I am now left with the sobering thought that a great responsibility rests with me, the responsibility of beginning God’s work among these people. Rev Cliff Keightley 4 December 1959, Nipa
We do not understand this talk. It is new to us. We want you with us. Some of us will die, and maybe you will die before we understand fully, but stay with us and teach us. Statement by Nipa man in July 1960, as interpreted and quoted by visitor Rev Harry Bartlett
Cliff Keightley picked up an exercise book. Today was a very important day. For a long time, he had been waiting to start his new work and now the time had come. He wrote down the date in his book and started his diary.
Saturday, 28 November 1959
Word received that Gordon Young and I are permitted to move into the Nembi, to commence mission work and that our movement was restricted to a half mile radius of the government patrol Post at Nipa. Also instructed that a government patrol led by Mr John Jordan, Assistant District Officer, would be available to escort us into the new area.
Straight away, Keightley started to organise everything that he needed to take. He had been planning this for a long time and had a lot of metal patrol boxes ready to fill with supplies. He knew that everything would need to be carried by men along the bush tracks across the mountains to Nipa. There was no road to Nipa and the new airstrip was not ready for planes. His first job was to find men willing to be carriers. That was not easy as it was hard work, but the pastor at Wombip, Setepano Nabwakulea, found some carriers.
Four days later, Keightley was on his way. He said goodbye to his wife Noreen and their daughters then he and Gordon Young rode on the mission motor bike as far as Wombip. That was where the road ended. Now they had to walk.
That night, when they arrived at Kip in the Lai Valley as the first stop on the way to the Nembi Valley, Keightley wrote again in his diary.
Tuesday 1 December 1959.
Thrilled that my time of waiting is over. The last few months have been very difficult for both Noreen and myself and we have not known what to think about it all. On numerous occasions we have longed for a church in New Zealand but it would appear that God has known better than me. Although I am overjoyed that my break has come at last, I also feel most inadequate for the task. I pray that I may always remain conscious of my need of God and of his help.
The walk across the mountain ridges had been tiring and Keightley was troubled by a painful leg. He wrote:
It commenced to rain when we were less than halfway. By the time we reached the top of the second and the last divide it was raining very heavily and it slowed our pace down considerably. We eventually arrived at Kip after dark. The last half hour with the aid of a dimly lit torch through mud up over our boots and up and down steep slippery tracks wasn’t any fun. …. I am glad the journey of five and a half hours of walking is over. We arrived, dripping wet, but glad to find a meal prepared and John Jordan with two police also there to escort us tomorrow.
The next morning, they set off again, after finding more carriers.
It proved a much longer walk than we had anticipated, eight and half hours, narrow bush tracks up and over five mountain ridges, up wild sugarcane grass slopes with the sun beating down and perspiration dripping off us. Down through stretches of bush and across several mountain streams we trekked. The scenery was glorious and had my shin not been so painful, I think I would’ve enjoyed the walk immensely.
What a joy to mount the last ridge and look down over what is to be our future home! … I hurried down the hill to the newly constructed airstrip.
The airstrip at Nipa was still being built by local people. At one end of the airstrip was a small cluster of huts and tents for the patrol officers and their workers. Cliff Keightley and his party were given places to sleep until they built places of their own.
The patrol officer John Jordan told them that they were not permitted to travel more than half a mile (less than one kilometre) from the airstrip unless they went with a police patrol. ‘It could be dangerous’, he said, ‘because we don’t know if the local people will welcome us or want to fight us.’ Keightley was thankful when Officer Jordan took him and Gordon Young on a long walk for several hours to see the area on their first day. This was his first chance to see something of the Nembi Valley.
On Friday, 4 December 1959, Gordon Young left them to return to Mendi. Keightley wrote in his diary;
I am now left with the sobering thought that a great responsibility rests with me, the responsibility of beginning God’s work among these people. So far, I have not been able to select a site for a mission station … Daniel Amen, John Teu [pastors from New Britain and Solomon Islands] and I have started to sound the people out with a view to discussing whether they’re prepared to make land available to us. Surprisingly friendly, and encouraging assurances were given that they would make land available. Much depends on this initial contact. We pray that we may be able to trust completely in God his wisdom and his strength in all our decisions and in all that we may say to these people.
A crowd of over a hundred local people gathered beside the raw earth of the airstrip to observe the visitors on their first Sunday. They were curious to see these strange outsiders and their unfamiliar Sunday ritual. Keightley was pleased to learn that the language in Nipa was a dialect of the Mendi language, with some variations. He had been learning to speak the Mendi language, so he spoke in that language. When he wrote in his diary that night, 6 December 1959, he wrote:
They all listened with eagerness and interest to the message I had prepared for them and showed reluctance to leave afterwards. … After I had introduced them to the idea of God, I told them the parable of the good Samaritan and explained that we wanted to help them, that we wanted to heal their sick and teach their children, and also to give them God‘s word. Daniel Amen then explained that we are not spirits but men like themselves. Their faces shone with delight as we sang a simple hymn in Mendi language. It was something we shall not soon forget.
The local people in Nipa were puzzled and intrigued by these strangers. The three new men didn’t look much like the Highlanders. John Teu was tall and lean with the very black skin of the Solomon Islanders. Daniel Amen was a powerful brown man from New Britain and Keightley was a pale-skinned New Zealander. Whether or not anyone understood what they were talking about, these visitors were very entertaining.
Over the next few weeks, Keightley was able to make a second journey with the patrol officer, this time to the north of the airstrip. He was looking for a good place to begin his mission work. He was still living in the simple house of the patrol officer and working with local labour to build a temporary house for himself and his workers with bush materials, using local timber and walls of woven pitpit canes. Two light aircraft landed on the unfinished airstrip but it was still not open for regular flights. Keightley was grateful to patrol officer John Jordan for a place to stay, but knew that he needed his own place before he could begin his own work properly. He was also waiting for permission for his wife and children to join him. His first Christmas in Nipa was very lonely and quiet. The Nipa people didn’t understand about Christmas, of course, and no plane came to bring messages or supplies. Early in the New Year 1960, Cliff Keightley and his small team moved into their temporary house at the end of the airstrip. He was very happy to learn that he could apply for permission for his wife Noreen to join him and that they could move 2.5 kilometres from the airstrip.
A month after he first arrived in the Nembi Valley, Cliff Keightley was given permission to go with two policemen to look for a site for his new mission. This time, Keightley walked with Daniel Amen, John Teu and medical orderly Wasun Koka. They went to the south of the airstrip and looked at that area for several hours. When he went back to the patrol post he was quite excited. He had found a place. That night, 5 January 1960, he wrote in his diary that he had found a place that he hoped they could lease. The patrol officer John Jordan had suggested a different place because he thought this other site would not be available but, Keightley wrote:
However, I find that the locals are quite happy to let us have it. We asked them, if they had no objections, to come in on Thursday or Friday when we shall talk to them about it. This site is preferable to the one John suggested for several reasons. It is the centre of five groups of population, it offers greater scope because it is a larger block of land, it is a little further away from the government patrol post (about one and a half miles), it is much better ground, it is a little higher and more toward the centre of the valley, it is against a bush with very good timber in it possibly 30 acres. There are small streams bounding it on two sides and it slopes gently towards the east offering a perfect position for a church. Have mentioned the site to John [Jordan] and he is happy, provided the owners are.
The next day, 6 January 1960, a team of Catholic missionaries from the Capuchin Order in Mendi also arrived to begin their mission in the Nipa area. The day after that, a group of Nipa men came to discuss questions about releasing land for the Methodist Mission with Keightley. Many changes had begun in a very short time.
When Keightley wrote in his diary on 7 January 1960, he was careful to record the names, clans and places of the men who came to talk about land. He wrote:
One of the groups owning the land which we hope to get for our mission station came in this morning. They own the northern section of it which runs into the bush, and they are prepared to give it to us, approximately 290 yards long. The name of the ground is PUTIL. Head man is OL PIS who lives at HUTUWA. Clan name Wol OL. Sub clan ASOP.
The owners are:
HILUB of HUTUWA, clan name WOL OL, subclan HODAPIYAL
KIBIR of HUTUWA, clan name WOL OL, subclan ASOP
OL KOPEN of HUTUWA, clan name WOL OL, subclan ASOP
KUJAP of KUATHE, clan name WOL OL, subclan MOSUWOL.
I paid each of these four men an 8 inch knife as a goodwill gift. This is in accord with their custom, an assurance that you really mean to do business with them.
It would appear that the other piece of land to the south, approximately 270 yards long, may be owned only by one man. He also came in. His name is WALBO and he has been helping us considerably with the construction of this house. He has no objection and nor has his line. He will be returning on Monday.
Keightley knew that he could not buy land directly from the local people. The government patrol officers were responsible for negotiation of purchase of land and the mission could lease that land. First, they needed to have a clear agreement with the local land holders that they were prepared to release some land for the use of outsiders. The patrol officer told Keightley that it would take a number of weeks of negotiation before a final decision would be possible.
While they waited, Keightley and his pastors Daniel Amen and John Teu planted a vegetable garden near the airstrip and talked about important plans for the future. If they were able to settle at Puril, what would the new mission station look like?
Keightley wrote, ‘The suggestion at the moment is the plan in the form of a cross with the church situated in the top of the cross. Whether or not this will work depends much on the shape and lie of the land’.
The little group shared some important conversations during that time of waiting. Keightley suggested that they should celebrate Holy Communion together regularly, and meet for Lotu, morning and evening prayers, every day. Perhaps he was a bit surprised by the very strong response of Daniel and John. With an honesty developed as the three men had shared weeks together in comparative isolation from the rest of the mission, Daniel and John agreed that this was important to them. They said,
‘This is what is wrong with Unja. (Mendi) You would think it was just a business centre and not a mission. It is not good, just preaching on Sundays. We must also show the people that mission work is an every-day thing.
Another comment from John was ‘At Unja I felt I was only doing business.’
Keightley may have felt that this was a rebuke, from his islander companions, which was justified. He knew about friction and unhappiness between some staff members in Mendi. Perhaps the mission team there had not been very happy and were losing the true purpose of their mission at that time.
The little team at Nipa was trying to start again. They began meeting for morning and evening Lotu on 18 January 1960 and Cliff Keightley noted that he thought that ‘it will prove a wonderful thing in binding us all closer together’. He did his best to try to explain to the Nipa people about God and Jesus in the local language. It was very hard to say what he wanted to say, because he didn’t know enough of the language. He tried to tell the people that the power of Jesus was stronger than the power of the evil spirits. He also said that the mission did not come to bring money or goods but ‘because we want to share with you the blessings of life with God in Christ’. After one conversation, he wrote in his diary:
Obviously, he only very partially understood what I told him. I pray that one day he will understand and that he will also come to experience the joys of life in Christ.
One thing made them very happy. A Mendi man had come with them to Nipa to help them as a medical orderly. This man, Wasun Koka, had long talks with Daniel Amen and John Teu about Christian faith. One night in January 1960, Wasun came to talk to Keightley. Keightley wrote in his diary:
Wasun, a medical orderly whom we brought with us from Mendi has also indicated his desire to be a Christian. He is emphatic about it and has requested that we start him on a course of instruction to prepare him for baptism. I am convinced that he is sincere and genuine in his search for Christ. God and Christ are most definitely at work in his life.
This was very important. Wasun was the first person from Mendi who decided to become a Christian. Many others would follow but Wasun was the pioneer.
Over the next weeks, Keightley, Amen and Teu talked to the landowner Walbo about his piece of land at Puril and waited for the government officials to complete the work on permits for them to be in the Nipa area and to negotiate with the landowners. Keightley was very impatient to start work but he had to wait. On 25 January the Missionary Aviation Fellowship plane brought Gordon Young and Roland Barnes to Nipa for a few hours. The patrol officer was away that day, so Keightley was not permitted to take the two senior men to look at the land where he hoped to start his new mission. They were able to look to the south and see the land in the distance. That day, they knew that Gordon Young was going on leave and expected that he would be back again after a few months. They thought that Roland Barnes would be Acting-Chairman while Young was away. None of them knew that in a few months both the older men would be gone and Keightley had to do the work of Acting-Chairman as well as his own pioneering work in Nipa.
Cliff Keightley’s wife Noreen and three young daughters arrived in Nipa on 26 February 1960. Like Grace Young in Mendi and Miriam Barnes in Tari, Noreen was the first white woman to live in that mountain valley. Keightley was very happy to have them with him at last. It was not easy or comfortable, with tribal fighting among two tribes to the south and worries about people using sorcery to attack their enemies. He wrote: It’s wonderful to have them here at last even though the conditions are primitive and space limited. They were still building a rough kitchen for Noreen to use.
The permits for the mission group to move away from the airstrip came at last. In the first week in April 1960, Keightley went with the patrol officer Doug Butler to look at a possible site. They talked to the local landowners and negotiated for some land at Puril. The landowners needed to be free to harvest the gardens that were already planted on that land. By 11 April the mission group started to cut back tall pitpit canes from the middle of the area to clear some ground. Keightley worked out a plan for the design of the future mission and was happy about the location.
He wrote: I am more than ever satisfied that we have chosen the right site and the centre of the station marked out in the form of cross will work.
An early visitor to the new mission at Nipa was Rev Harry Bartlett, visiting on behalf of the Methodist Overseas Missions Board. He arrived by plane and commented that the plane trip took 10 minutes instead of two days hard walking. He noticed how cool it was at that high altitude. He wrote:
When I stepped from the plane, I was surrounded by a crowd of men, women and children. They felt my hands and arms … When I removed my hat, they roared with laughter at my bald head.
On Sunday, we held the service in the open air and more than 200 men, women and children attended. The men carried bows and arrows or spears, axes and knives. The din was terrific as they shouted at one another to be quiet. They yelled to one another to close their eyes and not merely hold their hands in front of their faces…
I spoke briefly to these people in English through an interpreter. Their head man then said, ‘We do not understand this talk. It is new to us. We want you with us. Some of us will die, and maybe you will die before we understand fully, but stay with us and teach us.’
The small exercise book that Cliff Keightley was using as his diary was nearly full. On the last page, he wrote that two houses for Daniel Amen and John Teu were being built at Puril, the first of the buildings, and he had marked a place for a house for his own family. He wrote that he was ‘desperately tired after the strains and stresses of a long Synod meeting’. It was the time when so many mission staff were sick, or unhappy, or leaving the Highlands. Soon he would have to add the work of being Acting-Chairman to his other responsibilities.
He was very thankful for one thing. One of the last things he wrote in the exercise book was ‘Application for a 4.5 acres Mission lease has at last been forwarded to the District Commissioner’.
Sources:
Journal of Rev Cliff Keightley, November 1959-26 July 1960 [Typescript titled ‘In the beginning…’]
Rev Harry Bartlett, The Missionary Review, January 1961
Cliff Keightley, Noreen Keightley, Gordon Young, Grace Young, Roland Barnes, Miriam Barnes, John Teu, Daniel Amen, John Jordan, Doug Butler, Wasun Koka, Harry Bartlett, Epineri Kopman, Setepano Nabwakulea, Walbo, Olpis, Nembi, Nipa, Puril, Wombip, Kip, District Commissioner, patrol officers, patrol post, airstrip, medical orderly, land owners, land lease, tribal fighting, sorcery, Methodist Mission, Catholic Mission, Capuchin Mission, Synod, Quarterly Meeting, Lotu
Margaret Reeson 