The OSPA journal last year carried an obituary of Ian Butler, who went
out to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the 1950s to escape from his
humdrum existence in Birmingham, working for ICI. He did two tours in
the GEIC before moving to Swaziland for a decade and eventually
settling in South Africa.
After his death, Ian's family found a manuscript that he had written about
his time in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, but about which he had never
told them. This has now been published as Ghost Stories and Other
Island Tales.
He went at a time when the ravages of the Second World War had been
largely overcome, but before the constitutional developments of the
1960s and 70s had started. In a curious way the GEIC had become a
time capsule:
'Bairiki was the seat of the Resident Commissioner and
senior civil servants. It was small, shady and quiet with a
neat village of Gilbertese and an assortment of government
personnel all aware of their hierarchical ranking in terms of
the official circular on precedence ... [I was told] "If you get
an old file out make sure there is not a scorpion in it and
keep the whites happy and you will be alright". If the first
piece of advice was practical the second struck me as
cynical but it proved only too true'.
Like so many who went to the Gilberts as young bachelors, however, Ian
Butler clearly found the locals much more entertaining company than the
expatriates, and he quickly fell under their spell - and their tuition. We
follow him on an octopus hunt, through many history lessons, night
fishing expeditions, finding out why the scent of ghosts haunted the rest
house on Tabiteua, shark hunting, and learning not to kill rays if you were
with someone from the 'ray' boti (clan).
At the same time, once away on District Officer postings far from Bairiki,
he describes, as well as the locals, the many drunks and eccentrics; the
missionaries - Roman Catholic, Protestant and Bahai (who mostly led
lives of intense loneliness): 'tourists' with influence in London and total
ignorance of local custom, but nevertheless bent on interference with it;
and a disillusioned medical officer who shocked the community by
suggesting that a clinic for malnourished children might be a better use of
funds than 'a radiogram, some decanters and a picnic basket for the
Residency'.
Quite apart from the tales, however, this book is remarkable for the
quality of its prose; in places it breaks into sheer prose-poetry. Here for
instance is Ian's description of the night sky in the Gilberts:
'The heaven was vast and into it were fitted stars that were larger
and brighter by far than the small points of light that shine in the
nights of Europe. So expanded and numerous were they that it
looked as if we were beneath a vast mosaic dome built with
diamonds, blue and white, flaming opals and rubies, but stones
had fallen or been lost and some were dim, so that there were
dark holes and patches and the dome appeared old and in poor
repair. But enough stones remained... to ... clean and polish the
ceiling to the brilliance it had been'.
It is worth buying the book for the final two chapters alone. These
concern a hunt for a 'bison/buffalo' in the Ellice Islands which had
become the subject of a Parliamentary Question. Such questions were
the one thing that terrified all Civil Servants, and it provoked a visit from
the Colonial Office itself - which meant that not only the Resident
Commissioner from Tarawa, but also the High Commissioner from the
Solomons, had to accompany the hapless visitor from Whitehall. These
chapters gave me my best 'laugh out loud' for years.
Let us hope that there are other memoirs of Empire out there as good,
and yet to be discovered!
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