Soaba's Storyboard

Their very present help

2012-02-10T11:49:00.000+10:00

Sometime last year an academic at UPNG pointed out that aside from book reviews and literary criticism, storyboard could consider related topics surrounding the Bible and all the fellowship activity that goes with it.

And that storyboard found pleasantly challenging.

As seen innumerable times in our previous articles, and those of the window’s, the youth of any given community appears the more delicate – delicate because a strong concentration of it can be found at places like UPNG. It is this segment of our communities that needs concentrating on, because that is where much of the country’s potential leadership is. Those that take care of this particular segment of society have quite a task ahead of them. It is up to them to carry out the necessary grooming, pruning, shaping and moulding – whatever academic facade they are stationed at.

Of course our academic was not suggesting that some direct scriptural insertions should be observed in all programs offered for our youth within the academic communities, either at UPNG or elsewhere. That type of activity would be left to the talents and creativity of individual academics. But it would help a bit, and this we believe is our academic’s sincere suggestion, if some aspects of the wisdom from the Bible were included as ingredients of a good course offering, a good argument or thesis, even a whole scholarship program.

As storyboard writes this he feels somewhat amused by the thought that there are so many academics today who are shy about mentioning the Bible, even in a classroom environment. So much pressure placed on vigorous learning, extensive reading and research, and scrutinized debates during seminars and the like where one’s peers become the ultimate judge, can prove inhibiting to some. But we could, aside from being too vocal at times about our other social and personal preferences, be helping ourselves a bit if we said something about our spiritual selves, beings, egos, and so on. Moreover, if a lecturer similarly feels inhibited about his/her sense of spiritualism, then what of the student who is there to acquire knowledge and wisdom from his/her wise counsel and guidance? And what is an academic life if there is no spiritual sharing in it?

At home, within the family environment, there are women as mothers, grandmothers, aunts and relatives ever present and willing to give the necessary guidance for our youth. There, the advice and guidance given is usually Bible-based. Here, in a strictly academic environment the prospects of exercising one’s spiritual beliefs and habits can be a little isolated at times.

About a decade ago storyboard sat in his office and had a lengthy discussion on this very topic with a literature major who seemed to have been having problems of sorts herself. There were a few tears shed on the part of the student and storyboard felt it was his duty to cheer the young scholar up. One of the things storyboard remembers pointing out to the student then was that as academics and scholars there was “a tremendous absence of God in our lives.”

At which remark the student’s face lit up. Even to this day storyboard will never forget the bright smile accorded him.

It wasn’t till after the student had left that storyboard realized what all that meeting was about. The student was in fact praying for storyboard together with her other lecturers all those years that went by. When storyboard checked her records she had been gaining “C” grading and below and never once lodged an appeal which was her democratic right to do so.

Well-respected academics like Mrs Garua Peni, Coodinator of the Orientation Program, and her associates at the student counselling services might not entirely agree with our musings here. They will probably point out that for years all biblical fellowships, whether observed by staff or students of UPNG, were successfully observed one semester after another. Women members of the UPNG community will argue along the same lines. The spiritual lack in question, therefore, lies within an individual academic – and more precisely within a chosen lifestyle.

As we look around the campus grounds now, in preparation of the arrival of the 2012 student population, we see evidence of how much impact such fellowship gatherings have had not only on the campus itself but on the surrounding communities. At weekends these neighbouring communities come over to hire the university’s facilities such as its chapel, its lecture theatres and classrooms, for worship and fellowships. More and more from even as afar off as the Taurama campus and its surrounds are now requesting for space at the Waigani campus for similar activities.

This is a good sign. More so for the younger generation of children and youth who come and go. Not only do these come for fellowships but also visit other campus sites such as the Botanical Gardens for functions and recreation. And then there is the clinic, a must for some of these children and youth who do so with joviality and much cheerfulness. Where rumours of malaria and other ailments abound these children and youth respond positively, getting malarial blood tests and supplies of tablets to take home with them.

When we see them thus, we know they are bracing to become part of the university community in the years to come. There is so much life, so much song of spiritualism in these little ones. The ear plugs that some of them wear to make them hum and sing and stroll about with cheerful smiles spell out what’s really written in their hearts.

And we hope Hillsong won't mind us quoting part of their ministry sharing here.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

There’s none I desire beside you

You have made me glad...

You are my shield

My strength

My portion

Deliverer

My shelter

Strong tower

My very present help in time of need

A tyrant and a bear in the muse

2012-02-02T12:40:00.000+10:00

There is a poem by W.H. Auden which has been the haunt for many a literature student in Papua New Guinea for some years, especially around this time. The poem is so straight forward we get the feeling that it does not say much except that it was written by Auden, a great name in twentieth century poetry.

A closer examination of it surprises us in the manner Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Eagle does or Salvatore Quasimodo’s Ancient Winter, along with those other shorter and intriguing pieces by Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake.

But the thing about Auden’s poem is that it reflects the twentieth and twenty-first centuries so realistically that we cannot ignore it. The poem is simply titled Epitaph on a Tyrant and quoted in full this is how it looks and sounds like:

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

We sense the simplicity of the poem. And that is the dramatic aspect of it all. And the drama of the poem lies in just this one verb – “interest” (line 4). That, of course, makes us feel extra cautious about the whole poem. Even a simple poet may hold some keen interest in mechanical engineering, for example. Reading the poem and then pointing fingers at someone would therefore seem inappropriate as we could be pointing at ourselves in the mirror. And that is the irony, the very substance of the poem.

Yet the tyrant, so-called, is so simple and lovable in appearance we could all move forward and give him a nice little bear-hug.

Talking of nice little bear-hugs the next poem that comes to storyboard’s mind is the one by Galway Kinnell called The Bear (Body Rags, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). This poem is a ripper. It has seven stanzas or thoughts to it.

In summary the poem talks about a hunter who wounds a grizzly bear with simple hand-made instruments like fox bones and having thus slowed the movement of the beast slightly sets out to hunt it down, if even he himself dies along the way. In the end, when the hunt is all over, and he is successful, he feels like he must get up and dance but lies still. Both the hunter and the bear become one, as it were.

The whole poem looked at in detail reads as follows. In the first stanza the persona in his stature of civic orderliness notices a certain irregularity (“some fault in the old snow”), so he peers downwards and in doing so senses the odour of the bear, a beastly or bestial presence.

In the second stanza he manufactures a lure consisting of blubber and in it the whittled tips of a fox rib all of which he freezes in the snow and leaves “on the fairway of the bears.” When he notices the disappearance of the lure he knows he has struck luck and he thus sets out after the beast searching for signs that it has been wounded. He does see “the first, tentative, dark splash on the earth” and that sets him running, “dragging [himself] forward with bear-knives in [his] fists”.

The third stanza, which is the key turn of the whole drama of the hunter and the hunted, appears provocative but holistic at once. “On the third day I begin to starve/at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would/at a turd sopped in blood/and hesitate, and pick it up/and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down/and rise/and go on running.”

In the fourth stanza, which is the seventh and final day of reckoning, the hunter sees his object of pursuit far ahead, “the carcass upturned, the heavy fur riffling in the wind.” He walks up to it, sees the pathetic little eyes, the somewhat stunned stare and flared nostrils, “catching perhaps the first taint of [the hunter] as he died.” It is a piteous, melancholy kind of encounter for man and beast. The man “hacks a ravine” in the beast’s thigh to eat and drink; he then tears it down the whole length, opens it up, climbs in, shuts it as he would a door after him, for it is cold, and sleeps.

In the fifth stanza, the hunter dreams “of lumbering flatfooted over the tundra, stabbed twice from within.” He too becomes the wounded and the hunted. Even in a dream he notices that he too is splattering, leaving a long blood trail behind him. And he knows that he too will be followed, no matter which way he turns, “no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence, which dance of solitude, which gravity-clenched leap, which trudge, which groan.”

In the sixth stanza he knows he too must fall “on his stomach that has tried so hard to keep up.” Thenceforth, there is the problem of digesting bear blood, bear bone, the lot. Himself so mortally wounded need only lie back and smell the “wretched odour of the bear blow across his sore, tongue lolled into song or screech,” until he thinks he must get up and dance but lies still. And sleep he must. This is the most intriguing part of the poem, which spells out what some philosophers would refer to as “the sleep of the just.”

Stanza seven talks of the hunter’s or persona’s awakening. There is promise of normalcy restored. The landscape of snow country looks as enchanting as ever, with the exception of not just one, but two, three, four, and more, bears, slowly approaching him, licking paws and furs with indifferent looks in his direction, taking all the time there is in the world. The poem ends with the words: “...the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavour of blood, that poetry, by which I lived.”

These are two great poems. It does not matter how we read them to enjoy or be intrigued by. But storyboard feels the key word to keep in mind in the first poem is “interest” – a very simple, innocent sounding human sentiment. In the second poem we go beyond “interest” and enter the realms of “instinct” where the key word we note is “blubber”, denoting fat or meat as lures used on those senses that are less wary, even dormant. The lure or “blubber” also becomes the “fairway” of the persona’s, especially in that intuitive desire to wound in order to pursue and to continue “wandering”, “wondering”, “over the world”.

The second poem is highly metaphorical, and it too has become the haunt for many a literature student in Papua New Guinea.

Children of the tide and the seasons

2012-01-27T17:18:00.000+10:00

Do you remember our story of November last year (Lahara’s poetic stance 11/11/11)? It became one of the popular storyboard articles for the pre-Christmas/New Year holiday season.

A week ago storyboard felt saddened to see the two little ones stricken with malaria after being away at the village for the holiday season. Yet their story was about helping their parents to sell fruit and that meant sitting all day at a particular spot, waiting for customers.

In fact, that story wouldn’t have been popular without these two. So storyboard sent his daughters and granddaughters to go visit them with noodles and a packet of rice and bully beef, as a way of delaying the effects of malaria a bit before they could go to the clinic the following Monday.

Something else there is that needs to be told about such children. They go wherever we go as parents, do whatever we do, because we are their living examples of what they will become eventually. We must consider ourselves fortunate too that free education has now reached our door steps again since of course the times of the pre-independence era when all was indeed free. They are now able to go to school without the parents having to worry about how much they will struggle to sell by way of garden produce in order to raise funds for school fees.

And now that all is free how relieving it is to cast an eye across the landscape and see that these children are indeed enjoying themselves. And we must seriously ask, can school these days be more enjoyable than those previous years of struggle, both for parents and children.

Such questions are best answered for us by good people like Ms Wari Karona and her kind assistants Ms Rhonda Michael and Joseph Poe. These three are just a few of those who take care of the new and popular idea in child literacy projects called Buk Bilong Pikinini (Children’s Libraries).

The idea was initiated and established in 2007 by Anne-Sophie Hermann, wife of former Australian High Commissioner to PNG (2006-2009), Chris Moraitis. Since then altogether 8 libraries were set up within the National Capital District, including the ones in Lae and Goroka.

Ms Karona advised storyboard that another such library will be set up in Alotau town shortly this year.

Sponsorship to the establishment of these little libraries comes from various organizations within and outside the country. The one at the Waigani campus run by Ms Karona’s team was sponsored by Hastings Deering and Oxford University Press. This little matchbox looking library caters for the Waigani, Morata, Gerehu, Rainbow and Ensisi Valley suburbs and settlements.

Barely has the school year started and the sight of children running around at 10 o’clock recess is exhilarating, evidence of the notion that they are indeed enjoying themselves. Ms Karona states that the trick to all this lies in the careful management of phonics, particularly in the minds of four to seven year-olds. Children learn to recognize printed words through sounds. And they catch on faster than in a class room environment.

Ms Karona, herself a great story-teller as storyboard discovered, told of how a 9 year-old hated school so much he stayed at home and didn’t want to have anything to do with books. Even at that age he could not read the alphabet. This in turn became self-inhibiting somewhat, and the parents feared he would miss out on school totally. So they approached the Waigani campus Buk Bilong Pikinini library in late August last year. The result? By October he was not just able to recite the alphabet but read a whole book as well. From then on he told his parents not to worry so much about him; he had many friends, he was actually enjoying “school”. This year he will start school at the Karr Memorial Primary School just like any other continuing student.

When the organizers of these little libraries approached Professor Ross Hynes last year, the VC welcomed them warmly. A space was allocated next to the University Chapel, and today the little library stands securely at a convenient spot for mothers bringing in their children from the surrounding suburbs and settlements. It’s a grand idea, this. It places the child on a firmer footing before actually starting school.

The library opens two times a day. It caters for the 4 to 7 year-olds from 8 to 12 noon, and for those of school age from elementary up at 1 to 4 in the afternoon. All the necessary guidance or tuition given the child is free of charge.

Elsewhere in the world we can only wonder if children of such generations benefit similarly. But all that is yet another story to tell. For the moment we can be content with the idea that these children are indeed there for all seasons.

The tide comes in and recedes, as do the seasons, and these children likewise grow up to be men and women, from which point they look back, as do we all, and sigh, “We learn when we are old.”

A poem by Michael Dom

2012-01-26T13:14:00.001+10:00

A dinghy ride by starlight

There is an echo even now. Awakening

From haunted dreams, late in the night

A memory of a dinghy ride by starlight:

The noise of the motor reverberating

Off the coast, above the rushing waves,

Cold and damp from sea spray and rain:

Phosphorescent glittering streams in

Our passing wake arise from unknown

Depths as we skim their salty matrix:

Dark ragged hills like a rip in the fabric

Of a jet black sky and the ghostly white

Foam of the relentless Solomon Sea:

A shoreline strewn with the debris of

That unending war: A warning to steer

Clear off, but to keep a parallel course:

Speak not of crows for I have seen them

In a mist shrouded morning at Rabaraba

Where they held their nodding congress.

And Champion’s surprise at finding me

There upon his arrival was worth a

Hundred voyages into Anuki Country.

Michael Dom

Bubia Station, 04:31AM 21/01/2012

Of this poem Russell Soaba said:

Michael,

A good poem indeed. Deeply intriguing as the Anuki Country itself,
mysterious, yet ever close to the safety and comfort of the shoreline!

Qualities that good poems are always made of are to be found here.

Only a slight query, though. Last stanza. And Champion's surprise at
finding me... should Champion be singular or plural? If singular,
would suggest, "And a Champion's surprise..." If plural, then suggest
it read as "And Champions' surprise..." with the apostrophe coming
after the "s".

Thanks, Mike. I like the poem.

In response Michael said:

Thanks for that Russell. I'm glad I conveyed the sense of that experience. It was truly mysterious.

Champion Ando was the name of my traveling partner, whom I was supposed to meet at Alotau. When I arrived there around ten o' clock he had already left early in the morning. I took a bus from Masurina Lodge, went down to town asked the locals for a highway truck, got on and made my way around the coast to a dinghy place on the north coast (I can't recall the name, starts with 'N'). That's where my dinghy ride began.

Until that time I had never been to Milne Bay in my life. Champion had no idea where I was, and everyone else thought that I was still in Port Moresby.

You can imagine his surprise when he comes to shore at Rabaraba at six o' clock the next morning, to be greeted by myself, standing on the shore waving to him. He thought for sure I was a ghost (or bewitched). He had some difficulty speaking for a little bit, when I asked him what had taken him so long to get there. It will make a good short story some day.

Do let me know if you wish to critique the whole collection or if you will give an assessment based on my other works which you have read in the past.

Michael

What do our readers think?

Informal book vending

2012-01-20T13:36:00.000+10:00

Storyboard welcomes the window back as neighbour columnist next door. Reading Steven Winduo allows us to peruse each printed word with diligence. It is through his window of books and literature that we build up an intellectual capital for ourselves. We look forward to more of his offerings in the year.

On the subject of building up an intellectual capital what would be more appropriate than casting an archetypal glance at the amount of written material being sold in the streets. We suspect it was the students, the recent graduates and the senior students, of the Waigani campus that started this least noticed informal kind of business venture. Everything centres on the sale of text books not so much to make extra cash as to rid of what has, to the seller, become suddenly outgrown or obsolete. But it is a worthy kind of trade as at the end of the day you do manage somehow to retrieve some of how much your parents had spent in ordering and purchasing a year’s supply of required reading and research material. Texts books do become profitable, come to think of it, especially in the natural and applied sciences.

Not so in the world of literature and the arts. Hardly a second-hand looking scrap book of poetry gets noticed when lined up with the rest of the academic stuff in the streets by an informal book seller. But the good thing we notice here is an informal trader’s choice of selling books.

The reader may recall our brief mention of informal book vending in last week’s storyboard article. This Monday, believe it or not, our informal book trader did so well that when storyboard checked again there were but a handful of primary text books left. And what a success story it might have been for our book vendor, who was nowhere around to be interviewed but whose “agents” consisting of his wife and relatives informed us he worked as a security guard by day and as an informal book trader from 4.30 to 6.30pm daily. The agents or informants also told us that he got his supply of books from students anxious to lower their prices in order to fly home for Christmas holidays. Most shoppers the informants told us consisted of men who bought off the thrillers and mothers (accompanied by children) who went for the text books from primary school up.

Discussions with bystanders on this informal Waigani "book fair" led to the understanding that course text books obtained through standard means often proved costly for the parents. Some were government funded handouts which went back to their schools giving the pupils and older students little chance of close perusal of texts in relaxed environments such as at home. This would help them get a good grip of a given subject matter for study.

Other discussions, which touch lightly on the poetics (meaning politics) of book trade, revealed that informal book trade ventures anywhere in the country were quite excusable and that established international publishers such Oxford University Press or McMillan should see no cause to complain if their books were discovered being sold in the streets. Indirectly, these publishers were benefiting more from the government’s purse than a local book publishing shop or workshop such as The Anuki Country Press, Manui Press, Buai Press or even the University Book Shop at UPNG. And the copies sold at these street sites would be useless to the publishers because they looked marred by time and weather, not to mention the occasional betel nut or coffee stain on the covers and the pages.

But the most important thing to consider here is how much the informal book trader can make in order to sustain a family. The activity warrants support as much as encouragement at various urban community settings so that both the trader and buyer are compensated in one way or another. The trade itself becomes their subsistence activity, as it were.

What storyboard feels so excited about such informal book vending is the way they enable a child to go back to school armed with that hardly affordable science or mathematics text book.

Looking at the activity from a broad perspective we realize that street book vending has been around since the invention of paper and the printed word. Hundreds of years ago the Japanese haiku composers did their text messages on bamboo slits which they sent out to lovers or suitors. Thousands of years ago a certain Roman called Atticus employed a hundred slaves to sit and compose texts on papyrus as dictated by a supervisor. These, when completed, turned out be books which were sold out in the streets. Rumour has it that Atticus, who was the father-in-law of the governor of Judea, might have been one of those responsible for the first and Grecian printed version of the Bible.

On the subject of the Bible who can deserve more praise in the business of informal book trade than our good old Jehova’s Witnesses. Time and again we see them gather in clusters under rain trees for a word of prayer and encouragement from their leader before venturing out to homes to sell their literature. And they have been doing that in Papua New Guinea for many years. A journalist whose name now slips storyboard’s mind once wrote a nice line for the JWs in the then Niugini Nius or the current National. Indeed, long before Carol Kidu’s call for an enactment of the necessary and relevant laws on this type of self-sustainable business venture for the ordinary Papua New Guinean, the JWs have been selling and sharing their thoughts at various homes that could receive them often for as little as 20t or a glass of water. And still they do it. And still they remain as rich and strong as ever.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we all can learn from this idea of informal book trade is by looking at a prize winning Papua New Guinean writer, Martyn Namowrong. One moment he sells betel nuts and cigarettes, the next he is writing, and again the next instant he is running a web log that is read all over the world. There is one thing missing here, though, Martyn. There should be some books next to your other goods for sale, such as copies of The Watctower and Awake!

Informal Monday: things I like

2012-01-13T10:40:00.000+10:00

An informal book vendor at the Waigani Market

Monday this week turned out to be the brightest day there was after the gloomy Christmas and New Year break in Port Moresby. And it was rather pleasantly informal, as storyboard noted, saying hello to one and all here and there, knowing of course that what would follow would be Friday 13^th, meaning today. He’d anticipated then that the weather would hold out till this morning. But if it didn’t it would have to be another Black Friday and that would be it.

He was nonetheless elated in spirit when he walked around the vicinities of Waigani: the campus strolls during the best part of the morning, the Rainbow Stop N Shop at lunch, and the Waigani Market later in the afternoon. The whole day lasted as such, one which would qualify as Louis Armstrong’s idea of a “wonderful world.”

Around the vicinities of the Waigani Market itself storyboard stopped by at various stalls from cigarettes and betel nuts to the good old lamb flap huts that run parallel to the second hand clothing racks. But there was one area of the market that caught his eye. A display of books next door to the second hand clothing stalls and the main garden produce market. It was perhaps a little isolated but looked convenient enough as it is set along the main pathway that joins the Waigani TST and Stop N Shop shopping centres. A man bought a book there for K10 and storyboard could not help but marvel at the sight.

Now the idea of selling books at market places seems new somewhat but an economically plausible one. Everyone wants to and has to sell something at certain odd spots at one time or another, in order to eat at all at the end of the day. We will bring you more on informal book vending later on in our articles.

Noticing how remarkably informal that Monday afternoon was storyboard ambled about a bit then decided to let the lazy afternoon wear away slowly. Two of his buddies around the area, the taxi drivers, walked over for a chat. Barry and Mausgras as they are known complained a bit about the scarcity of clientele due to the holiday period but storyboard kept assuring them that by evening there would be customers, consisting of mothers doing their dinner shopping and needing to get home in time.

Storyboard suggested the three walk over to the Banana Club and the two protested strongly. “Where’s the money?” Mausgras kept blurting. “We didn’t make a single toea in the last few hours.”

“I agree,” comforted storyboard, “Let’s just talk about the weather and perhaps some poetry?”

The two laughed. And it was well that the afternoon should progress that way, since by that time a lot of the University crowd was arriving at the market and shopping centre to do shopping, while away the remaining hours, or simply walk over to the club for a bit of palaver.

Some bade each other belated New Year greetings and a few spoke with regret of UPNG’s losses over the holiday period. Malaria became the subject of conversation then, and it was amazing to note how this dreaded harbinger of ill-health had advanced over the years. It came in many forms, exclaimed a few academics in passing, evolving and re-inventing itself minute by minute it seems. One moment it’s diarrhoea, at another some complications with the urinal passages or the entire circulatory system of fluid transmission throughout the body. We have to be extremely careful of the little mozzies that we consider harmless.

A few fashionable and rich looking ladies walked by and storyboard and his little crowd of bystanders obliged them with slight bows of greetings. Mausgras nudged storyboard and chuckled why don’t you compose some poems about those lovely ladies? Why not? shrugged Barry and others.

Storyboard's buddies Barry and Maugras.

It is a lovely Monday afternoon and thank God it ain’t Black Friday, all agreed, none more so than the great St Nativeson, quite possibly loitering nearby and not far from us.

THINGS I LIKE

I like the way you see things

Reading, writing, looking up

With a reserved smile

And that sidelong glance

That gives the world

A reason to hope

I like all things bright

Colorful and beautiful

Like the wave of your

Bright hand in the sun

I like the weather

That promises warmth

And tenderness

And I like the way

You touch my heart

Caress my sorrows

Heal my wounds

And build me up again

Everything that you offer

Adds up to things I like

By James St Nativeson

P.S. When Friday 13th did arrive this morning it appeared cool as Monday!

Should NASA make a press statement?

2011-12-15T17:04:00.003+10:00

The President of the National Academic Staffing Association (NASA) of the University of Papua New Guinea, Ms Eleina Butuna, has asked members of the association if a press statement was in order for the current situation in the PNG Government. And we quote:

Hi all

The SC 5 bench handed down its decision. Three ruled for Somare's return to power and 2 descent. The SC has spoken but what do you think as ordinary citizens??

Any intellectual thoughts? What will happen to the 2012 budget which is the most important determinant of any government? Will the O'Neil opposition now defeat its own budget who were in government yesterday? Will Polye's NA re-converge with Chief Somare? I have more questions than answers! Should NASA make a press statement?

President- Eleina

In response to which, storyboard’s suggestion, as follows:

I think NASA should make a press statement along the lines that everyone else has had his share of being a Prime Minister.

You will notice that those who have come and gone are now sitting quiet but giving good advice here and there.

The Somares, the Wingtis, the Namalius, the Chans, the Skates; it's like everybody has had his share of the cake. But look who we have now. Here's Somare back asking for more! In any democratic environment this is asking for disaster. The three arms of the government are all we have. What else can we ask for in PNG since it has been experimented innumerable times that other forms of government cannot work. There will be no one from outside intervening in this affair. To do so will mean a far greater disaster than we all can envisage, even manage.

Somare must be willing to assume the role of a retired, well-respected leader, and he can only do this nation a great service by becoming himself an armchair critic, adviser, mentor. Nothing more. Let the young and robust taste the spirit of leadership and how to bail this country out from all its economic woes even though we say we are rich. Let democracy unveil herself of her everlasting beauty!

That would be the only solution to the present "crisis".

"That government is best which governs not at all."

- Henry David Thoreau

Mysteries and thrillers in Papua New Guinea

2011-12-03T10:51:00.002+10:00

Staff at the University of Papua New Guinea's book store looking through a copy of The Samana Incident in preparation of ordering copies for next year's literature courses.

Keith Dahlberg wrote an in interesting novel about an international drug ring operating in Papua New Guinea.

The Samana Incident: a crime novel of Papua New Guinea is his choice of a title for this novel. An enthusiast in the thriller, mystery and biography genres in literature himself Dahlberg would not have chosen a better mode of narrative to suit the reading needs and habits of Papua New Guineans.

A quiet missionary township of Samana, somewhere in what we might be content with as the “Central Highlands Province” as far as works of fiction go suddenly encounters early hours one morning a band of individuals who do not quite fit the description of local “rascal” burglary element. One speaks in a strange accent that passes as foreign but there is no telling whether it is American, Australian or other. Steve Talman, preparing to begin the daily missionary broadcast at the hilltop Radio Station P2WT, realizes the lines are dead and in going out to investigate gets knocked out cold. A switchboard operator further down, Jeannette, has a brief exchange of dialogue with the foreign accent, and then she too passes out the moment she feels certain the tightly locked door will give under the weight of the intruder. That is followed at half-light by short bursts of gunfire exchanged between the township’s security forces and the intruders.

The incident causes quite a worry for the little missionary township; more so the township’s mayor, Hans Vanderhof who calls for an emergency town council meeting the next few hours and the aid, if possible, of a police officer from the provincial headquarters of Kundioka for further investigations. Much is discussed then and everyone agrees that the matter could be very serious. A brooding Lieutenant Jason Kerro of Kundioka police headquarters leaves that meeting more troubled than ever after of course leaving his business card with the blushing Jeannette and resolves that he will not rest until he reaches the bottom of this new found mystery.

What follows thenceforth is a story of crime and mystery we should not turn a blind eye or deaf ear to. Lieutenant Jason Kerro aided by the advice and cooperation of the little missionary township of Samana sets out to observe his investigations with determination, soliciting the assistance of amateur personnel wherever his work carries him, from Samana to Kundioka to Lae and back to the Central Highlands Province. His own boss, the Provincial Police Commander, does not seem to be interested in the case. When Jason puts forward his report on the Samana incident the reply he gets is an indifferent directive: “Just type your report and leave it on my desk, Kerro, I’ll get to it in due time.”

That would of course be the kind of reaction from a senior officer (immersed in “inventing paperwork while closing his eyes and ears to anything new unless there was a chance for personal gain”) that would make men like Jason Kerro, 33 years old, think very, very hard.

“And Kerro!” the captain said as Jason was about to leave, “Don’t worry too much about those foreigners in Samana. There’s no profit in it for us.”

When Jason discovers that no help is due from his immediate superiors he resolves to continue the investigation on his own aware of the risk he is taking. At the same time the mayor of Samana sends a message to the missionary headquarters somewhere in Canada where an urgent council meeting is observed regarding the strange happenings on one of their translation outposts that contains some missionary workers “plus a hundred more researchers working out in remote villages.” The meeting then resolves to send a missionary couple consisting of a retired doctor and his wife to find out more about the Samana incident.

Dr. George Daniels and his wife Vienna are the two people the mission headquarters finally appoints on a fair amount of stipend to travel to Papua New Guinea, and it is this couple that finally joins forces with Jason with whom they are able to uncover the nature of business of the people involved in those early hours of the morning at the missionary township. And what a big find it is in busting what will later unfold towards the end of the novel as a drug ring that consists of Papua New Guineans, Australians and some Asians from around the border areas of Burma and Thailand.

The influence of this drug ring that has in the rural areas is devastating. A whole village becomes involved, christening itself as The Promise Village. The elders of that village whose limited knowledge of the world outside them is unfairly taken advantage of by the dealers; and with fabricated stories of cargo cult promises of what is there to come they are able to control an entire population which in turn allows this easier flow of arms and drug trafficking and trade between PNG, Australia and parts of Asia. There is an illegal airstrip at hand for easy transportation of chemicals and drug properties for sale in PNG and Australia.

Soon all this is uncovered, Jason Kerro and his team of retired missionaries, including his trustworthy superiors in Port Moresby organize what looks like a SWAT raid with the assistance of the Australian Air Force, undercover of the Mount Hagen Air Show, and there we have it. The rest is a good story, indeed a detective thriller that makes The Samana Incident so exciting to read.

We could go on with character and plot details, space permitting, but what needs to be pointed out here is the novel’s significance as an educational material. Keith Dahlberg himself is a medical doctor by profession and qualification and the chemical know-how he offers in this beautifully worded 193 pages of fiction can be useful information for some authorities, especially in the manufacture of certain drug products that are easily becoming accessible upon our shores.

Parents with grown up children are particularly encouraged to read this novel. And though this is purely a work of fiction it does get closer to the mysteries of why our youth behave the way they do these days after consuming certain brands of beverages that become suspect as dangerous products in our society.

Storyboard is in the process of liaising with the UPNG Bookshop to have the book ordered for next year’s literature courses. But as noted earlier he would much rather recommend strongly that parents include a copy of The Samana Incident on their Christmas New Year shopping list, before sending their children to higher grades next year.

Keeping track of those diaries

2011-11-25T10:03:00.000+10:00

Mr Nixon Forova with students from Trobriand Islands at the Gerehu Primary School.

“Mr Forova is the Principal of Gerehu Primary School. He is my grandfather’s cousin and they visit each other once when they have time. I barely know him but I will tell you more. My grandmother died in 2009 2^nd November and I think he must have come to the funeral service to pay his respects. He is from Gulf/Kerema.”

Words come from a diary of a former pupil of Gerehu Primary School offering a brief illustration of the man who takes care of that school. Those words help illustrate the significance of keeping diaries wherever we go. The writer of the words noted above now attends a primary school at Tokarara, but one can sense the power of recollection as much as the need there is in keeping a diary.

One point worth considering: that wherever they go, either through school transfers or other forms of movement within the city, children never forget their educational beginnings. And so they sit down to write their thoughts on paper. And when they jot down their thoughts on paper, that act alone becomes their gesture of exchanging letters with the world outside them.

To these children diaries are like writing letters to someone. There is always a need to write to someone, out there. Sometimes though, such letters may just become private things, so that each conversation observed daily might just be between a writer and his/her diary. But no matter how private they are or may turn out to be, there is always someone out there to read them and turn them into separate stories in their own right. And those stories will indeed benefit many.

On Monday 5^th September this year storyboard felt privileged to be invited by Mr Forova, the Headmaster of Gerehu Primary, to officially open the school’s literacy partnership activities for the week (5^th to 9^th September). Then of course storyboard found it hard to quickly turn that visit into a story for this column. So he put his diary away and attended to some other things as alternative stories. His grandchildren, however, came to his rescue a few days ago when he decided to look over the diary in search of a story. They, the grandchildren, were always handy when it came to checking and cross-checking certain details, for example, on Mr Nixon Forova, because they too keep diaries – evidence of which is seen at the opening of this article.

The time for that literacy partnership has lapsed, but that does not prevent us from writing a story about this wonderful man from the Gulf Province and his associations with Gerehu Primary School. In fact, both his students and teachers love and admire him so much most would sooner refer to him as Mr. Forever. Nixon Forova comes from Iokea and has spent 38 years serving the Education Department as a teacher, mostly in the Southern Highlands, Gulf, Central and Milne Bay provinces. Of those 38 years we can say that 26 were spent in the National Capital District alone, in such schools as Bavaroko, Koki, Kila Kila, St Peter’s Erima, Sevese Morea and recently Gerehu Primary School.

Aside from imparting upon his students the wonders of the written word through literacy programs Mr Forova also spends time assisting with translations especially of hymns from English to whatever language that suits his fancy. When he was a teacher at Mailu, for example, he had helped translate many hymns from English to that language which are being sung today. He currently works on Toaripi translations mainly of hymns, gospel spirituals and praise songs and even psalms and passages from scriptures. When storyboard visited his school in September he saw how rich this man was with the way he treated language as an important aspect of our lives.

Earlier that week, he sent two women, a Mrs Margaret (Meg) Moguna and Miss Lyn Charles to fetch storyboard; not only to witness the literacy week but to also see if a story could be written about the school’s literacy activities. The entire morning was very successful indeed. A photographer accompanying storyboard could only remark that this school must be one of the most privileged in the National Capital District.

But Mr Forova’s intentions in the realms of literacy programs seemed complete. It is good for all starting from primary school pupils up to start seriously thinking about jotting thoughts down on paper. Write them down now, put them away, and then re-visit them later. You will not regret the habit.

Today, as storyboard looks over his own diaries and those of his grandchildren who have been to that school, on that school, he cannot help but confirm how important this is. Many good stories, great works of literature, first come into being through diaries. And since our article appeared in the National Weekender about the book week at PNG Paradise High School and about the significance of diaries, many have responded with what looked like dairies kept over many years.

Among these was a prize-winning novel, “The Samana Incident: a crime novel about Papua New Guinea”, based on diaries kept over the years by missionaries who worked in the Highlands but which have now been converted to works of fiction that seek to entertain, to inform and to help educate the masses about our beautiful country. Another which was simply titled, “A Soldier’s Diary”, could not resist bringing out what had transpired over what we might regard as Papua New Guinea’s darkest hour in its short democratic life, namely the Bougainville crisis. In that diary now turned novel, there is a description of a party on its way to Wakunai to try recovering a machine gun captured by the BRA from the PNG army.

“The drivers accelerated for two hundred metres then shifted to low gears as we approached the bridge and then, bang! We came into an ambush fifty metres past the Wakunai Bridge. An old man with a shot gun had fired at us. We fired back at him as he ran up the hill naked, dropping the shot gun. The OC ordered us to let him go as long as we got his weapon. He was aged about sixties going on seventies.”

That came from a diary recorded as some 0600 hours on a Monday 13^th February 1990 by a soldier serving on Bougainville at the time. Some details are truthful sounding and much contradicts what we are used to by media coverage of yore. It makes an interesting story and we can see now how useful diaries can become.

Women at the helm

2011-11-18T13:47:00.000+10:00

The logo of the University of Papua New Guinea.

The most powerful intellectual industrial organization in Papua New Guinea, UPNG’s the National Academic Staffing Association/Union (NASA/NAU), has recently changed its status from a male dominated executive to a strictly female one. All its office bearers from the President down are women.

Industrial Registrar, Mrs Helen Saleu, herself a product of UPNG, described this as historic when informing the PNG Trade Union Congress Executive that “UPNG NASA has an all round female executive as an industrial organization.” At a special handover-takeover function organized by the new executive at UPNG she pointed out that “NASA as an industrial organization has achieved some of the landmark decisions [in the country]” and encouraged the new executive to continue that leadership role “in bringing about positive changes which benefit many other institutions in the country such as the National Research Institute, the University of Technology and others”.

The new executive was voted in on 10^th October and the function referred to above was held at the Ulli Beier Cultural Centre on 14^th October.

The new executive now consists of President, Ms Elaina Butuna (from Milne Bay and a lecturer in the School of Natural and Physical Sciences); Vice President, Dr. Anne Waiko (from Milne Bay and a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences); Treasurer, Ms Henrietta Simon (from West New Britain and a lecturer in the School of Natural and Physical Sciences); and Secretary, Ms Lois Stanley (from Manus and a lecturer in the School of Law).

Meantime, the male membership population of NASA welcomed the election of the new executive and rendered support for them through former president Dr. Peter Petsul who the current president acknowledged as one “who had successfully negotiated the [almost single line looking] salary package for the 2009-2011 term which expires at the end of this year.”

For over three decades NASA has always been at the forefront of all industrial battles and negotiations, making history along the way which not many of us may care to acknowledge. But it is true of our claim that it is indeed one of the most powerful industrial organizations in the country. From the late 1970s to the present NASA has initiated and caused changes to take effect which in turn not only affected the academia but also the public service, indeed the entire work force, throughout the country. Thanks to NASA virtually all the departments, government or private, enjoy the benefits of Domestic Market Allowances, Risk Allowances, Compassionate and Maternal leave benefits – all in line with the academic industrial union’s persistent call for a single line salary for all, irrespective of race, creed, class or gender.

While we can say that some of NASA’s battles have been fought and won we can still concede that there is a lot out there that remains challenging. NASA is well aware of that. With that in mind storyboard decided to give the President a few posers and the response received was invaluable.

On the question of the single line salary this was the President’s response: “NASA has been a pioneer and advocate for a single line salary based on equal work for equal pay principles at the University of Papua New Guinea. This in our view has been partially achieved in the 2009-2011 MOA where national academics can apply for international market allowance (IMA) based on academic and professional merits.”

On the question of accountability and transparency at all levels of UPNG’s performances: “UPNG is a public institution and therefore must be accountable to the people of PNG. This is a public university; both management and academics must be accountable to the public in the delivery of their services. All public funds must be accounted for under the Public and Finance Act.”

On the quality of staffing: “The quality of academic staffing and retention of staffing is essential, based on the attractiveness of the salary remuneration packages and conditions offered by the University at competitive labour market. I do not think remuneration packages are attractive enough to lure international professionals to be competitive with the nationals on equal terms. If you convert the Kina to US or Australian dollars international professors will be worse off at UPNG than in US or Australian universities.”

Other issues at heart affecting NASA? “NASA needs assessment survey or household and income survey, improvement in staff accommodation, the housing scheme of the national staff that needs to be finalized, development of forward looking corporate plans, establishment of a resource centre, creation of a data base for NASA members and the spearheading of an ‘Alliance of Academic Council/forum of PNG’ as a non government body that should encourage participation from other academic associations from various universities in the country; also increase of fund raising efforts for mentor activities at UPNG and support the administration in the development initiatives to provide quality education at UPNG. The alliance should meet annually to exchange ideas that affect learning at respective universities.”

At this point President Elaina Butuna took a slight pause to place an emphasis on NASA’s involvement at both community and national levels. She pointed out that whoever the stakeholders were in carrying out the projects of the Law building and the Science IV building, should consider 2013 as the deadline for the two to be completed. And she continued: “On the national front NASA thanks the Governor of NCD for his leadership and support for the tabling of the Equality and Participation bill now before the Parliament. The executive congratulates the government of the day for taking a bold step in approving the bill which countries like the US and Australia took over some 100 years to support in recognition of women. Actually, without the aggressive support of the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, the Australian government and the UN support for this bill would not have been possible in a traditionally male dominated society. NASA appeals to our good 109 members of Parliament to pass the bill for the sake of your children and posterity. Together we can build a strong vibrant society and together we can achieve the goals of Vision 2050.”

And now for storyboard’s final question, what would the President, as someone from Milne Bay, have to offer by way of advice and words of encouragement to the people of that province?

“I am proud to be from Milne Bay and to join the list of Milne Bay pioneers in various fields of achievement, such as Dinah Frank and her book, Under the Mango Tree, Dame Josephine Abijah, the first female parliamentarian and her book, A Thousand Coloured Dreams, Alice Wedega being the first nominated indigenous member of the LCG and her book, Listen My Country, and many others. Being the first female president of the National Academic Staff Association of UPNG is a special honour and privilege especially leading an all round female NASA executive of an industrial organization. This feels extra special yet it is a daunting task but I am confident with my team to meet all challenges as they themselves are intellectuals and respected citizens in their own right. NASA in my view has taken on a new frontier in its leadership role showing the nation that indeed when it comes to brain power both men and women are on equal footing. All our male NASA colleagues were pleasantly surprised and delighted to see us take on the union’s leadership role. Equally so, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Ross Hynes and his senior management team was delighted and pledged their support for my new executive team. I have pledged our support to the UPNG Management team to ensure that UPNG as a premier University of the Pacific lives up to its expectations both now and in the years to come. My team has a catch phrase, “Excellence in innovative academic leadership”, which we stand on during our term of office. We must rise up and take on new challenges and be partners in nation building.”

A poem by Melissa Sete

2011-11-12T14:20:00.000+10:00

DRIVEN AWAY

Let he who has not fallen

Launch the first boulder

Food and wine

Merriment and laughter

Disguised pride and unforgiven feuds

All these flowed crimson

From the devil’s lips

Tainting the beautiful mural

Set upon by angels

Four years before

Dark shadows flitted in and out

Among foreign silk and fine satin

Leather shoes and crystal cutlery

A meek voice cries out

From where it has been driven

‘What God has joined, who is man to separate?’

Both names have already been inscribed

In tablets of stone

And blood from my womb

Has long before

Fused

Lahara’s poetic stance

2011-11-09T10:17:00.001+10:00

...it is the smile given with the gift of corn, cassava or pawpaw fruit that makes storyboard value lahara’s poetic stance so highly.

When it’s lahara the first thing that comes to storyboard’s mind is music, and the best of jazz pieces at that, plus whiling the afternoon hours away waiting for that ticket from the employers to fly back home to the village. In the village there is that long stretch of white sandy beach upon your favourite island such as Rourakata, and the lobsters, the clams, the reef crabs and occasionally for the faithful youth escort of the village to the islands a moray eel or two sizzling over the fire. (The youth would need that delicacy to look after you well.)

That is how it feels when one flees the city like Port Moresby. But the question that comes to our minds now is what Port Moresby has done to us to force us to escape its significance as the capital of our country. We need to go back to storyboard’s jazz selection of music and reconsider.

The jazz music in question usually coincides with the yellow or gold petals that hang down from tall trees all around Waigani campus in November. In some laharas there is often sufficient drizzle to warrant the arrival of the season. And the flowering trees respond to the season with long hang downs of yellow and gold, so much so the campus and its surrounds bursts into flames of just that – yellow and gold. But not so this year. The atmosphere all around looks as desolate as ever. There has not even been a slight drizzle as yet and it seems this could continue until December. Even the fashionable Highlands women amble about the campus with umbrellas not so much to keep out the rain as to stop that damn sun beating down on them mercilessly. But even they look settled. They don’t want to escape the city. And storyboard believes that our attitude to the city should be like that. Good old Port Moresby.

So then, when there is such a season as lahara any time of the year it is true that storyboard becomes overtly poetic in sentiment, composing or reciting poetry wherever he goes, much to the annoyance of those who walk past him, taking quick disapproving looks at him and then walking on. But what matter. Poetry is beauty; poetry is truth.

The best poems in our lifetime come to us during lahara. It is that time of year, if you are living in Milne Bay, when the direction of the seasonal winds change and begin flowing west and southward so that the northern coastal waters are calm and tranquil as ash spread over water. The waters become so clear that some mornings you can take a peek from your canoe and see the floor beds of the ocean clearly from 20 to 30 feet.

Lahara then becomes that season of credence in a year when we think seriously about recharging our batteries, wherever we are. Hence, the significance of the Lahara program at various UPNG campuses and open colleges throughout the country. Since poetry of the lahara season rules the day people from all walks of life think of coming back to school to rekindle. They may be teachers, public servants, business men and women, informal tradesmen and women, ordinary folk of our country, villagers and so on – they know that at one point or another there must be a common meeting ground for us all to gather, re-consider, reflect and feel refreshed. Ah, good old Lahara.

Sometimes in lahara the southerly winds get a little restless, the weather becomes rough, but it is always in those rough moments that we get good messages coming to us from those higher up in authority. For example, as storyboard writes this he cannot help but recall the prime minister’s visit to the Waigani campus some months earlier. At that time storyboard felt enthralled to see his students from Hela all dressed up in traditional regalia to welcome their fellow villager back to the campus. It was at this time that this villager promised the Waigani population that in his government all education must be free. That every child from prep to Grade 12 at high school and beyond must be given the opportunity to replenish, to rekindle and be free as a citizen of our country. That anyone from prep to Grade 12 and beyond is a representative of our nation’s intelligentsia. And it is his government which will make that as a reality.

But, as storyboard always says, the best poetry of our country usually comes out at lahara. And this poetry has a lot to do with the future generations that surround us a good number of which is found right here in the nation’s capital. Some evenings, as storyboard walks home, these representatives of our very future come out to greet him with kind words. Sometimes with baked corn, cassava or pawpaw fruit, all given away for free. Storyboard fidgets a bit then, trying to find a coin perhaps to give back, but there is often nothing left in his pocket to give away because the day has been exceedingly harsh on his daily budget. Still, it is the smile given with the gift of corn, cassava or pawpaw fruit that makes storyboard value lahara’s poetic stance so highly.

A poem by Deborah Kayuwa

2011-10-02T15:54:00.000+10:00

The sands of Rourakata

Hand in hand we walk

The sands of Rourakata

Regarding footprints

Of a thousand lovers

Before us, eyes locked

Smiles sealing the bond

Of our friendship

A slight breeze

Turns you into burnt paper

I grip your hand firmly

But you are ashes in the wind

I search the moonlit sands

Shining ever so bright and white

For a touch, for a presence

But there is something so black

And magical about this whiteness

This pureness of spirit and serenity

I awaken crying, my face

Buried in my palms

Ah, lover, would Rourakata

Be ever kinder, would a sigh

Suffice as orison just to undo

The spell and bring you

Back to me?

A benchmark in PNG literature

2011-09-22T08:58:00.000+10:00

Some of the writers at the workshop at the Australian High Commission on the eve of Independence celebrations

This year’s Independence celebrations will no doubt include over 40 years of Papua New Guinea writing, now having come of age as our national literature. By a national literature we mean those works on Papua New Guinea written by Papua New Guineans. The first such works were gathered for literary journals as early as 1968, and these were immediately published as “words of paradise” in several journals and anthologies such as Kovave, Words of Paradise and Black Niugini Writing.

Since 1968 Papua New Guinea literature took many forms and a categorization of these as we have noted innumerable times range from protest writing to autobiographies, social commentary, oral literatures and traditions, criticism and genre experimentations. Somewhere along the line feminist theory took its place as a PNG literary discipline under the subheading of gender studies.

Today, through the publications of such works as The Unpainted Mask by Steven Winduo, Gutsini Posa by Regis Stella, Ripples in the Pacific by Paulias Matane and A Remarkable Journey by Carol Kidu we see that such writing, as a “holistic” representation of all creative endeavours, forms a new benchmark in the nation’s literary development. Such writing is now being read widely and studied at universalities throughout the world, including the Pacific region.

Such a literary development was noted to be steady in progress, though there were decades when writers fell silent for one reason or another, but that rate of progress indicated a sure homecoming of a new type of national as much as global literature that was destined to look complete.

A question that comes to mind now is whether or not Papua New Guinea has written enough. That question is best answered by a member of the present generation of writers and scholars, Charmaine Sialis, through the following observation.

“Can PNG literature in its current state of existence be questioned? Absolutely not! It is evident through the number of authors and their works we are reading now, and from the various points of view drawn from these writings, that there is definitely such a thing as PNG literature.”

Sialis continues: “But it is now up to each and every one of us to familiarize ourselves with the material available in PNG literature for educational purposes. Young people are the ones that will benefit more from this because they will learn more about their background and where they originated from. Since [the present generation] grew up in a modernized society, many may not know about their traditions and cultures. By reading PNG literature and applying it [as knowledge], they will be able to preserve our cultures and traditions; therefore, as future leaders, this will ensure the prosperity of Papua New Guinea.”

A question of importance, however, dwells on the amount of intellectual impact this national literature has on off-shore readers, critics, researchers and scholars. That question is usually answered by viewing the thoughts and opinions of outsiders on what we have produced so far as our literature. Critics from the immediate neighbouring regions, such as the Pacific itself, eschew PNG literature but only to a cautious degree. Critics and scholars such as the Indo-Fijian Subramani usually remark that PNG literature can be viewed separately and in its own right. Viewers from neighbouring Australia and New Zealand are seen to be more direct than that, but with a certain air of empathy.

Paul Sharrad from the University of Wollongong in Australia had this to say when he visited UPNG last week. At a private function hosted by Dr Steven Winduo he was somewhat of the opinion that though much has been written to date, that could only be recognized globally if there were seen some pro-active participation from our literary crowd with the international one.

Of course the implication noted there is how much we can achieve at global level after having (for an undergraduate, for example) spent some four years working towards a basic degree in literature. We can only market ourselves internationally if the content of what we study runs shoulder to shoulder with what other tertiary institutions in the world offer. At present, what we see as challenging from assessments and evaluations such as those of Sharrad’s is the fact that what we study at home as literature might lack the substance of canonization in literary studies overall. What Sharrad is hinting at there is that our literature students might leave after four years of strenuous study without knowing who William Shakespeare is or what province he comes from. After all, what is a cultured individual if he lacks the classical aspects of his own culture?

One other point raised by Sharrad which storyboard found intriguing as much as challenging. That since Sharrad himself specializes in postcolonial literature which covers much of the Pacific including Papua New Guinea, and since he is the only one in Australia teaching such a trend in course offerings, there is apparently no one else to teach it upon his retirement. That implies that either there is no one else, apart from his own students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, or that none of our own academics (particularly the young crowd) is considering taking up such a challenge in Australia or in any Australian university as yet. But the amount of professorial movements Dr Steven Winduo seems to be doing these days should indicate some bright prospects in that direction.

Paul Sharrad is highly regarded in this field of academic preoccupations. We must be grateful for his honest opinions on PNG literature to date. That certainly gives us, as a group from this little corner of our nation’s development, cause to celebrate. Paul’s postgraduate students once upon a time included Regis Stella, along with several other Papua New Guineans, including Australians themselves. His extensively researched book on the work of the Samoan writer, Albert Wendt, called “Albert Wendt and Pacific Literature: Circling the Void” has become a monumental publication both for PNG, the Pacific region, and the world. He himself is no stranger to Papua New Guinea having spent the best part of his youth at the Port Moresby International High School.

The seniors: Paul (left) and Russell at UPNG.

A visit to Paradise High School

2011-08-24T12:48:00.001+10:00

The motivation to write

Principal Safak Deliismail and students of Paradise High School enjoying the talk given by Russell Soaba during the National Book Week festivities.

Storyboard felt deeply honoured to be invited by Paradise High School to their National Book Week festivities Wednesday 10^th August. The atmosphere felt at the school could easily be likened to an established writers’ seminar if not a session at a P.E.N. international congress. It was the good questions asked of a writer by the students there that made storyboard feel that way. In a way, the whole afternoon became a “success story” for the school itself.

The first question asked, was: “What motivated you to write and become a success story?”

The answer provided by storyboard was standard enough. It was the same sort of answer any successful writer would give the world over.

The thing that motivated storyboard to write, came the reply then, was that in all his lifetime he had been nothing but a failure. It was that sense of failure that motivated him to write. Even today he has not abandoned the idea of seeing himself as such. And so he must write: not so much to publish and sell as to satisfy a certain curiosity deep within us that gives us the signal that we are not doing enough. But the greatest challenge to all this comes to us when we see what failure means face to face. It is that moment of realization that compels us to go on writing. And we will go on doing this forever.

The second question called for clarification on the notion that storyboard was a “failure”. “Sir, if you regard yourself as a failure, how is it that you are famous, here and overseas?”

To which the response was that storyboard never won any major literary prizes for all that he had written in his lifetime. If there were any reward at all for his work, these came in the form of fellowships and interns that enabled him to pursue his writing career at certain private schools around New England area of the United States when he was in his thirties; and at certain universities as a Writer-in-Residence.

“How old were you when you first published?”

“Sixteen.”

A wow swept through the head of the crowd.

The Principal of the school, Mr. Safak Deliismail, asked if there were any organizations or establishments in place to honour the country’s writers with awards and prizes. Storyboard answered that there were none in PNG, and those elsewhere had their own programs and policy guidelines to follow. “But that should not deter us from writing,” he continued, “from being writers and artists, which is what we are. So then, if we keep on writing, the chances are that we might reach that anticipated hour of success in our art, in our craft, which, if understood and appreciated well enough, will surely raise the whole world to its feet with salutation and cheers.”

Another question, possibly from the Grade 10 section of the crowd, had something to do with storyboard’s favourite myth or legend. What was it? The cassowary story, came the reply. The cassowary story? Where is it from? From the East and West Sepik Provinces, said storyboard. There was a huge round of applause. The student asking the question was from the East Sepik.

“And sir,” asked another, what is your usual reaction when someone says that he or she likes your books very much? I’m talking about Wanpis and Maiba here.”

“I get worried,” replied storyboard. “If my books are described as likeable, or enjoyable, then I begin questioning my own worth as a writer. And this in turn leads me to realize that all good writing is subject to objective literary criticism. It is good criticism that determines the true value of a book. That calls for quality as well. I tell this to my students of literature at the University of Papua New Guinea. And I am telling you this now: your best reader is not the one who says, “I like your books,” but the one who says, “Your books intrigue me.”

“How many books have you written, sir?”

“Just four: two novels, and two volumes of poetry. But now we come to the “success” part of our meeting this afternoon. This should ease your minds a little. Reason why I am well known is that this small number of books is proof enough that I am a very good writer. There is your success story.”

At this point we all realized that time was running out on us. Ms Bronya Kaine, conducting that afternoon’s book week session, announced that there was time for one more question.

The question was: “How long did it take you to write Wanpis?”

“Ten years,” came the reply.

Whistles of disbelief, perhaps; a little of fidgeting here and there. This can’t possibly be the right answer?

“All writing is art, scribbled in a diary that we keep visiting over and over. It starts at an earlier age, such as where you are now. And then we grow up with our writing. Let Mum, when cleaning house, store those diaries in a secure place. Keep on creating those diaries now until you reach your twenties. At that point, come back to all that you have written, arrange and re-arrange them, and there you will see that you have written a novel.”

The applause received then was resounding – an almost standing ovation.

Then the principal rose and thanked his school for choosing to share that Wednesday afternoon with a writer. He pointed out that writers were a special group of people; that you rarely saw them in public places, except at book fairs signing autographs; and that what they thought and wrote was useful advice to people of all walks of life, from ordinary people up to statesmen and leaders of countries.

The faculty of Paradise High School consists of Papua New Guinean and Turkish teachers or patrons and mentors. A student there finds himself or herself in a prestigious position of being a member of an international community of scholars, writers and artists. As he looked around, storyboard was mindful of the fact that the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Literature was Turkish, an important reflection on the academic potential of this new school.

And as he sat down to autograph the school’s copy of Maiba, at the kind request of the principal, he could sense that there was and there is no greater reward, no greater prize, for the writer than to see his books placed in the libraries of those young people so eager to know what writing is all about, such as the student who asked: “How old were you when you first published?”

SBKMC Comp ‘11

2011-08-05T15:07:00.000+10:00

Some of the Mooters in the SBKMCC 2011

By Nou Vada

I spent the whole week preparing for Round 5 of the Sir Buri Kidu Moot Court Competition. The nerves and the stress of preparing written submissions and then oral submissions had gotten to me by the middle of the week. But this is what I had signed up for, and I couldn’t complain and wish for everything to go away; I thought ex nudo pacto non oritur action; and that as such the stress is a part of the consideration in the agreement. I laughed at the thought. Such is true about all things in life, and the Sir Buri Kidu Moot Court Competition is no exception.

So what is the Sir Buri Kidu Moot Court Competition? It is a yearlong Competition where registered UPNG Law students from second year to fourth year go against each other in mock courtroom battles. Students form firms of two to four members and get them registered.

This year, the competition was revived after a one year hiatus. Twenty firms registered as soon as notices for the inception of the Competition were put up; among the ranks was my own team, CR Legal.

The first round kicked off midway through first semester. All twenty teams were pitched one against another. The moot problem given for the first Round was one on defamation; it was an appeal case where the appellant, one Kepas Bigmaus, Member of Parliament was appealing against the decision of the court of first instance which found the respondent, Ruts National Nius Korporesen not liable for allegedly damaging Hon. Bigmaus’s good name and reputation pursuant to the Defamation Act 1962 over a news report and a corresponding editorial about allegations concerning the Appellant’s conduct at a Hotel. In Round 2, teams dealt with a case concerning property law where the plaintiff, one Jenny James was claiming that the defendant’s bank had unfairly settled the mortgaged house she had defaulted payments on.

In the third round all teams were informed that eliminations would begin. For the third round, the case was in the area of Family law, where the appellant, an expatriate was appealing against the decision of the Court of first instance, in awarding the custody of his daughter to her Papua New Guinean mother, the respondent. Every team had, for every round, gone against another, either as plaintiff against defendant or as appellant against respondent. After the third round the bottom four teams were sent packing.

The remaining 16 went to battle in Round 4, where the case at hand was a tricky one. It was about a highway robbery. The trickiness of it was in the course of action that was taken; the victim of the robbery took the Village Leader of the village next to the area where the robbery happened to Court, claiming that the village leader could’ve prevented such a robbery as the culprits were from that village. The case, which was an appeal, dealt with one of the most complex areas of Law in Papua New Guinea – the Underlying Law. The Underlying Law is a branch of the laws of Papua New Guinea that is to be developed chiefly by the Courts. Ideally and in a nutshell it is to use the customary law of the Peoples of Papua New Guinea and the common law of England, as well as case law from similar jurisdictions as Papua new Guinea to develop a dynamic body of laws that is uniquely Papua New Guinean; an integral part of what the Late Bernard Narakobi often referred to as the Melanesian Jurisprudence. Round 4’s case required the Moot teams who were appealing for the victim to invoke the custom of Papua New Guinea, successfully plead it and justify its use with the help of real PNG cases, and then convince the court to modify the Tort law of Negligence which is a product of the Common Law of England, to create a kind of composite law that descends from both PNG custom and English law, that would find the village leader liable for a civil wrong based on customary duty of care. We joked that it was a House of Lords meets Haus Tambaran scenario.

This week, only twelve teams remain. Behind the scenes a lot of meticulous planning is involved in keeping the competition running. The Competition is co-ordinated by the Moot Court Committee. Consisting of Academic staff from the School of Law and a dedicated team of students, the Committee oversees co-ordinating of teams and ensures teams get their problems and hand back in the written submissions on time. The Committee then makes sure that the Moot Judges, practicing lawyers who volunteer their time and skill to preside over each session in a Round arrive at the venue and get properly briefed. The committee organizes logistics and refreshments for each round and also co-ordinates the Judges Associates’, mostly law freshmen, who assist the Judge during sessions.

In Round 5, the case in question is a criminal matter and the remaining twelve teams will either represent the Appellants or the State, which is the respondent.

The Moot Court has many benefits to those who’ve signed up for it. It builds confidence and gives an opportunity to practically engage the concepts, processes and rules that students study every day. As one of the Moot Judges once put it to me, “It’s not about winning or losing the case, it’s about how well and how efficiently you can assist the court in finding Justice because that’s what it’s really all about, finding Justice; the stress of the profession”.

I thought about this ‘stress of the profession’ in contrast to this stress I was going through preparing to represent the State in this imaginary case. A flurry of different feelings came; silliness, pride, happiness, satisfaction, fatigue, and then silliness again.

UPNG 2011 and Wanpis

2011-08-01T16:12:00.003+10:00

By Nou Vada

This week I scheduled an interview with Laken Lepatu, the charismatic Vice-President of the Student Representative Council at the University of Papua New Guinea. My questions to him were about the Student Allowance system that has been proposed by the Government, and why he thought it was necessary. Of course on campus a popular petition has been in circulation seeking signatures from registered UPNG students to petition Parliament to have the system passed in its November seating.

“If the Government is really serious about obtaining the 54000 university graduates a year as it envisions in the Medium Term Vision 2010-2015, it must invest in its students”. Lepatu continued, “Students are state assets. The government must completely subsidize all the school fees for tertiary students for the year 2012 and onwards. The fortnightly student allowance of K13.00 must be re-introduced to help these students; these future leaders of the country augment whatever little rations they can afford with whatever little their wantoks assist them with”. The revelations are nothing new and have been stated and restated countless times by countless student leaders, nevertheless, the truth and more so the urgency in these statements do not diminish.

Laken described the scenario unapologetically, “It is necessary to have this thing in place. Many of us here on Campus come from the villages and it is very hard to support ourselves.”

The model student that Lepatu describes is as it happens, the protagonist in Wanpis, who starts out his humble journey in All Saints’, a boarding school in Oro Province. He has a step-sister in his village in Milne Bay and a mother, both of whom he leaves away from for 9 years as he attends two boarding schools in succession. After his last year of school he returns to find his mother has died, and his half-sister, a frail woman at just nineteen, fearful of the future. The protagonist never knows his father. And this is one of the silent, maybe subliminal themes that the story addresses. Only at the end of the book does the question of who the protagonist’s father is sneaks up on the reader. The result is a beautiful distortion of emotions that rush to you almost as an onslaught of loud, topical afterthoughts.

The 176 page book has 3 lengthy sections. Each can almost be read as a stand-alone short story. The section titles are Lusman, Split-yolk Nostalgia and Wanpis. These three almost short stories come together to form a novel that is philosophical and poetic and yet so honest-to-God. The protagonist’s rigid approach to an admirer of his, Sheila Jivi La, who is to later become his wife, is as comical as it is apprehensively helpless. Characters like Just-Call-Me-Joe (J.C.M Joe or Joseph Bikman) and Sophie, the white expatriate student who reviles her expatriate status and her whiteness are what could be regarded as unrounded characters – that is, characters not fully formed and developed, but in the attitude of the book, the reader is expected to leave bona-fide literary analysis at the door, that this is Papua New Guinea where you expect the unexpected, in the people and in their stories.

Just-Call-Me-Joe becomes a student politician, an undergrad revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Nationalist Black Power Student Movement, but at the end all he wants, all he ever really longs for, with all his revolutionary philosophies and his firebrand leadership is fame and fortune. Soaba presents UPNG as it was in the 1970s when Wanpis was written and as one who studies there right now will acknowledge, not much has changed. There are still student forums held at the Forum Square and there are maverick student leaders, maybe without (maybe with) the ambition distorted intents of Just-Call-Me-Joe.

I met up with Laken fresh off a meeting with the Government. He was very local about the hardships that ordinary students face on campus. He told me about the 8% increase in tuition fees and the 21% increase in Board and Lodging fees that the students had to pay for this academic year and he stressed the fear that the school fee would indeed increase again next year. I asked why the SRC of UPNG was targeting the Government and not the UPNG Council.

“The University Council pointed fingers at the Government.”

According to Lepatu, it was the former Finance Minister and current Works Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill’s encouraging statements that prompted the SRC to act, not in civil disobedience, but in support of such an initiative hinted by the Minister on the 19^th May edition of this newspaper where he was quoted as saying “Our economy is growing at 8% and we need quality human resource to put this economic growth into reality... I see no reason why, with such money, we cannot give back fortnightly allowances and subsidize school fees for students in tertiary institutions”.

After meeting with Laken, I stood around the Forum Square for awhile. This small arena has been the sight of many a powerful student rally. In Wanpis, the protagonist after walking back to school from Hohola where he falls from the door of a moving PMV, and arrives to find a student rally in progress at Forum Square. The protagonist of course is a freshman and finds the atmosphere tense. The tense atmosphere of student rallies at the Forum Square, with all its now-or-never sentiments and emotional flare is a uniquely UPNG experience.

Wanpis, in its first two chapters deals with UPNG and the hope and despair it can represent. These two chapters deal with the philosophical musings of someone who has come to University as an elite, a lusman still, but an elite. Wanpis deals with the UPNG experience of broadening one’s mind, engaging in drunken philosophical arguments with friends, fighting in the name of your race and ethnicity, on campus romance and the contemplation of leaving school – things all students at UPNG go through. At the heart of all this is the concept of the Lusman, someone who is on transit to somewhere, someone who is looking for his identity and the meaning of life, who has left his village beyond the hills of Port Moresby and has come to create a destiny and recreate a context for his past. The Lusman as presented in Wanpis is so much more than a mere description a student; it a body of philosophy that the regular UPNG student thinks, experiences and derives himself from and it is that thing a former UPNG student in the workforce misses and reminisces over; a split-yolk nostalgia of some sort.

The Lusman of Wanpis is the student Laken Lepatu and like-minded student leaders have in mind to be the beneficiaries of these proposals the SRC is pushing for.

Norway's fearful Friday

2011-07-29T14:55:00.002+10:00

What a sad day!

I was in my car all day, driving home from friends in Sweden. I followed my plan to stay north of Oslo, and passed that area an hour before the bomb went off. I even drove by the shore of the lake where many youngsters were shot and killed two hours later. My radio was on all day and the continuous updates just turned more and more horrifying and unbelievable as I was driving westward. Now I’m back in my house. It’s just before midnight and I have seen the Prime minister and others giving their comments, condolences and reactions on TV.

This day is going to affect the whole nation in several ways and for years and decades. In the next few days we will find out who are among the victims, and in a small country like Norway so many will be personally affected. I also know people working in the buildings that were bombed in Oslo. I keep my fingers crossed.

That is Jan Hasselberg writing close to midnight, Friday, 22^nd July, in the quiet of his home in Bergen, Norway.

By midnight and Saturday morning 23^rd July he will have emailed that message to friends and acquaintances everywhere, including storyboard and many others in Papua New Guinea.

A sad day indeed for Norway, a country as small as ours.

Readers will remember Jan Hasselberg. He was among that little group of writers gathered at the Tufi Dive Resort upon a weekend of March earlier this year (4-6/03/11). See The Literary Marvels of Tufi. Jan (pronounced Young) described himself then as “itinerant Tufi resident” when storyboard met him and as always was busy at his lap top in between conversations that sometimes touched lightly on the similarities of fjords in Norway and those of Tufi.

“Is Norway as peaceful as our Tufi surroundings here?” storyboard asked Jan once. No, came the prompt reply, my country is just as bad as any story you hear about corruption in your country, and away he would go. There were the logging disturbances at Collingwood Bay, he would maintain; where is there peace anywhere on this globe for us sad writers and artists. Are we way out? Are we odd? He was a nice man to meet and strike up a conversation with. All the more nicer to hear that he is safe and sound where by this time the varying theories on this notion of the “terrorist” entity is further engulfing the norms of ordinary human concentration. And then again all sorts of questions are being asked and slung as weapons by one group of humanity against another, one religious sect against another, one extreme against another, and so on and so forth.

In Papua New Guinea we are not quite used to such threats of “unrestful silences” as Conrad would put it straight from the “heart of darkness”, or violence, if we can describe them as that. But oh, yes, we do have our own notion of civil or social differences, and nine times out of ten we deal with them successfully, almost every day of our lives – but not in as horrifying a manner as those bombings and wanton slayings as in Norway or elsewhere which, unfortunately for us, require a lot of theorizing. And these theories lead nowhere else but to utter confusion which the so-called civilized parts of the globe regard as rational thinking. One needs only look up the blogs, read the newspapers and view various channels of the TV box to see what all that is about.

When Jan Hasselberg sat down to write at his desk in the peace and quiet of Tufi in March earlier this year he felt he was far removed from the hum drum of intellectual noise that affects much of Europe today, at this very hour. We see a man carrying on with his life upon the age of retirement, going out to open sea, tasting the salt air, scuba diving or fishing, then coming back to a lovely evening and a dinner table laden with crabs and oysters. The only moment of disturbance he felt there and then was the way humanity began to meddle with ancient and ancestral land marks such as Keroroa (Mt Victory, so named after Lord Nelson’s battleship). He even wrote a nice coffee table type of article called “Keroroa is weeping” which covers much of the logging activities that go on around Collingwood Bay area. A full text of that article will appear shortly in one of the storyboard blogs.

Some of the information regarding the tragedy of Norway mentioned here comes from Jan’s fellow Norwegian citizen, Aslak Sira Myhre (guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 July 2011 13.25 BST). There we get into the inner workings of such modes of “unrestful silences”. That in turn forces us to wonder, as a very small country and far removed from the rest of the world, if what we hear about Norway will eventually reach our shores one day. Those premonitions we are not in the position to see, but we do have our own moments of uncertainty and doubt. And though we are often described as “the land of the unexpected” our choice of taking the middle ground of things seems to be adamant. But that should not mean we have a fate we will never know.

A further reading of Aslak Sira Myhre’s lamentation leads one to some sort of conclusion that Norway’s tragedy affects us all in one way or another. Those awkward yet indefinable moments of “unrestful silences” become our mystery as much as any other cultural group or setting. But as we read Myhre’s opinions as well as others we take particular note of the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s remarks that what we all need in times like these is “more democracy and openness.”

Now as writers we should know how to interpret such a phrase: that we must talk about things that bother us; that we must be alert about the next step we take; and that in this modern age of hi-tech distractions, it is best we keep our fingers busy with every strum of the guitar chord, with every turn of the pen on paper. And out of all that comes the anticipated poetry and song. That is where the dance is.

Hollywood’s misconceptions about Papua New Guinea

2011-07-22T15:28:00.001+10:00

By Nou Vada

“I’m finished with this crap. I’m going to Papua New Guinea. I’m outa here. I’m going off the grid. No more franchises. No more botox. No more ‘Oh, let’s clone another sheep’... and certainly no more sexual harassment suites...”

These are the remarks made by one of the characters in the 2008 Hollywood flick Accepted, starring Justin Long (Die Hard 4.0), Jonah Hill (The Rocker) and Maria Thayer. The character in question – what I’ll describe as a cynical old man – speaks of Papua New Guinea as a care-free, backward country where progress and civil ethics are irrelevant in society. To another 2008 Hollywood flick, The Condemned, starring World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin, Papua New Guinea is the host country to a globally broadcast free-for-all reality show where the contestants – hard-core criminals from around the world – are let out into the Sepik jungles to kill each other, the last surviving contestant winning his freedom. Accepted and The Condemned are examples of film that portray a bad image of Papua New Guinea to the world. These films impress on movie-goers everywhere that Papua New Guinea is an outrageously dangerous place to visit.

Then there are films which completely distort Papua New Guinean culture. There are so many I’ve seen and would mention if I had the time to properly research them, but I’ll mention two. I suspect many Papua New Guineans did notice that in the cannibal Island in the Caribbean that Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp) deserts to in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the face-paint worn by a couple of natives is distinctly Papua New Guinean; the most obvious of these is the bright yellow of the Wigmen of Southern Highlands and Hela, which in the film, is worn by one such cannibal native of the West Indies. One more film comes to mind. Bruce Lee in New Guinea, a flick made after the death of the real Bruce Lee and was a product of the Kung-Fu craze that had engulfed popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s. In that film, the Bruce Lee inspired protagonist sets off to investigate a special type of martial arts practiced in the New Guinea Islands. The film’s depiction of New Guinea Islanders is awful. Papua New Guinean natives are played by Asians. The bilas these ‘natives’ adorn themselves with are those of American Indians. I recall now my father in a movie-buff’s rage taking the disc out of the VCD player and breaking it.

There are so many more examples of inaccurate and ignorant portrayals of Papua New Guinean society and culture in motion pictures. The issue I put forward to whoever else noticed was why this was so. General awareness of Papua New Guinea around the world is poor. Those who have heard of Papua New Guinea will usually say the things films like Accepted and The Condemned present; that Papua New Guinea is a primitive and dangerous yet beautiful exotic paradise. Our efforts to turn this country into an international tourist destination are made difficult with such an existing global perception of our country. I wondered why big budget Hollywood film franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean would make such ignorant blunders and so I raised the question with one of UPNG’s Art and Culture experts; the image of the ‘Asian-apache’ New Guinea Islanders and the touch-down of a G6 private jet aircraft in what could only be a fabled international airport in the bush of Aitape as in The Condemned were fresh in my mind.

The expert’s response was as enlightening as it was heavy. “Papua New Guineans are partly to blame for all this”, he said, referring to the mis-portrayals of our country in film. I asked him how it could be. “Well, you people haven’t done enough films about yourselves and your country,” came the response. I felt the devastation of this truth hit me hard. Harder still was this confused feeling I felt that I was somehow personally blameworthy for this truth. I had championed the chorus of condemnation against Hollywood and film industries elsewhere for portraying Papua New Guinean society and culture so negligently, never once had I stopped that this negligent portrayal was simply the by-product of our own inability to show the film makers of the world and the world at large on film what real Papua New Guinean society and culture is. Film makers and screen-writers aren’t cultural anthropologists; the most primary knowledge of content they’ll have recourse to is the work of other film makers rather than academic sources. The thought was profound. Papua New Guinea hasn’t made enough films about Papua New Guineans and Papua New Guinea for film makers elsewhere to know exactly what Papua New Guinea is and looks like.

The gloominess gave way to a feeling of urgency. I returned to my dorm, determined as ever to settle a screen-play the general idea of which had been sifting around in my mind for quite a while. The setting of the story is UPNG in the present. I imagined it would be at its core a love story, but I’d throw in a bit of socio-political undertones as well. In all honesty, I hadn’t decided how this love story would unfold. To that extent some of my friends came in with different angles and plots and twists to these plots; mostly derived from their own experiences in UPNG. Over the next few nights we discussed this as a yet unwritten screenplay. We thought of the quirky characters we could put in, the contemporary and political symbolism and imagery we could deploy. We decided a policeman would be a character and in honour of the Major we were studying, we’d put a Law student in the story – a kind of tortured soul. I was interested in the music we could use. I thought Wass Kadoi’s Vaisi would be a good soundtrack for a montage scene in the film.

The screenplay is still not written. Like many other good ideas Papua New Guinea literary artists wish to pursue, there is no clear future for such a screenplay if I finished it tomorrow. We need a film industry in Papua New Guinea. The true fault of the current inaccuracy and ignorance in portraying PNG in film lies with Papua New Guinea itself. Not to pardon the blunders of film makers, but this is the true gist of the issue.

Nou Vada is our regular guest writer on this blog and the National Weekender.

The Unforgetable Yonki Dam

2011-07-20T15:06:00.001+10:00

By Lee Whiejin

Photo courtesy of Malum Nalu

The Yonki Dam, located in the Eastern Highlands, has become a household name in Papua New Guinea. The hydroelectric power plant on this dam has supplied electricity to five neighboring provinces. In my imagination the dam itself did seem to be huge and impressive. In fact from afar the seeming enormity of the dam was not even visible, and the dam was ensconced in the surroundings. The dam did not seem to evidence any feel of artificiality. The construction of such a big dam would usually show a stark contrast with the backdrop nature of mountain hills and river.

The embankment used as a road was not seen to be elevated, but on an even level with roads on both edges of the dam. I could barely notice its artificial shape and enormous size only when I stood in the middle of the dam and looked down upon the clear water falling down at the edge of water slope. The water did not flow over the steep downward slope, but under the slope due to dry season. It would be marvelous if the floodgate were open and let water run down the slope. The flow of water would have made a big noise. Though it was a man-made installation, it did not smell of any unbalanced, unnatural aspect. The location of the dam became part and parcel of the nature, assimilated into the mountains and Ramu River. I marvelled at the design and construction of the dam. People did talk about the Yonki dam not as much because of power generation, but because it contained natural elements as part of the river and valley.

Electric power is considered as one of the main pillars in economic growth. Needless to say, without power factories cannot be run, and people might have to live in darkness once the sun sets. Formerly economic development has entailed environmental destruction, the shadow in its wake. But now it is to be long-term, taking into account the possible side effects upon the posterity, and should be economically sustainable and eco-friendly. Among the various ways of generating power, using wind, tidal wave and sunlight is still under development and costly, though regarded as the power of the future. While the current main mode of power generation is hydroelectric, fuel and nuclear and has its own strength and weakness, hydroelectric power seems to stand out. PNG is blessed with plentiful rainfall throughout the year, adequate natural environment for hydroelectric power. It is anticipated that several other hydropower plants like the Yonki could be built, and benefit spread to every corner of this country.

The Yonki hydropower plant was built 20 years ago by the Hyundai Construction Co., then the flagship of the Hyundai conglomerate led by the late mythical businessman Chung Juyoung. He had natural talent for business, though of short schooling. Underpinned by his vision and leadership, the company had made a great leap forward, working miracle in the business world. The Yonki dam was part of his great feat.

Speaking of power supply, most dwellers in and around Port Moresby have heard of the Hanjung Kanudi power plant, whose power generating capacity is 24 MW, meeting about 30 % of electricity demand in NCD. The Kanudi plant, currently operated by Hanjung Heavy industries, is expected to be transferred to the PNG government in 2014.

His Excellency Lee Whiejin, our guest writer this week, is the South Korean Ambassador to Papua New Guinea.

Election Fever – A Rower’s Song revisited

2011-07-15T14:33:00.000+10:00

“Elections in Paradise

Beer, rice and tinpis

The vote enticer”

Steven Winduo summarises election fever in Papua New Guinea in that one stanza. The stanza gives me a flashback to the last General Election, where in my village, maverick campaign managers came around with packets of rice and sugar to buy votes. The image of one such maverick manager comes to my mind so clearly. He was one of those villagers who disappeared from village-life years on end and spawned around at times when you only began to miss them. This campaign manager gave my mother packets of rice and sugar. I remember him now all these years later because he had such a skill justifying his bribery.

He said the goods were not bribes; rather they were gifts and even before Mother could say something he added that rejection of these “gifts” would adversely affect what I’ll now term as social and cultural efficacy. His reason was that every other household in our clan of houses had accepted the “gifts” and for my mother not to do so would cause scandal and possibly conflict. He spoke of the latter so tactfully it was impressive rather than apprehensive. The proposition as a whole was clever. My mother at the end accepted the gifts, and indeed we all saw them as gifts rather than bribes.

The poem Elections in Paradise is taken from A Rower’s Song, which is Dr. Winduo’s third book of poems. It is just 1 of 104 poems in the book which were written between 2000 and 2009 and capture the essence of this period in Papua New Guinea’s history. It was a period of deconstructing hopelessness that had become so structural in nature, and in our endeavours to do so our country entered “once more into the breach”, as Shakespeare would’ve put it.

The book carries in its poems stories of life in Port Moresby. Stories of settlements and villages like the one I lived in last election, of city suburbs and betel nut markets, and of those who long for the light, ideologically even literally (yes, city blackouts).

The characters in the poems are the characters of Port Moresby. These are Betel nut vendors, second-hand clothing merchants, charismatic street preachers, vulgar-tongued drunkards, church-going mothers and hangover fathers and little street seller kids.

The poems have that essence of contemporary Papua New Guinean society that everyday Papua New Guineans, especially those of us in Port Moresby live in. The cacophony and the stillness of these poems are moving because they are distinctly Papua New Guinean and Melanesian. Few pieces of Western literature come close to capturing this essence. Sir V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street is one novel I know that does.

Succession and destiny is one of the over-arching themes you’ll find in A Rower’s Song. In Little Star, a father wonders if his son could be the next leader. In Beggar, a tale of Papua New Guinean election culture is told. In One Nation, familiar laments of everyday Papua New Guinean are echoed. One particularly moving line in One Nation goes,

“Stand up for your future

The ones your children and mine

Will Judge

In their own time”

Next year is election year in Papua New Guinea. The Storyboard revisits A Rower’s Song by Dr. Steven Winduo and reminds everyone that whatever happens to this country, we can be sure of two things; firstly, we will only have ourselves to blame as voters of Public Office and secondly,

Papua New Guinea’s literary artists will document the moods, the emotions and the stories of the times in their work.

To that effect, we can say there arises a third certainty; that whenever such work is published, we at the Storyboard will discuss and dissect it for you.

Whatever happens and whoever you vote in Election year 2012, let us remember the last stanza of Elections in Paradise:

“Election is on everyone’s lips

As if politicians are the only ones

Who build a country?”

By Nou Vada

The writer is a keen follower/guest writer of the storyboard and is a second year Law major at the University of Papua New Guinea.