59 
"sponsors" do not seem to understand. All my previous criticisms of the 
Alpha Helix were justified; its naivete with respect to any valid medical 
research use is enormous. How juvenile, unimaginative and hopelessly out 
of touch with the realities of medicine and medical research the people have 
been who planned medical investigations from the ship as a base cannot be 
overstated. We are forcing it to serve our purposes, for with its enormous 
sophisticated facilities it does hardly much better than would a small copra 
ship or one of the Condominium or French or British government launches. 
They could be so equipped and so organized as to render enormous support 
to medical studies, but these even at their most sophisticated laboratory 
level, are with people who must be solicited, and with whom we must keep in 
close touch all of the time. This is a matter of extreme importance in 
working with remote and unfamiliar populations. No provisions have been 
made for real support of shore-based and shore-hiking parties, and it is here 
that the whole concept of medical research from the ship falls down. How- 
ever, Walter and the Captain are trying hard to meet our extreme demands 
upon them and it looks as though the expedition will be highly successful 
after all. 
We have the histories of two old persons who have died from severe 
elephantiasis of one lower extremity, each in Moslna village: Olive, who 
died in the 1960's, and George, a male of sixty who died in Santo in 1971 
of cancer, secondary to chronic elephantiasis. Filariasls surely exists 
here and we shall take thick and thin smears tomorrow on most of the 
school children. Crocodiles still exist here, but no one admits to any 
known human death from them; shark bites are not admitted either. There 
are snakes on the island, but these are not supposed to be venemous. Sea 
snakes rarely cause trouble — on^ recent bite which was not fatal was 
recalled. Already we know of other asmatfcs besides the two we saw this 
morning at Moslna, and the one school boy at Sola (Arep) with recurrent 
asthmatic bronchitis. 
Veverau Village (Kolmarama village), Mota Island October 6, 1972 
Jean, Paul, Stanley and I disembarked at 5 p.m. at Veverau village, 
or Mission Passes, which is the site where Bishop Paterson first landed 
on Mota. We had an hour of light in the village to find a place to 
sleep, meet the dresser, and the priest. Father Oscar, from Central Pen- 
tacost Island, and then to walk over to Lotawan. Lotawan is the next 
village clockwise around the island below which, at a site called Nwapaka 
is the Mota school, with forty to fifty pupils. At Lotawan we met two 
Australian builders who live in a house at the center of the village. 
They have been here for three weeks and are building the new school for 
Mota — they have just started on the first building. In the three weeks, 
they could work but one week because of too many feasts and celebrations, 
which usually last for two days, they tell us. 
