Rumors
Given their relative isolation, several mistaken rumours regarding the Torres Islands and their people have become widespread by way of travel guides, inter-island gossip and the mass media.
One of the most notable, recent and unsubstantiated claims regarding these islands is that the small village of Litao/Lotew (usually reported as Lateu; population 45, all related to one large lineage from Toga), on the island of Tegua, has become one of the first human settlements in Oceania to suffer from the effects of rising sea levels as a result of global warming. However, no precise scientific observations were undertaken by the Fiji-based team of environmental observers who first visited Tegua in 2003 and began to voice this claim shortly thereafter. In view of these claims, it is important to realise that Litao village is a recent settlement, founded under pressure from Anglican missionaries about 100 years ago, which was built on a feeble coastal bed of coral and limestone that has gradually been eroding due to long-term wave activity. In this respect, it is notable that no other part of the coast of Tegua has yet suffered from the visible erosion and waterlogging that have undermined the ground at Litao throughout the past century. Hence, evidence for the claim that Litao is being destroyed by rising sea levels is inconclusive at best, and awaits thorough scientific scrutiny. Nevertheless, the unsubstantiated disaster story that originated in 2003 was quickly given credence by important regional organizations - most notably the South Pacific Regional Environmental Program (SPREP) - and was thereafter greatly magnified by the international media during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal in late 2005. Consequently the government of Canada reportedly decided to disburse $50,000 Canadian in order to help relocate the villagers of Litao on higher ground and to provide them with safe sources of drinking water - this, despite the fact that the people of Tegua had already begun to rebuild their settlement on safer terrain, with local materials and ecological knowledge, since early 2001!
Other mistaken rumours regarding the Torres Islands (some of which are reproduced in influential travel guides such as those from Lonely Planet) are that their inhabitants are keen surfers (they are not, and have never had a tradition of surfing) and that children on the island of Toga smoke pipes and chew betelnut (in fact, betelnut is practically nonexistent in the Torres group).
Read more about this topic: Torres Islands
Famous quotes containing the word rumors:
“It was because of me. Rumors reached Inman that I had made a deal with Bob Dole whereby Dole would fill a paper sack full of doggie poo, set it on fire, put it on Inman’s porch, ring the doorbell, and then we would hide in the bushes and giggle when Inman came to stamp out the fire. I am not proud of this. But this is what we do in journalism.”
—Roger Simon, U.S. syndicated columnist. Quoted in Newsweek, p. 15 (January 31, 1990)
“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 24:6.