ED BRUMBY
Lost in His Land by Winterford Toreas. Pukpuk Publications: Amazon/Kindle. 2014. 126pp. ISBN10:1503051846; ISBN 13:978-1503051843. Available from Amazon: USD 3.04 (Kindle); USD 5.70 (paperback)
IT’S now nearly 20 years since formal hostilities ceased on Bougainville.
While Leonard Fong Roka and others have provided valuable accounts of, and insights into the events and consequences of those times via books, essays and other means, their endeavours have been targeted primarily at adult readers.
No-one has written of the conflict and its effects specifically for younger, adolescent readers. Until now.
In Lost in His Land, Winterford Toreas provides a timely and somewhat conventional tale of loss, recovery and reconciliation that illuminates, for younger readers, the trauma that war and conflict inflict on everyone, combatants and innocents alike, regardless of age or gender.
It is a timely and welcome addition to the Bougainville canon because the majority of intended readers had not been born when hostilities were taking place and many (if not most) of them, Bougainvilleans excepted, know little about the tragedy that occurred on Bougainville during the dying days of the last century.
Mr Toreas has ensured that this and succeeding generations of teenagers will have some understanding of that tragedy.
Concerned with universal themes of conflict, parental loss and the search for identity and a sense of belonging, Lost in His Land is, in many respects, such a conventional narrative that it could be set in any war or any conflict, at any time in history.
That said, and especially in his early chapters, Mr Toreas localises and personalises these themes particularly well. He paints a vivid picture of how the people of a South Bougainville Hokoruts village, unconnected with, and having no cultural, social or economic interest in the conflict are drawn into it, unwillingly and unwittingly, and are forced to abandon their homes and their comfortable lives and flee into the mountains.
At this juncture, our protagonist, Kangku, is a much-loved babe, safe in his mother’s arms.
That is, until he is orphaned, under vengeful circumstances, when his parents suffer the ultimate consequence of defying the village Chief’s instructions to remain on the mountain.
In a strange twist of fate, he is then adopted by Thomas Tagin, the fearsome commander of a detachment of the Bougainville Resistance Forces – the very people who sought to destroy Kangku’s village.
Tagin takes Kangku back to his home village on Buka Island, renames him Haroman (‘unlucky one’) and raises him as his own son.
Unaware that Tagin is not his real father, Haroman grows up as a ‘quiet, handsome and obedient’ boy and an outstanding and successful student. Even when very young he senses, without knowing why, that he is somehow different from other children in the village and keeps himself apart from them.
As he enters adolescence, he becomes even more aware of these differences and his detachment intensifies. He knows that something is missing in his life, but does not know what, or why.
Tagin, meanwhile, knows that he will have to tell Haroman about the fate of his real parents and that, one day, he will have to take him back to his real home.
Fate intervenes to assist Tagin in this mission when Haroman, having graduated from teachers college, is posted to a school near his birthplace. Revelation and reconciliation follow as Haroman discovers his real identity and connections.
Lost in His Land is a worthy, well-written, easy-to-read tale well-suited to adolescent and adult readers alike and Winterford Toreas is a skilled wordsmith and story-teller.
However, his decidedly formal writing style means that, in the end, the reader is left with a Haroman-like sense of ‘detachment’.
The reader will become more engaged and empathetic with the story and its characters if, in his next edition, Mr Toreas allows his characters to speak more informally and if he injects more tokples terms throughout the book.
That said, there is no doubt that Winterford Toreas is a gifted writer who, with further mentoring, will become a bright star in PNG’s literary firmament.