A lahi dairi for Ulli Beier

Something we have to do lest we forget.

It is the sorrow of the lonely and the burning of the dead. When a member of the community passes on we hold the ritual of emptying the house, bringing out all the possessions and where possible burning the clothes that won’t be worn any more. A head dress, a dancing gear, the bagis and musical instruments, all distributed among neighbours or burnt. And then, when the spirits are appeased, we carry on with life.

Motsy David, a lecturer in Theatre Arts at UPNG along with storyboard feels that we must do that in honour of Professor Ulli Beier. Ulli Beier was the first Professor of the Literature Department of the University of Papua New Guinea. He is survived by wife Georgina and sons Sebastian and Tunji. But he is also friend and family to many Papua New Guineans.

Now there are so many things that can be said about Ulli Beier, here as much as elsewhere in the world. But storyboard has his own story to tell about the man.

He was not quite that man that a student would look at from a safe distance and say, “That’s professor so-and-so” and then get scared of walking up to say hello or talk to. He was so down to earth that a student would hardly believe he was a professor at all. But his name rang loud and clear at literary and art festivals and conference tables throughout the world. Whether it was Lagos or London or New York, or somewhere in mid-Europe, people knew who Ulli Beier was, what he was really about.

In 1977 storyboard found himself in the studios of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos, being interviewed by newscasters there about literature in Papua New Guinea. As much as the names Wole Soyinka or Chinua Achebe, and counterpart names such as Vincent Eri and Albert Maori Kiki, the name Ulli Beier kept coming into the mind as a reminder that his influence in virtually any literary and artistic albeit cultural setting was enormous. Who could do without a name like Ulli Beier in the academia or the book publishing world, particularly in the 60s and 70s?

In December of the same year storyboard again found himself walking within the grounds of the Sydney Opera House in the company of random site-seers when one of whom asked if he knew Ulli Beier. Yes, said storyboard; as a matter of fact he sent me here, to represent PNG at the 42^nd P.E.N. International Congress. A further exchange revealed that the man was from Harper and Row Publishers reputed to be the biggest American publishing house then. He also was interested in “work” by Ulli Beier, meaning literature written by Papua New Guineans under the entrepreneurship of Beier. But his request came too early perhaps at around that time because Ulli Beier himself was in the process of discovering the so-called finest writer in Papua New Guinea.

Some six years later storyboard, again, found himself at a little place called John Hay Library, belonging to Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (USA), where he came across a fine volume of folk poetry from Papua New Guinea. The editor? Why, Ulli Beier, of course. It was the finest little publication storyboard had ever seen and to own it would mean luxury in the Western world. Made of tapa cloth in design as cover, all art work carefully done by Georgina Beier, it contains works by Albert Maori Kiki, Allan Natachee, Kauage, Jakupa, Akis and some of the earlier and most unheard of names in PNG literature, not to mention a few familiar ones from Ulli Beier’s creative writing classes of the 60s. Now John Hay Library is famous for the rare books and manuscript category of cataloguing, and finding Ulli Beier there meant that he had had quite an impact even around that area of New England. The other possible places of rarity as far as books are concerned would be Yale and Princeton if not Harvard. But that was it. The man was there, already, and represented by a highly affluent book binder around New Jersey/Connecticut area.

He was interested in books as much as art and wood carvings. But his interest in that category of art far exceeds an anthropologist’s vision of discovering a new idea, a new race of people altogether, and defining these. No, Ulli Beier did more than that. He did not just discover the Papua New Guinea mind, and a creative one at that. He found a new definition that far exceeds any dimension of art, Western, Oriental or other. It was a separate world altogether where both entities merge to form that new definition, that new meaning. For all art is an endless search of new discoveries and meanings. In Papua New Guinea Ulli Beier found his art and set his mind at rest.

Peter Trist’s email to storyboard Tuesday 5^th April reads in part: “Ulli died on Sunday 3rd April, 2011 after a long illness. He was 88 and lived a long eventful and productive life.

He often spoke of you with warmth and affection and followed your career with much interest.”

When storyboard was completing his matriculation at a Melbourne high school in the late 60s one of his ambitions was to meet this great professor of literature in person. Providence had been kind. Ulli Beier joined the faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea at around that time, and also at a time when the colonial world doubted if a “university” would be established in the Territory. But what that doubting world quite overlooked was the fact that the new school, under Gunther’s Vic-Chancellorship, was actually in the process of recruiting the best there was in the world. And that is how Ulli Beier came to Papua New Guinea.

At the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies John Kolia, a naturalized citizen and under Ulli Beier’s directorship in the late 70s and early 80s, wrote so many good stories about the simple yet believable lifestyle of the locality that surrounded him. Among those writings was a careful mention of the scared essence of lahi dairi, a certain kind of communal gathering that signifies the sorrows of the lonely and the burning of the dead. There is a bit of feasting involved in this all on account of saying good bye to the ones gone and celebrating the notion that life must continue.

We at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences which houses the Literature and Language, Journalism and Creative Arts, Political Science, the Anthropology and Sociology and the History, Philosophy and Gender Studies strands, along with Modern Languages, do believe sincerely that a lahi dairi is in order, shortly, and in honor of this great professor of literature who at once decolonized and accommodated the minds of both sides of the world. 

A lahi dairi will be held in Ulli Beier's honour at the University of Papua New Guinea at a date to be set immediately after the University's graduation Day (29th April). There will be an entire afternoon of memorial service, speeches, an exhibition, poetry recitals, short drama sketches, food and drinks, commemorating the life of this great man who lived (and still does) among us.

Aioni, Ulli, and kagutoki

He was a great man indeed, a friend, mentor and adviser to those who have become wise in the world of arts and letters. His contribution to the development of PNG Literature and in particular his leadership in decolonizing the mind on both sides of the world will not be easily forgotten.

Evidence of his leadership can be seen in the great men that surround us today and they are all leaders in their chosen fields of vocation in PNG, among them prime ministers, academics, writers and artists.

Aioni, Ulli.

From the ridges

echoes are distant strangers

in the harbour

not even poem bridges

fly midnight winds

of escape

my songs are ancient dreams

of another place

another time

and were those songs

not what we enjoy now?

Photos, this & above: showing the Ulli Beier Castle and Estate, otherwise known as the Ulli Beier Arts Centre, built by the University of Papua New Guinea writers and artists in his honour long after he had left PNG to live in Australia.

                                                                           

 Aikaikaivem, Ulli; always a friend.

The modawa tree, fenced in, yet symbolic of those good things in life that we often discard or choose to do without; and yet look how they survive. The Anglicans in Papua New Guinea speak of this species of the rosewood tree in reverence and with a greater sense of respect because it represents those beautiful things we sow, as farmers would, and then watch them grow, survive for centuries. Thus, our tribute to Professor Ulli Beier through whose influence in the written word Papua New Guinea finally gained its political independence from Australia. Adieu, Ulli.

 

Reading into a story

"It was raining outside. Alotau was entering its wet season...Dasaid nodded with a smile, then sat back in his chair, listening to the music of the night’s rain and immortal silence.”

Those sentences come from a short story titled: “Introducing Dasaid.” It was written and published in 1979 but has been re-written and popularized so much readers think it was written just yesterday.

Anyway, the protagonist of that story, Dasaid, is a product of colonialism, one might say, though he himself would consider his own character and faculty of thought as otherwise. That is, he would prefer to be regarded as Dasaid; nothing more, nothing less.

In that story an attempt is made by Dasaid’s contemporaries, and post-contemporaries alike, to scrutinize and deconstruct his being thoroughly to find flaws, if any, in his character. They find little or none and this puzzles them somewhat. Ultimately, the colleagues send out what appears to be their “secret weapon” in the person of Yoyo, a tutor in Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea. Yoyo manages to hunt down Dasaid at Alotau where a three-day interview is conducted with the latter.

After which, Yoyo returns to the Waigani campus more frustrated than ever, just to declare to his superiors: “The guy is impossible. He just cannot be engaged in a reasonable conversation.”

To which, this reply from one of his post-graduate supervisors, with a knowing smile and taking up the pen to acquit the cost of the trip: “One should imagine so, considering how impressively deceptive things can get if one wishes to interview this – this music of night rains and immortal silences.”

Thereupon, Yoyo walks away biting a lip of covetous irritation for Dasaid more than the regret of his having had taken the trouble, at all, once in his many moments of studentship conviviality, to read Freud and Derrida. Freud because one is given a leeway in “reading into a story” and Derrida because one has the opportunity of beating around the bush a bit (which is a favourite preoccupation of academics everywhere) before reaching the conclusion that really there is no point in arguing over a given text.

And it is true. One cannot interview “the music of a night’s rain and immortal silence.”

Of course, the trapping that Yoyo got himself into was that in meaning to interview Dasaid it was he, Yoyo, who was interviewed albeit treated as the subject. Dasaid never said a word beyond a few gestures of greetings and offers of cigarettes during their so-called three day interview.

But that is Dasaid, a fictitious character; and that is how he wants others to regard him. The more we try to know such a character, the more vulnerable we become in laying bare our own weaknesses and shortcomings.

And now to the point of what storyboard is getting at here: the use of language and choice of words.

In that short story, which runs for a page a half, everything about grammar in the English language is present – except the auxiliary verb. There are doing verbs, certainly; but there are no pre-qualifiers to them.

According to the author of this story, pre-qualifiers are allowable items that help decorate a creative piece of writing. But they are not absolutely necessary.

By pre-qualifiers we mean certain probables such as “Thou mayest” or “Thou mayest not” and so on. These are missing. And if we asked the author why this was so, he would, aside from recommending “Thou shalt not”, promptly reply: “They are unnecessary burdens that distract more than help tell the truth.”

Upon the shelves of filing cabinets such pre-qualifiers, if included as parts of records in libraries and archives, can turn out to be less reliable than truthful. In many cases they may become cause or causes of human conflict. A document among them, for example, might read as follows: “Where two or three are gathered in the name of justice to preside over the case of a senior officer’s misconduct in office involving misappropriation of millions in the nation’s earnings, the onus lies within the power of the said three to determine whether or not the worthy and learned senior officer may be penalized.” You can see the obvious, now, regarding the auxiliary verbs. They mean a complete waste of everybody’s time. Woe unto that native English speaker who claims to know his own language well, while in fact he should be the one telling us, “Guilty. Penalize him.”

And so we go back to our selection of sentences again and realize how much of the unnecessary jargon has been left out, all in the name of truth:

“It was raining outside. Alotau was entering its wet season. Dasaid rolled a third cigarette and asked Yoyo if he wanted it. Yoyo quickly got up from his chair and took it. He lit it and sat down, smoking hurriedly, greedily, until the cigarette burnt out... Dasaid nodded with a smile, then sat back in his chair, listening to the music of the night’s rain and immortal silence.”

Now, delicate reader, feel free to attack the passage. Dissect it, deconstruct it, analyse it as much as you must because the protagonist has given the nod with a smile. The auxiliaries are missing. And thank God the story was written by someone who never became the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.

The literary marvels of Tufi

From left: Drusilla Modjeska, Hilary McPhee, Max Forman, Storyboard, John Wesley Vaso and (front) Jan Hasselberg.

What is it about the fjords of Tufi that makes them special in Papua New Guinea?

Snorkelling? Scuba-diving? Fishing? Lobsters or crayfish at the dinner table? Or the land mass of Tufi itself with so many fjords and estuary-looking bays and inlets that go zigzagging north and south of its coastline? Or the villager who would like to sit down with us, his visitors, and tell us about those days when the Kotofu ruled the surrounding hills and mountains, including the fjords that go deep into the sides of the mountains; those days when the warrior kotofu rushed down to the shores with spears to welcome strangers in large sailing vessels; or those days when a certain class of kotofu met and negotiated with the visitors over a certain portion of the fjords for the price of a few sticks of tobacco and axes?

From whatever aspect we look at the fjords, the answers to those questions are numerous. Some answers can set our minds at rest. But there are answers, questions in fact, that are waiting there, yet to be asked or answered, in order to make us all feel at ease.

One of these questions would be the fjords themselves, as looked at from the point of view of writing and generally literature. That was what storyboard went to find out last weekend at the request of fellow writers from Australia and Papua New Guinea wanting to treat the resort as a central meeting place. There several questions were raised and answered – but only to a degree; since a lot was in want of (should one say) investigation.

One of the things looked at was in the area of writing novels. Now Drusilla Modjeska, a long time visitor and friend to the people of Tufi, had always wanted to write a novel about that part of the world. And now she feels she has completed the manuscript. But the thing that makes her hesitate a little about publishing it is the fact that she feels she is an outsider looking at a setting that is outside her own view.

How can one overcome such a dilemma, one may ask. Well, storyboard and those around Tufi area who know Drusilla very well, think that this can be done by having the author accompanied by friends in the know sit down and talk about the book with the villagers before going into press. And this is what storyboard went over to Tufi to do: to talk about the book with friends in the village and set a date for its launching nowhere else but at that village.

The book is about a mountain, which could be Mt Lamington or anyone of the highest mountains around Tufi Wanigela area. It is well narrated using that mountain as a metaphor and this becomes the central theme which in turn poses as a web weaving all the different language groups of the area together. In short, it is a novel about the Oro Province with the mountain looming at the background as that entity that keeps all these little groups of people together.

The undercurrents of all that would be the sort of questions we would ask about the province and the sort of answers we would anticipate to them. But what comes to the reader’s mind so powerfully is the question of whether or not we are content as we are now. Or are there rather questions within the undercurrents that are yet to be asked and answered.

Of course, when a writer is faced with that dilemma, he or she must need some critiquing from the people for whom the book is written in the first place. And so storyboard goes to that meeting, along with a kotofu from the Maisin area who might assist with the critiquing – including the villagers themselves as objective readers and critics.

Drusilla Modjeska’s novel, “The Mountain”, is a big book in its own right. Not only does it trace the history of written literature in Papua New Guinea through various characters posing as writers of the 60s and the 70s of the pre-Independent era, but other aspects of the country’s development towards nationhood. All this happens entirely in fiction. But all the characters, both white and black, are as truthful sounding as ever, then, now and in the future. And this is what Modjeska wanted the people of Tufi, especially those at Siu Village, to know and if possible comment upon. And here’s the catch of it all. All royalties from the sale of that book will go to the people of that and surrounding villages to help pay for their children’s school fees. Not a bad fishing trip round the fjords, eh?

Modjeska was also accompanied by a fellow writer called Hilary McPhee, herself a writer but better known as a publisher who had helped so many young Australian writers gain international exposure. So when we see a publisher and a writer or a group of writers milling around the Tufi fjords this turns out to be a big thing,  effects of which might be felt in the not too distant future. Other people present at this meeting were John Wesley Vaso of Uiaku in the Maisin area and Jan Hasselberg of Norway.

John Wesley Vaso (left) and Max Forman (Headmaster of Tufi Primary School) at a Siu village guest house.

John Wesley Vaso was present there as a village elder and member of the kotofu of Maisin because he has been working with Drusilla Modjeska for many years: writing manuscripts, re-writing and editing them. But his presence there finally boiled down to the question of what is happening to the people of Collingwood Bay area today. Are they happy? Are they content? Or is there anything happening in their area that might need attention both at the national and international levels?

Perhaps the answer to that lies in the way the other member of this group, Jan Hasselberg of Norway, reacted when he first came to Tufi as a tourist. The fjords reminded him of his own country and generally the Scandinavian parts of Western Europe. Therein lies one’s idea of beauty in landscape as much as the sea that moves in gracefully or otherwise to meet it. To Hasselberg Tufi is another way of looking at the beauty of his own country. But if a tourist like Hasselberg comes to our country to snorkel around, do a bit of scuba-diving and even go fishing, and then see that things just next door are not right, then truly he too shall be disturbed.

To this group of writers, Jan Hasselberg declared one evening at the resort’s dinner table: “You know, of all the friends that I have been meeting at this resort this is the best group that I have met and have become part of.” Hence, storyboard’s choice of the title of this article.

But Jan Hasselberg’s other reactions to being at Tufi at all can be summed up in just this one intriguing sentence through an article that he himself has written: “Keroroa (Mt Victory) is weeping...yet another example of how the assets of the people and the nation are given away to end up as luxury cars and diamond rings in Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, or turtle- and shark fin soup in Shanghai.”

                                                                           

The Kaiwatara mines in folk literature

The Kaiwatara mines lie in the remote and higher altitudes of Cape Vogel called Kukuyaland, once a province or district of the Great Anuki Country, ruled by the Warakouta aristocrats of Ribua. Not only is the region remote and wild, but its terrain remains equally tyrannical for those who may dare to venture into its fringes and hinterland.

How a Queensland-based company managed to move the heavy American-made mining equipment from the coastal regions of Giwa (south coast of Cape Vogel) into that wild and dangerously precipitous terrain remains a mystery. But local folk literatures mention the use of horses and donkeys along with long lines of human labourers to move the heavy machinery which were as large and hardly transportable looking as those found at the abandoned Purari Delta mines, the Wau-Bulolo goldfields, the Woodlark Island mine sites and others throughout Papua New Guinea.

But of course with the Wau-Bulolo goldfields modern transport modes such as air planes had helped in transporting pieces of equipment such as dredges and then assembling these pieces upon arrival. With those at Kaiwatara mines none of these modes were available aside from sea transport so think of the amount of human and domestic animal labour expended in transporting such heavy equipment. All this happened during the 1920s.

The pipe end shown here goes almost a mile down.

The Kaiwatara mines are said to have been flourishing as they existed during the 1920s the economically boom period at the global level. Workers to the mines came from virtually all over the world local folk literatures report, but just as any other oil and gold mine in the country such an economic boom would come to a close as suddenly as it had started.

The impact that these mines had had on the social fabrics of local populations was enormous and as we all know at once positive and negative. A new era of borrowed Western type of trade began to take place among the local populations along with unceasing migration of people from other parts of the then British Papua. But again these would cease as suddenly as they had begun.

What then remains of these abandoned mines are the replicas of equipment left to rust away but at the same time serve as sources of inspiration for the mind that is creative. Thanks to the Kaiwatara mines and what remains of it today so many traditional songs, operas, orals histories and contemporary compositions such as poroga have be composed and are still sung today in as many as eight different languages of Cape Vogel. Among these compositions are the classic nipogana (traditional epics) Dobodobo, Menaga, Bonubonu and Kiara, storyboard’s favourites and as sung by the Anuki greats Doboro Tupotupo and Doboro John Bill – equivalents we could say of Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti, respectively, in the Western world.

The Kaiwatara mines have long been the source of inspiration for storyboard himself, having published a book of poems in 2000 in which this region of Cape Vogel is mention through a long elegy titled “Siapa.” The elegy is based on storyboard’s two years of education at the ages of 6 and 7 and under the care of his grandmother, Kwabura Sylvia Kawakoka. The region is also talked about in the last chapter of Bishop David Hand’s remarkable book, MODAWA: Papua New Guinea and Me 1946-2002. In that book Bishop David’s contemporary, Bishop Blake Kerina, merely talks about the winding up of the company from 1931 to 1934.

Sometime last year, storyboard found himself talking about the Kaiwatara mines with a colleague, Vincent Kewibu, of the archaeology section of the Anthropology & Sociology Department at the University of Papua New Guinea. Since both men are from Cape Vogel they often refer to the mine site as the “King Solomon’s Mines” of the whole of Cape Vogel Basin. Over the Christmas-New Year break, Vincent did visit the Kaiwatara site. The following is a brief report of his visit to the Kukuyaland:

“It takes about a day’s walk to Kaiwatara from Giwa and Didiwa. Kaiwatara is one of the early sites of oil and gas prospecting projects established in the late 1920s. By the early 1930s operations ceased.

A Queensland-based company held the licence to prospect for oil and gas at Kaiwatara. The remains of the pipes, machinery (rusting away) and well are still there. The machinery was supplied by the Buda Company of Illinois and Armstrong MFG Company of Waterloo, USA.

The well is located at the end of the grassland about 5 metres from the cliff-face (30-40m up from the water) of the Kuuru Creek. Kuuru Creek is a tributary of Kwipa River which joins the Awitapu River. Remains of materials related to the prospecting activities are located in the grassland nearby.

Kaiwatara is located within the territory of the Kukuya people. Today the people are settled at Kiiyagha on the plain near the Kwipa River. It is within the Giwa ward of the Makamaka LLG.”

 There are several explanations to the mine’s sudden closure. 

First, folk literature explains the sort of negative impact such mining industries can have on local populations. These include excessive and random migrations to other areas of a country or province. They also contribute largely to the breakdown of traditional family units and social systems. Of this latter explanation, the Anuki folk literature is full of it. Fearful that their traditional system of government would disintegrate rapidly the Warakouta aristocrats advised their wise counsellors to cast a spell of ibumutu upon the mining company, hence its sudden closure.

Second, an argument erupted between the two partners of the mine. The Kukuya folk literature reports a kind of high noon showdown (American fashion) imminent between the two who might have been brothers. Thus, the sudden closure.

Thirdly, some scientific as well as economic explanations reveal that the 1920s were economically the boom period of the Western world, particularly its imperial powers. Hence, the desire there was to claim extra territory and set up mining industries throughout the world. All this came and went as suddenly as the appearance of the economic depression of the 1930s just around the corner. That would in turn leave the Kaiwatara mines as desolate as any other mine site in Papua New Guinea.

We bring you this story with special regard to the sort of mining industry activities we experience through LNG and similar large scale projects in our country today. We hope they shed some light on how best we can handle certain social problems deriving from these. 

                                                                            

You can learn more about the Kaiwatara mines from Vincent Kewibu at this email address: vkewibu@upng.ac.pg.

                                                                      

Don't look down

                                                          

This is not a good story to tell. But we have to tell it anyway due to some unexpected turn of events at various quarters of our academic norms and practice.

One day, storyboard receives a strange phone call. The caller happens to be a very recent appointee at senior level from a certain academic department of the University of Papua New Guinea.

“Yes, sir, this is storyboard speaking. How may I help you?”

“Do you know Mona Lisa?” (Real name withheld.)

“Yes, I do. In fact, Miss Mona Lisa is a very bright student of mine.”

“When you see her today, instruct her to come to my office immediately.”

A little baffled, since the department was far removed from the discipline of literature, storyboard said: “That I can. But begging your pardon, sir, may I ask what this is in regard to?”

Thereupon the caller embarked on a lecture about his status and qualifications as compared to storyboard’s, and should he, storyboard, choose not to heed the caller’s instruction it would go down on record as an act of insubordination. Would storyboard be willing to risk that by questioning the caller’s intent in summoning the said student up to his office?

Of course, storyboard ignored the caller’s threat and decided upon warning Miss Mona Lisa that Dr. So-and-So wanted to see her on matters that might not have been work-related.

To which the student asked what storyboard’s advice would be if she did venture up to the caller’s office out of curiosity. Storyboard, after studying his good student’s smile and the mystery surrounding her eyes, pointed out that the university was a liberal environment as much as any other democratic setting and that as individuals one ought to exercise a certain amount of precaution regarding personal conduct and safety.

Since that incident Mona Lisa went missing from the Waigani campus. The co-supervisor of her honours program along with storyboard went through all worry and trouble trying to find out where she was. Has she gone home to her home province? Has she rather migrated to another country? Relatives from her home province also wanted to know. Even her appointment as a temporary tutor in Literature was beginning to become redundant and subsequently a new wave of honours students came on board to fill up the student’s position.

When Mona Lisa did re-appear some two years later she deposited a three-hour drama script at storyboard’s office, and that play was noted to be revealing – indeed a replica of a very intelligent young woman who had for one reason or other decided to take an existential type of departure that only creative literature itself might best explain the stress and worry she might have encountered during her brief sojourn as an honours student.

What storyboard failed to realize there and then was the unscrupulous attitude of the caller albeit appointee as a departmental head. Within a matter of semesters, not years, that caller would lose his position and in the following year become jobless. What followed thenceforth was that the university could barely manage human tolerance in having him re-instated somewhat but this time as a lecturer like storyboard. But even that position seems too small today to fill the incumbent’s shoes. So what does he do? He starts pushing and shoving, staging coup after coup to get into power – an activity hardly fitting for an academic environment where oratory, research and publication, including churning out the very best of manpower for the nation count more.

At this stage we must point out that where there is a threat apparent to place the reputation of a tertiary institution in jeopardy, such individuals must be dealt with accordingly through the media. Storyboard is only too glad to do so here on behalf of his well-meaning and highly respected colleagues, who no doubt have exercised that human sentiment of tolerance so much even that human quality can get well and truly expended.

Looking at this particular aspect of human conduct from a philosophical point of view reveals to us that what we are looking at is indeed the story of human failure in the raw. We all strive for that ultimate state of perfection in our lives but very few of us reach the top eventually. Those who succeed turn around and start mentoring the young who come after them. They become models worthy of following. But it is sad for this lot that fails even with such academic decorations as PhDs. What they mentor turns out ruthless and violent as evident in the life of our incumbent in question.

Now when parents spend thousands of kina to send their children along to us, they have in mind people who will nurture their young in the best way possible. But when these generations of young people are entrusted quite unwittingly by parents to the care of such unscrupulous individuals who revel in power more than human values, we are indeed staring at the face of social decadence point blank.

Even parents themselves must become actively involved in the workings of a tertiary institution, not just their terms as committee members at high school level only. The likelihood of our young walking away into oblivion without any hope of getting a job after four years of academia is enormous and needs to be quelled with the parents’ vigilance as well. As the song by B.B. King has it: “better not look down, if you want to keep on flying; put the hammer down, keep it full speed ahead; better not look back, or you might just wind up crying; you can keep it moving, if you don't look down.”

Thus, entertaining such unscrupulous individuals to the point of taking full power to control our lives can be tantamount not only to B.B. King’s idea of bringing ourselves down to their level but also as Shakespeare would put it: “anything from the neck up is heaven; anything from the neck down is hell.” 

Photos above by Ekar Keapu of The National newspaper showing over 1,000 new intakes of undergraduates during orientation week at the University of Papua New Guinea. A majority of these will be streamed into the School of Humanities and Social Sciences which houses the Literature and English Communication department.

                                                                             

Signs of our times

The arrow in this photo seems to be pointing to the National Parliament, the law-making premises of Papua New Guinea.

                                                            

It is always a nice thing to be prepared. Not that anything great can happen in our ordinary and simple lives but that it is wise to stay prepared.

And we do so by looking at the signs that surround us.

Overgrown grass that needs cutting, weeds about the fence, fibro walls rotting away, foot paths unswept and in many instances once lovable thoroughfares left littered and neglected. Sometimes a familiar and oft visited habitat looks as abandoned as ever, and gives us the impression that may haps no one cares any more about so many little things that surround us.

But the lesson of such instances of negligence startles us suddenly when Eda Ranu drops by to cut our water or PNG Power removes certain wires that used to supply us with electricity. And when we do look around in search of the source of all our woes and worries we notice it all, loud and clear and right at our doorsteps.

We have not been mindful about our bills.

And moreover, we have not been attentive to the voice that kept prompting us over the years: “Let the fig tree teach you a lesson. When its branches become green and tender and it starts putting out leaves, you know that summer is near.”

How negligent then have we become, especially in this day and age when modern technology has taken over all manner of human chores. Once, a messenger designated as a clerical assistant knew all that was recovered of him in order to get a certain job done for a department. Nowadays such entities are obsolete. You can email your boss as freely and as carelessly as protocol itself chooses to be absent in our consciousness. And a simple clerk, of all people, can transfer vast sums of money from one point of contact to another simply because modern technology allows that to happen.

                                                                   

Not so, thinks Eda Ranu which comes around to disconnect our taps, technology or not we were not paying our bills and that’s that. And Eda Ranu’s explanation: “Where is there documentary evidence that you were paying for sewerage and water all these years?” So we show them our pay slips and the amounts that were deducted from our pay to them and what do we get for an answer? That ain’t official by way of evidence. We know you have had that amount deducted from your pay, but look here, worthy and learned colleagues, we have not been receiving a penny of your so-called “deductions”. So what say you now?

Thus, if a company is said to be on the verge of liquidation, and this is what storyboard is getting at, let us not be alarmed, but rather go back to our diaries and try to pin point the date when all this moment of negligence first started. Sure enough, we will see it. If it was in 1995 that we stopped paying our bills to Eda Ranu through our clerk at the buttons of the computer, then perhaps the answer lies in the area of our good clerk not taking the trouble to actually deliver the money to Eda Ranu. Yet our pay slips show that certain amounts were deducted to Eda Ranu, as simply as that. Do we reprimand the clerk? We should rather not. Because in the beginning we did not let him know that we knew what he would be thinking and that we would certainly know he would know what we were thinking. That way he would, physically, remember to deliver the cash to Eda Ranu and not to an alter ego somewhere at BSP.

That little amount accumulated over the years sends awkward sound waves by way of signs to how easily man can go wrong even with his own inventions of which he should very much be in control. We have forgotten to consult nature. We cannot read the signs any more. We become so shut in that what we do indoors accumulates over the years until someone from somewhere else comes along and starts pointing out the loopholes of our own self-management apparatuses.

                                                                    

Shaken, we panic; and in panicking we find ourselves cleaning up our yards while in fact we should be welcoming our guests now beginning to flock in upon the so-called given hour.

Of course, stories such as these have very little in them when we first hear them. Eda Ranu must excuse us for using them as an example here, but storyboard has a good mind to suggest they be thankful as this serves as good publicity.

Examples aside, these are good stories to tell. To the one who listens these stories often turn out to be big stories in their own right. The guest is the most important personality in our lives. That is why we talk about signs and being prepared at all times. Our guest must be entertained. So being reputable people that we are, we get down to the traditional ritual of welcoming them. In most Melanesian societies it is an absolute must that a guest is well taken care of. We welcome him with familiar gifts, firstly, such as betel nuts and drinks. Then there is the ritual of traditional dishes: besa, if one is doing the monamona; or leu (almost pronounced theu in Wedau), a special dish consisting of baby taro leaves, coconut oil and mashed taro for important guests.

Our guest becomes our final judge of what we are as a community, as a government department or a school, college and institution of learning. He is the one who has the power, we might say, to assess whether our very act of existing and functioning as such is justifiable after all. Thus, if he says we ain’t paying our bills, we must listen.

The opinions expressed here are very much general and should not serve as “pointing fingers at” certain organizations in our society. But lessons learnt in this article are very much for the benefit of all of us.   

Last minute clean-up activity at the Waigani Campus.