BERNARD SINGU YEGIORA

BUSA Jeremiah Wenogo’s insightful comment about economic reforms in China is reflective of the measures which China has taken to publicise its economic transformation.

Busa Wenogo stated that China’s gradualist policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping (pictured) could provide the blueprint Papua New Guinea needs to foster development.

The comment led me to think about the lessons PNG can learn from Deng Xiaoping’s reform of China.  There are many, but one need to understand the fundamental changes that happened in China during Deng’s tenure.

After Mao Zedong died, Deng took charge and initiated a series of reforms to change the course of China’s future. He was able to address the developmental needs of that time and help transform the lives of many people in China.

Although Mao talked about rural industrialisation, there was nothing substantial in his approach because China was isolated from the international community.

Western countries had the technology and know-how for modernisation. But since China was isolated, there was little chance of accessing what they required.

Deng saw this dilemma and figured that the only way to progress was to open up China to the world and be part of the globalisation process.

Improving relations with the outside world was the second of two important philosophical shifts in Deng’s program of reform - ‘gaige kaifang’ (reforms and openness).

The domestic social, political and economic systems went through significant changes. The goals of Deng’s reform were summed up by the ‘four modernisations’ - agriculture, industry, science and technology, and military.

The strategy for achieving these aims of becoming a modern, industrial nation was to create a ‘socialist market economy’.

A rational method of developing China’s economy was determined at the 5^th National People’s Congress (NPC) meeting in June and July 1979.

The policy was summarized in four key catch-words – readjustment, reconstruction, consolidation and improvement. The aim was to firstly adjust China’s economy by reconstructing the framework to consolidate economic growth and improve the living standards of China’s populace.

This course of action was reaffirmed by the August-September 1980 meeting of the NPC when, surprisingly, two major new factors were introduced to stimulate production and increase foreign trade, respectively ‘free enterprise’ and ‘decentralisation’.

Deng realized that to modernise, China had to open up to the world, thus he created the ‘open door policy’.

This manifested in a number of ways; for example, a large range of commodities was transferred from planned state production to regulation by a market economy; factories were made responsible for profits and losses; individuals were encouraged to set up collective enterprises; workers were allowed to invest in the factories they worked in.

The decentralisation of economic decision-making encouraged provinces to work for their own well-being, hence, rural firms called Township and Village Enterprises were created and allowed to compete.

By the late 1980s, they accounted for most of China’s exports, as well, small family firms were encouraged, and eventually foreign and domestically-owned private firms were allowed.

Deng attracted foreign companies through the establishment of the exclusive economic zones, where foreign investment and market liberalisation were encouraged.

The government encouraged local firms to engage in joint ventures with foreign firms who brought in their much needed technology, investment, managerial know-how, and market access.

The changes in economic policy, particularly free enterprise and decentralisation, were the fundamentals of the new socialist market economy.

Deng used socialism to justify his introduction of a free market. Market socialism is a doctrine that socialism can achieve without a massive state apparatus. It posits that, while capital can and should be owned cooperatively, or in some cases by the state, decisions about production and exchange should be left to market forces and not planned centrally.

Deng was careful in the way he distinguished capitalism from socialism in terms of economic liberalisation.

He was not interested in getting rid of Marxism and Socialism. He wanted to amalgamate Marxism and tailor Socialism to Chinese conditions with specific Chinese characteristics.

His thought was influenced to a certain degree by Confucian-Taoist philosophy. The well known yin-yang (black and white) circle shows the harmonious co-existence of opposite ideas. Fusing together elements of capitalism with socialism, Deng was able to take a pragmatic approach to reforming the economy.

Deng said socialism was the primary stage of communism. At the advanced stage, the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs would be applied. This called for highly developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material wealth.

Consequently, the fundamental task of the socialist stage was to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system was demonstrated by the faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system.

As they developed, Deng believed poverty would be reduced.

Decentralisation was the icing on the cake; it was implemented to make sure the intended development process was bottom-up instead of top-down.

The processes of China’s reform have brought about influential changes, none more prominent than the reform Deng under took to transform China from an isolated and stagnant nation to a rapidly growing economic powerhouse.

Deng reformed China, a Communist country with a centrally-planned economy by merging elements of free market into the existing traditional economic system, justifying his actions with the theory of Market Socialism and Confucian-Taoist philosophy.

JIMMY AWAGL

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

WARE Mukale (pictured), until last year Deputy Principal (Administration) of Gumine Secondary School, frequently drove between Gumine and the Simbu provincial capital, Kundiawa, on routine duties.

When driving into the Dom area of the Digine Local Level Government, he was often confronted by road blocks set up by young men.

They were mostly fuelled by drugs and home brew (‘steam’) and took advantage of the commuters from Salt Nomane Karamui, Gumine, Drima, Omkolai and Boromil.

One Tuesday afternoon, Mr Mukale was driving back from Kundiawa when he encountered a road block at Munuma. The fully armed youths demanded K100 otherwise they would take his car keys.

“Boys, I am back from school business,” Mr Mukale said, “and I do not have enough for you. I will give you K50. I only have that amount.”

Some boys took the K50 and fled but a youth at the back threw a rock that smashed the rear window of the Toyota Landcruiser ten-seater.

Mr Mukale drove slowly up the road protesting to bystanders and elders from Munuma that such a disgusting thing should happen to the school vehicle before continuing his journey to the Omkolai campus.

However, he was reluctant to inform the Gumine police and have them arrest the Munuma youths.

Not long after, he drove the school truck to collect the students’ rations from town. He purchased the rations and returned in the afternoon,

When he drove through Munuma, the youths blocked the road and helped themselves to bags of flour and rice and containers of cooking oil. Mr Mukale informed local leaders of the issue and drove along the road towards Gaima village.

The Gaima youths saw the truck, blocked the trucked and looted more rations. Once again someone threw a rock smashing the back window as the truck moved off along the road.

This time Mr Mukale had had enough.

On a weekend, he came to Munuma and spoke with the leaders and the youths. He had a single intention: to tame the youths.

“Today the community will decisively come to a consensus to give me the most ruthless youth so I will take care of him,” Mr Mukale told the gathering.

“I do not want to be negative and arrest the youths but use this situation to have one of them accompany me and later come back to this place to address the law and order issue as an educated man.”

Community leaders and members were happy with the statement and decided among themselves to give Leo Kuman over to Mr Mukale.

Leo is 32 years old, a most notorious youth and a father of five kids from Munuma village.

So Mr Mukale took Leo Kuman away to Gumine Secondary School. He enrolled him on Monday morning into a Grade 9 class. Leo was happy to have the privilege to attend Grade 9 after 20 years of missing out on formal education.

He was introduced to Church fellowship and deprived of drugs, home brew and the other illicit and illegal activities he was used to.

He was instilled by the firm influence and discipline of Mr Mukale and became a changed person.

Leo continued into Grade 10 at Ku High School this year and he will be graduating on later this month. He is a bright student and aims to study engineering.

At Munuma Primary School’s first Grade 8 eight graduation recently, Ware Mukale mounted the stage as a guest speaker and gave a thought-provoking talk to the students and audience.

He cited Leo Mukale as a classic example of promoting education to generate peace and harmony even in a most notorious society of tribal fighting.

“The people, elites, businessman and others of higher status should not use negativity to address a negative situation but devise a positive approach,” Mr Mukale said.

“Retaliation is the outcome of negative reinforcement, so resolve to use positive alternatives”, he urged.

“Do not arrest them for their cruelty but teach them how to see a better future.

“Train them how to evaluate their own antisocial behaviour so they will apply what they learn to their own kids and accept others peacefully.”

Now there is a decline in tribal fighting, armed hold-ups and antisocial behaviour at Wahgi, Munuma and Gaima villages as Leo Mukale goes back over the holidays with inspirational messages and persuades his former comrades to refrain from their bad habits.

He is now used as an agent of change to promote law and order in the community and to restore peace and harmony within the Munuma and Dom areas. 

DRUSILLA MODJESKA | The Australian

THE better part of a decade ago, Papua New Guinean writer Regis Tove Stella said what his country needed was writers, far more of them than there were, to claim, or reclaim, the role of ‘‘visionary’’ and witness.

He concluded his 2007 book, Imagining the Other, with an elegant argument that it was only when the writers and intellectuals served as ‘‘watchdogs’’ alert to the ‘‘bleak’’ political realities and spoke out against corruption and greed — ‘‘the rape of a country’’ — that change would begin where it mattered: in the minds and hearts of a people.

In 2007 in PNG, a time of little publishing and all too few writers, let alone readers, it seemed a frail hope.

But PNG’s people have always been great storytellers and debaters, and while there may not have been many novels published and read since independence in 1975, there have consistently been a few noble souls who have taken the role of witness and poet.

Oral storytelling remains a reality for many, the stories that are told folding recent histories into those handed down from past generations. And newspapers do a busy trade in markets across the country. You see them read, and being read to those who cannot read.

So maybe Regis Stella, who died in 2010, would not have been surprised had he lived to see publication of the fourth Crocodile Prize anthology, a celebration of PNG poetry, fiction, essays and heritage writing.

When I reviewed the second anthology, towards the end of 2012, I was celebratory, but also tentative — as were many of the writers.

Two years later, in this anthology with 66 writers represented — among them writers from previous years and a heartening number of new, young voices — much of this tentativeness has gone.

A new generation of Papua New Guineans is claiming the written as part of their storytelling, debating inheritance — theirs as surely as any technology that comes with a post­colonial modernity.

I write and write / Like my forefathers before me / My blood is the ink on my paper …

This, from Diddie Kinamun Jackson’s Crocodile Prize winning poem, As a writer, opens a meditation on Melanesian expression that would have pleased Regis Stella.

But for the most part the mood of this anthology is less meditative. Anger is a dominant emotion — anger and loss — which could hardly be otherwise for a generation living with high levels of urban dysfunction, violence and ­corruption.

There are tough stories to be told, and so we read short stories about children finding neighbouring children shot dead; a girl killing herself because she’s pregnant; a widow struggling to raise her children with no money for school fees; a girl in a green dress raped and dumped in a drain.

The Crocodile Prize-winning story, Agnes Maineke’s, While war raged in Bougainville there was a miracle at Haisi, is about a woman giving birth in a remote hut during the civil war on Bougainville.

Bloodlines and dynasties / Disrespected and destroyed / Love, respect and honour / Erased by the power of rifles

With these lines, another Bougainville writer, Marlene Dee Gray Potoura, begins her story of a little girl woken at dawn during that vicious war.

As men with guns surround the village she escapes the carnage that follows by running into the forest, the gun-toting ‘‘crawlers’’ in pursuit.

‘‘The whole forest was angry,’’ Potoura writes, and in a smooth movement she takes us from the stark realism of the guns to a forest in which trees think, feel and act in unison.

And so a ‘‘grandfather tree’’ uproots itself ‘‘in seconds known only to the secrets of the forest’’ and its ‘‘hard old trunk’’ falls on the crawlers and kills them.

As it falls, its branches lift the girl to safety. The tree as a talisman for the power of an endangered inheritance.

‘‘Your guardian trees,’’ writes Michael Dom, a previous poetry prize winner. ‘‘No more you flame.’’

Gary Juffa’s poem on the ‘‘supposed concern’’ and ‘‘pockets filled’’ that accompany the widespread and often illegal felling of the forests, ends each stanza with the refrain: ‘‘And the trees keep falling.’’

It is in the essays that the corruption and greed underlying the violence and the dispossession are named. Where the essays in the earlier anthologies hinted and gestured, here there’s a confidence, a refusal to collude or be silenced.

Blogger and social media activist Martyn Namorong writes of counter-corruption, of corrupting the corrupters.

Bernard Yegiora questions the voting system, the pork-barrelling, the ‘‘wari-vote’’ that can get a corrupt politician back into power when the voters want the handouts back.

‘‘The race within the race,’’ Bernard Witne calls it, as money outstrips policy, and everyone, in large ways and small, is out to ‘‘thicken their purse’’.

Is a Westminster system developed over centuries on the other side of the world the best model for a country of 800 languages and tribes? What would, or could, a Melanesian democracy look like?

And so the question is reopened, first raised in 1980, of whether there is, or can be, a ‘‘Melanesian Way’’ out of this mess.

What system of government would, or could, give back to its people the resource-rich wealth of opportunity? Is it neo-colonialism that rules, as Namarong suggests? He ends one of his essays with the hope that his colleague Nou Vada, who appeared in the earlier anthologies, will one day be prime minister.

‘‘The day a boy from Hanuabada becomes prime minister will be the end of colonisation,’’ he writes. Another frail hope?

There’s been many a local boy, though not from Hanuabada, who have taken the role. Some of them did it well, but were too often replaced by those who fill their pockets from the coffers of state.

On the other hand, if anyone doubts change is possible, contemplate Gary Juffa, who has 10 pieces in this anthology. His story of going on a picnic as a child with a saved packet of noodles, picking tomatoes and shallots in the gardens as the picnickers walked to the river, is one of the best in the collection.

The clouds come over and the group scrambles up the rocks to the road. They make it home to discover two children shot outside their father’s tradestore.

Juffa is now a member of the PNG parliament and, since 2012, governor of Oro Province that takes in Kokoda and its famous track. One of his first acts as governor of a once deeply corrupt province was to put a moratorium on all land deals, logging and resource extraction pending audit and review.

“‘The days of watching our resources be shipped out for whatever scraps have been throw at us is over,’’ he said.

His essays are tough and fearless, impressive by any standard and from a politician remarkable. From a politician in PNG, they could also be considered foolhardy. His first term in parliament showed him how reluctant his fellow members were to speak on national issues for fear of losing access to government funding needed to keep their electorates happy.

In Tribe Versus Nation: Observations on PNG’s Core Challenge, he writes of being warned ‘‘by a particular minister’’, and it indeed proved the case that when this year’s budget was handed down, he saw that he and his province had been well and truly ‘‘punished’’.

There are those who urge him to keep quiet, to think only of what he can do for Oro with the money silence buys, but he says he will not.

While tribalism ‘‘is necessary for the preservation of culture, language, [our] unique identities’’, the future of PNG — the ‘‘core challenge’’ if there is to be any possibility of a better way, a Melanesian way — depends on a leadership willing to renounce the power of playing tribe against tribe, and speak for the wider collective consciousness.

Even if it costs him the next election, he will continue to speak out, he says, because something has begun, ‘‘the stirrings of change’’ are afoot. ‘‘The concern is now a small seed, but it is growing and growing fast.’’

We can only hope he is right. Change will not come easily, and it will not come fast. At the time of writing Juffa, halfway through his, was facing a vote of no-confidence, orchestrated, according to media reports, by corporate interests.

ANOTHER sign of PNG’s literary stirrings is that this year there were two new categories in the Crocodile Prize. One was for children’s writing, sponsored by Buk bilong Pikinini, the children’s library organisation that is growing apace, bringing books and stories to children from impoverished urban settlements.

The other was an overall award for the book of the year, the inaugural winner of which was Leonard Fong Roka for his memoir, Brokenville, which brings a child’s eye view to the civil war on Bougainville.

The war, for him, began in class 2A at Arawa Community School. There was a commotion along his row of desks: the son of a policeman reported fighting in the mountains.

There had been rumours and strange behaviour among the adults, and this time even the teacher stopped to listen. The division was right there in that classroom, between the dark-skinned children of Bougainville and the ‘‘redskin’’ children of parents from the mainland.

At first it is clear enough for the young Roka. It’s us against them. Our island. Their government. Our land. Their mine.

The reality, of course, proves less clear cut for a boy whose father was a ‘‘redskin’’ from West New Britain and whose mother is from Bougainville. He has relatives on all sides. There are those who depend on the economy generated by the mine; there is his uncle, Joseph Kabui, a senior man in the militant interim government.

Over the next years, before he can return to school, Roka will learn a great deal about war and tribalism, the contradictions of a nation drawn from colonial borders, about moral ambiguity, about betrayal and possibility.

‘‘I owe much to [that] crisis,’’ he writes in his acknowledgments. ‘‘It made me who I am.’’

It is in such writing from Bougainville, perhaps not paradoxically, that the pulse of change ticks most strongly.

Drusilla Modjeska’s most recent novel is The Mountain. She is founder of not-for-profit SEAM Fund, which supports literacy in remote communities in PNG. www.seamfund.org

The Crocodile Prize Anthology 2014, edited by Phil Fitzpatrick, Pukpuk Publishing, 512 pp, $15 from Amazon

Brokenville by Leonard Fong Roka, Pukpuk Publishing, 239pp, $10 from Amazon

LIAM COCHRANE | ABC PNG Correspondent

PAPUA New Guinea's prime minister Peter O'Neill looks set to go before a leadership tribunal over a controversial loan to buy shares in an oil company.

Earlier this year, Papua New Guinea's government took out a $A1.3 billion loan with the Australian branch of UBS bank to buy shares in the nation's biggest company Oil Search.

The move was controversial, with criticism over the approval and the level of debt incurred by the nation.

Mr O'Neill told media today the country's public prosecutor had asked the chief justice to set up a leadership tribunal to investigate his conduct in relation to the loan.

Mr O'Neill said he welcomed the chance to clear his name.

"We welcome this decision because it gives us an opportunity to go before the independent tribunal and the courts to determine the outcomes of this decision based on real evidence," Mr O'Neill said.

A leadership tribunal is a quasi-legal forum that must be approved first by the ombudsman, then the public prosecutor and finally the chief justice.

It was not clear when such a tribunal might be established, but the impending recess of the courts meant it was unlikely to start before next year.

Mr O'Neill said he had no intention of stepping aside unless asked to.

"You don't step aside because you are referred, only the tribunal can make that decision," he said.

He said he would follow the precedent set by then-prime minister Sir Michael Somare, who faced a leadership tribunal in 2011.

Sir Michael stepped aside while his case was heard and appointed an acting prime minister.

Mr O'Neill stood by the decision to buy the shares and take out the loan and says the allegations against him are political.

"The only way to participate in the resource development [of the country] is by making sure we have ownership in shares of those companies," he said.

"Otherwise we will continue to be bystanders while other people come and develop our resources."

Mr O'Neill said the investigation would not affect payments to service the loan.

He said he was confident the correct procedure had been followed to approve the loan.

"It is not a one-man decision, it was made by cabinet. NEC has endorsed that decision so I'm very surprise that I'm targeted ... to be put before a tribunal," he said.

Mr O'Neill raised concerns that news of the public prosecutor's letter informing him about the referral was leaked on social media before it was officially announced.

THE STAR ONLINE | Kuala Lumpur

CONGLOMERATE Sime Darby Bhd came into the spotlight again this week after it said the Papua New Guinea government had expressed an intention to increase its stake in New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL) to 30% from 18% presently.

This led to some confusion about how this would impact Sime Darby’s ongoing buyout offer for NBPOL.

How can Sime Darby ensure that the PNG government gets the additional 12%, as Sime Darby doesn’t yet own any shares in NBPOL, considering that it only recently posted the offer document to the latter’s shareholders?

But that is missing the point: Sime Darby’s chief executive officer and president Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh had said clearly on 9 October (when it first announced the planned takeover of NBPOL), that the ‘buy-in’ of the PNG government was crucial to the deal, making it a long-term partner in NBPOL.

Hence, Bakke had said that Sime Darby would be happy to have the PNG government raise its stake in NBPOL, a development which seems to be coming to fruition.

As far as the concern of where this additional 12% is going to come from, or whether this increase in shareholding by the PNG government would impact the buyout, the point to note is that for Sime Darby, the ideal situation would be to have a 100% acceptance of its buyout offer.

Subsequently, Sime Darby would then seek to provide the PNG government with that 30% equity in NBPOL on terms that are acceptable to both parties, considering that NBPOL is the largest corporation in the whole of PNG.

This is probably why Sime Darby has offered a rather generous offer to buy out NBPOL. Despite the seemingly high buyout price, NBPOL presents a game-changing chance for Sime Darby to embark on a new chapter in its plantation endeavours.

At least, that’s how Bakke and the Sime Darby board see it.

MICHAEL GEKETA

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

When he is talking
Be harmonious by being a good listener
He will obey you
Even in little things

When he is in penury
Be harmonious by addressing his needs
He will die with admiration for you
An epitome of sharing

When you feel for someone
Be harmonious by being compassion
You will stir his affection
And be accorded peace
Because you cared

When wanting to know another
Be harmonious by being in his shoes
You will appreciate his dilemma
And earn his respect
Leading to co-existence

Papua New Guinea
Highlanders may be aggressive
Be humane with them
So they exploit the passion for reconciliation

Papua New Guinea
Momase may be self-absorbed
Be generous with them
So they isolate impartiality they posses

Papua New Guinea
Papuans may be egoistic
Be charitable with them
So they set apart altruism they inherit

Papua New Guinea
New Guinea Islanders may be haughty
Be humble with them
So they access their potential

Papua New Guinea
Naturally resourceful you may be
Just harmonise it with egalitarianism
To rid underdevelopment

The Land of the Unexpected
Crime-ridden is your image
Just harmonise it with a smile
A symbol of Love, Peace & Harmony

KEITH JACKSON

THIS year’s Rivers Prize for writing about peace and harmony ends tomorrow having received a record number of entries.

With still more than 24 hours to go before the contest closes at midnight, 20 writers – including some of Papua New Guinea’s best known names – have submitted 68 poems, stories and essays to the contest.

The Prize was initiated last year by Val Rivers, a school teacher in PNG in the 1960s, to fulfil her wish to focus attention on issues and subjects related to promoting peace and harmony in communities.

Of the 66 entries received so far, there are 40 poems, 18 essays and 10 short stories.

There is a first prize of K1,000 and two runner-up awards of K300 each.

The winners will be announced in PNG Attitude in early December.

Meanwhile, all is in readiness for the launch of the fifth Crocodile Prize national literary contest tomorrow week.

A new website has been designed and enough sponsors have committed support to get the contest underway.

At this stage, entries will be called for in five categories of writing – poetry, short stories, essays & journalism, tourism, arts & culture, and book of the year.

Committed sponsors are the PNG Government, Ok Tedi Mining, PNG Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture, Kina Securities, the Cleland Family and the PNG Chamber of Mines & Petroleum.

Organisers are confident that more pledges will be received in the next few weeks.

A dispensation will be made for writers who have had material published in PNG Attitude between July and November this year.

The published versions of their material will be accepted as competition entries if the authors submit them, indicating that they have been previously published, from Monday 24 November.

PAUL WAUGLA WII

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

I was up late one recent night thinking about all these terrible events happening around the globe.

My three-year-old son was fast asleep in the other room with his mum. We would wake up tomorrow and it would be another beautiful day in our country home.

We adults would go to work as usual, my little son would roam around the house in pursuit of his own carefree endeavours.

Life for my children would go on in an unbroken rhythm for the foreseeable future, and in that knowledge there is reassurance.

What saddens me are the countless children in other parts of the world whose lives are caught in the grip of armed conflict.

What does the future hold for these unfortunates? I was horrified by television footage of dead and dying children caught in the crossfire as Israeli troops moved into Gaza to wage battle against Palestinian Hamas.

Children are innocent victims of armed conflicts around the globe.

It is almost three months since the MH17 airline disaster over eastern Ukraine. As I ponder events, it particularly saddens me to recall that young children were amongst the hundreds of travellers who perished.

It grieves me to know that the future may not be particularly beautiful for the countless children whose lives are caught in the grip of human-induced tragedies around the world.

This poem, entitled ‘Teddy bear in the Field’, is dedicated especially to the memory of the children who perished in the MH17 airline tragedy in the Ukraine.

Teddy bear in the field

I cherished a dream
That one day we were going to live in a world
Devoid of human suffering.

But on a bleak summer day,
My dream died in that field of sunflowers.
The heart rending image of a toddler’s pack bag,
A child’s teddy bear
Lying so fresh…so fresh
Among the twisted, mangled, burning debris
Reminds me of life’s painful realities
An unforgiving reality visited upon the unsuspecting
At an innocent, unwary moment
To shatter our collective dreams 
Into a thousand broken fragments.

The sweet little child,
Cuddling her dear little teddy
Oblivious to almost everything but the love
Bestowed upon her.
An innocent child, so full of life,
And glowing in the love of her dad and mum.

I fail not to picture their moment of happiness together.
It was a perfect moment of family bliss
Until only Heaven knows what misfortune befell them.
Death came like an intruder in the night
Carrying the dear little angel away.

In that faraway countryside, amongst the sunflowers
And amid the sound of battle
Lies the remains of a loved one: an uncle, a cousin
Someone’s dad and mum.
The dear innocent child among them.

KEITH JACKSON

PUKPUK Publishing received an honourable mention in yesterday’s review of the Crocodile Prize Anthology 2015 by Drusilla Modjeska in The Australian newspaper.

And it would be a fair question for readers to ask, ‘Well, what is this upstart? Where does it fit in?’

Like the Crocodile Prize and PNG Attitude, Pukpuk Publishing is a voluntary, not-for-profit project established to both strengthen the Papua New Guinea-Australia relationship and to ensure authors and poets writing about PNG can achieve publication for their work.

In the case of Pukpuk Publishing, its objective is to bring long-form works to publication and to take those books to market in a coherent way.

The entity is the brainchild of Phil Fitzpatrick and it spun out of his magnificent work to bring the Crocodile Prize Anthology to print, which it has done each year since 2011 - even in the fallow period of 2013.

Phil Fitzpatrick guides authors through the full process of negotiation, commissioning, editing, layout and design and ultimate production.

He now manages a 17-title book list which is constantly growing.

It includes novels, memoirs, short story and poetry collections, children’s books and non-fiction as well as those five anthologies of PNG writing that represent such a great breakthrough in PNG literature.

Books on PNG-related subjects written by Australian authors are part of the ouevre.

You can download the complete Pukpuk Publishing Book List. All the titles are available from Amazon in both hard copy and digital versions.  

They include works by authors well-known to PNG Attitude readers - Francis Nii, Leonard Fong Roka, Chips Mackellar, Jimmy Drekore and Diddie Kinamun Jackson (no relation).

Not to mention Phil Fitzpatrick himself, whose most recent novel is hot off the press and well up to his usual rivetting story telling.

The Floating Island is set in World War II in the islands of PNG. It tells the story of Mick O'Shea, a young plantation manager, who witnesses the brutal murder of his employer and family by the invading Japanese.

Mick is determined to join the war effort against the Japanese. He escapes by boat, is wounded and lands on a small island where he is bedazzled by a mysterious family.

Reluctantly leaving, he joins the war effort but, disillusioned by the brutality of conflict, decides to head back to the island.

It has disappeared and he begins his search to locate it and find the peace it offers.

Philip Fitzpatrick: The Floating Island, Pukpuk Publishing, 300 pp, paperback $13.50, Kindle $2.97 (from Amazon)

KEITH JACKSON

PROFESSOR Allan Patience of the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute has said that there has been a worrying blurring of the separation of powers in Papua New Guinea and that Australian aid seems to have worsened the development situation in PNG.

Prof Patience, speaking with interviewer Geraldine Doogue on ABC’s Radio National, said it was “especially worrying” that Taskforce Sweep which was doing good work in tracking down corruption had been swept aside.

He was also concerned that former Attorney-General Kerenga Kua, “who was one of the best ministers in the Cabinet and one of the most balanced”, had been replaced by somebody likely to do the prime minister's bidding.

Prof Patience added that it was also of concern that prime minister Peter O’Neill had intervened in the police force.

“Normally, Cabinet appoints the Chief Commissioner of Police and the Chief Commissioner is able to appoint his deputies. The Prime Minister is now taking over that role,” he said.

“We've got to remember that PNG has got this long tradition of systemic corruption at all levels and that includes nearly all of the politicians,” Prof Patience said.

“Billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money has been sunk into the country since independence and we've got nothing at all to show for it.

“The illiteracy rates are increasing, the maternal and infant mortality rates are amongst the worst in the world and so on.

“The whole development project shows that PNG has got a long history of weak incompetent governance and Australian aid dollars seem to have made that situation worse, rather than improved it.”

AGNES MAINEKE

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

A means of traditional reconciliation from the Telei language group in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville

MARRIAGE is a sacred institution even in today’s more liberal society. But it was much more sacred in traditional Melanesian culture.

When a young man was of marriageable age, his father would search for a suitable partner, usually from his nieces, daughters of the father’s sisters or cousins’ sisters.

This would be done without the son’s knowledge or acquiescence. Even the girl was not consulted as to choice of marriage partner.

All the arrangements were conducted without their approval or agreement.

It was the elders who made assessment of character, suitability and compatibility. Even their wealth was determined by the chiefs.

In the Telei culture, the males inherit land, wealth and position from their fathers. Thus, the marriage had to be agreeable to the male partner. The female was not so important. She became important through the wealth, power and prowess of her husband.

The bride price paid for the female was usually shared amongst the girl’s relatives. The amount of money, whether currency or shell money, determined the value of the female.

The female’s brothers had the important role of ensuring that their sister lived in happy circumstance in her marriage.

After the bride price ceremony, the bride leaves her home to live in her husband’s home. She now becomes a member of her husband’s clan and, of course, the children she bears are of the father’s clan.

If a woman experienced violence at the hands of her spouse, she would flee back to her own family. Swearing in Telei culture was seen as a serious crime, especially when a male coupled his wife’s name with her brothers. That was the worst misdeed any husband could commit in their eyes.

So once a wife fled to her family and reported abusive language and physical violence, the family would consider how best to teach the man a lesson. Not by violent means but through subtlety. That was the way of the Telei chiefs.

A common practice occurred when the family accompanied their female relative back to her estranged husband. They would be bearing a live pig and garden food items.

The husband might be expecting a medium to large sized pig, so the relatives of the fugitive female would hand him a very small pig.

When they arrived at the village, the brothers-in-law would set down the pig. When the violent husband saw it, his displeasure would be obvious.

In response the bearers of the pig would say that if there was further violence, they would bring another pig as small as a rabbit.

From then on, it was seen that such husbands learned to control their violent temper and abusive tongues.

The subtle belittling by the little pig went a long way to promote peace, love and harmony in traditional Telei culture.

LEONARD FONG ROKA

IN the shimmering streets of Buka town last month, a pair of New Guineans and some young Bougainvillean ‘born-agains’ were preaching from the Bible.

Suddenly a young south Bougainvillean went to attack them but was ushered away and put on a boat to cross the Buka Passage.

Seated beside me on the dinghy, he was in tears.

“Who do these redskins think they are?” he asked. “They dug up Panguna and gave us nothing and we went to war for our rights and now they’re coming back to tell us about Jesus.

“They haven’t even compensated us for stealing our wealth and declaring war on us.”

Panguna, as all Bougainvilleans know, is where the crisis that cost us so much originated.

This young man lost two uncles to the PNG Defence Force, he says because of the Panguna mine.

But still, to the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), Panguna is still the place to help develop Bougainville so it can achieve its political ambitions.

Millions of kina have been injected into seeking possible ways to settle the entangled conflicts over the Panguna mine and its proposed re-opening.

But all this money and effort has not produced any tangible outcomes for the ABG and Bougainville.

In October, Bougainville President Dr John Momis had dinner with Panguna’s Meekamui group led by self-created leader Philip Miriori at the presidential residence. 

They exchanged views on a number of issues and Dr Momis went as far as suggesting to the Panguna elders that he could grant some form of higher political power to the district if it worked in mutual respect and understanding with the ABG.

Dr Momis was running a political solution to the Panguna problem but the young south Bougainvillean on the dinghy with me was suggesting material compensation for the wrongs PNG had done to Bougainville.

This is now where the friction is in the prolonged Panguna issue. The Panguna people want compensation and this issue is spilling across the rest of Bougainville.

The ABG longs to first see a political solution to enhance the referendum on independence.

There are two groups of people in the Panguna district. There are landowners of the mine affected areas and there are non-landowners.

So when talking about the millions of kina spent to try to address the Panguna problem and the proposed mine re-opening, we know which group of Panguna people are benefiting and we know which group of Panguna people are not benefiting.

After BCL entered Bougainville uninvited in the 1960s, there was not much tangible development like roads and footbridges in the Panguna District. This is what the ordinary people are now looking for; access to vital services through roads.

The Panguna District consists of four main areas: Pinenari, Kavarongnari (Panguna mine and Tumpusiong Valley), Toio’nari and Biampanari.

The only current infrastructure is the main Morgan to Jaba road (which runs on to the rest of south Bougainville) that traces its way through the Pinenari and the Kavarongnari.

Further feeder roads are the Bolabe to Okoni (Orami) road and the road from Sikoreva to Koviako (trafficable) on to Iarako (non-trafficable due to dereliction).

The Toio’nari area had no government or BCL infrastructure. The Biampanari had road access but only to Iarako village and this did not reach the most populous villages, Irang and Pangka further upstream.

Both Toio’nari and Biampanari are that parallel valleys; and Toio’nari hosts the majority of Panguna’s villages - Mumurai, Widoi, Poaru, Damara and Mosinau with Piavora, Kokore, and Guava on the ridge running between Toio’nari and Kavarongnari.

Most of these villages, in the 1960s and 1970s were denied education by Irang villager the late Damien Dameng’s 50t Gavman (government). Thus the majority of the people have remained illiterate since the pre-crisis era.

So there are some residual issues the ABG has to now look at.

The late Francis Ona of Guava village began his militant campaign against BCL in late 1988. His first recruits were from the villages of Piavora, Kokore and Poaru, neighbouring villages of his Guava home.

These three villages were known for their criminal activities in Panguna since they were close to the mine site. They entered the militancy early with sabotage of BCL and government infrastructure.

During the Bougainville crisis of 1988 to 1997, many young men from these villages lost their lives and their villages were burned down by PNG government soldiers.

The Peace Process entered the Panguna District through the Tumpusiong Valley (Upper Tailings). It was resisted but the involvement of former Bougainville Revolutionary Army ‘A’ Companyy commander Peter Onabui of Poaru Village, and married into the Pinenari, gave the peace a window of opportunity to work within.

Over time under the peace process, the Panguna District advanced politically, economically and socially.

Vital education services were established as were health services, however access is readily available only to villages along the main trunk roads. Thus to access and partake in change, the village belt stretching from Irang and Orami to Mosinau, Poaru, Widoi, Mumurai, Piavora and Kokore now have to squat at the Panguna mine site.

In Panguna, the majority landowning villages of Dapera, Pirurari, Moroni and Guava (few Poaru, Kokore and Piavora families are landowners in mine site) are suppressed by squatter settlers.

Thus Panguna is the scene of a political tug-of-war for power and dominance where settlers (some hiding under Meekamui) use their services during the crisis as a bargaining chip to take the upper hand.

The ABG’s main concern is the realisation of the Bougainville Peace Agreement into which millions of kina has been injected.

In its time, the Panguna mine bankrolled the PNG state and in the future time is a readily available resource needed for Bougainville economic recovery.

But Panguna District’s political conflicts—with their spill-over impact to the rest of Bougainville - are an impediment to progress.

For the ABG and other stakeholders, finding amicable solutions has been time-consuming and costly.

ABG’s effort must now be aimed at creating material solutions as the south Bougainvillean on the dinghy suggested to me as we were crossing the Buka Passage.

Physical infrastructure development, especially road projects to the inaccessible villages of Panguna District, must occur if Bougainville wants change to happen.

In the 2008 documentary film, Bougainville: Killer Deal, the late Bougainville leader, President Joseph Kabui, said he believed the Bougainville crisis would not have happened “had they done simple things like providing roads into villages, providing electricity into villages, providing educational facilities for landowners....

"Those sort of things had they done that could have led to avoiding the sort of problems that we went through. I think that was the biggest mistake.”

ABG needs to direct BCL, Rio Tinto and the PNG government to compensate the Panguna people for the exploitation of their land and lives if ABG wants to see change that will bring Bougainville to nationhood.

PAUL WAUGLA WII

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

THE highlands region of Papua New Guinea is known for its tribal warfare. Like all armed conflicts, these fights can have a devastating impact on the lives of people on both sides of the conflicting parties.

I was born and raised within the Kuman society of Simbu. As a result, I have spent my entire 37 years of existence in this world witnessing and becoming a victim of sporadic tribal and clan wars fought within the bounds of my homeland.

The Dagletribe is one of the biggest tribal groups in the Kerowagi district of Simbu.

The Dagle people live towards the north-west of the district, along the border of the newly-created Jiwaka Province.

Like almost every other tribal group in the highlands, the Dagle community is not exempt from the ravages of tribal and inter-clan war known as kunda in the Kuman language spoken in the northern part of Simbu.

The Dagle tribe has an adult population of roughly 11,000 - this figure represents only eligible voters (those 18 and above).

I come from the Wauglaku clan, one of nine clans within the Dagle tribe. The other clans which make up the Dagle tribe are Konkambuku, Koruglkane, Waikane, Tekmuglku, Dukana, Kindikana, Gariaku and Mugluaku.

There are several customary practices such as inter-clan marriage that help maintain cohesion within our tribal community while occurrences such as tribal fights serve to fragment and destroy it.

My grandfather and other elderly people have told me that our Daglepeople descended from the same ancestors, but we have never been a truly coherent or unified community.

Tribal war and inter-clan fighting are the main culprits fragmenting the Daglecommunity. The nine clans have not been at peace as long as I can remember.

My carefree childhood roaming in my beloved countryside was disrupted in 1983 when a tribal skirmish erupted between the Dagle and the Bomakan and Kombalkan tribes which lived on the then Western Highlands side of the border.

A young coffee buyer, the son of a prominent Dagle businessman, drove his Toyota laden with coffee bags and a few workers to the border.

When the vehicle reached the border at GanigleBridge, it was stopped by several masked men with a shot gun. The robbers demanded the money bag, knowing it was a coffee truck and the money would be somewhere in the car.

The businessman hesitated or refused to hand over the money and the workers on the back of the vehicle jumped off to attack the robbers.

A gunman later identified as a fugitive from one of the tribes on what is now the Jiwaka side of the border pulled the trigger. The young coffee buyer was killed instantly and lay in a pool of blood on the seat.

His father, Peter Tugo, was devastated by the demise of his son at the hands of criminals.

The Dagletribesmen retaliated and the ensuing battle continued for several weeks. My family and I took refuge in the mountains where my father had constructed a hut a few months earlier.

We lived in the mountains for some weeks along with another refugee family and, after a while, our meagre rations ran out.

Our village was ravaged by hordes of people from far and near who congregated on hilltops overlooking our village to watch the battle that raged in the valley below and who looted our food gardens and other property such as pigs. They even to/ok plates and cups from our houses.

Intervention by the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary eventually resulted in the cessation of hostilities.

The weapons of warfare used by the warring tribes in 1983 were entirely traditional - bows and arrows, spears and kuglangand awagle (shields made from owiye. Modern weaponry such as the AK-47 assault rifles now used by tribesmen in the highlands was unheard of back then.

We who belong to tribal communities are bound by the dictates of our tribal and customary norms.

One instinctively feels an obligation to protect fellow tribesmen in the event that a member of ones tribe encounters intimidation or threats from someone outside the tribe.

This sense of obligation to protect ones kinsmen is a norm in the highlands today as it was since time immemorial. If one member of the tribe is murdered in cold blood, his tribesmen feel an obligation to avenge his death.

If the murderer happens to be someone from a neighbouring tribe, the tribesmen of the deceased are very likely to wage a war against the wrongdoer’s people. If they do not resort to warfare, the kinsmen of the murdered person might execute a retaliatory cold blooded murder several weeks - or even years- later to avenge the death.

We have heard reports of pay back killings in parts of Enga and Western Highlands Provinces in recent times.

The Dagletribesmen did not realise there was a better way to seek justice for their slain kinsman. That tribal war which claimed several more lives and devastated my village could have been averted had my people allowed the rule of law to take its course.

My tribesmen took the law into their own hands by declaring war against the killer’s tribesmen. As a grown man, I have come to realise that payback killing is not the way to resolve inter-tribal conflict. Other people are thinking along the same lines.

Two fundamental factors are changing people’s mindset: education and Christianity.

People who are educated are likely to make better informed decisions when it comes to conflict resolution.

People with Christian convictions are also likely to make correct decisions when it comes to resolving conflicts.

These are the two fundamental tenets we should vigorously promote if we are to truly create a peaceful society. A change in the people’s mindset is the first step towards creating a peaceful community.

BUSA JEREMIAH WENOGO

AS an economist, I am fascinated by Papua New Guineans’ home-grown salesmanship. It seems to be the hallmark of our informal economy.

Driven by the lack of meaningful opportunities, most of youths and adults end up plying their raw business traits on the side of the road or in public areas.

Most of them pick up the mannerisms through simple observation as they are forced to take up these activities for survival’s sake.

Although considered by many people to represent a breakdown in social order, these traders nevertheless play an increasingly important role in the urban economy of PNG.

Recently, my level of interest in the economic behaviour of these mobile traders was intensified by the fact that they have become more visible as a result of the traffic congestion caused by road works in the city.

A drive around Port Moresby will see you encounter or pass by these budding entrepreneurs, some as young as eight or nine.

There are legitimate concerns amongst the public that these mobile traders are responsible for petty crimes including bag and phone snatching, car-jacking and pick pocketing.

There is also concern that child labour could be on the rise given that there is a large pool of kids engaged in petty trade. Whether these kids are trying to make ends meet for themselves, their parents or someone else, it is clear that they should be in school and not on the street.

Littering is another problem associated with mobile traders, who don’t seem to take any responsibility for the rubbish they and their clients generate. This poses a big problem to urban authorities as large amounts of money are spent on cleaning and disposal.

I have watched mobile trading in Port Moresby burgeon over time and its associated problems intensify.

The construction of the multi-million kina flyover in Erima has provided traders a wide open field to utilise their traits to maximum capacity. They normally target unsuspecting customers who, in the haste to drive home, do not have time to check the quality, content or compare prices of the goods being sold.

What started out as an activity comprising less than 10 people has expanded to well over 30 traders. In fact, since a detour was created around the back of Erima, mobile traders can be seen lining the road for hundreds of metres trying to convince the travelling public to buy their betel nut, cigarettes, assorted drinks and other items.

For those travellers who don’t want to be bothered, the sight of traders peeping through their car windows can be irritating.

Being impressed by their level of confidence and salesmanship, I wonder if these raw business skills and talents could be refined to turn these street hawkers into professionals who can become an engine of growth in the PNG economy.

If this was to become a reality, the PNG government would marvel at the rapid progress of these entrepreneurs. These people, at base, are entrepreneurs not opportunists.

Opportunists don’t themselves make things work but feed on the weaknesses of their victim. A pick pocket is a classic example.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs sweat their guts out to make something that will add value to someone’s life. They are driven by a set of goals and a vision. A mobile trader could be an example although it is debatable whether they are goal driven or merely trying to make ends meet.

Often youths drink away their money and care little about the welfare of their family. So there is perhaps a greater possibility that most of these mobile traders could really be opportunists.

That said, most of these traders are friendly and are only trying to make money. Furthermore, the amount of time and effort they put into their work and their willingness to take a risk are to be admired and encouraged.

Mobile traders provide policy-makers with a glimpse of the ingenuity and innovative thinking that is in abundance among Papua New Guineans.

This is a trait that is required for people to be competitive in a very competitive national and international business environment.

Yet if not controlled and allowed to flourish at will, there is a possibility that the negative aspects of mobile trading could predominate.

The government needs to ask itself a simple question: Are mobile traders entrepreneurs or opportunists?

The answer to this question does not start at the doorstep of the Waigani Parliament but out on the streets where the harsh reality of life manifests itself in various forms, mobile trading being one of them.

RAYMOND KOMIS GIRANA

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

HAKU and Halia are two distinct constituencies which share the same border in the north-eastern coast of Buka in Bougainville.

The word Tsuhana in the Haku and Halian dialects means ‘sacred house’ or ‘chiefs’ house’.

The aim of the Tsuhana is to strive for a harmonious society. We may understand it as ‘Sacred House of Hope’.

Hope is embedded in harmony; sacredness comes from how the people of Buka value Tsuhana.

Other areas have their own names for Tsuhana but the term is known and understood by almost every Bougainvillean.

In our social structure, Tsuhana has three pillars - Tulgus (central post), Palmatana (front post) and Palbio (rear post).

These pillars are chiefs who represent clusters of extended families in a village. In a Tsuhana, the Tulgus is the principal chief and he is supported in village administration by the Palmatana and Palbio.

In the past, the people of Buka maintained and strengthened the consistency of their clans through the oral transmission of traditional laws within the social structure of the Tsuhana.

The people lived by traditional laws and the customs that bound them together. Peace and harmony were maintained through family and community discussion that allowed people to freely express their thoughts and feelings.

People would discuss land disputes, marital issues, reconciliation and other social issues considered a hindrance to the well-being and prosperity of society. Discussions were geared towards achieving and maintaining peace and harmony.

In this way the people of Buka, irrespective of their different Tsuhanas, experienced a sense of belonging, sharing and caring. They were able to connect with one another through relationships in the wider community.

Children were taught to respect authority, especially of parents, and that of people who were more knowledgeable and experienced in cultural beliefs and practices.

Marriage was valued as extremely important for the Tsuhana as it is the basis of family and the well-being of the community as it is through marriage that traditional values, beliefs and practices are passed from generation to generation.

Marriage also played a vital role in bringing different communities together and so extending peace.

Women are highly respected and cared for in Buka because they own the land. It is through the women that Tsuhana maintains its existence. It is also through the women that the pillars bear their names and representation. In the Tsuhana, women are represented by men who are mainly uncles or brothers.

Today the value of the Tsuhana is slowly fading away due to modernisation and the impact of the Bougainville Crisis.

“The people are struggling to maintain the identity and the values that were once seen and thought of as sacred,” the Catholic Reporter stated in November 2014.

“The rapid and ongoing transitions of life at all aspects bring in confusion and frustration as people struggle to understand the changes that are happening so fast while trying to make proper decisions.”

Now the communities are managed by three distinctive bodies; government, church and by traditional culture. Government provides the civil laws provided by the constitution. The church has its canon law and teaches Christian values based on its social teachings while the Tsuhana maintains its traditional customs and laws.

Looking back at the traditional system and especially the Tsuhana, I have come to appreciate what has been the wisdom of my people.

They were able to trace their lineage through this unwritten history. This gave them the courage to be firm in their decisions, knowing the reasoning and history behind their traditions, including from where and whom they originated.

The people were also able to reason and raise questions on why they had to be bound by the traditional laws and so on. They even questioned their destiny. This is a question about peace and harmony. To experience peace and harmony, the Tsuhana must lead them to supreme good.

On the other hand, the life of the Tsuhana reflects the wellbeing of the people of Buka in a way that is balanced.

The three pillars that hold the Tsuhana together are founded on the family and they provide the basis of human development in all aspects. 

The spiritual aspect of the Tsuhana is where faith comes in. This is represented by their discernment regarding their existence and origins. The mental aspect is expressed through dialogue where people are given the space to share their thoughts and feelings on issues that are of concern.

The physical aspect is reflected in people’s daily communal activities for instance in helping other families in building houses, doing gardening and cutting copra etc… The social aspect is expressed by family relationships within the wider social structure of the society.

Looking at the Tsuhana, we can grasp its concept of balance. This notion is relevant for our society today. Because human issues often bring disharmony and do not promote peace, humans need to deal with these problems in all their roles - as family members, Church members and as citizens.

A fully integrated person means a fully integrated family, a fully integrated society and a fully integrated nation.

As indicated by the title, the Tsuhana of Hope, history confirms Bougainville’s longing for freedom. This is the hope for a harmonious society.

This hope for the best possible society brings us to the essence of peace, which is God himself. The Creation story in the book of Genesis tells us that God was happy when he saw all that He created. Our challenge is to maintain this goodness endowed to us by God by use of our knowledge.

As Papua New Guinea is a Christian country as stated in the Constitution, it should promote Christian values and communities in a way that promotes a culture of life. In this way it will give meaning to our Melanesian life as we continue our journey in search for meaning and ways that lead towards creating a healthy Papua New Guinea as a political community.

PHILIP KAUPA

Her days are numbered and it’s surely due
her event is rare as it happens to  few
she gasps and grins, she can hardly talk
her feet are numb, she had to walk.

In love she soaks
in agony she’s shocked;
it‘s love she earns
there’s no point to turn.

The scripture says she must groan
as in pain she turns she had to moan;
her eyes are blurry and bath with tears
she cries and wails she barely hears.

She gently twists and moves in pain
because she knows  in time she’ll gain.
She wipes and vomits, it’s time to cry
but she is strong and will not die.

It seems impossible, but she strives to believe
as nature gives her the strength to be alive;
at last i come, she feels the pain of birth
the air i breathe is fresh of earth.

Now she feels the chill
as it seems to heal;
in her relief, she need not medicate
as in her joy she’s engulfed in meditate.

I cry and she’s in tears
she’ll be my mama for years.
Her strength is my life,
thank you mama for my life.

It’s when i come

WARDLEY DESMOND BARRY-IGIVISA

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

SOMETIME around 2012, the PNG Post Courier newspaper published on its website an article under the headline PNG leaders lack philosophical edge.

I devoured the article: and read it again and again. I must have read it a dozen times.

The next day, I went to town to grab a copy of the paper. I turned to the Viewpoint section and scanned the letters without finding what I was looking for. I did the same thing on following days. I was disappointed.

What irked me was that I expected people to respond to the article, but it was not to be. It was a pointed, provocative and penetrating article. The writer’s main argument was that PNG leaders lacked the philosophical insight to turn the country into a world-class competitive nation.

Because if they can’t think, we shrink.

Such a bold thesis should have elicited fears attacks or strong support from our thinkers. But silence followed.

Traditional Melanesian society is pragmatic: we do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

Our forefathers operated on a trial-and-error basis. They tried a simple technology and if it worked, fine, they held on to it and passed it on. They moved to the plain, the valley, the island or the coast and if they found the environment conducive, the streams bountiful and the land yielding there they settled.

They dreamed stories of how things came to be. In them, were lessons for practical living. We didn’t question chiefs nor doubt their tales. We were raised in an environment where reverence for elders was paramount and we defined ‘reverence’ as sure silence and orthodox obedience.

The silence that followed the newspaper article seemed to me to be a reflection of this traditional cultural disposition.

It was appalling in this highly informative age, where freedom of speech is propagated in our classrooms and media, that not one responsible person responded.

The writer was correct. We Papua New Guineans lack a philosophical edge, so we struggle to fit into a world that is largely philosophical. We are caught between our traditional pragmatic lifestyle and the influence of Western philosophy.

Frankly, we are confused and cannot think clearly. And not thinking clearly, we do things that are outright unthinkable.

The result is an experimental, hit and miss approach to problem solving: let’s try this; if it works, we’ll take it on board; it if doesn’t... well, we’ll think about that later.

The following line by local band, Hausboi, aptly summarises our approach.

“Trabolkamap han go pas na toktok kam bihain... em i pasin blo yumi, yumi ol PNG.” (Troubles arise we throw our fists first before we talk about them... that’s how we do it, we Papua New Guineans.)

Nicely captured. We are still pragmatic. Let me give an example, the Objective-Based Education system. From what I gather, this system was an experiment and we were the guinea pigs.

Yet our thinkers chose to implement it nationally. It was scrapped many years later and at great cost. Had our educational and political leaders thought it through, we wouldn’t risk having our classrooms turned into a science lab for some overseas genius’s experiment.

But then, we were not taught to question anything that came from the Whiteman’s hand. When they first landed on our shores, our chiefs went to greet them. They were given salt, a few axes and matchsticks and told to point as far as they could, north, east, south and west.

The chiefs did and the Whiteman gave them a piece of paper with strange marks on it and the chiefs made marks on it. The next day, the Whiteman ordered our chiefs to command the rest of us to work on our own land and deliver the profits to him.

Our chiefs did not dare to quiz him lest he bring out his long loud-stick.

We obey like little children reciting a multiplication table.

Since those days, we have never really questioned the Whiteman’s words or philosophies. Our cultural and historical background has clouded our minds and made us gullible.

We accept everything from the West without scrutiny and particularity. Even our best efforts to analyse and criticise Western ideologies are not immune to gullibility.

No wonder the Whiteman has no difficulty exploiting our resources under our very noses. He even enlists our help and we gladly assist him for a few trinkets. If only we could think!

And that’s where the solution lies. We must think and train our young people to think.

Our education system has been foremost in failing this nation. We have a curriculum that trains people to think in a particular way, to behave in a particular way and to relate to concepts and life in a particular way. It doesn’t encourage us to think outside the box.

Generally, we are trained to accept things, not invent them; to become employees, not employers; to accept fixed set of principles, not think critically about them.

This system will not get us anywhere. It will succeed only in multiplying our woes. We have thousands of young people dropping out. Instead of having thinkers in our suburbs, we have thieves on our streets. Our once were landowners don’t own assets, they become security guards.

Our problems escalate. We solicit help from the West, but it plays on our ignorance and gullibility and fool us some more.

We need a complete overhaul of our education system. It must be based on creating thinkers rather than conformist reflectors.

When I was in primary school, I read of Ben Carson doing science experiments in seventh grade. My heart burned to enter the science lab and play around. But I had to wait until twelfth grade to do an experiment of sorts. We need to change that.

Give children the opportunity to express themselves, not only in art but in science. Provide avenues through which they can experiment with principles and prove concepts.

That way, we will be able to produce independent thinkers. And that, I believe, is the true purpose of education – to help a person think independently.

Independent thinking is revolutionary thinking. We can develop new ways of dealing with old problems and new problems will be solvable not impenetrable. Miracles could happen.

I envision a nation that ranks in the competition for literary and sport awards and the Nobel Prize. I dream of a country that is not immune to problems; but that could solve problems.

Our leaders are yet to inject the philosophical edge. But we can be thinkers. We grow when we think; otherwise we shrink.

PAUL WAUGLA WII

The lone villager came home one afternoon.
It was so comforting to be on that familiar road
That led to that hamlet
Across the tumbling, crashing Singanigle River.

Walking along the path
On that melancholy day
The drizzle and the mist hung like steel
Upon the flank of the imposing Tokma Range.

The lone villager’s heart is full of longing
For what is he longing?
Unlike days gone by
The mist and the drizzle that descend now

Upon the face of the Tokma slopes
Caress not the bereaved villager’s heart.
If ever one’s mood can be triggered
By reminiscences of what used to be

A beautiful, innocent hamlet
Beside the churning, tumbling Singanigle River.
That beautiful, innocent hamlet
Has not stood the test of time.
What calamity has erased it into near obscurity?

An insidious act, in 2002, by men on the warpath
It is so vile an act
To scar what has been built over time
To smother our civilization
Before it has reached its maturity

The lone villager is longing for everything
That he knows cannot be replaced.
The passage of time cannot erase the memory
Of his beautiful, innocent hamlet by the Singanigle River.

BUSA JEREMIAH WENOGO

AS an economist, I am fascinated by Papua New Guineans’ home-grown salesmanship. It seems to be the hallmark of our informal economy.

Driven by the lack of meaningful opportunities, most of youths and adults end up plying their raw business traits on the side of the road or in public areas.

Most of them pick up the mannerisms through simple observation as they are forced to take up these activities for survival’s sake.

Although considered by many people to represent a breakdown in social order, these traders nevertheless play an increasingly important role in the urban economy of PNG.

Recently, my level of interest in the economic behaviour of these mobile traders was intensified by the fact that they have become more visible as a result of the traffic congestion caused by road works in the city.

A drive around Port Moresby will see you encounter or pass by these budding entrepreneurs, some as young as eight or nine.

There are legitimate concerns amongst the public that these mobile traders are responsible for petty crimes including bag and phone snatching, car-jacking and pick pocketing.

There is also concern that child labour could be on the rise given that there is a large pool of kids engaged in petty trade. Whether these kids are trying to make ends meet for themselves, their parents or someone else, it is clear that they should be in school and not on the street.

Littering is another problem associated with mobile traders, who don’t seem to take any responsibility for the rubbish they and their clients generate. This poses a big problem to urban authorities as large amounts of money are spent on cleaning and disposal.

I have watched mobile trading in Port Moresby burgeon over time and its associated problems intensify.

The construction of the multi-million kina flyover in Erima has provided traders a wide open field to utilise their traits to maximum capacity. They normally target unsuspecting customers who, in the haste to drive home, do not have time to check the quality, content or compare prices of the goods being sold.

What started out as an activity comprising less than 10 people has expanded to well over 30 traders. In fact, since a detour was created around the back of Erima, mobile traders can be seen lining the road for hundreds of metres trying to convince the travelling public to buy their betel nut, cigarettes, assorted drinks and other items.

For those travellers who don’t want to be bothered, the sight of traders peeping through their car windows can be irritating.

Being impressed by their level of confidence and salesmanship, I wonder if these raw business skills and talents could be refined to turn these street hawkers into professionals who can become an engine of growth in the PNG economy.

If this was to become a reality, the PNG government would marvel at the rapid progress of these entrepreneurs. These people, at base, are entrepreneurs not opportunists.

Opportunists don’t themselves make things work but feed on the weaknesses of their victim. A pick pocket is a classic example.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs sweat their guts out to make something that will add value to someone’s life. They are driven by a set of goals and a vision. A mobile trader could be an example although it is debatable whether they are goal driven or merely trying to make ends meet.

Often youths drink away their money and care little about the welfare of their family. So there is perhaps a greater possibility that most of these mobile traders could really be opportunists.

That said, most of these traders are friendly and are only trying to make money. Furthermore, the amount of time and effort they put into their work and their willingness to take a risk are to be admired and encouraged.

Mobile traders provide policy-makers with a glimpse of the ingenuity and innovative thinking that is in abundance among Papua New Guineans.

This is a trait that is required for people to be competitive in a very competitive national and international business environment.

Yet if not controlled and allowed to flourish at will, there is a possibility that the negative aspects of mobile trading could predominate.

The government needs to ask itself a simple question: Are mobile traders entrepreneurs or opportunists?

The answer to this question does not start at the doorstep of the Waigani Parliament but out on the streets where the harsh reality of life manifests itself in various forms, mobile trading being one of them.

FIDELIS SUKINA

An entry in the Rivers Prize for
Writing on Peace & Harmony

I collect the empty cans for cash,
Hope it’s enough for a scone or two.

The sun makes me sweat so bad,
Wish my thirst would quench on an empty can.

I find peace at lunch with flour fish,
Broken and shared with pals of mine

Days like this I wish I could,
Go and read a book or two.

In school, I could I know I would
But this a dream it only be,

I pray and pray and pray a lot,
For a life worth more than this,

And as I sweat and look for cans.
I wish I could find peace,

No love or smile of happiness,
Not love but hate I feel inside,

For it’s not fair to live like this,
To dwell in a realm of inequality,

Where rich and poor are classified,
Violence and crime go hand in hand,

And the poor are marginalised.
And my cans become so heavy,

I weep in silence at all of this,
I know I am more than meets the eye.