Full Text:

A Letter From Pitcairn Island

(with cut)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Chris Bergeron waited six months for a reply to a letter, but when it came it

was well worth the wait. He is one of the few Americans to get a personal

response from the pastor of Pitcairn Island.

Pitcairn is an island lost in the South Pacific, where the descendants from

the Bounty, made famous by Mutiny on the Bounty , can still be found.

Chris had become fascinated with life on this isolated island in the South

Pacific as soon as he learned about it. He wondered what teenagers did on an

island with only 60 residents (especially since only ten residents were

children). He wanted to know what the people looked like, what they ate, where

they lived. He wondered how it felt to only get mail delivery three times a

year (when the ship comes in), and if they had telephones.

Since so many students (from around the world) write to Pitcairn Island, the

people living there simply cannot reply to all the letters personally. Most

people are sent the Island Newsletter which gives Island news and gossip.

But Pastor John Chan of Pitcairn saw something in Chris's letter that made him

want to respond, and he did with a long, humorous personal letter for Chris.

Chris was so pleased when he got the letter, he read all six pages out loud

without catching his breath, to Corrine Cox, special education teacher.

The islanders, most of whom are "great great great grandchildren of white

English sailors and their Polynesian wives" live quiet farming lives. They

live off sweet potatoes, bananas, coconuts, fish, and bread.

Chris thought it was neat that instead of cars, everybody drove "quads" a four

wheel all terrain vehicle across the two mile long, one mile wide island.

Dr Reed, looking over the descriptions in the letter from Pitcairn said "you

know, I bet this is something a lot of people dream of, living on an isolated

island, getting mail three times a year."

Chris pointed out the part in the letter where Pastor Chan shared a little

local gossip: one young man made a call to England for half-an-hour and it

cost him over $100. Good news for people who avoid tele-marketers.

Chris also pointed out a peculiarity with the local telephone system. The

local phone is just one party line, so anyone can pick up the phone and listen

in on other people's calls, which Chris thought would be a distinct

disadvantage for teenagers. Even Pastor Chan admitted that people hardly ever

use the local phone for this reason.

Mrs Cox is thrilled by the response from Pitcairn and how it has continued to

spark Chris's growing interest in reading. She said when school started last

fall, Chris was not interested in reading. But she got him started on a

wilderness adventure novel, The Hatchet , by Gary Paulsen, and all of this has

developed out of ideas he got from the novel. In the novel, the main

character, Brian, had to hide out in a cave. Chris drew the cave, and the

following week Mrs Cox found an article in Discover Magazine with a cave

picture very similar to Chris's cave picture, (November 1997 "Paradise Lost").

The article was on Pitcairn Island.

From there, there was no holding Chris back. He researched Pitcairn on

Encarta. He obtained a contact name and address in Pitcairn from someone he

met who happened to get the Pitcairn Newsletter. When he wrote to Pitcairn, he

knew it would be six months before the mail would get there and be picked up

again, but for Chris, it was well worth the wait.