the games and some isolation from the rest of the spectators. Rooms were built underneath it to accommodate the players before and after the match and there were open sheds along the side opposite where food and drink could be served.

The labour was drawn largely from the unofficial part of the village. The men were enthusiastic about earning their living instead of having to beg. The problem of theft from the Official Village reduced and even the fights in the shanty areas seemed to reduce since the workers were tired at the end of the day. The risk of losing their jobs made the workers more amenable as the Gardeners and Guardians were able to decide who to employ and who not to.

The other interesting aspect of the project was the need to provide money to pay for it. When the Americans were here, they used their coins to pay for goods and services (and I believe that they also brought money made of paper).They continued to be used in Morakeewa when they had gone but there were not enough of them to make them practically useful and when Our Granny’s house was built, the villagers worked as volunteers and were rewarded with gifts – food, cloth, corn beer and so on.

The construction of the stadium was on a much larger scale, with many more people involved so that this system was no longer appropriate. It would not have been realistic to take huge quantities of goods down to the site for distribution each day. Workers were therefore given tokens – small circles punched out of aluminium sheets left by the Americans – at the end of each day’s work.

These could be exchanged for produce when it was convenient and people began to use them more generally to buy and sell things. At first this system was sufficiently effective, since the total number of tokens distributed corresponded exactly to the number of days worked on the project. Soon, however, things started to go wrong and extra tokens were found in circulation.

Some of them were crude copies – easy to detect because they had clearly been cut by hand from aluminium scrap recovered from plane wrecks in the jungle. Anyone who tried to pass these was quickly found and punished. With time, however, more sophisticated copies began to appear.

It was also possible to detect these because outside sleeve of the punch used to produce them did not fit the inner cutter as well as the official one so there was a tiny ridge of metal on one side that could be felt with the fingers if one knew exactly what to look for. Unfortunately, to the general population, they seemed exactly the same as the real thing and people were using them in good faith. The whole system would have come to a halt if they had lost confidence in the value of the tokens.

The authorities needed to find a way to regain control because the amount of goods and of work being performed remained the same so with more tokens in circulation some people were receiving more goods than they were entitled to and, ultimately, the average value of each token was being reduced.

After a number of council meetings, a plan of action was agreed. New tokens that were not so easy to copy would be produced. Following the American system, they would be coins, authenticated by stamping patterns on each side. The front of the coin would be stamped with a tractor. Initially the proposal was to follow the Americans and stamp a picture of Our Granny on the other side but this proved too difficult. None of the artists who would have to carve the steel dies knew what Our Granny looked like so, in the end, a hibiscus flower, the emblem of the Gardeners was stamped on that face.

The daily rate of pay was changed to three of the new coins for a day of the least skilled labour, with skilled craftsmen receiving four, five or six coins depending on what they did and how long they worked. This would make the new coins more suitable for use in trading, as they would no longer represent a whole day’s work. For a period it would be possible to exchange the old tokens for coins and people who had saved the tokens were able to bring them in to the Guardians’ hangar and make the swap.

Generally, this worked well although people were inclined to complain that tokens they had worked a whole day for were now only worth a third of a day but the Guardians were able to explain that this rate had been sanctioned by the Gardeners on behalf of Our Granny. Most people accepted this because the extra tokens had undermined token values to the point that they recognised that the real difference in current value was not that great. Also, everyone recognised the authority of Our Granny which stood behind the coinage.

What this process did reveal, however, was that there was a group of people who were bringing mostly false tokens for exchange. Once this pattern was noticed, it was decided to try and see if it was possible to find out who had been making them and whenever a number of false tokens were presented, the owner was detained for questioning.

It soon became clear that the people trying to exchange the false tokens were not aware of what they were doing and had agreed to make the exchange on behalf of others in return for a small share of the resulting coins. These people were also questioned and gradually the net tightened on the real culprits.

An association with the Guardians should not come as a shock at this point. They had access both to supplies of aluminium and to the tools required to create the fakes. The exact identities of the forgers did, however, come as a complete surprise.