Black Stone: Onneyn Morris Tahi; an Autobiography

By Miriam Leah Adomea

This autobiography gives the readers a glimpse into the events prior to and immediately after the country of Vanuatu became an independent nation. It is a historical account of the determination and drive of the people who pioneered the way forward for a nation (that had been under a condominium rule for decades) to become independent of colonial powers. It is a firsthand account of a man who was involved in the changes, the struggles, and the emergence of a people whose voice prior to this turn of event was not heard and whose interests were not taken into consideration. Most importantly, the nation came out struggling to do the right thing by its citizens. Misbehavior by the elected members of Parliament was dealt with and a code of practice established as a constant reminder that they were put in their position by the people and for the people of Vanuatu.

Vanuatu sets a good example of keeping their leaders accountable. The recent action in adherence to the laws regarding corruption was possible only because leaders were called into accountability right from the start. This comes through the pages of this autobiography.

The Vanuatu coat of arms and the national anthem echo the desires of the people of Vanuatu for their leaders. As long as the anthem is sung, it serves as a reminder that the nation was founded on Christian principles and will continue to uphold Christian principles because righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34).

Long God yumi stanap!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Sep 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781499098747

Miriam Leah Adomea

Born in an obscure village on a remote island, Miriam had a very humble beginning. Fatherless at two years of age, she was raised by her entrepreneurial grandfather. Her grandfather’s father was from Bourbon, now called Reunion Island. Because her grandfather knew the value of education, she was sent to school and was the first female from the area to go to a university. Since then, Miriam has traveled to several countries to study, including the United Kingdom. Although she now lives and works in New Zealand, her love for her nation remains strong. Editing this autobiography gives her a strong sense of keeping in touch with the nation and people she dearly loves. The historical content of this autobiography as well as the love for her uncle gave her the drive to make this book available for the people and friends of Vanuatu. Miriam hopes to see the educational struggles in Vanuatu as well as in the Pacific change so that teaching is compatible with how Pacific children learn. She has a vision and is behind a team that is building a school where she was born and raised to put into practice this very change. She believes her system will have the opposite effect to the present situation in Vanuatu and the Pacific as a whole, which educates only a few and produces a massive population of semi-illiterate citizens. This contributes to youth crime, teenage pregnancy, and the spread of communicable diseases.

Book preview

COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY MIRIAM LEAH ADOMEA.

EDITED BY MIRIAM LEAH ADOMEA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:   2016914400

ISBN:   HARDCOVER   978-1-4990-9876-1

SOFTCOVER   978-1-4990-9875-4

EBOOK   978-1-4990-9874-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 09/22/2016

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

My Birthplace

Schooling Years

Condominium Government Service

Politics

My First Mission Overseas

Education and Its Problems and Difficulties

The Problems of a Speaker

My Term as Speaker of Vanuatu Parliament

Long God Yumi Stanap

Dedication

I dedicate this autobiography to the people of Vanuatu.

Please use the struggles in the pages of this autobiography as a reminder of how much it took our pioneering leaders to turn a condominium nation into an independent nation.

I hope and pray that the nation will someday truly be independent in every aspect of its existence and growth.

Long God Umi Stanap!

Acknowledgements

My gratitude goes first of all to my God for His leading and guidance and the ultimate saving of this material found among a mountain of papers from my late uncle’s four terms in Parliament. It was a miracle to find the material still in a better condition than the rest of the materials and papers on the piles of papers.

To my husband, Meshach Adomea, for his love, not only for my own family but for the people of Vanuatu.

To my children, especially my daughters Lynette, Lornah, and Leilah, who would move heaven and earth to support any cause for Vanuatu and my three sons, Lincoln Morris, Leroy John and Levi Shaun.

To Uncle Chief John Tarilama: My only surviving uncle, who trusted me with the material for his brother’s autobiography. He confiscated it before damp destroyed it. Thank you.

To Aileen Hames: When I needed someone to read and correct my grammar and spelling in the work, she agreed to do it for me. I cannot thank her enough for the time she took to read through the autobiography.

To James Tari, my brother (from another mother), who is a lawyer: I appreciate his reading through the work, helping on the legal stance of the material used, and encouraging me to publish this book because, in his words, It’s the history of Vanuatu.

1

MY BIRTHPLACE

Losingoiburie, the village where I was born on 24 July 1944 is on the northern coast of Aoba Island in the eastern region of the New Hebrides. We moved to Lovuivetu, my father’s village, soon after I was born.

New Hebrides (now Vanuatu)

This is Vanuatu in relation to Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the rest of the South Pacific nations.

Aoba Island (now Ambae Island)

Lovuivetu was a small village where only members of my family lived. Life was simple but happy and healthy. My father owned a shop, a bakery, and a copra buying shed. He had a truck and a small boat for transporting people to the hospitals east or west of where we lived or for carrying cargo from the Australian trader Mr Bruce (as he was known back then) at Narugu.

Apart from the shop and the copra shed, all of the houses in the village were thatched. Later my father built my brother and me another corrugated iron-roofed house. My elder brother Samuel, as well as my maternal grandmother, also had iron-roofed houses. We lived in a large house, part of which was partitioned to house the shop. Another vale next to the sleeping house served as the kitchen, with an open fireplace for cooking and a large bread oven made of concrete lined inside with copper. My father baked bread, ran the shop, and made sure that the copra was ready for the trading boats to collect every once in a while; ships were few and far between because they had to service the whole island and the neighbouring islands.

Customarily, only women cooked, collected firewood, and tended food gardens. Often my sisters would be busy in the gardens as well as working in the copra plantations, feeding the pigs and mending fences for the cattle. Our village was the hub of the whole of that side of the island. Other centres were the shop at Narugu, the hospital to the east of our village, and the Catholic mission about two kilometres west of the village. It made it all the more special to me that the hub of the community I grew up in was the village where I lived because of the services offered by my father’s businesses.

For the children of my village, life was hard but happy. Everyone had something to do. When I was growing up there were more girls in the village than boys – mainly my sisters and my sisters’ children. My elder half-brother Samuel Morris Tarilisi, my younger brother John Rusty Tarilama, and I were the only boys in the village. My elder brother was sent to New Caledonia to a French school there, which only left my brother and me in the village. While my sisters and the girls were working in the gardens and collecting firewood, my brother and I went swimming and fishing at any time of the day. We played little boys’ games and shot birds with a catapult made of rubber cut out from a tube and attached to a wood with the sling pouch made from leather or another rubber tube.

We were oblivious to what was going on outside the village. Life was the shops, the cattle, the trading boats coming in, my father’s little boat travelling out and coming in, and blowing a conch shell so that we could go out and hoist the boat out of the water to rest till the next time. There were cattle fences to mend; copra to be made; food gardens to be planted, weeded, or harvested; church on Sunday; and then it was the same all over again – until government started to get interested in the education of children. Before that, it was the parent’s decision to send their children to school, but things changed, and school became compulsory for every child.

It was then that education was available to everyone, including the girls. Later on, more boys were born to my sisters, but by then we were in the workforce in Vila.

It was always fun when there were feasts because there was always much food to consume