blackbirding

A few weeks ago one of the board members (I'll call her Marian) turned up at the office with a middle-aged white australian guy who had a couple of young daughters with him. I thought she introduced him to me as her cousin but really cant ever be completely sure what people are saying to me in bislama so I just smiled and said hello. A few days later I asked her who he was and she said again that he was her cousin. I felt I knew her well enough to comment on the fact they didnt share much family resemblance, most pertinently he being white and she being black. She explained that one of her grandfather's brothers had been out fishing in the solwota off the coast of Pentecost one day and had gone missing. They initially thought that he had drowned but as a number of other local men had also gone missing they soon realised he had been stolen.

In the second half of the 19th century Australians (basically still pretty much brits i guess at that time) carried out a (semi-official) policy called black-birding. Ships cruised around the pacific islands picking up men who were then taken back to Australia to work in bonded labour. It wasnt quite slavery but in terms of brutality and forcing people against their will its a pretty close approximation. (bislama evolved on the plantations as the pacific islanders were forced to develop a language enabling them to communicate with the plantation owners and other islanders with different native languages).

Marian's uncle was taken to Brisbane where he worked on a sugar plantation. I'm not sure how long after he arrived he escaped, running across fields until it was light when he hid under the foundations of a wooden house and went to sleep. He was woken by the owner of the house who happened to be an english nurse in need of some help in her garden. She employed him and some time later they married. The middle-aged australian who came to visit was one of the blackbirded man's grandsons who had recently rediscovered his family in Vanuatu.