Time, Aorigi's Master Carver, tells all

Face to Face with Aorigi’s Master Carver

He says hello as I enter his semi dark house.

 I say thank you and he invites me to sit down.

Next to him sits Matthew Sau, his nephew, a young but expert carver himself.

This is Tawaroga village.

 Not Santa Catalina or Aorigi.

As I sit down, he extends his hand and we shake hands.

He then says he is happy I was interested in visiting him.

I told him I was interested in writing a short article about him.He chuckles and then excuses himself as he moves away to get all his carvings out from a corner of his house and lines them up on the bed on which I sit.“These are just a few of my works. I learned to carve at a very early age. Look and learn. That was the only way,” he said.

His name is Time. Old man Time, is how he prefers to be called.Mr Time says he became interested in carving at an early age because it was the custom. It was a prestige to be a carver on Aorigi.  The way the community expects most of the young men of the island.

He adds that since his young days most of his work was sold at the BJS Agencies.“I would get invited by that company to go and work in Honiara. I lost count of the number of carvings I’d made and sold.  And also how many times I’d done that; but at the same time, I must say I also gained money for me and family. I don’t know what year I’d started but it was when Honiara was still a very small town. Betty who works there knows me. I don’t know whether or not she still works there. But she was the one who always asked me to go and work,” he said.Asked whether or not he’d saved some money, he laughed and said all the money he’d generated went for goods from shops and sea fares. Saving is a new thing. There was nothing like that at the time. So the money I’d received went for the needs of my family,” he said.

I ask why he now lives at Tawaroga and not Aorigi.“I am originally from this village. This is where my ancestors started from. So at this age I decided to come back to my roots and spend the rest of my days here. I am very sorry to do this as I should have done that at an early age. I would have made a lot of quality carvings. However, I am still producing carvings using all the hard woods that are plenty here. Most of the works you see displaced here is from here. I am also sorry that I had wasted much of my works selling them in Honiara in those days. I should have just produced them and waited here to attract visitors here,” he says.Mr Time says working together with Matthew Sau, also from Aorigi but married to a woman from Tawaroga village on the mainland and now lives in the village, has rejuvenated his desire to carve.“We have a mission. We want to carve as many works as possible. I believe that this area in East Makira is a top spot for tourism. We are working on a small resort where we hope to produce more carvings. This way, we believe, we can be role models for people here to see it is important to not forget our culture,” he said.

Asked what the main items he carves, Mr Time says he does anything.“During my young days, what made me go to Honiara all the time was pictures which BJS Agency got from overseas collectors always sent back asking that new ones to replace damaged or destroyed ones be made. If those collectors asked, Betty would send word for me to go and look at the pictures and create new ones. In short, I carve anything – I don’t have any particular preference.”I ask him to explain about his current collection and he moved out of the bed on which he was sitting and walked over to the corner of the house to line them up on the next bed.The variety ranged from the sea spirit usually carved on that part of the island as well as shields and spears. He also had a collection of sea horse carved into several sized pieces of timber, decorated with shells.

Mr Time says most of what he carves nowadays still follows the traditional practices and styles.“The styles we follow on Santa Catalina are usually dictated by spirits. We don’t produce any style we want as that could cause problems for individual carvers. It’s not like other places. Our custom is still very strong so we have to follow the way our ancestors want our carvings to be done,” he stressed.Asked what year he was born, Time shrugs his shoulders, laughs a little and shakes his head to indicate he didn’t know. But he says he was a young man when the Second World War came around in 1942.

Today he and Matthew Sau have completed the resort he spoke about earlier and are making a lot of carvings which he says they hope to sell for visitors to the new Eco lodge.