Collision of values: how advertising came to the NBC
KEITH JACKSON I ARRIVED IN WEWAK in November 1963. I was 18 and had just finished teacher training at the Australian School of Pacific Administration. A decade later, by the end of 1973, I’d spent...
View ArticleMy Story: Out of war, the passion & power of writing
2 - LEONARD FONG ROKA MY FATHER WAS FROM UNEA (commonly referred to as Bali) Island in the Witu Island group of the West New Britain Province of papua New Guinea. As an auto-mechanic apprentice in the...
View ArticleSomare in Fiji for Melanesia spearhead celebrations
RITIKA PRATAP | Fiji Broadcasting Corporation FORMER PAPUA NEW GUINEA prime minister and the founder of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, Sir Michael Somare, is in Fiji. Sir Michael arrived Friday...
View ArticlePNG takes regional lead in free West Papua campaign
AIRI INGRAM & JASON MACLEOD | Pacific Scoop MELANESIAN SUPPORT for a free West Papua has always been high. Travel throughout Papua New Guinea and you will often hear people say that West Papua and...
View ArticleRhado Piggery says it’s time to support local industry
JOE WASIA | Supported by the Bob Cleland Writing Fellowship FOR YEARS MANY local businesses in Papua New Guinea have never been given a facelift. Almost all financial assistance from the banks and...
View ArticleMy Story: The making of a young patrol officer. Paul Oates tells how he got...
3 - PAUL OATES WHEN I WAS YOUNG and lived in the outer suburbs, most of our requirements except meat were delivered by horse and cart. It was only in the mid-1950s that the first supermarket opened in...
View Article‘The World Until Yesterday’ redux. Not so bad really
PHIL FITZPATRICK WHO SAID ‘NEVER BELIEVE what you read in the newspapers’? Whoever it was could probably now add ‘never believe what you see on television, hear on the radio or read on the Internet...
View ArticleCondition critical: PNG health training is in the ICU
PAULUS RIPA THE CURRENT STATE of health personnel training in Papua New Guinea is appalling. We have known for at least a decade that we would be running into a shortage of health workers (see recent...
View ArticleOnce again we ask readers to give a helping hand
KEITH JACKSON Deakin University keeps inviting Papua New Guineans to its annual PNG talk fest (sponsored by AusAID) without providing travel support for those folk who can’t afford to make the trip to...
View ArticleFootnotes from a poet’s journey: prose poem problems
MICHAEL DOM ARCHIBALD MacLEISH WRITES in his poem, Ars Poetica, on the art of poetry, ‘A poem should be palpable and mute / As a globed fruit’. What MacLeish is saying, poetically, is that a poem does...
View ArticleWorst people, worst places; a walk into dependency
LEONARD FONG ROKA | Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship ON THE SOUTH COAST of Madang town is Ward 17, Local Level Government, a precinct of some 10,000 people reached by an unkempt feeder...
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THE NAMORONG MELBOURNE FUND STANDS AT $450 We’re raising $750 to get Martyn Namorong to a leadership conference in Melbourne He’s been invited - but AusAID & Deakin University won’t pick up the tab...
View ArticleMy Story: From Baimuru via bullying to blogging
4 -MARTYN NAMORONG LIFE IS FULL OF STORIES that may never be told. So, as Keith asked me and some other writers to tell our own stories, I was quite lost about where to start. So here’s a superficial...
View ArticleAustralia’s new high commissioner arrives in PNG
THE MASALAI BLOG AUSTRALIA’S NEW HIGH COMMISSIONER to Papua New Guinea, Ms Deborah Stokes, arrived in Port Moresby on Monday. Ms Stokes replaces Ian Kemish. “I am delighted to be in PNG at a very...
View ArticleMoses Summa – goal achieved - walks above the clouds
LEONARD FONG ROKA | Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship ON THE INSIDE COVER of Moses Summa’s notebook is the line: The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more...
View ArticleMy Story: Sketches from the empty and hopeful years
5 - KEITH JACKSON THE EARLY MORNING sun creeps across the brown room, eventually arriving at a bed upon which slumps a skinny 10-year old boy with a weak chest and bad eyes. He is staring glumly at a...
View ArticleSexual violence in Lae: impunity and resistance
STEPHEN HOWES & KAMALINI LOKUGE | Development Policy Blog LAE, ON PAPUA NEW GUINEA’s northern coast, is the country’s second city and industrial hub. It is also the capital of PNG’s largest...
View ArticleLife of a young kiap: case of the Baimuru patrol post
JOHN FOWKE THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS OF Baimuru Patrol Post in the days when patrols were done and justice, dispute resolution, sanitary maintenance instruction and all sorts of other advice physically taken...
View ArticleOnce more PNG Attitude readers come to the party
KEITH JACKSON YOU’VE GOT TO HAND IT to our readers – they have done it again. With donations ranging from $20 to $250, in a little over 24 hours they raised $1,000 to make sure Martyn Namorong could...
View ArticleMy Story: I am Simbu. I am Mosbi mero. Read, son, read
6 - MICHAEL DOM I AM A SIMBU. My parents were born in the foothills of Yoba Kogul, at Ninal Village, Sinesine. Yoba Kogul is part of the massive limestone structure that dominates the entrance into the...
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