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Tengano this morning by canoe across the lake. As we left some canoes were 
returning. They pole along the shores when wind is strong and the lake is 
rough, but today it is calm enough to paddle out far from shore. I have seen no 
sails. 
Torben Monberg was back on Rennell with three other Danes working at the 
lake villages for about two months on language principally, the people tell me. 
The boys are vague about dates, but suggest March and April. Others tell me 
that he also stayed with his whole family for several weeks on Bellona this 
year. 
The Mitsui Company has opened up a road from Lugugi Bay and Abol village 
inland via T village into the center of Rennell for its high grade bauxite 
ore mining. They first tried building the road into the interior from Lavangu, 
climbing the coastal cliffs to Lavangu village, but later abandoning this for 
Lugugi, They have now withdrawn pending resettlement of the political problem 
of distribution and sharing of profits locally and with the entire BSIP 
government. There is still a plan, the boys tell me, of a road from the upper 
Lavangu village to be extended to Kangava and from there into the interior to 
reach Lake Tengano at Niupani. This is planned largely for recreational 
purposes, so that the Company employees could relax at the lake on days off. 
The people of the lakeside villages want such a road badly, although from our 
point of view it will spoil their isolation, remoteness, and quiet — almost 
unique for an inhabited lakeshore in the modern world. 
There is a full industry here of carving clubs, masks, animal figures, and 
canes all decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl shell and tight ensheathing 
black and straw-colored braiding. This "traditional" Solomon Island handicraft 
is hardly Rennellese, but has been learned by the Rennell men at work on 
Honiara, and extended to embellish their Rennell clubs and maces and other 
traditional items of carving. Thus, whereas in 1963 I got many plain 
Polyneslan-style clubs and maces from the Rennell carvers, now they are more 
decorated and adorned, more "polished", and the high gloss black finish is much 
sought after, I suspect that it is often applied with dry-cell battery 
manganese oxide as a base and perhaps even shoe polish for the gloss, but the 
people all Insist that the carvings are buried in mud for days or weeks and then 
removed, with this treatment having produced the blackening, I am skeptical, 
and recall on Mota Lava when the boys and men were telling me of the use of 
traditional ground shell and other dyes for the coloring they used, how my 
youthful friends with me mumbled "lies, all lies" as they heard this! This 
carving commands high prices now in artifact and craft-conscious Honiara, and 
our party here has purchased everything available anywhere they have seen it. 
This has so stimulated the carving shop here at Tengano that the atelier is open 
and work continuing far into the night, and carvers rush works to completion in 
the hope of a sale before we leave tomorrow. The carving shop is well-equipped 
with primitive but adequate tools, and several of our party have already 
contracted to buy items which are unfinished as yet. However, we have all run 
out of the Australian currency with which to make purchases. 
A 
