If You Wish to travel and contemplate satisfaction of such desires by visiting the South Pacific Islands in a NZUSA work camp party, and in doing so conceal your primarily selfish motives under the cloak of humanitarianism or some such worthy cause, then read the following account of the NZUSA work camp in Fiji.

The Publicity issued by NZUSA looked attractive: Study tours at cheap travel rates and supposedly next to nothing living costs (£6 for four weeks) together with the expenditure of energy in some community work for the underprivileged. Of course, it would be reasonable that such expenditure would result in some gratitude from the recipient, expressed in the form of hospitality that would not otherwise be offered, and thus make the effort beneficial to the donor as well as to the receiver.

To arrive in Suva in a party of close on 30 students, with the lads outnumbered two to one by the lassies; stay in a school hostel in the heart of Suva for around £5 per week (half subsidised by the Freedom From Hunger Campaign or some such organisation): and to find that we are to work for the Rev. Dr. Hemming, administrator of the J. P. Bayley Trust Fund, at planting rice—a scheme that is the brainchild of this one-dimensional Christian to whom work is, and always will be, the greatest virtue, followed closely by more work—did not promise the realisation of the concocted dreams of this gullible idiot.

After a few days further doubts arose concerning the worth of the task, to which we were committed beyond the limits implied in pre-travel circulars. These doubts were further reinforced and magnified by the attitude of the locals who viewed us from afar as if we were insane nuts capable of other violent deviant activities apart from make-believe dirt scratch-ings.

Or perhaps they saw us as posers of some inspirational spiritual notions relating to the virtues of rice planting? As they were all more experienced in the labours and rewards of rice planting, they tended towards the former interpretation of our feeble endeavours.

This article is by R. B. Nicholls, who controlled the Fiji work camp in the absence of former NZUSA president Alister Taylor.

Acting on the grounds of their fairly reliable diagnosis of our symptoms, the locals were not greatly moved in gratitude, but rather regarded with detached amusement.

After one week, in which the now serious drought remained unbroken, the gloom of the prospect of three more weeks of this idiot dirt scratching pastime was momentarily lifted with the news that Alister Taylor, begetter and director of this bastard scheme, was to leave for New Zealand in one week's time. The relief was temporary. The lot of foster-father to this now malignant brainchild-scheme fell into my tender care on the grounds of seniority and supposed responsibility.

As the rain continued to bless other parts of the globe, rice planting was still out of the question, and the ground preparation seemed satisfactorily completed with the aid of a tractor hired from the RNZAF base for an undisclosed sum of money generously provided by NZUSA.

With rice planting waiting on the rain and our Christian landlord busily devising useless schemes to capitalise on the free labour and. in so doing, to glorify his god of work, I decided to exercise my new found position of responsibility and grant the serfs one week's holiday.

Could go home

This proposition was duly presented to Dr. Hemming (the landlord) to be met. with the retort that if that was our plan we may as well go home now! This was gratitude.

In this one week of rest, no rain fell and many of the students tripped around the islands devouring the many sensations that New Zealand cannot offer. This was profitable.

The last days of the final week brought rain and the obligation to plant rice. This was duly carried out in the time that was left, resulting in about two acres of planted rice and four acres of naked dirt —not six acres of planted rice as the publicity hound Alister Taylor would have the masses believe.

Publicity first

Through all the resulting chaos in Fiji, Alister Taylor's main concern was with the reporters and the publicity potential, rather than with the students or the locals. But to see this yearning for publicity as the only, or even the main, motive is possibly being unreasonably cynical and maybe more reputable intentions are being frustrated in the machinery of the NZUSA bureaucracy.

Even if the aim is purely to benefit the people of the Pacific with no desire for public recognition—imagine NZUSA doing that —such schemes can only be offered to people lacking any vestige of pride or ability if they think that students of New Zealand universities can do something concrete and economically significant during their vacation, that they (the locals) could not do for themselves.

Not respected

If you offered to paint my house free, I don't doubt that I would accept your offer. But to respect your offer as that of a sane self-respecting man. is another proposition.

Does it give one a mild thrill of superiority or a feeling of big-daddy generosity to think that one, in one's vacation, by stooping to pat the head of some brown-skinned boy, can make the sun rise earlier and brighter for a people who are all too conscious of the cultural differences that are further emphasised in this completely one-sided scheme of patronising giving?

Is it not possible that these hypocritical Pacific excursions may well be in ultimate conflict with the proudly and loudly declared aims of NZUSA travel scheme?