The rural politician delivers more

So the rural politician delivers services to his people after all.

That is what storyboard discovered on the 8^th September 2010 in Alotau town when his bag, reported missing in the Weekender article of August 13^th (Literacy projects and rural politics ) was safely delivered to him. And who could be responsible for such a safe delivery of baggage to its rightful owner than our rural politician, the child prodigy talked about in that article. 
  When the bag was first discovered misplaced on 26^th July our rural politician became aware of the presence of the Anuki Country elders as equal witnesses and decided then to observe the correct procedures in passing the bag to the owner through the rank and file of each village, starting from Woruka where storyboard witnessed a literacy and Bible translation book launching the previous day. Since the bag was discovered at that village, noted our politician, it had to be stored at that village and at the house, if any, of the clan storyboard comes from or is connected to in rank. A house and family was immediately identified and there it was that the bag was deposited for safe keeping until the owner came for it. What fascinated storyboard with that detail was our rural politician’s choice of listening to the advice of the elders which told him that the bag ought to be deposited at a household equal in rank to storyboard’s own. The household nominated thence belonged to the Bogerara clan, which is also storyboard’s family and rank in the village setting.

It is not exactly clear what part our rural politician played in the sudden disappearance or misplacement of that bag on the morning of 26^th July. But the fact remains that the whole village was aware of the bag being left by the dinghy that storyboard boarded to travel to Alotau. Now in the Great Anuki Country it is common knowledge that whenever a secret gesture of malice becomes public knowledge it automatically loses its power as a scheme to wrong others. Thus, a magical spell cast on another loses it power the moment its source is discovered and made known to every member of the community, no matter how powerful that magic, art of witchcraft or sorcery might be. The public is the healer for every individual careless enough to become a victim of such mysterious powers which indeed seek to influence, dominate and control.

Viewing the whole business of storyboard’s missing bag from that perspective, it would seem that our young politician would be classified as the sole perpetrator revealed in the nick of time. Bravo, we might say, we have one under our control; he won’t bother us anymore, and that sort of thing.

But there was something else in play here which storyboard found fascinating; and that is the young man’s ability to politick successfully in that rural setting. In order to win favour or credibility from his potential followers and eventually voters he had to show or display through the language of maiba a thorough understanding of the social structure of which he was a product as much as member. Once the bag was stored at its delegated homestead it meant that several clans and family members would attempt to claim it starting from the top down, if storyboard was not there physically to retrieve it himself. Several clan members had offered to claim the item on behalf of the storyboard - all of whom were denied possession by the clan house at Woruka. Finally, it was the clan of our young politician which was given the opportunity to do the bidding; and he, our rural politician, being in charge, sent it straight away through a contemporary of storyboard to Alotau.

By now we can see that almost every clan had its turn in bargaining for the ownership of the bag. A few had even suggested tearing open the bag to share its contents among their families. These were families closer to storyboard who were, would one believe, his first cousins. They were reprimanded, of course, when storyboard got to Tototo. In the bag were a change of clothing, a digital camera, a mosquito net and toiletries and a few packets of coffee, coffee mate and some biscuits and sugar.

When storyboard went home (8^th to 14^th September) he heard so much discussion at various points and villages along the coastline of the Anuki Country on the fate of this poor misplaced little bag from the urban areas. And each word uttered had a lot do with what belonged to whom and what did not. “Are we thieves, people of Anuki?” was the resounding rhetoric heard over and over.

Then on the 13^th September, the morning storyboard was leaving Besima Bay for Alotau, he noticed the dinghy loaded with a variety of raw sea food and vegetables, including mats, clay pots and so many other little gift items. He looked questioningly at those who came by to see him off and among them was our rural politician, standing a little aloof but content on being an observer from afar. His wife, who is also a relative of storyboard’s, quietly made her way to storyboard and explained that all that was loaded on the dinghy as infrastructure was to be distributed equally to those that deserved them, “especially our relatives in towns and cities who have less to eat than those of us in the rural settings of the Great Anuki Country.”

But, of course, storyboard knew where all that oratory was coming from. The rural politician certainly delivers more.

                                                  

Justifying Papua New Guinea Literature

                                  Two places my friend Jack Lahui and I have been to in 1974 that I shall never forget. They are Utu High School in the New Ireland Province and Holy Name High in the Milne Bay Province. It was at these two wonderful places that I have learnt the true value and meaning of literature. We were conducting creative writing workshops then during the schools’ term holidays.

At Holy Name High, a 15 year-old boy, who had travelled all night by a government trawler from Salamo High School on Fergusson Island, just to arrive in time on mainland Dogura for classes at 9.00 am the next day, wrote: “Oh, rose, rose, rose/How I love you so/But your hairy body is prickling me!” instead of complaining perhaps of sea-sickness. At Utu High, another 15 year-old having similarly travelled from Manus to be present at the New Ireland workshop, wrote: “Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes/Always picking on me for mistakes in grammar/But I know this is love, love, love.”

It was quite an experience watching these youngsters pore over their exercise books, trying to write poems and short stories. All the more amazing was their desire to travel long distances, by sea, air, land or foot, just to be present at the workshops. They were certainly taking creative writing seriously; for creativity, says the sage in literature, is the birthright of every human being. Their teachers would later write to us saying how much our presence meant to them in improving their sense of creativity as much as empowering them to conquer and tame this imposing foreign language called English.

 Thus, the humble beginnings albeit consolidation of what must correctly be seen as PNG Literature. Earlier, of course, at the Waigani Campus, Ulli Beier had succeeded in selling worldwide but only one aspect of PNG Literature. This aspect falls more on the category of protest or anti-colonial literature than on what Jack Lahui and I had intended to promote through the Department of Information and Extension Services as PNG Literature overall. Jack was then editor of “Papua New Guinea Writing” when I joined him while at the same time conducting the popular National Literary Competition. The literary competition drew interest from writers all over PNG. The university crowd, in particular, dominated the prizes, and the winning entries were then published by the Literature Bureau.

The competition itself was divided into various sections, from open field to entries catering for secondary and primary schools. Myths and legends, oral histories and essays, even vernacular entries accompanied by translations, also found slots for themselves in prize money within the budget of these national literary competitions. With that amount of work at hand, one can imagine the amount of reading material produced and made available as part and parcel of PNG Literature.

But Jack and I believed sincerely that ours was an extension, indeed a continuation, of PNG Literature whose origins go as far back as the 1890s. There is ample evidence that our national literature began to flourish around that time, mainly at church surroundings and through the influence of earlier missionaries. In 1895, for example, barely five years after the landing of the first missionaries at Kaieta, Dogura, on August 10^th 1891, myths and legends were already being written in the English language by the so-called natives at a place called Makawana (now Mukawa) in the Milne Bay Province. By 1900 this creative writing enterprise culminated in its actual objective of activity, and that was translating the Bible into “Mukawa” language, which was really a creolization of the Anuki, Are and Gapapaiwa languages. (That explains why the present generation cannot read and understand the Mukawa version of the Bible.) In 1904 the entire “Mukawa” translation went into print in London and was ready for distribution along the north coast of Papua the following year. Speakers of these three languages along with their English speaking missionary counterparts needed a common field of experience in communication in order for them to understand each other. Hours had been spent under modawa and mango trees, trying to decide on a language that could be understood by all parties. In the end the task of learning languages became a two-way process for all parties concerned. 

But hitting two birds with one stone is the point I am getting at here. Successful translation of the entire Bible into a local language accounts for the very development of the literature of that locality, irrespective of whatever choice of language it appears in. Thus, the first written PNG myths and legends. Notice that these myths and legends were written by the natives themselves, unlike those collected in the western districts of British New Guinea some decades later by the government anthropologist F.E. Williams, including those of Malinowski’s and at certain instances, by way of illustrating a point, Mead. A written literature of a nation is born when a native of that country sits down and consciously writes it. What followed the Mukawa writers of myths and legends came spontaneously everywhere in PNG as a common experience of scribbling thoughts on paper, most times in the form of letters to loved ones, and often in the lingua franca (not excluding English) used by the missionaries, such as Mukawa, Wedau, Dobu, Suau or Motu in Eastern Papua, Kuanua in the New Guinea islands, Zia, Siassi, Waria etc in the Momase region and Nagum Boiken, Arapesh and Telefomin further west. In the Highlands region, PNG Literature was encouraged through a similar process by the Catholic Church mainly, and later through other denominations in partnership with the SIL translation programs.

Even within these church environs, some attention to creativity was given by our people. Autobiographies and generally accounts of personal experiences began to flourish by the turn of the last century. Aside from the Mukawa writers, we have on record works by Osea Linge of East New Britain (as reported by Minol and Wolfers). Now Osea Linge was a charismatic figure, but a colourful one at that. A hunter by profession his brothers would laugh at him as he took off before dawn in search of wild game in the forest instead of going to school with them. Soon the laughter became too much to bear and he decided to teach his brothers a lesson by going to school himself. Now there are so many hymns sung in Kuanua today which are attributed to his sense of creativity. Moreover, his work would be among the first by way of book publications that fall under the category of PNG Literature. His book “Erstwhile Savage”, first written in Kuanua, was later translated into English by a woman missionary in 1932. This was followed by two more books, and these the UPNG Bookshop is currently preparing to re-publish under its PNG classics program, which includes works by Kiki’s, Eri’s, Kumalau Tawalai’s and so on.

 In all, what we regard as PNG Literature today from Albert Maori Kiki onwards is merely the tip of an iceberg of what we actually own as our “written” literature and this goes back to the 1890s. While many see “Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime” as the first PNG autobiography or “The Crocodile” as the first PNG novel, PNG Literature took its form as such much earlier than that, the Mukawa writers and Osea Linges being examples. There is a wealth of written material available in government archives, and in the monthlies and bi-annuals produced by both the government and the churches, such as “Talaigu”, “Pren bilong mi”, “The Papuan Villager”, “Catholic News” to name a few. These constitute PNG Literature.  

There are also arguments at certain quarters, particularly within university circles, that PNG Literature does not contain enough reading material to warrant its existence as a course offering at both tertiary and secondary/primary school levels. For those of us who are actively involved in developing PNG Literature, we see such arguments as coming from those who specialize in marginal literatures and not mainstream literatures. Indeed, PNG Literature has established itself well enough as an academic discipline, and finds its equivalents in the literary and cultural disciplines of other nations such as American Civilization, American Studies, African-American Studies, African and Caribbean Literature, British Literature, Singapore-Malaysian Literature, Indian Literature... the list goes on in English speaking countries.

                       

                                 You find yourself at the college green of a campus regarded as the centre of American civilization, and as you stand there admiring the surroundings, an elderly academic walks up and joins you. After a few words of greetings he asks what you are doing there. When you explain that you are there to teach PNG Literature, he suddenly feels he must visit his doctor.

You let the good professor go, of course.

A minute later, a much younger and athletic looking individual, probably a freshman in the natural sciences walks up. He asks you the same question. You give him the same reply. His face lights up, but warns that he has only a few minutes to spare in listening, and if not convinced, he’ll enrol in another course as an elective. So you take him by the hand and lead him to the library, for that school boasts of over 15 million books in its possession, go through all the stalls, and there, sure enough, at an appropriate section, is a copy of “Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime.” There is your evidence, you tell the young man, and before you know it you found yourself a friend for the rest of the morning. Now you have to convince him that the course you are offering is worth all the trouble in the world (assure him that Thoreau, Emerson and Dickinson are synonymous with Kiki, Eri, Wedega and Kilage, that Obama* will make a fine president, and encourage the young man to believe in himself as a product of a larger and most powerful culture in the world) before he also decides to go to Iraq or some other corner of the earth in search of new discoveries.

Tell him that Papua New Guinea is rich in all its resources and has a wealth of cultural knowledge, 20% of which is published and in book form while 80% lies untapped and deeply embedded in the unconscious segments of human memory.  

Before embarking on teaching the course proper, you must familiarize your friend with the sort of ideological and philosophical connections PNG has with his country, especially in literary studies. Point out the similarities between Kiki and Thoreau, for example. In Kiki the notion of self-hood, self-assertion and self-respect stand out powerfully, whereas in Thoreau that same phenomenon of the individual transcends all else in order to find a greater meaning in life and human existence. Kiki talks about the significance of human life by drawing out ideas from his own personal experiences as a product of colonialism. Thoreau on the other hand opts for the same method of explications, except that he would rather remove himself physically from the humdrums of industrial environs and lead an exemplary life in nature or some quiet geographical setting. You must also point out earnestly that the reason why America is such a powerful industrial state in the world is that virtually every American takes a very simple poet and philosopher like Henry David Thoreau seriously in much the same way your country would regard Albert Maori Kiki. Thoreau teaches, for example, that in order for a country to become rich and powerful it must first be willing to cut down its expenditures on its wants and increase its spending on its needs.

When you have established that connection as your base, you can now proceed to teach the course proper. Now the amount of material constituting PNG Literature is so big that scholars and researchers have difficulty in determining where to start. Following T.S. Eliot’s mathematical rule of objective correlatives (that of arranging data in their logical sequence from point A to Z) you begin where the main focal point of PNG Literature lies. PNG Literature can, therefore, be viewed through four main compartments of study and research. Firstly, protest or anti-colonial literature; secondly, works of self-appraisal or autobiographical writing; thirdly, social commentaries and criticism; and finally, oral literature and traditions.

Protest or anti-colonial literature deals with PNG’s struggle to re-assert itself in the face of the world and subsequently prove its existence as a member of the overall global setting. This category of PNG Literature was the one publicized and distributed widely through Ulli Beier’s entrepreneurship. It includes works such as Kasaipwalova’s Reluctant Flame (which sold out in New York in 1972), Leo Hannett’s The Ungrateful Daughter, John Waiko’s The Unexpected Hawk and Kumalau Tawali’s The Bush Kanak Speaks, to mention a few. This segment alone would take up three weeks of reading and research in a given semester.

Works of self-appraisal or autobiographical writings include those of Kiki’s Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime, Wedega’s Listen My Country, Kadiba’s Growing Up in Mailu, Osea Linge’s Erstwhile Savage and Kilage’s My Mother Calls Me Yaltep, to mention a few. This category of PNG Literature covers those insights that researchers from other cultures would anticipate knowing. No other art form succeeds in truthfully representing the soul of a people and a country than the autobiography. It is through this form of literature that other countries become aware of the inner and psychological workings of a country. This segment also would take up three weeks of semester work.

Works of social criticism and commentary look at the way a nation re-examines itself, for a life without any element of self-criticism to it (says Socrates) is a life not worth living at all. This segment in your case would include works such as Nora Vagi Brash’s Which Way Big Man, Moses Maladina’s Tabu, Sorariba Nash’s A Medal without Honour and the novels Wanpis and Maiba, to name a few. This segment would again take up another three weeks of semester work.

Oral literature and traditions which forms the fourth compartment of study and research in PNG Literature constitutes 80% of the country’s literary material, much of which is yet undiscovered but there enough to be delved into and understood. It best represents the arena of PNG’s very attempts at re-discovering and knowing itself, and in further observing the epistemological reconstructs of its own cultural identity. This type of literature comes in myths and legends, oral and family histories, fables and light operas, dances, tattoos and associated decorations which do require serious study and research as far as traditional knowledge systems go. This would also take up three weeks of a semester.

All this would make up the necessary equipment you need in your pursuit of teaching PNG Literature in the world’s renowned universities. Indeed, our literature cannot be seen merely as a particle in greater arenas of global discourse, and should no longer be dubbed in with the rest of the world’s intellectual preoccupations such as literature of new nations, emergent literatures, whatever that is, indigenous writings, post-colonial literatures, new writings from the Pacific, and so on. You must believe sincerely that your country has come of age and is now ready to offer meaningful courses in the global arena of intellectualism in other universities as well. Moreover, you are there no longer as a budding graduate student attempting to defend a dissertation on the new literatures of the Pacific region but as a professor of repute from PNG at an American university. On this point, I think we should commend Steven Winduo for being a visiting professor teaching PNG Literature at the University of Minnesota last semester (2007/8 U.S. academic year).

Finally, what new idea is there for the world to know? PNG’s world view overall through literature is divided into two: the philosophies of lusman and wanpis. A PNG individual is one or the other, and that is how the whole world is seeing Papua New Guinea at present. The lusman is one who believes that he is by nature free to exist and do whatever he wants. In fact, he is free to exist without any rules attached to his conduct and behaviour. The wanpis is basically the same, but with one difference. He has a conscience, and that’s the worrying part. He is not just free as a human being. He is, as the appropriate philosopher puts it, condemned to be free. All these instances of philosophical enquiry boil down to that one focal point of what PNG Literature is: the wanpis phenomenon. Whereas the lusman possesses all the vulnerabilities that can lead a country to total ruin and downfall, the wanpis does not. And that is the greatest phenomenon that we have about ourselves and which we would like to share with the world, even at the campuses that exist as the centres of their respective countries and their civilizations.

*This article was published in The Weekender of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea some many moons before the election of Obama as President of the United States.                                 

Birthday Greetings from the Great Anuki Country!

Happy birthday, sweetheart!

 Iphigenia turns 19 today.

Greetings from the Great Anuki Country!

Happy birthday, Ifi! From Cicero, somewhere in the Anuki Country! 

More from Ensisi Squad 

And from Makawana, birthplace of the novel Maiba!

   

                            And another from Besima!

How to write a novel

Billboard at background by PNG Tourism Authority; this photo and others on this page by storyboard.

Setting out to write a novel is like inviting your friends to jump into your car so that you can take them out for a ride. But you cannot take them out unless you have a driver’s licence.

The analogy here implies that your friends are safe in your hands as a driver, that you know everything about the mechanics of your car as much as traffic rules and that you win their confidence and trust that way. That is tantamount to saying that not only do you know the rules in writing a novel but that you are also proposing to tell your friends or readers nothing but the truth.

Truth is the word that impels you to start looking for the best authority on the subject matter. That authority is E.M. Forster and his book called Aspects of the Novel.

Everything you want to know about novels is covered in Aspects of the Novel.

According to E.M. Forster there are several elements of the novel that you must be aware of. But all that depends on how much truth you know to tell your reader. The amount of truth you have to tell in turn determines the length of what you are going to say. If you have so much truth that endures for 50,000 words, then that is the length of your novel. If you have less truth to tell, meaning you have less than 50,000 words to utter, try the short story. Or else regard your prose exercise in creative writing as a novella if it falls several words short of the 50,000 mark. Thus, by way of definition, a novel is a narrative that runs for 50,000 words. That’s your first rule.

A point before we go on. Of course, when talk of truth we do not say that E.M. Forster directly talks about truth. But we feel that throughout the pages of the Clerk series of his Cambridge lectures which he had compiled into that publication called Aspects of the Novel he does. At least in Papua New Guinea we believe that he does.

Now the second rule to consider consists of the words “story” and “plot.” These sound like the same creatures by way of definition but they are not. A story, according to E.M. Forster, is a narrative of events told in their time sequence, and these events are logically structured. Thus, your story begins at point A and it must no doubt end at Z – in that logical order. Your plot is what you actually do with your story. It means creating drama, excitement, suspense, climax and resolution. After all, what is a good novel if it lulls you to sleep? Forster offers the definition that a plot is a narrative of events told in their time sequence but with the emphasis falling on causality.

Now many students of literature mistake the word “causality” to mean “casualty”, which is quite all right if your story is full action, accidents and the need to rush to the hospital. But what Forster is saying is that a story cannot be a story if nothing causes it to be told in the first place. If you consider that remark a little you will notice that the whole world is full of novels that tell you nothing, meaning they are just there to waste your time. You learn nothing from them. And he even gives several examples of which we could spare their authors by not mentioning them here.

Then of course you have to identify the setting where your novel takes place. If it is Papua New Guinea, let it be so; France, France; Scotland, Scotland; and so on. Your setting is important and it becomes our third point to consider when setting out to write a novel.
  

No novel exists as a work of art without people. There must be people present in a novel. And these people known in fiction as characters must be believable looking or sounding types. Forster classifies them as “round” and “flat” characters. A round character is the one that you identify yourself with because he appears true to life. That character you regard as your hero, commonly referred to as the protagonist. He is also someone who “changes” from one personality to another, such as from bad to good during the course of a narrative. Sometimes such “round” characters are referred to as, for example in the Shakespearean or Aristotelian sense, “tragic heroes.” A “flat” character, on the other hand, does not change at all. He remains the same good old Bob from the beginning to the end of the novel. But his presence is necessary to enable the protagonist to stand out clearly.

The next element to consider is the time factor. When did your novel take place? Dates are important as they reflect character, scenes such as landscape and style of buildings and architecture, dress, dialogue and mannerisms and so on. Time indicates a certain level of understanding of what are current and what are not. For example, it would be ridiculous if a novel set in ancient Persia of something hundred B.C. had a character saying, “Yeah, yeah this happens Tuesdays and Thursdays, Government pay week.”

The other elements of the novel which Forster talks about are your sense of style and rhythm in story-telling, mood of narrative; dialogue of given characters by gender, age, social class and so on. These are important and a good writer pays particular attention to these little details in order to make the novel sound interesting as well as truthful. However, the most important thing to consider about novels is their quality of permanence as well as their ability to truthfully portray humanity itself as the most mysterious as well as monumental entity on earth. Are there novels that best express that idea?’ There are indeed, declares E.M. Forster, and cites Leo Tolstoi’s War and Peace  as supreme example of the destiny of man: from page one to the last Tolstoi’s novel does that and we see characters born and they go through the process of growth, decay and death.

Having ourselves made aware of these elements of the novel, it is time for us to sit down and start constructing the story. But we must remember that successful writing always begins by looking at the rules that are very simple indeed to follow.

Collaborative research in literary partnerships

They will never stop writing. From left, Storyboard, Nora Vagi Brash and Peter Trist.

We have now come upon the month of September and as we all know this is, aside from the usual preparations for independence celebrations and the Hiri Moale Festival within the National Capital District, our book hunting season. The production of both new and old titles abound.

Through the University bookshop you have been given titles and also those of the Institute of Business Studies’ publications program. That denotes that the latter part of the month of August saw a good number of books in circulation, among them re-prints of Allan Natachee’s Aia poems of the Papua Pocket Poets fame and, of course, Michael Somare’s autobiography, Sana. Everything else you wanted to know about books has been covered.

What we need to do right now is actually go out and find these books so that we can buy them to create our own libraries at home; we can send some away as gifts to those who need them; and, further, establish a reading culture of our own. This last point is important. So let us do that during this month so that in the years to come September will be regarded as our book hunting season. Someone, like those at the national events council, if it is still in existence, should take particular note of this.

While on the subject of observing September as our book hunting season, there is something else that we need to be aware of. And that is the amount of time spent on writing these books, which people do the job of research and write-ups of these books, and for what purpose. It means going backstage to find out more. Of course, there are many people involved in this. But there are certain people within this crowd that need to be observed closely in order for us to answer the simple questions: “Writing? What is it all about? And to what end?”

Papua New Guinea has established itself as certainly the most unique country in the world through its literature. It has become the envy of other nations through the very management of its own experiences of imperial subjugation and colonialism, its bid for political independence and its aspirations towards the goal of developing its own literature. But such achievements did not come about without the input seen from both sides of the coin. In every successful piece of literature read today there is the presence of both entities at work, meaning the coloniser and the colonized. Neither one can do without the other. The empire does not merely write back, nor does the colonized whimper itself to total oblivion.

Occasionally you hear of words and phrases such as “Wanpis”, “Which Way, Big Man?”, “Double Consciousness without the power to liberate,” “A dichotomy of themes in literary research”, “Contemporaneous judgment in literary consciousness” and so on. What do they mean?

In an attempt to answer this question, among others, we look at the thematic aspects of PNG Literature and how those evolved over the years. Again there are many themes to consider, but this one of storyboard’s choice needs careful study. It begins with the word “Wanpis”. When this word was first read in print in 1977, Nora Vagi Brash was the first to respond to it through her play “Which Way, Big Man?” Others followed suit by way of reviews, treatises and dissertations which in turn earned them higher degrees at various universities throughout the world. What was actually happening then was that these different groups of people were responding to a certain forum set up by the novel Wanpis. They became involved, as it were, and that sentiment of involvement got everyone participating in one way or another.

Now Wanpis is not quite a “good” novel in the true sense of the word “good.” But it got everyone worked up, so to speak. (And it even does today considering the persistent call from various university conference rooms and conventions for its reprint or re-publication.) It got everyone wearing masks or not wearing them, everyone getting painted up or simply walking into the arena to join the dance, everyone writing and reading poems or directing and performing plays, and even spitting and swearing at each other. But that is what the novel set out to do.

Thematically speaking, that would be typical of its author and his uncanny craftsmanship as a writer. He did not want to think alone as the colonized but that the colonizer too should find some sentiment of involvement in all this. Here, names such as Krauth, Stow, Kolia, Trist, Boden, Nora Vagi Brash, Steven Winduo and Trevor Shearston come to mind, as people who look at the phenomenon of post-colonial literature not so much as those isolated subject matter that need critiquing as something more than that.  If it meant opting for dichotomy in literary research, then this was it.

Thus, when you see a tourist paint one side of his face with dance decorations and leave the other that reveals his true identity and nationality – that is the influence of “Wanpis” at work. The moral of which is quite simple: no matter how much you claim ownership of your own identity you are still part and parcel of someone and something else.

And so, to come straight to the point of this article, a Papua New Guinean writer today is not quite the product of his/her own society but rather a conglomerate of both his/her society and colonial past. The same can be said of the Australian writer. In fact, much of Australian writing today tends to look towards Europe or America for economic salvation only to discover its own sense of isolation. But we do have our own group of Australian writers coming back and will continue to do so – a bosoming gesture that we should say hats off to. It has been discovered at the Waigani seminar recently that indeed there is a new crop of Australian writers emerging consisting of those who were born in Papua New Guinea. Aside from that, a well respected Australian author has recently asked storyboard if both would collaborate in writing a novel. A grand idea. But this, in essence, is precisely what storyboard is getting at when he talks about partnerships in literary research and creativity. We must take that up. It is honourable that we do

The ethics of business and research

So what are the good sides of every LNG project and its endeavour to see equal revenue distribution to the landowners? And what are the bad sides to all that? What is it about tourism in PNG that enables it to thrive one moment as an industry and then loses it value the next? And what are the shortcomings of a good HIV/AIDS program in a predominantly busy industrial environment?

These are some of the many ethical questions IBS (Institute of Business Studies) proposes to answer through its new publication, the IBS Journal of Business and Research.

Launched last week at the IBS campus, 6-Mile, the journal runs for 67 pages and is selling at PNGK80, US$80 and AUD$80 (airmail postage included).

There are five main stories represented in this publication, namely Ray Anere’s Governance Issues Relating to Liquefied Natural Gas Project, Joyce Rayel’s Development of Human Capital in Papua New Guinea: A cornerstone for successful tourism and hospitality industry, Ravinda Rena’s Information & Communication Technology Education in Papua New Guinea: Development challenges, Lekshmi Narayana Pillai’s Contemporary Leadership Strategies to Manage Financial Crisis and Sakaya Enopa Botu’s Contemporary Issues in Business: Impact of Culture and HIV/AIDS on employee motivation – a Papua New Guinea perspective.

These five papers invite serious observation from the reader on certain issues affecting both business and developmental strategies in the country. Be those observations ethical in nature or simply based on discerning certain complexities that are found in every MOA signed, every ambitious project launched or every new policy introduced – these call for serious scrutiny and critiquing.

Ray Anere’s essay on governance issues relating to the current LNG project is one such example. How far has the government gone in answering the needs of each landowner faction throughout the country? What are the percentages involved in every MOA agreement signed and do such percentage promises meet the developmental needs of the rural regions containing these landowner populations? On this point the author suggests that policy makers do not turn a blind eye on the arguments of men such as Hon. Mr. Anderson Agiru, or those of the landowner factions from the Gulf and generally the Southern region of the Highlands. An oversight on arguments and proposals such as this, suggests the author, may lead to certain spill over effects that may prove as inevitable as those recently experienced within the Central Province.

Joyce Rayel’s essay on tourism and hospitality industry needs careful study. Questions relating to how Papua New Guinea copes with current projects in place for this industry need re-visiting. More emphasis, argues the writer, needs to be placed on manpower training and development, particularly in the rural settings in order to allow the industry not only to survive but to also successfully meet the challenges of a rapidly growing international market. With an approximate figure of 100,000 or so visitors per year (quite possibly more by this time), that is quite a rich figure to look at. But we must have the necessary and adequately trained manpower in place to meet such a growing demand in the industry. It means simply setting up the right sort of training institutions throughout the country with sufficient amount of well-funded resources to make the whole enterprise workable at all. Papua New Guinea is without doubt a member of the global community and subsequently must live up to that demand.

Being a member of the global community implies also that we improve on our educational programs surrounding advanced technological set ups, particularly in the area of communication. This becomes the next topic of discussion in this IBS publication, as offered by Ravinda Rena. A sufficient educational coverage in this area, argues the author, should give way to information technology systems that increase power and confidence to the skilled work force of the country. It is true much of the country lacks this mode of educational expertise, and it is all the more disheartening if the rural sector in particular is denied access to such educational privileges. But, concludes the author, this aspect of our nation’s development, if properly looked at by the necessary policy makers and if these policies are properly implemented and executed they can in turn give way to a stimulating economic growth that should help alleviate the nation’s impeding poverty.

An article in a September issue of the National Weekender last year by this author (“September is a book hunting season”) ran along the lines that places like IBS would be fitting places where a potential businessmen, rather than devoting much time to dreams about becoming a prophet of Wall Street one day, should sit down and share a thought or two on the workings of global economics and how this might be understood in a PNG business environment. As if in response to that remark this next article by Lekshmi Narayana Pillai reflects on that. It is all about practical modes of managing financial crisis in a PNG business locale. There must be tight control on cash, advises the author, “increase frequency of overall control,” including increasing the same amount of communication with employees in order to maintain their confidence. The article is in two parts: the crisis we hear about at global level, what causes it, it mishaps and remedies; and, of course, in the second part, the author’s suggestions on leadership priorities which should help manage “toxic assets during the hours of economic crisis and uncertainty.”

The last article by Sokaya Enopa Botu looks at possibilities of every employer providing educational and awareness programs on HIV/AIDS for its employees. It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that such facilities exist to help curb the spread of the epidemic. Present industrial set ups seem to lack these and that is a discouraging sign. 

Finally, as the tone of the last article suggests, a research publication is a publication indeed. But what is that publication if at the same time it fails to ask some of the crucial ethical questions that surround us today, in our country. Setting up a financial organization or running a business school is fine. But we would prefer to see some of the most important ethical questions that affect us deeply go along with all that. Looking at the world from that perspective IBS as an institution of higher learning in our country has served us well today.

                           Photos courtesy of IBS Corporate

Literacy projects and rural politics

A gathering of clergy and participants of the Anuki Literacy Project at the launching of their work at Woruka village, in the Cape Vogel area of the Milne Bay province. Photo by Tuula Kaija of the VITAL office, Alotau.

                         

On 27^th December, 1995, at Bogaboga village, a little boy of about 12 years old kept stalking storyboard, waiting for an opportunity to speak to him.

It was St John’s Day and the village was abuzz with celebrations in honour of the patron saint, starting off with an early morning Mass, followed by a wedding, and later some sports and associated cultural activities that culminated in the observation of a large feast to which came the four main compounds of Bogaboga, namely, Kibirisi, Yarogu, Garogaro and Kopara.

For the whole day the boy had no luck, as storyboard was always in the company of the elders of the Yarogu compound who were also hosts to his family.

It was not that storyboard was rich or famous to make that number of people want to talk to him. It was rather the people’s desire to know more about all that was happening in our country, by way of development, new trends in government policy that affected the rural populations in one way or another, and so on.

Of course, storyboard never had sufficient answers to give to all that was asked of him. What mattered there and then was that the people were genuinely interested in knowing more about what goes on at Waigani and the world at large. Above all, the fact that places such as Bogaboga remain even today as isolated as any of the neighbouring villages of that region of the Milne Bay province, becomes a kind of concern for everyone.

How can we, whether outsiders or natives of such remote areas ever succeed in bringing development to this corner of our country? And where is there an MP, whether from that area or from the resource rich regions of the Highlands and the New Guinea mainland as much as the Islands, ever able to part with just one morsel from the “nation’s dinner table” for the people of Bogaboga and the surrounding villages?

But they, the villagers, seem to know more about our activities in Port Moresby than we them. It was on this day, for example, that storyboard heard a funny story about a certain “politician” called John Kaniku who, having exhausted himself after a long walk of campaigning along the beach lay on the nearest veranda of Yarogu and asked: “Does anyone here know a man called Russell Soaba?”

In response to this, the women preparing tea for him, chorused: “Why, you are sleeping on his veranda. This is his wife’s village.”

That is to say that politics observed at rural level would only be beginning to seep in then. People became familiar about names that were heard over the radio and which they had scantily read about in the newspapers, but it would have been all the more better if these so-called famous names occasioned to drop by at such places like Kaniku at one time or another. Then the villagers would ask as many questions as they would quite to their hearts’ content.

Aside from such questionings there was often felt all around that such isolated places would be in dire need of information and there would be, apart from radio broadcasts, little chance of gaining these sufficiently. While other parts of the country became used to seeing development at large scale such as roads, transport systems, various projects in agriculture – these areas lacked them. Hence, the need there was to ask the storyboard so many questions and hope to be informed.

At least, as the day wore on that day, that seemed to have been the predominant sentiment directed at the storyboard – to which there were no pet answers made readily available. But they were all genuine questions that needed answers.

The next day, in order to avoid large crowds, storyboard woke up at 5am to go the toilets, built over the sea and away from the compounds. Afterwards and as he came down the platform to jump ashore, he was confronted by the twelve year-old previously stalking him. He was taken aback a little in the half-light of the morning, but upon close examination he realized the boy was from Pem, the same area storyboard comes from. The boy was in tattered garments which were secured by what looked like a strand of bush vines.

“How?” asked storyboard.

The boy moved forward and, as if to avoid anyone overhearing him, said: “When you go back to Port Moresby, can you ask my brothers to send me some clothes?”

“Of course,” said storyboard. “But come with me first.”

Back at the Yarogu compound storyboard gathered what he could of two of his boy’s clothing for they were about the same age and gave them to the boy. Then he forgot all about that encounter.

Fifteen years later, when storyboard went back for a book launch of the Anuki Literacy Project at Woruka (July 25, 2010), he came across the same boy, now a man and married with a couple of children. But it was not the same boy he met at Bogaboga. This one had changed so much and had quite a following in the village that storyboard could not help but become simply fascinated.

Perhaps it is well that things should turn out that way.

But what came to storyboard’s mind then was that no community project – literacy, translation, health or other – operates without some degree of influence from even those who are not directly involved in these projects. A certain degree of politics plays a part in these projects as well. So then, the type of questions storyboard was receiving now, in the year 2010, and away from Bogaboga of 1995, had a lot to do with what you have done for your area. What development have you brought? In time storyboard became no longer a simple writer witnessing a literacy project launching at home but rather a Parliamentarian from Waigani come to visit his electorate. And neither was he that man who once gave his children’s clothes away to someone who needed them most.

On Monday morning, July 26, when getting ready to leave Woruka, a cousin of our 1995 prodigy met at Bogaboga and perhaps with his prompting, told the storyboard: “Come; let me take your bag down to the dinghy. They are loading and we are set to travel.” Five hours later, when landing at Awaiama, and when the entire luggage was unloaded from the dinghy, storyboard’s bag was missing.