[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

45o MALEKULA
do not all arrive together; some come one day, some another;
some early, some late ; each bringing with him his mat, cooking
implements, and other gear. By the end of the next ï¬Åve days
they have all assembled, and life in the loghar begins to hum.
From now onwards, until the end oi the Nimangki Tlel celebra-
tions, each member will not see his wiic or any other woman,
but he will have arranged with the former to bring food and
other necessities to a certain spot in the bush, whence he can
fetch them unobserved. The initiated members who come
together thus are generally a rather irresponsible crowd, chiefly
young men who come i.nto residence in the loghor principally in
order to have :r "good time â€ù; a kind of “man's holiday ".
Certain of them have speciï¬Åc duties, for each novice has one
or two who act as his guardians, these men being paid for their
trouble by the novice’s father. The general term for such men
is tï¬Åmbal, which appears to mean " guardian ", but is also used
to include any initiated member, whether he has the position of
a guardian or no. The bond between men who have been in
residence together in the loghor is a very strong one, comparable
to that between boys who have been in the same " house '1‘ at
school. In fact, it was said that when they dispersed at the
conclusion of the Nimangki Tlel, they would often weep at
parting with each other, so unforgettable and irrevocable had
the three or four months irresponsible “good time " in the
loghor been to them ; it is felt that they will never come together
again, the same company in the same way; later there will be
other men, new initiates, " never like this time " again. Deacon
writes :-
“I am very sure of the correctness of this interpretation, as
my informant talked about it at length, and much emphasized the
bond uniting those in residence in a lodge. It is perhaps worth
while mentioning a parallel that the Nimangki Tie! has continually
suggested to me: that of Oxford or Cambridge. Members, in
fact, ‘ go into residence ' i.n a laghor in much the same way as we
go into residence in a college of a University. In many respects
the atmosphere oi rr lodge during initiation is reminiscent of an
English Public School—rags, fogging, tests of endurance, etc.
Trying to convey the atmosphere of a loghcv, one man said that
the tï¬Åmbal were ' all same boat's crew belong loghor ', while the
nesnm was ‘like master belong cutter belong loghor '. It is quite
clear that, apart lroru the special secrets of the society revealed at
initiation, seclusion in the laghor constitutes a very real kind of
‘education’ oi the boys. In a sense here (as in England) what