As a teacher at the high school on the island of Rotuma, I had to come up with a Wednesday afternoon club activity that was extra curricular. For the first term, I ran a rugby club and taught interested boys the rudiments of rugby on the dusty sports field in front of the school. This was back in 1972/73.
For the next two terms, I formed a singing club that became ridiculously popular. It attracted half of the school population. It was standing room only in my classroom.
After a few weeks, I was struggling to come up with new songs we could sing together. I found one in a songbook I had put in my luggage. It was, I believe, a slave song from the southern states of America and it was called "No More Auction Block". I learnt it and played it to the singing club, accompanying myself slowly on acoustic guitar.
Soon the entire singing club were joining in and for whatever reason they loved it. Their Polynesian voices interlaced in natural harmony. Beyond the unglazed classroom windows the deep blue Pacific Ocean reached north to the Ellice Islands - now known as Tuvalu. Drifting over the ocean deep, the song began like this:-
Noa'ia! Rotuma sounds like a wonderful place to have been a teacher. You must have many stories from that experience. I can now add the island of Rotuma to "my places in the world" learning this week.
ReplyDeleteSo nice that you bothered to Google Rotuma Melinda.I remember many details of my time there even thought it was fifty years ago.
DeleteI looked for the island in my big old atlas, you were reasonably close to Australia then.
DeleteIt would have been too far to swim River.
DeleteThe enslavement of people is the great sin that we shall never, ever be able to make right.
ReplyDeleteIn "Uncle Tom's Cabin", Harriet Beecher Stowe likens the plight of English factory workers to Afro-Caribbean slaves on American plantations. They were paid so little and worked so hard that they might as well have been slaves too.
DeleteI remember watching the TV show "Roots" as a 10-year-old, and that vividly depicted the conditions you describe here -- the inspection of the slaves and the auction block itself. I've never forgotten it.
ReplyDeleteI looked up Rotuma on Google Maps. It really IS a speck in the ocean, with its nearest neighbors quite a distance away!
But when I was on Rotuma it felt like the whole world.
DeleteI remember Roots, I remember "Chicken George".
DeleteLooking at a satellite image of Rotuma, I'm guessing they don't do such things as going for a Sunday drive. It would get old pretty fast after the third or fourth lap.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny how such a small island could have so much to offer. There was always somewhere new to go.
DeleteI had never heard of Rotuma until your blog post today. I wonder how you ended up teaching there and it is wonderful to hear how much the students enjoyed your activities. A beautiful song about a horrible time in US history and now some people don't want that mentioned in schools these days. Sad...
ReplyDeleteBritain had a volunteer programme called Voluntary Service Overseas and that is how I found myself on Rotuma.
DeleteMy husband spent a year in Botswana after school ( 1964/5)on the VSO scheme. He met Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth and found the film " A United Kingdom" very interesting! ( So did I ) One morning their daughter Josephine , who was about 14/15 at the time came to tell him and his colleague that it was time to get out of bed! She is born in the timeline of the film.
DeleteYour husband may be interested to learn that I was in the very last batch of school leaver volunteers. After 1973 VSO became a graduate programme. I would like to see "A United Kingdom" now.
DeleteWhat a powerful song! It's one I've never heard before. The auction block is fresh in my memory, too, having read "Mandingo" by Kyle Onstott in January.
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine.
"No More Auction Block" should be taught and explained in American schools even if this might upset some privileged white kids.
DeleteThe "Mandingo" series is the ones I mentioned in my comment lower down here, I couldn't remember the name or author. There are 6 or 7 books in the series centred around the "Falconhurst" plantation. It must be 35 years since I read them.
DeleteRotuma does indeed look like Paradise. What a wonderful time you must have had there - they look such happy people. I wonder how it's changed over the 50 years since you were there?
ReplyDeleteI've just watched a promotional video for the islands on You Tube, sadly spoiled by the irritating fashion of speeding up the camera. Paradise is a place to be savoured in slow motion, not at break-neck speed!
When I was there, there was no airstrip Carol. A small supply ship arrived from the main Fiji Islands every three months. There was no tourism. I must look out for that promotional video you mentioned.
DeleteI just Googled the name of the island, which gave me a good selection of videos, and I chose one at random. Later I'll go and have a look at one or two others.
DeleteWhat I've found from my 37 years of teaching is that my students don't remember how to conjugate verbs or anything past the language basics, but they do recall the celebrations we had, the songs we sung and the funny moments.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange how some kids can emerge from twelve years of schooling and know so little.
DeleteThe singer is amazing.
ReplyDeleteShe feels every word and gives reverence to the past.
DeleteI am impressed. A Yorkshireman afoot in the South Pacific. As someone else said, you must have some marvelous stories from your early days. And that is a beautifully performed song by Ms. Redbone about a very dark period of history that unfortunately lives on in many respects today. Thank you for sharing it, YP.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful response my good sir.
DeleteChattels for sale by auction. Roll up, roll up. Hard to believe really.
ReplyDeleteWe were taught a few Deep South songs at school and I can remember them quite well. Our mad music teacher was a Stephen Foster fan.
How wonderful to remember those songs after all these years.
DeleteThe island sounds like a little piece of heaven.
ReplyDeleteWhat humans can do to humans takes qualities that are, well, inhuman. I cannot fathom it even when I read about it and am told why it happens, how it happens and how it will happen again. My brain seems unable to absorb the truth.
And then Putin's face comes on the television screen.
It didn't have to be this way. As Grace Slick sang: "We should be together -all you people standing round."
DeleteThe very thought of auction blocks upsets me. Standing there being stared at, felt and bidded upon, knowing you'd be torn from your family. It's just awful. I remember reading fiction books where the buyers wanted "breeding stock" so the men would be manipulated until they ejaculated then the semen would be judged, pregnant women were preferred over those holding babies as proof they could reproduce, since the baby being held could be anybody's. Children in good health were sought because they were young and could be trained in the way the new masters wanted.
ReplyDeleteHow could they be so cruel?
DeleteAs a teacher here, I came up with cycling for spring and fall and cross country skiing in winter, However, I did not come up with a significant piece of music.
ReplyDeleteI would have sought out one or two indigenous songs - celebrating them with respect.
DeleteLinda's comment is pretty much what I would have written, had I been here to comment earlier.
ReplyDeleteSorry you were late to the party Meike!
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