Manui Publishers

Used Books and Second-Hand Clothes

2010-05-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

Appeared in Steven's Window, a column in The National newspaper's Weekender. Published on Friday 14th May 2010, p.5.

The security guard was disinterested in me as I showed no enthusiasm that day. My wife pulled me into one of those large second-hand clothes barns in Port Moresby. This particular barn is located across the road from the PNG Institute of Education and next to Club 22. The tailoring company Luk Poy Wai was once the merchant there. Inside, as I took a peek, more out of curiosity than as a scavenger for second-hand clothes. I was there because my wife said we could find nice clothes since we had little money to spend. I truly disliked the idea out of my personal distaste for second-hand clothes. I’d rather buy new quality clothes that transform me to think for myself, than wear some else’s used clothes. The thing with me is that I can never rid myself with the awareness that there is more to life than wearing second hand clothes and thinking in those clothes.

My children had followed their mother into the second-hand clothes racks arranged in neat and tidy rows. It was a Saturday morning on the Easter weekend. The barn was one of the few shops open that morning. We had to find a new white shirt for my son to wear for his Baptism in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church at Boroko the next day. Knowing how upset my son would be I followed my wife and the children to this second-hand shop. Whatever it was we had to get this white shirt.

It was not the second-hand clothes, the security guards, the customers, the cashiers, or the size of the barn that captured my attention. It was the sale of used books that attracted my attention. The racks holding the used books were next to the entrance. At first I thought it was one of those outfit selling books that have second rate intellectual content and are only good for pleasure readers; books that are unlikely to be recommended as text books in my literature courses at UPNG.

As it appeared, the books on sale were of both kinds, serious, and entertaining; some encyclopedia, children’s books, novels, and self-help books. I studied the encyclopedia, thinking how these could have been donated to the schools, instead of selling them for money. The longer I stood there I selected several books that I never thought I would find them in a place where second-hand clothes are sold. The books were sold for K1.00 to K2.50, depending on the size of the book. Books are not a priority in this second-hand clothes barn. A cashier and a guard, anxious and watchful, let me finish my business, without giving them any pleasure.

I spent close to K15.00 that day for 6 books, an amount that is insufficient to buy a new book of the same title in a bookshop. I was glad to spend my money on books that day. I even bought one book featuring Indigenous Maori women role models for my 14 year old daughter. The treasure I stumbled on to in this second hand clothes barn made my day. The books that I bought include: Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, Witi Ihimaera’s Bulibasha, Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, Hingi McKinnon’s When the Kehua Calls, and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. Of these writers I have met Angela Carter, whose other book I already have in my private collection. I met Carter when she gave her talk during her visit to the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in the early 1990s when I studied for my MA degree in English. Carter’s writings are intriguing exploration of folktales and modern day juxtapositions of feminist ideas to rewrite the gendered subconscious and transformation of the feminine self.

Then there is Witi Ihimaera, the senior Maori writer, a tall figure in Pacific literature, and a great friend I have so much respect and admiration for. I have followed Ihimaera’s writings since I was a second year student at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1985. His book Pounamu Pounamu, which means Greenstone, Greenstone was the first collection of short stories published by a Maori writer in 1972. Since then it has been reprinted several times. Ihimaera has since then published several award winning books such as The Matriarch, Tangi, The New Net Goes Fishing, Whanau, Whale Rider, and other books to make him one of the leading Pacific Island writer of our time.

The opportunity I had in meeting Ihimaera came about in a surprising way. I was in Honolulu several years ago at the University of Hawaii to participate in the 6th Fall Festival of Writers featuring the writers of the Pacific and the Caribbean. I was fortunate to be included as one of the Pacific Island writers, together with the two big names: Witi Ihimaera and Albert Wendt. There was also the Solomon Islands writer: Jully Sipolo Makini, one of few women writers of the Pacific. The Caribbean was represented by George Lamming via satellite, Michelle Cliff, and Nalo Hopkinson.

During the book signing ceremony at the University of Hawaii Bookshop I asked him to autograph his books Pounamu Pounamu, the Matriarch, and the Whale Rider. He asked for my name so that he could sign the books. On hearing my name he almost dropped his pen in disbelief. He said in embarrassment that he had read and followed my work all this time and never thought the day would come for us to meet. He told me also that his students at Auckland University were also studying some of my writings.

It was a great moment to remember as it was also the week I had the opportunity to see two films made from the writings of Witi Ihimaera and Albert Wendt: Whale Rider and Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree, respectively. Both writers have always been my big brothers and role models.

The point of my story: Used books are as valuable as new books and second hand clothes.

Universities and Knowledge Production

2010-05-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

First impression of the article is in Steven's Window, The National newspaper of PNG. 07 Friday 2010, p.5.

Here is what I think universities are and what universities ought to be doing. Universities are institutions where the production of knowledge and dissemination of that knowledge is pursued to achieve understanding and wisdom.

A nation is dependent on a university to supply the manpower it needs to propel forward. Each university is established through an Act of Parliament to carry out its duties and responsibilities. A university endeavors to fulfill the national expectations by being mindful of the objectives it has set for itself to deliver as a corporate entity through high academic achievement and excellence to promote the well-being and progress of the nation. Government universities are institutions operating on public funds to carry out their duties and responsibilities.

In recent times a three men Committee investigating the performance of universities in Papua New Guinea released a report of their findings. The report was damaging to all public universities highlighting key areas where public universities seem to fail. The report suggests that the quality of graduates has dropped to a point where our graduates are viewed as half-baked products of a poor system. Many of us with more than 10 years of teaching feel accused of under performance and under achievement in terms of the graduates we produced.

An independent review of Papua New Guinea’s six universities, as reported in the media made 13 recommendations for the Australian and PNG government to take into account. The reviewers were particularly critical of the public universities, framing them within a blanket generalization as failing to meet the demands of the industry more than the social well-being and progress of the nation. Prudence tells me there is more to this report.

Several questions beg answers from the conscience of the graduates of public universities: Does this mean that national progress happened without the input of universities through their graduates? Does this mean the bureaucracy machinery is still operated by poor quality graduates and half-baked certificate and diploma holders? Does this mean the civil society organizations and service providers have no graduates from our public universities working with them to improve the quality of life and understanding of their rights as free and proud people? Does this mean that the academics with more than 20 years of service in some of the public universities have failed in their duties to produce top quality graduates who now head departments, executive positions in the public and private sector, and who are now also national leaders? Does this mean that the degrees our graduates have are not recognized by universities around the world? How did some of us, most of the national academics teaching at the universities, get our Masters and PhD degrees in prestigious international universities in the world?

The views about universities failing to produce quality graduates is an old sentiment worth paying no consultation fees to individuals with no teaching experience at these public universities in the last 20 years. Many of us live the struggle and difficulties faced every day to deal with uneven ratio between teaching staff and students due to increased number of students every year, unavailability of teaching resources and technology, cramped office spaces with poor ventilation, small prison-like classrooms and offices, poor employment conditions, and unpopular management decisions that dampen the spirits of hardworking academics in some of these public universities.

The issue of output is determined by the condition of the machine itself, to use a metaphor, if I may. If oiled, greased, and checked by the operators, the machine will maintain quality production. The public universities have had little or no development to their physical infrastructure, improvement in teaching and research facilities, and are left to pity themselves against an imperative propelled in the direction of the new kids on the block. Yet, the public universities are the ones who produced the graduates who now teach in these new universities? It makes no sense to argue that the degrees awarded in public universities are associate degrees. What is an associate degree then?

Public universities are by design created to serve the wider or specialized national interests. They must exist and operate to serve the people of Papua New Guinea in two ways. First, stand as higher institutions in Papua New Guinea, for the people to have their children earn a university degree so that they too can participate in national development through their children’s contribution.

Second, public universities exist on the basis of history and the merit of each institution to produce teachers, medical doctor, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and specialists in different fields. In as much as possible they are not to reduplicate their courses and purposes for which they were first established. Duplication and replicas are against the spirit of government funded universities, established under their own original Acts of Parliament. The point is made when public universities find themselves under the spotlight to cut and save costs every year, restructure academic programs, and manage resources and facilities with the knowledge that the national government is not going to increase funding any more than what it already gives.

I have been part of the University of Papua New Guinea for many years. I am proud of UPNG’s long tradition of academic excellence and intellectual foundation set up by the founding professors and administrators of the University of Papua New Guinea in 1963. University of Papua New Guinea adorns its academic credibility as the national university in Papua New Guinea with high academic tradition measured by producing more under-graduate degrees holders who go onto earn Masters, PhDs and other qualifications in prestigious international universities in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe, Japan, China, Singapore, and elsewhere. The few who have gone far afield away from traditional training grounds in Australian and New Zealand universities know that the University of Papua New Guinea is the benchmark of academic standard.

Everywhere I go in our country I have not failed to see a UPNG graduate in charge or is part of a team working hard to build PNG.

Fiction and Reality Juxtapositions

2010-05-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

The published version of this article appeared in Steven's Window, a column in the Weekender magzine of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 30th May 2010, p.5.

I recommended Moses Maladina’s Tabu, (a fictional account of an interracial affair in colonial Papua) to students studying my course on literature and politics in Papua New Guinea. I have two reasons for doing so. First reason has to do with how writers use fiction to rewrite history from their own perspectives. The second reason is that the colonizers went through great lengths to legislate their conduct and relationship to those that they colonized.

In the book, Maladina considers the colonial period under Lieutenant Governor Hubert Murray’s administration. This is juxtaposed against the postcolonial period under the Sir Julius Chan’s period as Prime Minister. Murray’s period was marked by unpopular administration policies and colonial legislations, especially the Eurocentric and ridiculous laws enacted to protect the Europeans more than to protect the ‘natives,’ the subject of such legislations. Sir Chan’s period was marked by the Bougainville Crisis and the Sandline Affair controversy.

Sir Hubert Murray passed the Ordinance on the protection of white women in the Territory in 1926. The legislation came to be known as the White Women’s Protection Ordinance. According to Amirah Inglis: “It was a piece of legislation discriminating in its provisions, harsh in its penalties, and startling out of character with Murray’s rule and its effect on Papuans, no history of colonial Papua, can be complete without an explanation of it. The White Women’s Protection Ordinance was the most significant expression of one aspect of the relations between black and white in the colony, the fear of sexual attack by black men on white women and girls: the “Black Peril”. The extent of this fear is perhaps hard to believe today, but any reading of the papers of the day will uncover it.”

Tabu, is a historical fiction centred on the legacy of a love affair in colonial Papua New Guinea. The novel opens up with the execution of Sitiveni (Stephen) Goramambu, the first indigenous man trialed and hanged in Port Moresby on the 29th of January 1934 under the racially prejudiced law. It was a law created, not to protect white women in the colonies, but to protect the property of the white men, and his prejudice against the black men in the colonies.

The period of Murray’s regime was marked by the European fear and anxieties about Papuan’s transgression of the colonial space, property, and comfort zone. Such transgression was considered dangerous and damaging to the ego, pride, and authority of the European male in colonial Papua. As is clear in Amirah Inglis’s book Not a White Woman Safe: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby 1920-1934, published in 1974 by the ANU press.

The link between Maladina and Murray’s action is that what Murray did was similar to what Maladina is doing now, by sponsoring a Bill to amend the Constitution in order to protect the interests and actions of the leaders, rather than the general interests of the people of Papua New Guinea.

It seems to me that Maladina is repeating what history has taught us about the creation of legislation that is biased towards the ruling authorities in the pretext of creating laws to protect the interest of the majority of people. Maladina had learnt from Murray’s experience that all he needs to do is get the National Parliament to amend the Constitution so that the powers of the Ombudsman to investigate leaders who breach the Leadership Code are erased. The real reason for making the amendment to the Constitution is not to make the work of the Ombudsman effective, but to disarm it from operating as a watch dog.

Soon after the second vote a cross section of the society spoke out about the danger to PNG society this amendment would make. After the third reading takes place to amend the Constitution it will open the floodgate of corruption, nepotism, and abuse of office. The new amendment in Section 27 subsection (5) of the Constitution will also affect the Section 16 of the Organic Law on Duties and Responsibilities of Leaderships. Inserting subsection (5), essentially, stops the Ombudsman Commission from intervening, investigating, or holding leaders responsible for questionable conduct, false pretence, squandering, and misuse of public funds. This is a ploy considered mischievous by the Ombudsman Commission “of the view that this proposal is not clear in terms of the mischief it seeks to address.” The new amendment to the Constitution removes the teeth of the public watchdog.

The Ombudsman Commission is against the Constitutional amendment as noted in its public lecture at UPNG on Friday 23 April 2010. It is now public knowledge that the Ombudsman Commission had rejected all of the proposed amendments that Maladina had submitted for the First Reading in Parliament. Maladina then withdrew the proposed amendment because it was not in concert with the spirit of the Constitution.

It is reassuring, however, to know that we are a conscientious people, able to speak against sectorial interests and manipulative leaders at work in denying the spirit of the Constitution that bind us together since 16 September 1975. It is also reassuring to see civil society organizations such as Community Coalition Partners Against Corruption, NGOS, and Transparency International (TI) mobilizing public support against Parliament making amendments to the Constitution in the next sitting of Parliament.

I am left to think fiction imitates reality. Murray made a mistake that tainted his political legacy. It seems to me the ghost of Sir Hubert Murray has reincarnated itself with the sole purpose of reaffirming the rearranged psychological conditions, postcolonial anxieties, fears, and contiguous tensions between the rule and the ruled. Is Moses Maladina about to do the same (as Murray) in pursuing the amendment to the Constitution by getting the Parliament to pass it?

What is a possible intervention against the proposed amendment? A constitutional intervention is possible if the Ombudsman Commission, as an authority entitled under Section 19 (3) of the Constitution, can make an application to the Supreme Court to give its opinion on any provision of a Constitutional Law.

Gender Equality an Uncharted Terrain

2010-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

This is the orignal version of the article published in Steven'w Window, a column in the Weekender of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 23rd April 2010, p.5.

Popular misconception, prevailing patriarchal notions of women’s place in society, and the struggle women have in articulating their experiences using their own voices seem to affect gender equality at work. The respected Papua New Guinean scholar, educator, and advocate for gender balance in workplaces, Dr. Kapa Darius Kelep-Malpo, has a recipe for addressing gender equality at workplace and in organizations. In her new book Gender Equality at the Workplace, Dr. Kelep-Malpo provides a recipe for smart organization to promote gender equality. The book is self-published with funding support from generous individuals. The book features provocative cartoons illustrated by Mr. Bunesito Thaross, a student in the Expressive Arts Department of the University of Goroka.

The book is also endorsed by Dame Carol Kidu, MP and Reverend Philip Tony Dalaka, Assistant General Superintendent, AOG-PNG and senior Pastor of the Cornerstone Gateway Church in Goroka.

Dame Carol Kidu says of the book: “Dr. Malpo’s book is an insightful analysis of this situation. Her recipe is for smart organizations with a purpose in Papua New Guinea to address the imbalance and to make gender equality in the workplace a reality. She skillfully analyses the fact that women in authority is uncharted terrain for men…It is imperative that politicians and bureaucrats who design policies and programs for gender interventions listen to the voice of our indigenous researchers to ensure appropriate responses to address the present gender imbalance in the executive levels of the workforce in Papua New Guinea”.

In his own words, Grand Chief Sir Paulias Matane, the Governor General of Papua New Guinea, also speaks highly of Dr. Kelep-Malpo’s purpose in writing this book: “She strongly believes that smart organizations thrive and move forward, because women and men work together. She highlights many examples in this well researched and written book.” I couldn’t agree more.

Gender Equality at the Workplace has 13 chapters on gender equality and organizations smart enough to make decisions based on the skills and merits of individuals rather than on the traditional gender divisions.

Dr. Kelep-Malpo declares: “Literature on organizational management abroad illustrate that smart organizations are thriving both on their amalgamation of feminine and masculine leadership qualities as well as the general gender differences in the workplace…Global literature and media coverage illustrate that more and more women in developed and developing counties are entering the executive arena.”

To illustrate her point how this is possible in Papua New Guinea Dr. Kelep-Malpo gives a historical background to the promotion of gender inequality before moving on to addressing specific recipes for success in promoting gender equality at workplace. After each chapter a number of questions to consider are given.

In the chapter on smart organizations that value human resources, Dr. Kelep Malpo says: “Smart organizations are led by visionary leaders. The organizational vision emanates from an organizational culture which promotes competition and experimentation of ideas, knowledge and skills…Utilizing the best of both genders is part and parcel of the experimentation.”

“Papua New Guinea has to catch up with countries that are benefiting from the realization that equality between women and men is important in the successful transition to a market economy,” is the discussion in chapter 3. National development must not ignore the constitutional requirement of gender equality in Papua New Guinea.

Chapter 4 highlights the reality of gender equity and practices in the workplace in PNG: “Generally, the obstacles to women’s full participation in their country’s development and in public life can be grouped into these categories: legal and management; cultural, and social and economic factors, including access to and ownership of resources.”

The need for Papua New Guineans to be educated on gender equality at all levels is by Dr. Kelep-Malpo: “the lack of a consistent support towards national women’s actions from the national government …The absence of women in the national government could be a contributing factor to this inconsistency.”

In chapter 5, the challenges, women leaders face are considered. Women leaders are often tested by their male colleagues. “When women occupy leadership positions, the organizational landscape changes,” Dr. Kelep-Malpo writes in her 2003 study. “It becomes uncharted terrain for men, full of hidden bumps and potholes…because many men experience a sense of disorientation working for women because the top of an organization is where men make their last stand to be themselves and uphold what they think is the natural order of things.”

Beginning at chapter 6 and ending in chapter 10, the author describes how and why men test women in authority. Gender stereotyping and biases, cultural beliefs and practices, work ethics affected by gender and early childhood experiences, and finally Christian beliefs and practices are some of these factors.

In the last three chapters Dr. Kelep Malpo delivers the recipe for smart organizations with a purpose in Papua New Guinea: organization members have diverse personality, training for gender equality in the workplace is must, and the necessity of gender equity and diversity policies.

Dr.Kelep-Malpo says: “Smart organizations perceive staff diversity as an asset which can lead to enhanced learning, flexibility, organizational and individual growth, and the ability to adjust rapidly, and successfully, to the changes in the external environment…[to] promote and reinforce policies recognizing diversity and its richness”.

Dr. Kelep-Malpo has succeeded in writing this book. It is a well researched and articulated book written in simple, clear, and objective language that reinforces the sense of a successful woman speaking for herself and her lot. Second, it is a book that has the potential to become a workplace manual or reference in organizations and work environments in Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Kelep-Malpo is among leading PNG women in the likes of Dr. Cecilia Nembo, Dr. Orovu Sepoe, Dr. Anne Waiko, Dr. Angela Mandie-Filer, Dr. Julian Kaman, Dr. Anastasia Sai, Prof. Betty Lovai, Dr. Rose Kekedo, Mrs. Rose Ninkama, Ms. Margaret Taylor, Mrs. Josepha Kanawi, Judge Cathy Davani, Ms. Winnie Kiap, Ms. Helen Seleu, Ms. Margaret Elias, and Norah Vagi Brash.

The book is a compass for those navigating the uncharted territory of gender balance.

Gender Equality Through Children's Art

2010-05-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

The edited version as in the title was published in Steven's Window, a column in the Weekender of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 16th April 2010, p.5.

PNG school girl's winning drawing in 2007. Waigani Primary School in the National Capital District was chosen by the European Commission as the site to launch its Drawing Competition 2010. The competition is now in its fourth year. This year’s competition is based on the theme of Gender Equality. The competition was launched on March 08th, 2010 coinciding with the International Women’s Day.

The International Drawing Competition on gender equality has been conducted by the Commission since 2007 with great success. The competition aims to mobilize and raise the awareness of both children and adults around the issue of gender equality as well as giving EU Delegations the chance to involve the relevant national and local authorities in the planning and implementation of the competition, in close collaboration with local schools.

To have the competition made relevant to Papua New Guinean children the European Commission worked in partnership with the Department of Education’s National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat.

Eight to ten year old children in developing countries are invited to express in a drawing vision on the theme of gender equality. This year’s theme proposes to reflect on how girls and boys, women and men, can together make the world a better place.

I was privileged to have witnessed the official launch of the competition at Waigani Primary School this year. I turned up at the school for the launch more out of curiosity than as an invited guest of the European Union. An extended invitation from Mr. Willie Jonduo, the Director of the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (NLAS), was reason enough to tag along for the launch of the drawing competition. I joined the official party without knowing the background of the European Union International Drawing Competition.

It was only later, after the launch and during the refreshment that I requested from Catherine Eminoni of the European Union office in Port Moresby to give me printed materials on the competition.

The European Union published a book written and illustrated by children in the 2007 competition. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the Europeans Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood policy introduces the little booklet containing all the background information.

Ferer-Waldner’s introduction helped me to understand the history and background of the International Drawing Competition. She says: “We have made this little booklet for you. Take a good look at the beautiful drawings…They were made by girls and boys from all over the world; from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and from an island in the Pacific Ocean.” The completion is so popular around the world.

One of PNG’s own daughters won the competition in 2007. Young Florence Adjouyniope Metta, 10 years old at that time from the Saint Francis Primary School of Koki, National Capital District won the competition. Florence drew a garden of men and women doing the same job. The caption to her drawing reads: In a garden in Papua New Guinea, a chief made man for woman and woman for man. He said we are all equal in everything we do and see”.

Papua New Guinea and Namibia were the winners in the category Africa Caribbean Pacific, while Brazil and Colombia won for the category Latin America, Afghanistan and Nepal for Asia, Georgia and Ukraine for Europe and Jordan and Syria for the Mediterranean.

Praising the talents of the children of the world Benita Ferrero-Waldner says: “I was very impressed by the many excellent drawings … for this competition. Overall, we received more than 10,000 drawings from all corners of the globe. This really exceeded all our expectations. It just shows how many talented children there are, and how many want to contribute to improving the fate of women and girls”.

It comes as no surprise to me to see one of our children win the competition. The many stories and drawings our children do at school can be sent to the competition immediately.

The Education Department supports the artistic development and appreciation of the arts and culture of through its Lower Primary Syllabus on Arts. The Department believes that art is an important factor in social and spiritual development. “Arts subjects at Elementary, Primary and Secondary School levels put this into practice. Students become aware of their place in the community by learning traditional skills, such as storytelling, acting, singing, playing instruments, dancing, painting, drawing, weaving, carving and construction. Arts activities are the basis for exploration and creativity in areas such as artistic expression, such as performance, dance, song writing, musical composition, painting, pattern-making and design. These develop the whole person.” I hope that this competition or any other art competitions are seen as opportunities for our children to contest using their natural talents and skills of storytelling and drawing. Teachers and parents must encourage their children to send in their entries to this competition.

Outside of the Education Department, The National newspaper encourages our young readers to draw, write and tell their stories in The Young Life, a children’s own publication appearing every Wednesday for our young enthusiastic readers and writers.

Parents and teachers must encourage our talented young Papua New Guineans to submit their drawings and stories for the competition.

The stories and drawings in The Young Life have been the source of many of my writing classes at the University for adults enhancing their creative writing skills, editing techniques, and book productions. Our children have taught me and others to write and tell our stories in our own way without worrying about the mechanics of writing and stylistic elements.

Our children have, through their stories and drawings, in The Young Life, made us, the adults appear ashamed for not ploughing the creative national psychic and advancing our skills of writing to make Papua New Guinea proud.

The competition dateline is 14 May 2010. The selection of the winning drawings by a jury of European children in June 2010. Final award announced in November 2010.

For further information contact Catherine Eminoni of European Union office or Mr. Willie Jonduo, Director of the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat of the Department of Education.

Keep Writing Arnold

2010-05-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

The edited version appeared in The National newspaper on April 10th, 2010, p.5.

Losing the manuscripts for his third novel, Arnold Mundua wondered if publishing his first two books were worth it. He had spent his limited resources and time to research for the novel. He hopes to complete the story began with Yaltep, the protagonist in Ignatius Kilage’s My Mother Calls Me Yaltep. Arnold is devastated with the experience of losing his laptop with the manuscript in it to some lazy thieves. All he wanted to do was to stop writing altogether. He felt disrespected for being a writer.

Arnold wrote and published two books early this century. His first book is A Bride Price: a Novel (2003) and the second book Elep Returns (2005) is a story of a tree and its conversion into paper—an experimental fiction using the literary device of personification. Arnold is a forester by profession, based in Mount Hagen, Western Highlands Province. Arnold is from Gembogl district in the Simbu Province of Papua New Guinea, but spent most of his time in other provinces like the Morobe, West New Britain, and West Sepik Province. Arnold has a Diploma in Forestry, received at the PNG Forestry College, PNG University of Technology.

Arnold is not the average forester, he writes profusely, as if talent was something he would not run out of. His first novel A Bride’s Price, a semi-autobiographical novel, set in the Simbu Province was published by the CBS Publishers & Distributors of India. To introduce his novel to many Papua New Guineans I wrote a review on it some time back. His second book Elep Returns, is a story of a tree named Elep that grew in Kandrian on the south west coast of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. The second book is also published by the same publisher in India.

I gave a raving review of his first book when it came out of press. Recently, he wrote to me expressing his disappointment that he was one of the PNG writers that the Education Department ignored. In his own words, Arnold says: “I spent close to K20,000.00 to get my two books published in India and shipped to me, only to find that there was no market for them in PNG. I distributed copies to the relevant government institutions and departments, but strangely received not a single response, let alone an acknowledgement letter of receipt to all my letters. I really don’t know why, but I am truly and deeply upset particularly with the Education Department for not seriously considering my book: Elep Returns: The Story of a Tree & its Conversion into Paper. This particular book was intended for Grade 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12 students in PNG schools, to give them an overview of forest, foresters and forestry in PNG. It is simplified English, illustrated and made ideal in thickness for any school child to read, enjoy and learn about the forest industry in PNG. Many adults found the book very educational too but I really don’t know why the Education Department ignores it”.

Arnold’s second book falls under the category of personification, a literary device used by writers to add human characteristics to non-human things. The book is suitable for use as a text in the Language and Literature curriculum, environmental studies, or as a social studies book. The quality of the book is that it is written in a language that is playful, fun, and recognizable. I’m surprised it was never picked up as an interesting book for use in our schools.

Elep Returns is the story of a tree, named Elep, which grew in Kandrian on the south coast of West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. The book relates Elep’s own adventurous story, blossoming from a seed to a big tree, its metamorphosis to log of wood and then its export to Japan, its transformation as paper, import of paper by Australia and then its export to the country of its origin for printing of school certificates. As a matter of coincidence, Elep, now in its new incarnation, as school-leaving certificate, has the proud privilege to display the academic excellence of the boy who used to relish its nuts while in the Kandrian village.

This science fiction, profusely illustrated, is written by a Forest Officer and brings to focus the knowledge and information of the various stages in the growth of a tree, working of the Forest Authority, mechanism undertaken from the stage of its export to the pulping of log and to its transformation as paper in Japan. The voyage of the logs from PNG to Japan and then to Australia, in the form of paper, provides a kaleidoscopic view of the places the ship sailed through and the beautiful ambience of Japanese ports and cities. It also describes the distinct nature and skill of Japanese workers.

Arnold Mundua’s two books are in my professional view, relevant books for use in different levels of our education systems. The first book A Bride’s Price is a book I would recommend for use in upper secondary schools and university level courses, but more particularly it will make sense for every young Simbus to read and reflect on the experiences and perhaps consider writing their own books to capture their own experiences.

The second book Elep Returns is narrated in a simple way and keeps the reader engrossed. In view of the educational nature of this novel, it should be essential reading both for the young and the old alike. It is a must for every school level, colleges, university, and institutional libraries.

Arnold makes the point that writing books is one thing, but when the books are ignored by the responsible entities there is no point in writing anymore books: “It is sad to admit that such ignorance has led me and many other potential writers to lose interest to commit anymore time and energy on new books… because there is no incentive or motivation in book writing in PNG from the government and public alike.”

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Back on Blog

2010-05-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends:

Be assured the blog has not gone out of operation or moved away from this spot. The blog will remain active for as long as it can.

In the last four weeks I have not posted any new views on this blog. The main reason has to do with the versions I wanted on the blog. The versions that appear on this blog usually get published in the Steven’s Window, a column in the Weekender of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. The last four articles published in The National had not been posted on my blog.

The published version in The National newspaper is an edited version. I don’t have the edited version in electronic form until after the newspaper posts it on its website.

The decision I am taking now is to publish the original version on my blog. The main reason being that I own the original idea and the way it was expressed. I’d like to maintain that authenticity on my blog.
I am now posting the four articles in their original versions. I ask that you update your reading with these articles.

Let me know what tickles you from my views expressed in this genre.

From time to time I will add new unpublished stories to the blog.

HAPPY READING!

SEW

PNG's Poet at Large Remembered

2010-04-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

The tribute appeared in The Weekender of The National newspaper on Friday 26 of March 2010, p.5 under Steven's Window column.

THE plan was for me to travel to Manus around June this year to launch Andyson Bernard Kaspou’s book.

I was working on a collection of poetry written by Mr Kaspou, at Sherwood Forest of Nottingham, South Yorkshire, Great Britain. I had also planned to include a rare interview I had with him last Christmas.

The news of his passing on Feb 28 reached me in a vague way leaving me unsure about the truth or falsity of the event. What I am used to is hearing about the eminent visit of the poet-at-large, Andyson Bernard Kaspou to Port Moresby once in a while. He was a Manus man, living life to its fullest back in his village.

The late Andyson Bernard Kaspou had his home province at heart, but found it necessary, once in a while, to travel to Port Moresby to visit his savannah wantoks, relatives, brothers, sisters, in-laws, and new additions to the tribe of writers, artists, musicians, scholars, academics, English teachers, students, and others with a passion for literature, books, arts, and music.

He came, he saw, he commented, and left us in the savannah to wallow in his piece of mind and words of wisdom. He occasionally flew to Port Moresby to participate in conferences and workshops where writers meet. His contributions to such gatherings were invaluable. They made some of us look mediocre, showing us that though we live in Port Moresby, we are simply too aloof as writers and scholars because of our failure to contribute meaningfully to the community of creative Papua New Guineans.

He spent his time in Port Moresby hammering home his message of hope for Papua New Guinean writers and intellectuals to remain true to their people in their representations. The fiery, often latent nationalism of the 1970s rubbed off and remained in Kaspou until his demise last month.

He drummed into my head the idea that we can never be free of the Western history we inherited from our colonial past unless we learnt what Russell Soaba’s artist saw through the eye-holes of his father’s skull after he returned from overseas.

In the moments I had with him since our first encounter in the mid 1980s to last Christmas, Kaspou impressed upon me that whatever I was doing had so much value to our society. It was as if he was the unasked-for guiding angel, whose rare visitations always left unanswered questions about our role as Papua New Guinean writers in the wind. As writers, he reckons we should do more, say more, and articulate our experiences as Papua New Guineans.

A sense of purpose permeates all he said. “All writers must return to the village, their birth place at least once in our lifetime to appreciate the earth and cultural environment that nurtured our beginning”, he said in our first interview, published in the Savannah Flames: A Papua New Guinean Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture. In that interview I remember the poet-at-large making the ultimate statement that no matter where we go in this world, we Papua New Guineans will always return to the place where our umbilical cord lies buried.

Writing this tribute to a silent man whose life might never be known to other Papua New Guineans I am obliged to remember him at this time.

Andyson Bernard Kaspou’s life began and ended in Ndranou village in the Manus province. He came from the Timoh lineage of the Poltru-u major clan. He has four children.

He graduated from the University of PNG, majoring in anthropology with a minor in social psychology. He also has a diploma from the then Goroka Secondary Teachers’ College (now University of Goroka) and a diploma in foreign service from the Papua New Guinean Institute of Public Administration. He obtained his masters degree in sociology of development from the University of Sheffield, UK in 1988. He has travelled throughout the Pacific, Asia, Middle East and Western Europe

The late Kaspou did a variety of jobs including teaching, academic research, editorial work, diplomatic service and consultant to the PNG Government. From 1990-92 Kaspou was the director of the research unit of the Office of the Prime Minister. From there he returned to Manus to start the

Ila Ime Research Centre, a community based organisation. He was there until his death.

The late Kaspou was lecturing at the PNG Institute of Public Administration when I first met him. The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies had just published his collection of poems in Bikmaus: A Journal of Papua New Guinea Affairs, Ideas, and the Arts in June 1987. It was the year he won the poetry prize in the PNG National Literature Competition. He also published his poems in Ondobondo, the PNG Writer, ASPECT, and the PNG Teachers’ Association Journal.

Kaspou was preparing to launch Akara Nwihe, his poetry collection, in June 2010 when he passed away. Akara Nwihe in Akara language means everything in life can be attempted. And true to these words, the late Kaspou lived the Akara philosophy: “If one can conquer any challenge, that challenge once conquered becomes ultimately nothing. In other words, what anyone can do, within all human frailties and limitations, you can do it too, even at a better level.”

Kaspou derived his wisdom from his father, John Kaspou Yoke, to be able to see life in this philosophy.

That was the Andyson Bernard Kaspou, the PNG poet-at-large that I came to know and respect.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Living in a Candle City

2010-04-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

This review of A Rower's Song was done by Russell Soaba in his column Russell's Storyboard in The National newspaper. Friday 26 March 2010, p.4.

The poet is a rower, that dutiful oarsman, guiding the society along, “in the currents that [sweep] this land, for many moons and many nights, under the Southern Cross...”

We, as the poet’s guests, need only jump on board and witness with him what he sees, what he hears, how he responds to the noise and voices around him, as he takes us out to the deep sea of thought, wonder, expectation and, of course, revelation.

Thus, Steven Winduo’s new publication, a collection of poetry titled A Rower’s Song. Published in 2009 under the imprint of Manui Publishers, a self-publishing venture, the volume runs for 146 pages and sells at the UPNG bookshop for K60.

It contains 112 poems. More than half of this number is devoted to the “candle city”, observations of life and daily activity in the urban settlements of Papua New Guinea. The remainder covers observations from the poet’s travels overseas as both writer and scholar, to places such as mainland America, Canada, Hawaii, Samoa and New Caledonia.

While the poems set in Papua New Guinea are written in a tone that we are familiar with, about the ordinary and the everyday occurrence, all of them, in fact, cause us to pause momentarily and ask: “Wait a minute. What am I reading here?”

As we thus ponder over each poem, the persona of the whole collection, not Steven Winduo as the poet or writer, gently nudges us: “Mystery deepens everyday/I yearn for the spoken truth/In art, poetry, music/Even in their surreal moments/there is a story behind them.”

And so the persona takes us further in this journey of poetry that is constantly in motion; that will never stop buzzing. There, in A Rower’s Song, in every poem, in every line, is everything the reader would want to know about the “candle city”. In this city, no one sleeps. Everyone is awake, not for the fear of some natural calamity or the fear of war, but to “create betel nut wars, peddler wars, lamb flap wars, second-hand clothes wars, settlement wars” and even “create traffic chaos.”

Sounds familiar? “And watching the dawn break”, continues the persona, “I have forgotten all this time [that] the candle city is their world.”

So to the “candle city” is devoted the first segment of this volume of poetry. In there, we learn of betelnut vendors, doing all they can to earn their keep. We learn of a young woman whose father, a tucker shop owner, wants her to become a lawyer but she cannot because her peers and the habits of the candle city divert her attention to other interests. We learn of a politician promising his voters so much just to become a total stranger to them the moment he wins the elections. We learn of music turned up full blast at a certain neighbourhood and the shouts and screams and cursing of the new generation of youth drowning that genre of cultural sensibilities. We learn of how much we earn each fortnight and how much we lose to income tax or “troubled youth who cannot sleep at nights”. Then, of course, we take a peek at our pay slip and lo and behold, all this, this becomes our life style in the candle city. “Every day after work/we go to the shop/we spend all we have to keep the house/our living is a borrowed one/the money we earn disappears/on the first day we are paid/our lives are sold to someone.”

Yet the persona does not merely take us on such a trip just to dump us if the weather gets rough. He rather assumes a new voice with the next poems that follow. Poems that lament, that instruct, that remind us of our sense of belonging, such as when we spare a thought for our betelnut vendor: “I wonder how you go home/every evening... to your family/do you count your day’s earnings first/or cook your meals before doing your accounting.” And above all, poems that give us direction in our search for destiny itself. One such poem is “Date with Destiny” and those familiar with the Waigani campus may recall the same poem that forms part of the mural art work leading to the students mess. But the best of these would be “Urban Natives” and “Glimmer of Hope” in which we learn, respectively, that “we brought the village to town/we are the urban natives/we will never return home” and “never mind the corruption debate/give the people a glimmer of hope/let the candles burn in the city.”

As a concluding remark on what it is that we must do for the candle city the persona suggests work. We must never stop working such as the poem “Scent of Jasmine” intones, when the persona stays up at night working and looking forward to when his children will wake up to a “new morning scent of jasmine”: “They sleep while I work/And listen to their breathing/I am thinking of them/Someday they will know/What I thought tonight/About their future in this world.”

The second segment of A Rower’s Song takes the reader to another level of poetic consciousness. This covers reflections on things observed during the poet’s travels overseas. What is significant here is Winduo’s experiences in meeting, knowing and working with poets from other cultures. Through Winduo, we see our persona, both as poet and scholar, re-living the thoughts, experiences and insights of great men of poetry such as T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Walt Whitman and Borges et al.

It is always an exciting experience for a Papua New Guinean to find himself at certain settings once walked upon by these great men of poetry. What was Walt Whitman thinking when he last visited this part of America, or Auden that college or university? Other literary figures the persona mentions include Langston Hughes and Mark Twain, and in this volume of poetry we feel certain affinities developing between the PNG poetic consciousness and the American one as “we walk on the same road twice/Or more, to be reawakened/To the slightest of ruffle, or/To the sudden awakening of the spirit/That brought me all the way here/And would take me all the way back.”

In all, A Rower’s Song becomes an important addition to Winduo’s checklist of publications, where the literary flame, like the savannah years of the University of PNG, will never stop dancing.

Students of literature and the general reader alike will find this volume invaluable. But for the enormous amount of influence that the author has within our region of the Pacific what better way to say of his work than to quote one of his fans from Kamehameha schools in Honolulu, Hawaii: “I would like to say that I enjoyed the subject of your poem the most, the dancer. Just the subject of this poem has so much emotion and vigorous feeling lying within the name itself. A dancer, a person who uses their body to express themselves is a wonderful way to embody the feelings being expressed. I derived passion, heat, envy, love, and energy from the lines of your poem. The line, “Finger tips of flames”, brings these emotions out to me through the personification of the flames being fingers that can reach out and touch people.”

Responses to this review: anaveramaga@EWCA.EastWestCenter.org

Our Knowledge System

2010-03-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

The article was featured in The Weekender of The National newpaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 19th March 2010, p.5. Photo credi: The National newspaper.

PAPUA New Guineans are great story tellers. People spend more time talking than reading or writing. No matter how hard I or other literate people push people to make reading and writing part of our culture Papua New Guineans will depend on storytelling skills to get around.

We often hear the expression: Hau yu tromoi tokpisin em yu yet nau. (The way you use your Tok Pisin is up to you) It means the way in which you use language, how you talk, what you say, and to whom you say it, matters a lot in getting the results you want. Speaking is privileged more than written expression that most Papua New Guineans would rather talk their way through an issue rather than communicate on paper.

The more we keep ignoring the importance of writing our stories on paper the more we move away from recording valuable linguistic and cultural knowledge in a permanent form.

We need to encourage our young people to record the stories they hear from their parents, grandparents and relatives. I have no doubt this is already happening with many Papua New Guineans.

Recently I came across an archive of material which I had asked students who passed through the University of PNG to write down about stories and cultural knowledge from their area. These original materials remain unpublished all these years that a sense of guilt on my part began to bother me. To settle this I will include some of these in my column to highlight the value of stories in our communities.

The first piece written by Lyne Kuraiba is about the ways in which knowledge is preserved in the east coast area of New Ireland province and the Sina-Sina Yongamugl area of Simbu province. Lyne writes that in her mother’s area of Sina-Sina Yongamugl, the weather is predicted on the basis of observing the sky in the night. If people see a single star in a cold night it means the weather will remain dry and sunny in the ensuing days and weeks.

Lyne’s mother’s people also observe that the appearance of a green grasshopper at night means good fortune will follow soon after. Another cultural observation of the people is the smell of bedbugs indicating that visitors are expected to arrive in the village soon. Lyne describes how her mother’s people know that a gift of pork meat is on the way when they have the tip of their toes dug into the ground when they walk. This cultural knowledge system may seem ridiculous to those who are not from that society, but these stories provide explanations regarding cultural experiences that form the cultural logic informing the members of that society.

In traditional societies every action taken is in response to an event that is of significance to that society.

“In my father’s area of the east coast of New Ireland,” Lyne writes, “one common practice of recalling knowledge is the tying up of a betel nut tree trunk. When one sees the trees being tied up with knots then surely the trees are preserved for special occasions such as feasts, initiation, etc.”

The betel nuts are then left to reach full maturity before they are harvested for personal use, trade, or gifts to friends and visitors. People in that community know and accept that practice without questioning or breaking the taboo.

“Similar to that is the tying up of tanget (cordyline terminalis) leaves.” Lyne continues. “When a tanget leaf is being tied up by someone, then this normally means danger or that something has gone wrong.”

She gives the example of a son leaving home after an argument with his father. After some time the father discovers that a tanget near the house is tied up. This is read as a message that the son has vowed never to return to his family. He considers himself an outcast. To reconcile the difference and unite the father and son, the father must kill a pig and have a feast to bring his son back into the family.

Such knowledge remains culturally bound. It gives us all the more reason to document their practices. PNG is a fast changing society and efforts to have our cultural knowledge systems documented in any form should be encouraged. I know it is easy for me to say encouraged, but it is difficult to do everything possible to preserve our cultural knowledge.

It is easy for me to encourage students to write down the traditional knowledge and ways of knowing inherited from their parents, but the challenge with this kind of approach is to find the funds to publish the original materials produced by our students as part of their learning experiences.

Our young people bring with them a plethora of stories drawn from the rich diversity of PNG cultures. I am mindful that these stories become corrupted through a process of cultural centrifuging. Efforts to authenticate their originality can be futile. The moment a story is told, it is fresh, original, and has the power to affect its listeners. It must be written down at the precise moment.

I am insisting on the writing down of these stories to preserve their cultural authenticity and their symbolic power. A handful of local publications such as PNG School Journal, Young Life, Lost in Jungle Ways, Zia Writers of Waria, and Oxford Pacific Series feature writings and artworks of our local writers, artists, and young people, but the circulation of these publications is limited. More local publications are needed to meet the increasing reading demands of PNG children.

Perhaps we should start thinking outside of the box now. Dependent on books with no local content or authorship can lead us to ignore our own stories, histories, and knowledge systems. Should we continue to think of ourselves as incapable of writing books about our people and for our people? No I don’t think so.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

The Passing of a great Melanesian

2010-03-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

This tribute was made to the late Dr. Bernard Narokobi on Friday 19th March 2010. front cover of The Weekender in The National newspaper. Photo credits to Staff of The National. Thanks to Margaret Daure for editorial.

In the engine room of the Constitutional Planning Committee in 1972 was a young Papua New Guinean lawyer from Wautogik Village, an Arapesh community of the East Sepik Province.

The lawyer, Bernard Mullu Narokobi, had just graduated from the Sydney University, Australia a year ago in 1971.

Born in 1945, Bernard Narokobi, who was educated in PNG and Australia, played a prominent role as the legal officer from the Public Solicitor’s Office to advise the Constitutional Planning Committee on the development of the Papua New Guinean Constitution.

The Constitution was submitted to the Chief Minister, Michael Thomas Somare in Aug 13 1974.

The Constitution became operational on Sept 16 1975, when Papua New Guinea became an Independent State. Without the Constitution, our nation would never have been born.

Dr. Bernard Narokobi passed away at the Port Moresby General Hospital on Tuesday March 9, 2010.

He was believed to have died of heart failure associated with his diabetic condition.

I pay my respects to someone who in my lifetime stood tall and carried himself with the highest degree of human dignity, wisdom, and Papua New Guinean values that all citizens young people, men and women, leaders, nation builders, students, teachers, and ordinary folk should consider the ideals of a true citizen of this great Melanesian nation.

His life is exemplary to many of us who want to serve our country without making a big deal about what we want to do to help our people.

Dr. Narokobi’s influence in the legal system, politics, and ideological development of Melanesian Ways, remains truly monumental and inspiring.
After PNG gained independence, Bernard Narokobi held several jobs, including serving as the legal advisor to the provincial government in his home province of East Sepik, he also worked as a private lawyer, a lecturer in law at the University of PNG and had a stint as an acting judge in the PNG National and Supreme Courts.

He also published a number of papers and articles, which are scattered in various journals and several books, including: The Melanesian Way, Life and Leadership in Melanesia and Lo Bilong Yumi and a short book of fiction entitled Two Seasons.

The late Dr. Narokobi was like the un-diminishing morning beacon of light raised on the hills of Wautogik to shine out its steady and assuring beams into the Ocean to guide the lost fisherman back home, to the roots, to our ways of life, our ways of knowing, and to the laws in our society that guide us onward.

His life was the embodiment of the ideals he believed in and inscribed into the constitution and the philosophy of Melanesian Ways.
The late Bernard Mullu Narokobi served as a Member of Parliament, Government Minister, Attorney General, Opposition Leader, Speaker, and the PNG High Commissioner to New Zealand.

Two occasions that the late Narokobi surprised me, even though he was a busy man and one would have thought he had no time for the little man.

The first occasion was in the PNG High Commission Office in Wellington, New Zealand in 2006. Never mind his busy schedule that day, he made time to meet me, when I traveled from Christchurch to make a courtesy call to the High Commissioner.

The second occasion was during the funeral service of the late Paschal Waisi, who had worked with the late Dr. Narokobi to develop the course Melanesian Philosophy at the University of Papua New Guinea. He turned up before anyone else to pay his last respects to the one person who taught Melanesian Philosophy at the University.

Dr.Narokobi’s philosophies, ideas, way of life, and simplicity rubbed on many of us, who held him higher than some of his contemporaries.

He was in the league of grand chiefs, influential statesmen, philosophers of eminence, and the conscience of a postcolonial nation.

For many of us now, whether we are political leaders, public servants, academics, students, or ordinary Papua New Guineans, we will have to live with the ideas and philosophies of Narokobi.

He lived a simple, everyday life without the pretense that many of his contemporaries exhibit on occasions to separate themselves from the common men and women on the streets of Port Moresby or in the thousands of villages in our country. His life is exemplary to many of us who want to serve our country without making a big deal about what we want to do to help our people.

At this time of his passing the sadness of loss casts its shadows over us in many ways.

How many great men and statesman of unblemished and impeccable record do we have? How many among us are as great as the man whose life is a public life, yet whose virtues and philosophies of life are grounded in the traditions of our people and those of the modern world that we have borrowed from the Western world, but which we now come to regard as our own?
In his own words, we regard such a lifestyle or way of life and ways of knowing, the Melanesian Way.

I pay tribute to the late Dr. Bernard Mullu Narokobi, a person of high intellect and moral standards, someone whom I have long admired his life and work, as a member of the Wewak local community in the East Sepik province that Mr. Narokobi had represented in the National Parliament as a politician, and as a student of Melanesian Philosophy and Constitutional Law.

Dr. Narokobi was more than the titles and offices he held. His life was lived in the way he imagined it to be—a simple, yet complex life, one imbued with the solid idealism grounded in the foundations of the Melanesian Way of life.

Among the many inspirational lines of the late Narokobi, I would like to leave with the reader, a passage from his seminal book, The Melanesian Way (1980): “There are those who are so ill-informed, simplistic and narrow minded as to believe Melanesians have the choice between the so-called “primitive” past of our ancestors and the “civilized and enlightened” present of Western civilization. The choice is in fact more complex than this. The secret to that choice lies in the dual pillars of our Constitution. These pillars are our noble traditions and the Christian principles that are ours now, enhanced by selected technology. It is my hope that we would not blindly follow the West, nor be victims to technology and scientific knowledge. These belong to human kind. They are no racial or national. It is the same with music and good writing. These are physically located in time, place, and people, but in their use and enjoyment, they belong to all. Thus it is with Melanesian virtues”.

Indeed, Dr. Narokobi’s legacy in Melanesia will remain, with us for a long time, as our guiding light.

Transforming Memoirs into Books

2010-03-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window, a column in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 12, 2010, p.5.

I read through my memoire I had written some years back. I am transported back in time and space. A memoire is a personal history or autobiography. I keep journals of my life for as long as I remember. I plan to publish some parts of my journals as a way of sharing my experiences with others as well as to inspire others to write. Writing a personal memoire is fun.

Many of us go through significant moments in our lives without ever recording them. These experiences remain in our memory until we cease to remember anything at all. Keeping a personal journal is one way of recording our thoughts, visions, plans, actions, reactions, and emotions felt at a certain moment in our lives. The memoire is also useful in capturing on paper an event or moments we want saved for a long time. Without a memoire we unable to have a total recall of the details of our experiences whether charged with positive emotions or negative outcomes.

As a writer I keep a journal every day. I write at least one to two pages a day. What I write in my journal is dictated by the events of the day or the events yet to arrive. I write before I sleep or as soon as I wake up early in the morning around 4.00am. At least I spend one hour between 4.00am and 5.00am writing in my journal. Without doing so I feel left out in the cold.

A personal memoire is like a friend or a confidant I talk with everyday. The best part of it is that the journal does not talk back or interrupt the flow of thoughts and ideas. It listens and records every word, thoughts, emotions, and ideas. The personal memoire is a personal record of my life. Keeping a journal is a therapeutic exercise in maintaining sanity, when the world is too difficult to deal with. The journal keeps a permanent record of visions, plans, and strategies of a person. A memoire is a book of personal memory.

At lot of what I publish were first written down as journal entries. Using these original thoughts I then weave them into the kinds of stories I want people to read.

I am now preparing to publish the journal I kept between September 2007 and May 2008, the time I lived and worked in the United States. It was also the time the US Elections Campaign trial was on. I followed with keenness the meteoric rise of the first black President of the United States of America. The race for nomination between the First Lady and now Secretary Hilary Clinton and President Barack Obama infected many of us at that time. For some reason I have always felt a pull towards the Democrats, even in the days when I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota between 1994 and 1998. To make sense of the man destined to be the first African American President in the United States I bought The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. I read the memoire with a sense of purpose and reflection on the future.

For the sake of making sense of my rumblings about keeping memoires and publishing it later, a sneak preview of my memoire is given below. At 10.00pm on the 24th of September 2007 I wrote:

“The first time I came to the United States was when I had turned 30. I was young, adventurous, ambitious, and excited about new experiences. I had always wanted to come to America since 1986. At the time I had written my goals out in a small pocket notebook which I carried around with me. Exactly as I had set myself out to do, I did. With goals in my pocket I became a success story.

Getting what I want or where I want to be begins with writing my goals down and working towards them. The goals I have written down in the past had all been achieved. If I didn’t have any goals I wouldn’t be here. I told myself that if I could be anybody I want to be I became that person. I told myself that I can do anything successfully and I saw that it’s done.

Now teaching in the United States was also a goal I had set myself up to do. Here I am teaching and enjoying my life as a scholar in the USA. I have now set a historical milestone in Papua New Guinea as the first PNG professor of English in the USA.

As far as I can see, this is the point in my life that has taken a giant leap. Working as a professor in the United States is the best break I needed to fully explore my full creative, intellectual, and academic training and life. Back at UPNG I felt useless and had no motivation to do much. My performance level was very low. I felt lazy and unproductive. I felt that I was losing my true self.”

I returned home after a year to the same de-motivating environment I had left behind. From the memoire one can revise and recast one’s plans and strategies based on the success and failures of yesteryears.

Now preparing the memoire for publication, I asked myself whether my personal memoire is of significant interest to anyone, but myself and my children. Most entries in the memoire are straight forward, but there are others too sensitive or unfulfilled wishes not ready for exposure and public scrutiny.

Those writing their autobiography or thinking about converting their personal memoire into a published book should consider such issues, questions, and short-falls before exposing themselves. Great autobiographies inspire and encourage readers to fulfill their own life’s journey.

Autobiographies and personal memoires help steer people on the right track without losing sight of their destinies. Papua New Guinean leaders must publish books based on their experiences to inspire our young people.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

True Measure of Values

2010-03-07T22:06:00.000-08:00

First appeared in Steven's Window, a favorite column in The Weekender of The National daily newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Date: Friday 05th March 2010, p.5.

In his autobiography: The Measure of a Man, Sydney Poitier, the living legend, epitomizing the black presence in Hollywood, talks about his incredible journey from the tomato fields on Cat Island in the Bahamas to the limelight of Hollywood. Poitier recalls his simple childhood on island home: “On that tiny spit of land they call Cat Island, life was indeed very simple, and decidedly preindustrial. Our cultural “authenticity” extended to having neither plumbing nor electricity, and we didn’t have much in the way of schooling or jobs, either. In a word, we were poor, but poverty there was very different from poverty in a modern place characterized by concrete. It’s not romanticizing the past to state that poverty on Cat Island didn’t preclude gorgeous beaches and a climate like heaven, cocoa plum trees and sea grapes and cassava growing in the forest, and bananas growing wild.”

Sydney Poitier went on to be the first black actor to win the Academic Award for best actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963. His landmark films include The Defiant Ones, A Patch of Blue, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and To Sir With Love. Among his many other accolades, Poitier has been awarded the Screen Actor’s Guild’s highest honor, the Life Achievement Award, for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment.

It is always refreshing to read about the life of a successful person to learn about how he or she became successful. The need to reflect on life’s unpredictable journey is the reason for Poitier to write the book. In his own words Poitier describes his reason for writing the book:

“More recently I decided to write about life. Just life itself. What I’ve learnt by living more than seventy years of it. What I absorbed through my early experiences in a certain time and place, and what I absorbed, certainly without knowing it, through the blood of my parents, and through the blood of their parents before them.

“I felt compelled to write about certain values, such as integrity and commitment, faith and forgiveness, about the virtues of simplicity, about the difference between “amusing ourselves to death” and finding meaningful pleasures—even joy. But I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I’ve suddenly come with the answers to all life’s questions. Quite the contrary. I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questioning. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I’ve done at measuring up to the values I espouse, the standards I myself have set.”

Sydney Poitier remains true to his values, principles, and the standards he had set himself to live with. His humbleness and forthrightness as he would in his film roles is also the image one gains from reading the autobiography. The Poitier we follow in this book is someone who went from dishwasher in New York, on to Broadway, and to Hollywood. Sounds a simple straight forward journey, but no, as we find out from Poitier as he recounts his experiences.

What struck me about the book is the association I made to Poitier, acting as the black teacher in a whites only school in England. “Now admittedly, the young teacher I portrayed,” writes Poitier, “was the epitome of virtue. Elegant and well-spoken, intelligent and kind, he was also courageous and steadfast as he stood up to abuse and maintained his commitment to the students under his charge.” That image stayed with me for a long time. The first time I saw the film it inspired me to think of it as a real life experience.

As fate would have it I found myself in exact imitation of the film To Sir With Love when I became the first Papua New Guinean professor of English in an American university between August 2007 and May 2008. It was also the time I acquired Poitier’s autobiography. Reading the book gave me the courage to go through the experience with ease even though the challenge to remain unaffected by the high standard of education in the United States was always a constant heart beat. The experience I gained from teaching English to a class of predominantly white American students for 10 months would remain with me for a long time. The value of such uncommon experiences is that we tend to gain more positive outlook on life by veering into life’s vault to find the inspiration to reinvent ourselves.

Now, at least two years after that experience and teaching back here at the University of Papua New Guinea I reflect on that experiences as a measure of the potential professional Papua New Guineans have in the international market place. We are capable of working as professionals in our chosen fields in different parts of the world, earning respectable salaries for rendering our professional skills and intellectual labor. I was earning US three grants a fortnight, which is equivalent to about nine to ten grants a fortnight in our local currency. With that kind of salary I was able to remit money home and even afford to fly my family over to the United States for a two months holiday.

That seems more like the movies than real life experience. The salaries I receive as a national academic at UPNG is meager. In real monetary terms my fortnightly salary after tax is peanuts to say the least. Such punishing salaries force professional people on the international market scene to leave when an opportunity presents itself. I am no different to the next national academic with similar qualifications and exposure.

The sad truth about this outdated system of salaries is that many of our bright minds are poorly compensated or rewarded for their loyalty to their country and people. Our system of reward for loyalty falls short of a true measure. A sizeable number of professional Papua New Guineans are already marketing their intellectual labor at the international market.

 Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

 Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Learn More to Earn More

2010-02-26T23:15:00.000-08:00

The article first appeared in Steven's Window, a column in The National newspaper in Papua New Guinea. Friday 26th February 2010: 5.

Success has everything to do with simple behaviors such as reading for an hour a day, turning television time into learning time, and attending classes and training programs. Jack Canfield’s Success Principle 36: learning more leads to earning more is what’s on my mind this week. People who have more information have a tremendous advantage over people who don’t. Cutting out just 1 hour of television or idle conversation a day creates an extra 365 hours per year (that’s over nine additional 40-hour workweeks—2 months of additional time!) to accomplish whatever is most important to you. What can you do with that extra hour? We can learn from motivation leaders.

Forget saying: I don’t have the time to do what you do or that I wish have all the time in the world to do something different. I wish I have the time to write a book. I wish I have the time to learn more about computing? I wish I have all the time to make my family happy. We complain about having no time to do everything we want to do.

We don’t complain about all the time we take to tell stories, complain, and talk about the things that don’t get us anywhere. People don’t complain about playing computer games or net serving all day long. People don’t complain about spending many hours in the betting shops. People don’t complain about drinking beer during work hours or staying on the phone whole day doing personal calls. People appear busy without doing anything productive.

This week in this column I am sharing what I learnt from reading Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. There are 12 sub-principles for learning and gaining more with the extra time:

1. Decrease your television time or storytelling time. Use that time to read for an hour a day. Read inspirational autobiographies of successful people.

2. Leaders are readers. Read the books on successful people and successful living. Read a book or chapter of a book every day.

3. Learn to read faster to read more. If you read more slowly than you’d like, consider taking a course to increase not only your reading but also how fast you absorb the information. You can check for useful sources on reading by using the internet search facilities.

4. Develop a weekly system for getting smart. Reading self-help and personal development books will help you achieve mastery in the areas of life that are central to your happiness and fulfillment. They contain some of the best time-tested wisdom, information, methodologies, systems, techniques, and secrets of success that have ever been recorded. If you make the commitment to read one book a week, review what you have read, and apply at least one thing you learn from each book, you will be miles ahead of everyone else in creating an extraordinary life.

5. Study the lives of great people. Read some of the best books out there on biographies and autobiographies on great people. By reading them you will become great yourself. A thought: If you’re to watch television, make a point of watching any documentaries on inspirational people.

6. Attend success rallies, conferences and retreats. Thousands of people attend rallies, conferences, retreats, and workshops to learn from great speakers, trainers, and motivators of our day. You, too, can access these powerful learning experiences by attending rallies, conferences, and retreats—additionally benefiting from the excitement and inspiration of your fellow attendees and the networking that goes on at these events. Keep an eye out for ads in your local paper.

7. Be teachable. To learn and grow in life, you need to be teachable, too. You need to let go of already knowing it all and needing to be right and look good, and open yourself to being a learner. Listen to those who have earned the right to speak, who have already done what you want to do.

8. Be prepared when opportunity knocks. Learn as much as you can from people around you or those who have gone before you. Seek out mentors and learn from them what you can about what you want to be. Absorb everything you could. Be prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

9. What do you need to do to get ready? If you want a promotion at work, why not ask your boss what it takes to become promotable? Perhaps you need to go back to school and get your MBA. Or maybe you need 1 year accounting experience. Or perhaps you need to learn the latest software programs. Do you need to learn a new foreign language? Could you develop advance skills, more resources, or new contacts? Do you need to get your body into better physical shape? Should you expand your business skills, sales skills, or negotiating skills. Are you learning new skills on the computer—such as using PowerPoint, PageMaker, Photoshop, or Excel? Whatever you need to do to get ready, start now by making a list of the top 10 things you could be doing to be ready when opportunity finds you.

10. Attend human-potential trainings. Imagine that you suddenly discovered you were driving with the emergency brake on. Would you push harder on the gas? No! You would simple release the brake and instantly go faster—without any additional expenditure of energy. Most of us are going through life with the emergency brake on. It’s time to release the limiting beliefs, emotional blocks, and self-destructive behaviours that are holding you back.

11. Therapy and Counseling. Some of us simply need more in-depth work to remove the emotional blocks and childhood programming that are holding us back. For some therapy and counseling are the answers.

Finally you must commit to lifelong learning. The amount of knowledge and information available in the world is growing at a mind-numbing pace. All human knowledge has doubled in the last 10 years. Don’t expect this trend to slow down in the next hour.

 Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

 Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Book Flood Without PNG Authors

2010-02-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window, a column in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 19th, February, 2010; p.5.

The dailies, on Thursday 28th, 2010, covered the news on 20 containers of books shipped from Australia to Port Moresby and Lae for distribution to schools around the country. It sounded to me as the best news before schools began this year. From the newspaper reports I gathered that the number of books destined for primary schools is 539,000 books. It was revealed that the textbooks were funded by the Australian government through its AUSAID program in consultation with the Department of Education through its Curriculum Division. The cost involved is about K20 million to purchase, ship, and distribute the books to primary schools and teachers colleges around the country.

I applaud this commitment from the PNG government and the Australian government through their respective agencies to flood our primary schools and teachers colleges with books and reading materials. The massive book flood is very costly, yet it seems like a worthy cause to have developmental grants quickly disbursed for quick commitments.

In between the fine prints of the news on this book flood several issues remain etched uneasily in the throes of the PNG Education Department’s Curriculum Division and the AUSAID office. The amount used for purchase of books for our schools is massive.

I asked myself one question soon after reading this good news: Should some of these funds be set aside to purchase books and resource materials written by Papua New Guinean writers? Our local writers have written and published books and resource materials for use in schools. Half of what was spent on purchasing books in Australia could have been used to purchase books from local authors, reprint Papua New Guinean classics, assist local publishers in publishing and reprinting costs, and running writing, editing, and publishing courses for Papua New Guinean teachers to learn how to write, edit, and publish locally relevant materials for use in their schools.

Several local authors with excellent books appropriate for primary schools and colleges expressed disappointment that their books were ignored in the process of selection. It makes no sense to snub local authors and import books that has little relevance to the local culture and society. I have argued in some of my earlier articles that local authors must be supported by the government as well as the development partners where books and reading materials are concerned.

Many Papua New Guineans are writing books now-a-days and having them published with little support from the government. Many local writers struggle to have their first books published, let alone if they have one book published it is either because they are lucky or that by some sheer miracle they stumbled on to some charitable sources or from the personal sacrifices they have to make in order to get the book published. Some of these writers have paid local and international publishers and printers amounts between K6,000.00 and K20,000.00 to have their first 1,000 books published and printed.

That amount is difficult to recover in a scenario where the PNG Education Department’s curriculum officers become turn-coats and collude with the funding agencies to ignore the plight of Papua New Guinean authors. The problem is further compounded with the inability of the National Library to pay local authors to have their books distributed to school libraries around the country. The scenario gets even abysmal when schools and colleges pay books with bad cheques after receiving their books from an author or publisher. Bookshops and stationery shops also add to the woes and wounds of the local writer when they are unable to sell books by local authors, fail to pay for the books they ordered from the authors or publishers, and when they care less about the local literary scene. There are exceptional ones that support the works of local authors such as the UNIBookshop and Theodist Limited.

The poor attitude to local writers and the ambivalent situation of local literary art scene and book trade have a negative impact on the results expected of an Outcome Based Education. Papua New Guinea will remain handicap in the production of its own literary and school materials and the implementation of the curriculum will have a zero movement forward.

The views I express here are the sentiments I share with many Papua New Guinean writers and would be writers. I have talked to many former primary and secondary school teachers who are writing books. They want the Education Department to help them publish their books for use in their schools. The Education Department is unable to support creative endeavors and local materials production and book publishing. Perhaps one suggestion is for the Education Department to work with writers, local publishers, and printers to produce locally relevant materials for use in schools. For example, it could work with several writers, teachers, publishers, and printers to produce locally written books that get absorbed into the school curriculums. Quality local content and text could be printed on affordable paper thereby increasing the quantity of prints at minimal cost, enough to distribute a copy of one book to every school child in Papua New Guinea.

A final point to consider: Instead of developmental partners of Papua New Guinea taking back their money set aside for book purchase they should build school libraries, strengthen local book publishing capacity, and assist the government in setting up programs and projects to enable Papua New Guineans to write and publish their own books. This may sound wishful, but if we think about it, it makes sense as it involves several government departments and agencies such as the Department of Education, Department of Community Development, the National Cultural Commission, the University of Papua New Guinea, NARI, NRI, Divine Word University, and various international and church organizations. Many of them are involve in book production and publishing that a concerted effort is needed if funding is set aside for writing and book publishing. Books published in the programs and by these organizations can then be absorbed in the education system of Papua New Guinea.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

To Embellish or Not to Be

2010-02-17T21:19:00.000-08:00

The first version appeared in Steven's Window, a column in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Date: 12th February 2010.

Charles Dickens remains one of the most influential British writers of all time in many corners of the world, including ours, as revealed in an award winning novel: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.

“I have tried to describe the events as they happened to me and my mum on the island. I have not tried to embellish. Everyone says the same thing of Dickens. They love his characters. Well, something has changed in me. As I have grown older I have fallen out of love with his characters. They are too loud, they are grotesques. But strip away their masks and you find what their creator understood about human soul and its suffering and vanity. When I told my father of my mum’s death he broke down and wept. This is when I learnt there is a place for embellishment after all. But it belongs to life—not to literature”. This is the voice of Matilda, a young Bougainvillean lass, researching her Masters thesis on Charles Dickens in England. Matilda Laimo is a fictional character in Lloyd Jones’s novel: Mister Pip (2006), published by the Text Publishing Company of Melbourne Australia. The novel went on to win the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Japan’s Kiriyama Prize, Montana Deutz medal and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Matilda Laimo’s story began during the Bougainville Crisis of the early 1990s. Matilda grew up in the middle of the civil war where men had gone into the jungle to join the rebels or had been killed in the conflict. Matilda and her mother Dolores Laimo lived through the Crisis to experience the darkest moments of her life. Matilda’s father lives in exile in Townsville, Australia.

The other important character in the book is Mr. Watts, the only white person, the self-appointed teacher of the tiny primary school where the only textbook is the Dickens novel Great Expectations. Mr. Watts teaches the children about their lives through the word, lines, and images painted by Charles Dickens during the Victorian era in England. Dickens’ world came alive for the young children in Mr. Watt’s class.

In the beginning of the novel Matilda tells us about the background of her own life narrative in Bougainville: “during the blockade we could not waste fuel or candles. But as the rebels and redskins went on butchering one another, we had another reason for hiding under the cover of night. Mr. Watts had given us another world to spend the night in. We could escape to another place. It didn’t matter that it was Victorian England. We found we could easily get there…By the time Mr. Watts reached the end of chapter one I felt like I had been spoken to by this boy Pip. This boy who I couldn’t see to touch but knew by ear. I had found a new friend.” It was Pip who captured all her imaginations as Matilda lived through the ordeal before coming out to tell her story about that experience and the influence Mr. Watts, Mr. Pip, and Charles Dickens have on her life.

The word embellishment as used in the book captures my attention. Matilda talks about embellishment towards the end of the book. Embellishment is a noun, meaning adornment or enrichment. Adding ornaments or decorations to increase beauty of something is one meaning of the word embellish. Another meaning is to add false details to something by making an account or description more interesting by inventing or exaggerating details, and in the context of music adding ornamentation to melody such as extra notes, accents, or trills to a melody to make it more beautiful or interesting.

Matilda declares that embellishment is more true to life than it is to literature. Embellishment is the outcome of adding something to enrich what is already present. Matilda grew up with the wondrous and exciting world of Mister Pip as embellished by Mr. Watts.

Matilda discovers the place of embellishment in life in her search for the world described to her by Mr. Watts through Charles Dickens’ book. She comes to the shocking conclusion that Mister Pip’s England was never that fantastic, magical, and the fairytale world, but one which went through periods of defining moments that shaped its contemporary history. Mister. Pip’s world was stark, harsh, plain, and grim. Dickens capitalized on that experience for most of his fiction, revealing nothing of the future that England would become.

Mr. Watts, the self-appointed envoy for Charles Dickens and the bearer of Western knowledge, stubborn enough to risk his own life for the Bougainvilleans, was caught up in the armed conflict between the PNG government and Bougainvilleans. He had a lot to do with the embellishment of Charles Dickens’ world that Matilda grew up as a child to believe in.

In much the same way The Great Expectation was a window into the world of Mister Pip I think of Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip as a window into the world of Matilda, her people, and Mr. Watts’s, during the Bougainville crisis. Matilda’s escape from the dangers of the Bougainville conflict to Australia provides us a window into one of the defining moments in our history. She joins up with her father in Australia and grows up in exile from her country.

Matilda’s discovery, that embellishment belongs to life rather than literature, is our observation of life. We need also to ask how embellishment might have anything to do with our lives. Embellishment occurs the moment we adorn ourselves with underserved titles and appear powerful. Others accentuate self-importance without demonstrating the solid foundations for such titles and offices they hold. Still others make themselves look so big without evidence of productivity, progress, or substance. Our society is now saturated with such people. Striping away their masks would reveal their emptiness, hollowness, and a magnitude of fictitious lives.

At least that is one thing I learnt from reading Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, which gave me a new sense of appreciation of the works of Charles Dickens.

Experiences of expatriate women in PNG

2010-02-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea published first version in Steven's Window, Friday 05th February, 2010. Picture: The National newspaper.

In one of my regular visits to the University of Papua New Guinea Bookshop in recent times I came across a book: Our Time but not Our Place: Voices of Expatriate Women in Papua New Guinea. The book is edited by Myra Jean Bourke, Susanne Holsknecht, Kathy Kituai, and Linda Roach. Melbourne University Press published the book in 1993. The chance I had seeing this book for the first time, I could not resist buying it for my personal library.

I have two reasons for buying the book: First, I figured the book is useful for my research on how Papua New Guinea is constructed through the eyes of expatriates, in this case how expatriate women saw, lived, and experienced Papua New Guinea. This perspective is one that is difficult to know until it is written down as in the book. Expatriate women have varied reasons to come to Papua New Guinea. The reasons are many, but the ones around which the book features, include adventure in exotic surroundings, seeking fortunes, changing jobs, running away from unhappy situations, furthering professional or academic interests, and others came here because their partners or parents had work to do here. Some of the contributors to the book lived in Papua New Guinea since the 1930s. The book covers the stories of women from Australia, Britain, New Zealand, China, French, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, and North America. “The writers chose to present their experiences in the form of essays, diary extracts or letters, memoires and fiction. Some focus on incidents, issues or characters while others review the entire period of their sojourn in Papua New Guinea,” according to the editors of the book.

The second reason for buying the book is that many books written about Papua New Guinea are difficult to get hold of from our end. The University of Papua New Guinea Bookshop, under Dr. John Evans’s, capable management, now sells rare and out-of print books and publications on Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Dr. Evans, who knows more about books than anyone I know, made sure the UNI Bookshop regains its reputations as the best bookshop in the Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. A complete section holds any books and publications about Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. The UNI Bookshop is now the next place to recommend to anyone interested in books about Papua New Guinea if accessing one from the libraries in the country is impossible.

I am glad I bought the book that day. I read the book several days later during a quite time at home. I read the book backwards, beginning with the Rosalie Everest’s story “Barefoot and Free”. The story interested me because Mrs. Everest, as she was known to me, was one of my inspiring teachers in Aiyura National High School between 1982 and 1983. Mrs. Everest, the ‘local meri’—a term used by her students to differentiate her from other expatriate teachers, taught me Expressive Arts with good nature and grace. She guided me to write and illustrate my first children’s story book in 1983. For that part in my education and growth I acknowledged her in my second book of poems: Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest (2000) published by the Institute of Pacific Studies (IPS) in Fiji.

After I had read the book I pondered on how little we, Papua New Guineans, know our expatriate teachers, coworkers, helpers, mentors, friends, mates, and acquaintances. I knew Mrs. Everest for two years as her student, but hardly know the full background and the challenges she and family went through to live with us, work with us, and help us to find our place in the world. At least, Mrs. Everest, her husband Mr. Roy Everest (my biology teacher), like many well-meaning expatriates, gave their lives and time to develop our intellectual capacity without displaying frustrations, displeasure, unnecessary demands, or anger to belittle us.

I also pondered on the importance of writing books in our lives. I was lucky to have someone like Mrs. Everest encouraged and mentored me in thinking about writing books before I entered the University of Papua New Guinea. Even though the unearthing of the literary and artistic talents came early to me I refused to think that I had any talents at all. I entered the University of Papua New Guinea to study Political Science and Public Administration. It was only in the third year of my studies did I make the final decision to study Literature as a field to make a career out of.

Writing in the same book as Rosalie Everest are other expatriate women writers whose work and scholarship I have read. Among them are Mary Mennis, Lolo Houbein, and Amirah Inglis. Mary Mennis’s Hagen Saga is an indispensible text about the Catholic missionary experience in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The essay by Lolo Houbein on the theme of love in Papua New Guinean literature has been a source for several of my research papers on PNG literature. Amirah Inglis published two iconic books on colonial law and its application and misapplication: ‘Not a White Woman Safe’: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby 1920-1934 and Karo: The Life and Fate of a Papuan. I have never met these expatriate women writers and scholars, but their books and scholarships remain influential in the kind of research I do in literature and cultural studies in Papua New Guinea.

Books and teachers are important part of our lives. The difference they make in our lives remains permanent marks we can never erase. I gained from reading this book the importance of writing down our experiences and publishing them in books for others to know who we are and the kinds of work and challenges we face in our lives every day. I appreciate reading the essays in the book, especially the stories of Andree Millar, Mollie Parer, and especially Tan Mow Yan Hing, whose shops in Wewak had so much childhood memories locked into it.

Success Elements in Our Schools

2010-01-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

First appeared in the column Steven's Window, The National newspaper. 29th January 2010.

This is the time of the year our young people prepare themselves to enter a new grade or educational institution. Many children at the primary and secondary levels have their paths cut out for them. The ones entering the universities are excited with beginning their first years at the highest learning institutions in the country. Most will go through the process with high expectations and dreams of the kind of person they will become after four years of tertiary education. Their fertile minds are ready to tackle the intellectual challenges before them.

Three important elements are at work in the success of students reaching the university level: First, the last school the students attended is the first element. Top ranking schools often have a high number of students entering university. The second element is the advice and direction provided by guidance teachers, parents, guardians. Many depend on their guidance teachers in upper secondary schools. Others with educated parents and guardians follow what they want them to do. The third element is the individual choices that each student made last year as they thought about what they wanted to do.

In thinking about these three elements I recall the journey I took in my own life. The school I went to is a Catholic boarding school only for boys known as St. Xaviers High School. The Marist Brothers ran the school. The school has the motto: duc in altum, meaning reach for the highest, enjoyed the reputation of being one of the best in the country. Every boy who went to that school strived to live up to that motto. Every year the boys left their crying parents and relatives at the old Wewak wharf or at the Wom Beach to travel by boat for two hours to reach Kairiru Island. The boys stayed on the Island for the whole year, except for the one week mid-term break and the Christmas break. The boys were either 13 or 14 years old the first time they leave their families to go away to the island to grow up, get schooled, and disciplined in their attitudes, manners, outlook of life, and the kind of life they want to lead in later years. Prayer, study, and work were the three important elements that the school enforced in its efforts to produce the best students in the country.

The school, however, is no longer a top secondary school in the country. The school standard has dropped over the years. The education authorities have watched the school go from being one of the best schools to being one of the last schools in the country.

I responded, like everyone else, to the school’s motto: duc in altum. We wanted to reach the highest level in our chosen paths, careers, and lives. We wanted to compete with everyone else in Papua New Guinea to get the top spot in the country. We had the privilege of mission education with its pious regime of constant prayer, fellowship, and intellectual commitment to our goals. Good Christian, respectful, and disciplined values kept us at bay. We remained true to these values and expectations that denied us the teenage temptations of spending wasteful time chasing girls or talking to them. We had no problems with alcohol, drugs, guns, and violence, unlike today’s high school students. We were content with our lives in school away from the luxury of our homes and relatives.

To get from grade 8 to grade 9 was the first real challenge. We completed grade 10 before moving into the job markets, national high schools, and the universities. The decisions we made at that time to continue on with our education were done with the best advice from our guidance teachers.

I had the best guidance of both worlds, so to speak. Getting into the national high school in the days when only the top 10 percent were given the opportunity was possible for me with the guidance of the good principal Brother Peter Cassidy. Whereas the advice I received in national high school to enter the University of Papua New Guinea was a cold shower, to say the least. Not because it was to wake me up to the reality, but because it was given with absolute decree that because I have an average grade in English, I would perform poorly in the field I chose to do since I was a kid. Notwithstanding I out performed such poor guidance and expectations without having to ignore the challenges that came with being in such a situation.

Now a days it is the parents who are more likely to influence their children about what they want their children to become. This seems like the normal thing to do, but the reality is that many young people soon find out that what they really want to do is different to what their parents and guardians want them to do. Those entering university studies quickly find out that they are either performing below standard or are disinterested in their studies. Parents and guardians must realize that many young people go with the choices they made because it is what they want to do in their lives, not what their parents or guardians want them to do. Parents and guardians should avoid over-determining a young person’s life.

We see time and again every year many students entering the university without knowing exactly what they want to do or become. “Wild Cards” is the term I use to describe this category of students. No one knows exactly what the young person will become after four years of university studies, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences programs.

I have one advice to many young people returning to the classrooms or taking up studies at universities across the country: “Set your goals high and believe in yourself that no matter what it takes or how long it takes you will achieve your goals. Have these goals written down. Achieving your goals is a process.”

The Great Wall of PNG

2010-01-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea on Friday January 22nd, 2010.

My ten year old son described the mural wall outside the Chinese Embassy in Port Moresby as the “The Great Wall of PNG”. He posed in front of the wall for me to get a picture of him. This wall appealed to him more than the mural wall paintings at Murray Barracks or elsewhere in the city. I took pictures of the wall that day because I know that sooner or later someone ignorant will deface it with graffiti of no taste.

My interest in the mural has nothing to do with my son’s description. The mural on the “great wall of PNG and China” focused on cultural and educational themes more so than economic or political themes. The artistic representation of the relationship between PNG and China is given prominence on this wall. The artistic framing of the experiences of Papua New Guineans is only read if we care to view it deeper than the surface reality presented to us.

Most of the mural artworks are on the walls of the Port Moresby National High School, the University of Papua New Guinea, the Port Moresby General Hospital, and the Chinese Embassy. These mural arts promote a cultural and social memory among the residents or the visitors to the city of Port Moresby. Whether anyone takes mural art in a serious way or remains uninterested, the visual pleasure such art generates is immeasurable. The mural art developed slowly in the early days when Port Moresby was a less populated city to one that is now overcrowded, congested, and struggling with promoting a balance and unbiased image to counteract the images promoted about it overseas.

Art is a reflection of a living experience that “is more than a statement about the relations of the observer to the observed,” according to Theordore Adorno, the influential Marxist art critic and intellectual. For art to embody the aesthetic experience it must become a living experience animated by the gaze of the viewer. The murals around Port Moresby or elsewhere in PNG serve similar functions.

Art is a tapestry of life. It is contemplative and reproduces meaning in a fundamental way. Art is produced in a way that is capable of speaking to us the moment our gazes land on it. “By speaking,” Ardono argues, “it becomes something that moves in itself.” It is that movement that we grasp when we view art, not its static, unchanging, and immobile elements. We grasp the relations formed by these elements in the work of art.

Art imitates reality. The artists negotiate the past with the present, the modern with the pre-modern, and between those who observe and those who are observed. The sense of hybridity permeates most of these public art forms in a way that many stories are told at once in a single space. Mural arts are always there in front of us. If we take the time to view these mural walls of art we can make sense of the importance these public art work at reproducing the history of our country.

The artists of these mural paintings appropriated postmodern cultural tools, knowledge, and material culture for their own self-representations. In the process of appropriation Papua New Guinean artists simultaneously reproduced a culture that is neither traditional nor modern, but a hybrid of both worlds capable of telling thousands of stories.

Art is a text with its own language system. Art as a text functions to signify meaning that is embedded in the society that produced it. As a system of signs art demands to be read as a text. Art produces and replicates its individuality and associations with itself and others in the same sphere of relationships.

The public murals are works of art that constitute a set of texts about life and conditions of human society in Papua New Guinea. These works of art are more than merely present or as colourful wall decorations—they are produced with the sense of art as a textual embodiment of life.

Reading mural art as text allows us to testify to the great human potential and complexity, its confusions, contradictions, contentions, and meaningful associations. Art as text is a tapestry of human lives always needing to be interpreted, given meaning, and reproduced to suspend closure or ending. Adorno reminds us that all artwork have something to teach us: “All artworks, even the affirmative, are a priori polemical… they are the unconscious schemata of that world’s transformation” (1997). It is this unconscious schemata of our world’s transformation that we experience every time we view the artwork around us.

The mural art alls of Port Moresby represent our world through the brush strokes of our local artists. In the mural arts we become active participants in an unconscious schema of transformation. We are to a larger extend involved in the reproduction of the textual meanings in these works of art. The mural on the “Wall of PNG” gave my son his perception of the wall as it did to me. We inhabit the same world, but see the world in different ways than we know.

Our rich traditional artistic heritage, in the forms of material arts, performance arts, or other artistic constructions, is not our focus here. Most of us are familiar with these and others such as the fine arts, sculptures, and print art forms. The notions of art discussed here, however, remain principles of aesthetics and function as frameworks of reading works of art in general.

The art works that we create in our lifetime capture the lived moments of our lives. In art we express the way we feel, see ourselves, and make sense of the complex world around us. Art gives us the key to self-expression and social-cultural representations. We use art to speak about our way of life and our world. In art we seize the moment to make a point that cuts through the different views we have about issues affecting us every day. Art is a reflection of our world.

Museums and Cultural Institutions

2010-01-18T15:07:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window, column of The National newspaper of PNG. Friday 15th, 2010.

A young guard of cultural traditions in front of Ayugham Bana cultural centre, Aiyura valley, EHP, PNG. Photo: Keisiva Darius.

Two places I am fond of visiting every time I travel overseas are the museums and bookshops. In museums I get a rare glimpse of a place, a people, a culture, and lifestyles as preserved by the curators and museum workers. It is also a place that a society makes a point about itself. The way a museum is organised, structured, and arranged is the way in which a particular society sees itself in relation to its objects of cultural value.

There are many stories and narratives written, painted, printed and displayed in the halls of a museum. I sometimes spend hours walking in the carefully structured hallways to view and learn about a society. In his introduction to the book Museum Provision and Professionalism, Gaynor Kavanagh says “museums differ across time and across cultures. Cultural and political differences will also make themselves evident in the form the museum takes and the priorities adopted. We invest our own culture in the institutions we create. A museum in, say, the West Midlands, in the United Kingdom, will have a different range of characteristics to one in central Sweden, northern France, California, the Ukraine or the suburbs of Sydney. Should you visit them, you would spot the differences instantly, although sometimes they are difficult to put into words” (1994: 3).

The museums that I have visited include the Chicago Field Museum in Illinois, Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, USA, Australian National Museum in Sydney, Te Papa in Wellington, and the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand. In the Minneapolis Institute of Arts I spend a whole semester studying how the Foucauldian notions of power and space are organized in a museum. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts hosts one of the rare collections of Malagan artefacts.

In Te Papa Museum, I learnt that eels are migrational around the South Pacific rather than being static in one place. In the Chicago Field Museum, a Murik Tumbuan guards one corner of the main hall. Canterbury Museum, located in Christchurch, New Zealand hosts its original collection as well as travelling exhibits. One year, a section was devoted to the Antartica Field Research Station. Among its original collections is the exhibition of Polynesian canoes, among which is a canoe from the Solomon Islands.

Just before I left Christchurch in August 2006, the Canterbury Museum staffs, together with the staff of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, worked on a small exhibition featuring the collection of Macmillan Brown during his visits to the Pacific Islands in the early 1930s. Among the interesting items collected was a paddle from the Trobriand Islands.

My reflection on the point about museums is that as institutions of cultural preservation and education many lessons are learnt from within its halls of knowledge. Museums serve as a place to preserve our past and a place where we can learn about ourselves.

Our own National Museum and Art Gallery is an important space for public education and information dissemination. Consistent yearly activities should be scheduled and publicized for public visits and viewing. The importance of museums in contemporary Papua New Guineans’ lives must be set in motion. The museum must move away from the traditional role of being a house for preservation and housing old artefacts and rare traditional pieces of art and culture. The museum space must magnetize the public rather than keep them away from visiting it.

It is time also, I suggest, the government build provincial museums and cultural centres to house, exhibit, and educate people about the heritage of a province. Each province can showcase their archaeological heritage, art, material culture, and living traditions in their own museums. The provincial museums can also be centres for art exhibitions and education centres for the people of the province and those who visit the province. It is the pride of each province to tell its own stories in the way they have developed from the prehistoric past to the present.

One of the unique provincial museum is the J.K. McCarthy Museum in Kainantu. It was renamed as the Kainantu Cultural Centre. It has been in operation for 30 years. It attracts hundreds of tourists annually for its pottery, crafts, paintings, and other crafts. Unique to this centre is the pottery made from local clay unique to the area of Obura-Wanenara. The recent support it received from the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Honourable Charles Abel to keep its operations going is moral boosting for its patrons.

“Museums around the world are united in as much they are keeping places for objects open on a restricted basis to members of the public,” says Gaynor Kavanagh. “But, beyond this they vary according to such factors as the political and social attitudes of those involved, funding structures, the legal framework and the ideological baggage of the time…Museums serve a multitude of purposes and in particular, play many roles, some of which are rarely even hinted at in a museum’s mission statement or development plan … They can be shelters from the rain, mortuaries for dead objects, shrines to the memory of wealthy donors (frequently long forgotten), forums for debate, repositories for community archives, centres of scholarship and understanding, instruments of social control, locations for recreation and reflection, sacred spaces where the spirits of the ancestors rest... No two people will find exactly the same thing in a museum, or in a museum visit.”

In his article “A House of Thousand Cultural Societies” Michael Kisombo had written an informative piece on our National Museum and Art Gallery, (The National, September 4th, 2009) which readers can turn to for more information. I am also aware of plans to have a new museum developed in the near future to give it much needed attention in Papua New Guinea.

The personal reflections made here serve to reinforce what was already stated by others for the sake of keeping alive the conversation on the provision of museum services and development of cultural centres in Papua New Guinea.

Modernity's Manifold Chasms

2010-01-15T18:57:00.000-08:00

The article appeared in Steven's Window, The National newspaper of PNG on Friday 08th January 2010.

A few days before Christmas I had a brief conversation with a colleague who had just returned from the Southern Highlands Province after the signing of various LNG agreements between the state, the developers, and the land owners of the massive oil and gas field.

I was curious about trauma resulting from the transition from the stone-age to the gas-age for the landowners with so much money in their lives. Resource owners are going on a spending spree, massive consumption of alcohol, and car sales yards in Mendi and Hagen are out of new vehicles to sell to the landowners. The landowners have become wealthy, in monetary terms, beyond their wildest dreams.

Money to spend is no longer an issue to the landowners. I have been thinking about what it all means to be someone who, a few years ago or a decade back, would have been so absorbed in the daily routine of tending to gardens, animal husbandry, customary social obligations, gifts exchange, and involvement in the tribal social, cultural, political, and economic activities in the high valley. With the oil and gas development the same villagers are given millions of Kina as payments for what is extracted from beneath the surface of their land.

These are people who have never thought money would change their lives. These are people content with living the way they were since their ancestors. These are people who never realized that their lives began in a simple way—a life that now has changed dramatically to one that rushes headlong into modernity without any preparedness for its negative consequences.

It is a life that, without much thought to it, takes a flight away from simple and ordinary things in life, or a life without the benefit of large amounts of money to one that is transformed into what is sometimes described as the postmodern anxiety.

The transformation is crafted within the shortest possible time in response to the resources and economic development initiated and sanctioned by the national government of Papua New Guinea. Nothing would have come about without the strong well developed policies and stewardship of the national government to safeguard the economic, natural resources, and political interest of its people.

The issue that interests me is the experience of social stress and disorder in the lives of the people who are now displaced from their social and cultural nests that kept them safe, healthy, and simple. With so much money to deal with many of the benefactors of the oil and gas fields will abandon their traditional and cultural way of life to one driven by the money received for being resource owners. Many people will go through a process of denial of their traditional social and cultural foundations, replacing these with new introduced cultures and social attitudes that are detrimental in the long run. Human history demonstrates that once such a cultural and social revolution is set in motion there is no turning back to the old ways. It is a one way train from depths of the cold mountains to the sea of modernity.

Change happening in the oil and gas rich Southern Highlands is irreversible unless someone cares enough to insists on setting up social and cultural institutions to shoulder the burden of social and cultural house-keeping. The need to respond to the emotional and psychological intensity of the experience is never a shot term solution. It must involve carefully designed institutions, programs, plans, and strategies of responding to the results of this traumatic experience. Otherwise it takes years to repair the cultural and social damage done to these people within a short span of time.

The experiences of Panguna, Misima, OK Tedi, and Pogera must continue to inform our leaders, planners, and resource developers to consider the social and cultural consequences emanating directly from the development of resources in the Southern Highlands Province. Consideration on the ripple effects such as rural urban drift, disillusionment, developmental anxieties, violence, over population in urban areas, and the spread of modern diseases caused by the experiences of displacement, social fragmentation, and cultural sacrifice must take place within a framework that is responsive rather than ignorance.

One is reminded, in saying this, of the difficult transition and suffering made in China after the Cultural Revolution. Arthur Kleinman, a leading authority of anthropology and medicine reminds us that the recovery of the cultural self lost in the transition is never easy and quick. In terms of what this means is that a case of posttraumatic disorder is set in motion. In his book Social Origins of Distress and Disease (1986) Kleinman describes the case histories of individuals whose stress and disease resulted from the excesses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1920s and 1930s. Similarly, we must ask: Are the landowners of the oil and gas fields prepared to deal with the break down of social and cultural order as a direct result of the great leap they are now taking into the realms of modernity without preparedness? Are there institutions and programs to deal with posttraumatic stress disorder once it appears to make its presence difficult to ignore as it gnaws away at the moral and cultural sinews of a society? I pose these questions at this time to flag the imminent future our people in the Southern Highlands will go through in the lifespan of the resource exploitation.

It is not my place to tell the people of Southern Highlands, especially those with direct connection to the massive resource development, what to do. It is not my place also to argue with the government’s decisions and positions in the development of the resources in the Southern Highlands and Gulf provinces. What is important, however, is that, as a Papua New Guinean writer and scholar I stand between the past and future, then and now—and looking and asking questions that might easily be overlooked or answered in haste in our headlong dive into modernity’s manifold chasms.

A Rower's Song: poems by Steven Edmund Winduo

2010-01-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

New Book from Manui Publishers (PNG)

Steven Edmund Winduo: A Rower’s Song (2009), published by Manui Publishers. ISBN: 978-9980-9919-2-8. 146 pages. K69.90 (US$25.86)

A Rower’s Song is the first self-published book of poems. This is my third book of poetry. In this book I reflect on the experiences of living in a fast developing city in Oceania, where the social, cultural, and economic landscapes are changing in constant tune to the postmodern pressures. A Rower’s Song describes the changing social urban landscape with all its problems, challenges, and hopes. In this poetry, I am the rower with a song to sing as I cross islands and continents.

Here is a sample:

Borrowed Lives

Our pockets are torn
Living in our pockets
We have fallen so deep down
Walking the dark smelly alleys
Of some cheap Asian backyards
Or standing everyday at the same spot
Seeing the monotony of life
Driving by on the same road
We see the crowd swell like locusts
Beyond limit at the bus stop
Emptiness drops from the sky
And blanketed our vision forward
There’s nowhere out of this, we declare
We have to borrow money
To go on living here
Our pay packet looks fat
Our bank accounts stripped
There is no savings
To help us through hard times
Our hearts cannot bleed
Our hopes remain intact
Our borrowed lives will continue.

The collection includes works published in various journals and anthologies such as Journal of Postcolonial Writing (UK), Savannah Flames: a Papua New Guinean Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture (PNG), and Writing the Pacific (Fiji) edited by Jen Webb and Kavita Nandan. I recited some of these poems in Canada (Alberta), USA (Minnesota and Hawaii), Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

To order email me on steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Large Footprints on Pacific Shores

2010-01-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

The article first appeared in my column Steven's Window, in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. December 31st 2009. Picture taken by author in 1988 on a cruise in the Sydney Harbour.

A year it was. Some of us will remember 2009 as a great year. Others will remember the year as a year of missed opportunities and tragedy. At this time of the year we also take stock of our lives, acknowledge the successes and losses, and re-cast our nets into the future. We also take a moment to reflect on the journey itself for what it’s worth.

In the journey we met fellow travellers, advisors, mentors, and those who made decisions that changed us or stopped us from realizing our full potentials. The great mentors are hard to replace.

I have known many such people in the journey of my life as a Papua New Guinean writer and scholar. Many such incredible people gave their knowledge, wisdom, time, and references to get me from where I was to where I am now. These people are beacons of inspiration in my life.

In this last column of the year 2009 I wish to remember one person I owe so much gratitude and admiration. This person passed away in the middle of this year, on a bus in Auckland, after visiting Tonga on his way home to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The person is the late Emeritus Professor, Ron Crocombe, a man of majestic stature, wisdom, character, and scholarship.

Ron has mentored many of the leading Pacific Islands scholars in one way or another throughout his life. He had maintained an abiding interest in the culture, history, politics, economics, land tenure systems, and social change in the Pacific Islands throughout most of life. He had published volumes of books and literature on the subject.

He has undertaken research, consulting, lecturing, and administration in most Pacific Islands nations for more than 50 years of his life. He has worked for the Cook Islands government, the Australian National University (including being director of the New Guinea Research Unit in the 1960s, now known as the National Research Institute), University of California, East-West Center, Smithsonian Institution, University of Kagoshima, and the University of the South Pacific where he was Professor of Pacific Studies from 1969 to 1988, and founding director of the Institute of Pacific Studies. He has undertaken extensive consultancy for Pacific governments, the Pacific Community, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, University of Papua New Guinea, various UN and Commonwealth agencies, Asian Development Bank and others.

Many of us, doing research on the study of Pacific Islands, cultures, literature, education, knowledge systems, and developmental studies, emulate the good professor’s style of scholarship. Some of us had the good fortune of being acknowledged in his various books.

I first met Ron Crocombe in Sydney in 1988 during a conference on Australia’s relationship with the South Pacific Islands. It was a year after I had graduated with my BA degree from UPNG. As young and inexperienced as I was at that time, the meeting with Ron Crocombe changed my life around. On a boat tour around the Sydney Harbour I asked Ron to help me publish my first book of poetry. He said he would speak to Marjorie, his wife, who at that time was the Director of the South Pacific Creative Arts Society in Fiji.

Nothing happened for the next few years until I met up with Ron and Marjorie again over lunch at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1991. The lunch was hosted by Dr. Malama Meleisa, the first director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury. The connection all of us have is the University of Papua New Guinea. Ron taught some courses at UPNG, Marjorie from Cook Islands and Malama from Samoa were graduates of UPNG. At that time of our meeting I was completing my Masters degree under a New Zealand government scholarship.

After that lunch Marjorie saw to it that I had my first book of poetry published while I was still a student in New Zealand. Ron, Marjorie, and Malama took it on themselves to make sure that I found my footing in the area of serious writing and scholarship in the literature, arts, and culture of the Pacific Islands, especially about my own Papua New Guinean society. There was the sense of urgency in their encouragement.

Ron had so much respect for Papua New Guinea. He observed with keen interest the social, political, economic, and cultural change in this country. He also maintained his relationship with key individuals in Papua New Guinea, who would call on him to provide wisdom and direction. Ron was always willing to come to PNG, when invited, any time of the year.

I saw him last when he was here in mid 2008 for the UPNG Waigani seminar and customary land development seminar in Lae, Morobe Province. Ron, as always, was the towering figure, full of wisdom and advice to his young followers. He also had so much respect for what others have to say, and was willing to stand up for the underdogs.

I did not get the time to talk much to him, but exchanged a few words of pleasantries and well wishes. It was to be the last opportunity I had of seeing Ron here at UPNG after my return from the University of Minnesota, USA.

Ron had done a lot for me in terms of encouraging me to continue writing and publishing scholarship on the cultures, literature, and the knowledge systems of my country. Ron went as far as sending me personal copies of his monumental book The South Pacific (2001) and his other two books.

In paying my tribute to the great doyen of Pacific Studies, Ron Crocombe, at this time, I am mindful of the scholarship in Pacific Studies, indigenous cultures, and knowledge systems began under the his leadership and others, which has given many young indigenous scholars, like myself, a stage to launch our career.

Ron’s shoes are too big for us to wear, but we can follow the large footprints left on the shores of the Pacific.

The Language Burden

2010-01-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

Cultural Day at
Waigani Primary
School 2090

The article appeared first in Steven's Window, a column in The National newpaper of Papua New Guinea. December 24th 2009.

The choice of language for communication among Papua New Guineans has never been an issue. In urban areas most people speak Tokpisin to get around or communicate with each other. English is chosen in an environment that requires communication in that language. Most people code switch between these languages whenever possible. No one seems to bother which language is used in the everyday communication.

The most trouble people have with language is the moment a language is written. One can speak Tokpisin competently, but transferring it to writing is difficult to many speakers. The same is also true of English though more so with speakers of English as a second, third, or fourth language. Written English demands adherence to rules of composition and stylistics, known also as grammar or rules of language construction. Ignorance of these rules results in poor constructions, punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, and misuse of words and expressions.

The main reason for insisting on school age children beginning with Indigenous languages is that our children can have some form of language competency at the elementary level before transiting into English at the third grade and upwards. Linguists, Anne Cursan and Michael Adams, tell us that in “India, South Africa, Malaysia, Switzerland, and many more, speakers learn multiple languages because they participate in multilingual communities in which different languages are used by various speakers for different purposes. In many countries where English is not the primary language, children start learning English as an additional language fairly early and intensively in their schooling.”

“The desire for a shared language (Sometimes within the country as well as internationally) and the desire for the opportunities available for speakers of English can compete with the desire to maintain more local identities and, therefore, languages. The debate about the use and status of English in Kenya, for example, has been lively and captures many of the concerns shared by other countries in the expanding …circle.”

Ngugi wa Thiongo best known for introducing the term ‘decolonizing the mind’ by replacing the English language with local languages is one of the influential people in the debate on language choice. African writers, according to Ngugi, must do justice to the local languages by writing their own local languages. He writes: “We the African writers are bound by our calling to do for our language what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English: what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian: indeed what all writers in world history have done for their languages by meeting the challenge of creating a literature in them, which process later opens the languages for philosophy, science, technology and all the other areas of human creative endeavors.”

Ngugi’s position is challenged by the South African writer Harry Mashabela in 1983: “But learning and using English will not only give us the much-needed unifying chord but will also land us into the exciting world of ideas; it will enable us to keep company with kings in the world of ideas and also make it possible for us to share the experiences of our own brothers in the world: men such as black Americans W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes; Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, Ghana’s Ayi Kwei Armah.”

The Nigerians writer Chinua Achebe expands the argument: “The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience….I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.”

The point about bringing this debate to this column is that many of us choose the language with which to communicate in because of the necessity to do so at a particular time and place. I choose to speak and write in English most times, but allow code switching with Tokpisin in many occasions. Most people speak Tokpisin without a second thought, but writing in Tokpisin is difficult to many Papua New Guineans. In schools the language of instruction is English, but Tokpisin is always on the tip of the tongue, when English becomes difficult to understand and use as with some of my university students.

John Kasaipwalova experimented on this linguistic situation in the story “Bomana Kalabus O” where he experimented with the registers of English and Tokpisin. We know that English alone would not affect change in a multilingual environment such as Papua New Guinea. In literary usage we also know that English is insufficient in capturing all our cultural knowledge without the help of our local languages as is the case with Russell Soaba’s writings captured in the poetry collection Kwamra: A Season of Harvest.

Adult literacy classes in Port Moresby city are conducted in Tokpisin and English. Many of the students are mothers living in the city with no skills of reading or writing in English or even Tokpisin, but converse competently in spoken Tokpisin. The methods, approaches, and resource materials used in literacy programs make the difference in a learner’s ability to read and write within a short period.

Come to think of it, the head rush in the direction of imposing an English only curriculum next year is troubling. The poor performance of students in formal education is not necessarily because of the use of vernacular or the lingua francas in schools. Other factors must be considered such as teachers’ language competency and pedagogic skills, learning resources, and attitudes to learning in different linguistic and cultural locality. Enhancing reading and writing competencies of teachers and students alike might break the hoodoo.

Colours of Christmas

2009-12-19T23:59:00.000-08:00

Golden Shower (above)
Royal Poinciana or Flamboyant tree (below)

First published in Steven's Window. The National newspaper. Friday 18th December 2009.

At this time of the year we celebrate Christmas in different ways to mark the important Christian period of the calendar. It is also a time for Christians everywhere to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. In the Northern Hemisphere it is winter. White snow, green Christmas trees, and colourful lights characterize this period in most places. During the winter period most trees without leaves and flowers appear lifeless. In North America people go crazy decorating trees outside their houses with high voltage lights to lit up the nights. In the Southern Hemisphere it is summer. Rainy days, Christmas trees, summer activities, and colourful lights are switched on everywhere. This is also the time for personal budget blow-outs.

I appreciate the Christmas period in a special way that I would like share with everyone. In our part of the world many plants bloom at this time. Many people appreciate them, but do not know the names of these beautiful plants that give our Christmas special colours to lighten our spirits. We see them around us and admire them for reminding us of the beautiful things in life and for a great country, rich in biodiversity and exotic tropical plants. We are blessed with these wonderful tropical plants with their natural coloured flowers, showering everyday during the Christmas period.

Yet, if someone visiting our country asks about the names of the plants we would without doubt reply that we have no idea about the names of the plants that grow in out city. Once a visiting American writer and inspiration for the film Dead Poets Society, Sam Pickering, remarked that we have some of the wonderful flowering trees in Port Moresby, but no one seems to know the names of these trees. The remark sank like dry wine into the gullet of my soul. Sam is the author of the book Trespassing and was my guest at that time.

At this time of the year a number of plants show-off their flowers with splendid colours. The Golden showers and the Yellow oleanders display their yellow splendour. The Golden showers are also known as the monkey tree or the Indian Laburnum. Casia fistula is the Latin equivalent. The Laburnum is more than just a flowering tree. It is an important medicinal plant in Ayurvedic medicine of India, featured in the ancient religious rituals of cleansing against unbalanced mind and body.

Most of us have the Yellow oleander growing around our houses. The Latin name for this plant is Casabella thevetia, with yellow trumpet shaped flowers and long narrow simple leaves. In a silly way people name this plant as the yellow bell, though the genus name appears to have come from the Spanish casabella, which means small bell, referring to the shape of the flower. The Yellow oleander is a marvel to see.

Chief among the plants with red flowers in full bloom at this time of the year is the Royal Poinciana or the Flamboyant tree, known in Latin as Delonix regia. The Royal Poinciana is often associated with Christmas period, but never carries the name Christmas tree as most people like to refer to it. This tree is an ornamental growing all over the tropical environments. This plant is originally from Madagascar, but introduced to many parts of the world as an ornamental, together with the Golden trumpet (Allamanda cathartica), Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spectabilis), Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), Chinese hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), Multicoloured lantana (Lantana camara), and Common Oleander (Nerium Oleander).

The perennials such as the hibiscus, the frangipani, the bougainvillea, the flame-of-the wood (Ixora casei), and the rosewood continue to display their spectacular flowers. The most popular is the frangipani plant, sometimes known as the Mexican plumeria, also known as Plumeria rubra in Latin. The red and yellow Mexican plumeria, bloom in concert with their cousin, the Singapore plumeria or the plumeria obtusa. These frangipanis have soft colours, texture, and nice smooth scent.

Other perennials with spectacular flowers are the Heliconia, also known in Latin as Heliconia psittacorum, the Jasmine, the Morning glory, and the St. Thomas Orchid Tree, also known as Bauhinia monandra in Latin. The red, white, and orange lilies add spectacle to the ground. There are many more plants that bloom at this time of the year in our yards, streets, and suburbs.

Imagine living in the Northern Hemisphere at this time with white snow, cold weather, and leafless trees to stare at and you stare back at them, wishing all the time that you were home to take in the beautiful sights and smells of flowering plants. I have been in this situation before, living through several winters of Midwest America, and know that the tropical flowering and leafy plants make my country a special home.

Many other plants are also in bloom around the country at this time. Whatever we do in the city during the Christmas period, let us pause for a moment to admire the blessings of the Creator. Our country is blessed with natural plants that make our Christmas more colourful than the cheap Christmas trees and lights we rush to buy for our homes every Christmas. We should be thankful to God.

Those of us living in the great city of Port Moresby want to see all our frangipanis, palms, and St. Thomas Orchid Trees remain untouched by careless individuals, drunks, and ignorant people during the Christmas period. Please, for once, leave the beautiful plants planted for our pleasure and peace of mind left alone. There is no peace in running through or onto the plants the Happy Gardener and the NCDC have planted along the roads for our enjoyment. No forgiveness for those who trespass against plants this Christmas.

To all loyal followers of this column I wish you a safe, peaceful, and Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Look after our flowering trees for our people, our children, our visitors, our friends, and non-resident Papua New Guineans to come home this Christmas to enjoy.

Tough Journey for PNG Writers

2009-12-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

The second missing piece is now also restored on this blog. Tough journey for PNG writers
Source: Steven Window, The National newspaper. Friday 02nd October 2009. Publishing works of fiction, poetry, and drama is still trapped in a time capsule, writes Dr STEVEN WINDUO

The period between 1978 and 1990 creative writers and publishers moved away from each other. Publishers associated with the churches concentrated on religious publications. This period saw the proliferation of religious literature. Private publishers concentrated on non Papua New Guinean authors writing about Papua New Guinea.

The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) shouldered some of the burden in the 1980s. The IPNGS published several series on oral history, short stories and poetry. The writers with their works in print during the 1980s were part of the Bikmaus tradition. Special issues of the Bikmaus journal featured Mark Hau’ofa’s The Bride Price of Hura and A Sequel to the Bride Price, William Tagis’s Weekend Melodrama and Michael Tsim, Abrosyius Waiyim’s The Flooded Sipi and John Kilburn’s King of Marbles. Single titles were Toby Kagl Waim’s Kallan, Michael Yake Mell’s Kumdi Bagre and The Call of Land and Joseph Aguang’s The Sorcerer, published either by IPNGS or National Research Institute. Others writers of this tradition include Rex Okona, Gideon Kinkawa, Bernard Kaspou, Adam Vai Delaney, Jack Lahui and myself.

Books published in the 1980s include Paulias Matane (Aimbe series), Russell Soaba’s Wanpis (1978), Ignatius Kilage’s My Mother Calls Me Yaltep (1980) and all of John Kolia’s publication. Kolia used the publishing funds of IPNGS to publish his own books, arguing that all attempts at writing the great PNG novel had failed in his time.

In general writers were left in a limbo, to stand up on their own feet. The Grand Chief Sir Paulias Matane worked closely with UBSPD and CBS, an Indian publishing company, had many of his non-fiction books published with this company. The same company published books written by Arnold Mundua, Francis Nii, Lahui Ako, and several others.

A number of us, including Regis Stella and myself, had our books published outside of PNG. Russell Soaba saw his second novel Maiba (1985), published by Three Continents Press in Washington, USA. Dellasta Pacific in Australia published Yauka Liria’s novel Bougainville Diary. Nora Vagi Brash published, Which Way Big Man-her collection of plays with Oxford University Press.

Oxford University Press published several children’s books for lower primary school children. Several anthologies were also published at this time. Macmillan published Through Melanesian Eyes, compiled by Ganga Powell. Oxford University Press published Moments in Melanesia, a compilation of short stories by Melanesian writers, edited by Regis Stella. Stuart Watson edited an anthology of prose and poems by Goroka University students, entitled Lost in Jungle Ways, published by Dellasta Pacific. Adeola James edited a collection of writings by Papua New Guinean women in PNG Women Writers, published by Longman, Addison, and Wiley. Two anthologies: Lali (1980) and Nuanua (1996) edited by Albert Wendt featured a section on PNG writers.

It seems Papua New Guineans are caught up on a pendulum of publishing supported (or not) by national and international publishing houses. UPNG Press published Tsomi by Matabuna Tahun, A Medal Without Honour by Nash Sorariba, and The Blue Logic by Wiri Yakaipoko. The Blue Logic was later published as The Dark Side of Port Moresby. The literary works published by UPNG Press were either funded by the authors or were funded by cooperate sponsorship.

With the demise of UPNG Press, the Melanesian and Pacific Studies (MAPS) of UPNG began publishing several books and journals, among them Melissa Aigilo’s Falling Foliage, Regis Stella and Linda Maeaniani’s Melanesian Passages, and Zia Writers of Waria.

As recent as 2008 a local printing company, Birdwing Printers began publishing several books targeted for primary school children. Local indigenous authors and foreign writers on Papua New Guinea still compete for the same attention with this publisher.

Oxford and Dellasta Pasific (later Longman, Addison and Wiley) became the major outside publishers. According to Oxford University Press publishing PNG novels, poetry, or plays is a non-profitable venture. Oxford’s strategy is to publish educational resource books promoting the outcome based education, most of these written by non Papua New Guineans. Oxford has no intention of publishing original works of creative fiction by Papua New Guineans. Instead it leeches on works published in journals, anthologies, and other publications.

How can international publishing companies promote a literary culture in Papua New Guinea when they do little to recognize the struggles of writers in this country? It is akin to the experiences of African writers in the 1950s and 1960s when major European publishing houses were more interested in maintaining a hegemonic status quo, visa-vise economic exploitation, rather than bridging the divide between European literary culture and postcolonial creative literary productions.

Papua New Guinean writers need financial support to have their works published. In the last five years I observed that a number of Papua New Guineans have begun self-publishing their own books. Without the help of the government or international publishing houses a number of local writers have gone down this road. At face value, it appears to encourage local authors, but the ambitious journey for a self-published author in PNG is unpredictable and treacherous, if left alone.

Russell Soaba self-published Kwamra: A Season of Harvest under Anuki Country Press; Yauka Liria and Stanley Liria published their books under Crossroads Publications, and Fegsley Risapi under his own company Bradwin. I self-published my third collection of poetry: A Rower’s Song, under my own publishing company known as Manui Publishers. I used my own money to have my books printed with a local printer. I have to make a lot of personal sacrifices to come up with enough money to have one book published. Life down this road is painful, yet fulfilling.

Books and publishing are inseparable in a literary culture. If there are no publishing activities then no writing appears in print. Writers depend on publishing companies to see their writings in print and read by many people. Publishing works of fiction, poetry, and drama is still trapped in a time capsule. From time to time we see bubbles of this great energy escape the bottom to fill up the top of the jar.

Listen My Country

2009-12-19T22:30:00.000-08:00

The missing pieces are now found and restored in this blog. The first one is Listen my country
Source: Steven’s Window, The National newspaper. Friday 18th, September 2009. It is time, we, the country, listen to the voices of women, writes Dr STEVEN WINDUO

PAPUA New Guinean women were in parliament since 1961. A simple Papua New Guinean village woman made history that even some of the history books, except for Eric Jones’s book on Dame Alice Wedega have no records of, let alone celebrate the feat accomplished by a pioneer woman in our midst.PNG women have been asking their country to listen to what they have to say about themselves. We have not been listening. We have been assuming their voices all along. In so doing we have denied women to speak for themselves.

In her autobiography, Listen My Country, Dame Alice Wedega answers one of the moral question of our time asked by Gayatri Spivak, an Indian-born post-colonial literary critic based in USA: Can the Subaltern Speak? Can PNG women speak for themselves? In her life and in her book, Dame Alice, pleaded with her country to hear the voices of women. The book was published in 1981, a first by a Papua New Guinean woman.

Dame Alice was born in 1905 to Wedega Gamahari and Ema of Alo Alo village in Milne Bay province. She went to school at Kwato mission school led by Cecil Abel of the London Missionary Society fame.In a book on colonial impact between 1884 and 1984 Dr Anne Dickson Waiko and Prof Tony Deklen made scanty references to Dame Alice’s part in the 1961 Legislative Council.

Dame Alice did so much in her lifetime by speaking for our women in international gatherings in New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka and in Europe. A pioneer member of the Legislative Council between 1961 and 1964, she was one of the nine native representatives during the Australian colonial administration.Dame Alice’s life story is exemplary of a colonised Papua New Guinean woman’s ability to rise above the ordinary to transcend all expectations by participating in a political process dominated by white Australian males. She worked with Sir Cecil to bring Christianity to Abau and parts of Central province in 1935. She founded the Ahioma Training Centre in the early 1960s to train women welfare assistants in Papua New Guinea. In 1952 she represented women’s rights at the Pan Pacific Women’s conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. Later in 1952 she led the Moral Re-armament group to India and Sri Lanka.Her story is brought up again in Deklin’s discussion on the constitutional development, especially for a home-grown constitution, in PNG between 1962 and 1975. Following World War II Papua New Guineans played no part in decision-making in terms of constitutional changes until 1964. During this time the Legislative Council, created by the Papua New Guinea Act 1949, was the body advising the Administrator on the running of the Territory Administration. This Act was the basic colonial Constitution until it was repealed in 1975.
Only three Papua New Guineans were nominated on the Legislative Council of 29 members since 1951. The Legislative Council Ordinance 1951, however, prohibited them from voting or being elected on the grounds that they were “natives.”

This remained until 1960 when nine additional members were added in the new Legislative Council. The significant constitutional change in 1960, according to Deklin, was “the principle of indirect election of native members of the Legislative Council authorised by the Legislative Council Ordinance 1960.”The climate in the early 1960s was such that the Australian government wanted the indigenous representatives to vote with them on any major legislative changes because the administration chose them for such purposes. Of course, we now know, that Dame Alice did vote if she felt it was right. She voted against the administration if her conscience wins, as was the case against the Bill on Liquor Licensing in 1962.

In the Legislative Council of 1961 there was the sense of feeling that Papua New Guineans must take control of the future development of the Constitution. As a member to the Legislative Council, Dame Alice had the opportunity to vote for any legislative changes that would have a dramatic impact in the lives of Papua New Guineans. One such important vote was on the formation of the Select Committee on Political Development on Mar 9, 1962. Of course, later in the political development of PNG, in the 1964 and 1968 House of Assembly new Constitutional Development Committees were formed, headed by Sir John Guise and Paulus Arek, respectively. The last, but most important committee, known as the Constitutional Planning Committee of 1972 was chaired by Michael Somare and later by John Momis.By this time, Dame Alice was out of the political scene. She resigned from the Department of Welfare Services and went back to missionary work in 1972. She was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) that same year. Be it national politics, public service, or missionary work, Dame Alice had been a stout ambassador for women’s voices in PNG for many years.

Her history reminds me of the present political and social climate. The efforts to have three women members nominated to Parliament have come under a lot of scrutiny from the public, politicians, women’s groups, and NGOs. The decision to have women nominated to Parliament or voted in remains a political hopscotch.
At this time of Independence we have to remind ourselves that women, through the likes of Dame Alice Wedega, Dame Josephine Abaijah, Nahau Rooney, Matilda Pilacapio, Annie Moaitz, and Lady Carol Kidu have been wrestling with the bulls of PNG politics since 1961.

I do not profess to know constitutional law or legislative processes, but my conscience tells me that women must speak for themselves with their own voices and conscience in the National Parliament.

Scientific Research and Development

2009-12-10T23:36:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper 11 December 2009.

It is always refreshing to see some of our best minds at work in finding solutions to our problems. I had the rare opportunity of participating in the UPNG 2009 Science conference at the Holiday Inn between the 12th and 13th of November 2009.

The conference began with a little story of how the PNG Medical Society began to the story of how the Sir Buri Kidu Heart Foundation began. Captivating and challenging, when told by one of PNG’s top heart surgeons, Professor Sir Isi Kevau on the first day. The stage was set as scientists and medical health specialists got down to addressing the national and global issues through scientific research and development. The conference is the second organized by UPNG’s School of Natural and Physical Sciences and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Throughout the two days scientists presented papers on their researches on natural product research and development, biodiversity conservation and climate change, alternative energy to science education.

Exciting discussions on scientific collaborations, specific research on medicinal and nutrition value of plants, climate change, antibacterial screening of medicinal plants, phytochemical diversity from the rich biological diversity of PNG, to isolation and characterization of chemical constituents in native beans were generated. The dynamism of the first day of presentation was maintained on the second day of the conference. This is the second year of the UPNG Science conference.

Some of our leading scientists like Professor Teatulohi Matainaho, Professor Topul Rali, Dr. Augustine Mungkaje, Professor Chalapan Kaluwin were leading research programs in the sciences, together with students and international colleagues such as Dr. Prem Rai, Professor Bret Neilan, Professor Louis Brown, Professor Hugh Davies, Dr. Basil Marasinghe and Dr. Philip Kigodi. The wonderful thing witnessed in this conference is the involvement of students in the scientific researches done in Papua New Guinea. Their contributions are some of the most rigorous and innovative in their research methodologies. Original researches from students are often invigorating and exciting.

As titillating as Professor Topul Rali’s discussion of downstream processing of plant derived compounds and market opportunities from PNG plants is the student researcher, Clan Alok’s discussion on the measurements of above and below ground bio-mass carbon of a forest reserve area in the Bogia District of the Madang Province. Mr. Asi Anas of the Department of Fisheries in the PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment collaborating with Dr. Augustine Mungkaje of UPNG and others gave his findings on the biology of the fish species Hairback Herring (Nematalosa come) in the Bwemapou Lagoon in the Trobriand Islands. In a research carried out in the East New Britain Province, Peter Mwayawa reports on the pesticidal effect of six Tolai traditional medicinal plant herbs on Head Cabbage (Brassica oleraceae var. capitata) pests and diseases.

Discussions on the 1888 Ritter Island collapse Tsunami based on new data from sediment and oral histories, mapping mangrove cover change of the Bootless Bay in the Central Province between 1974 and 2000 using GIS and remote sensing techniques, and land use change and population growth in the National Capital District between 1990 and 2000 brought home the issue that important researches that can help national planners were possible because of sufficient funding. Without funding for such researches by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education, we would not have known the present sea level trends in the Manus area or the cause of infectious disease outbreaks in Papua New Guinea.

The issue that remains central to me when it comes to research at the university level is that collaborative work across various disciplines and schools of thought is the key to conclusive results. Most times we tend to narrow down our researches to the walls of our disciplines. In doing so, we exclude other elements important in our researches such as the cultural factors and the human societies with their forms of knowledge systems. Our scholarships and research works must find currency and relevance in our communities. We must ask: who are the benefactors of our researches and discoveries?

Listening to the research on fish species Hairback Herring in the Trobriand Islands I remembered listening to an ordinary villager profess his knowledge of fish and fish stock in the Waria River of Morobe province. The man knows more about fish than anyone I have known. We have not documented the knowledge of our indigenous fishermen and fisherwomen. There is more we need to do in the area of traditional knowledge systems.

More collaborative researches between scientists, social scientists and humanists are needed. In the session I was in, a young scientist, Gelenta Salopuka gave her paper on the pharmacognostic characteristics of Alstonia scholaris or the Milky Pine plant. Her scientific work on the plant interested me because of my own interest in the plant as an important medicinal plant in my own Nagum Boiken society in the East Sepik Province. I have documented the uses of the Milky Pine as an important medicinal plant used in traditional medicinal practices, but also considered a sacred plant in many societies. Medicinal plants classified as sacred plants have intellectual property rights attached to them. In my society this plant is linked to a mythical storyteller who recited stories about creation, about men and women, and about life and death the whole night until the sun rose. He walked up and down each branch as he recited the stories and genealogies of the tribe. His name is kept in secret by those who tell the story of this man.

As researchers we should be mindful of the possible cultural exploitations we open the gates to. Working together can protect the intellectual property rights of our people and country. The ethnobotanist, Mark J. Plotkin’s says in his book Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (1993) that the humble pink-flowered rosy periwinkle, native to southeastern Madagascar, fetches annual sales exceeding $100 million, yet not a penny goes back to Madagascar, the country of origin for the rosy periwinkle and one of the poorest country in the world.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Saving Our Languages

2009-12-08T22:18:00.000-08:00

The article was published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper Friday 4th December 2009. Photo of young Gadsup speaker with mother. Photo credit: Keisiva Darius.

The Atlas of World Languages, revised edition, says that the future of the Melanesian languages and their survival is uncertain. The use of English in education and of varieties of Melanesian Pidgin as national languages means that many children are failing to acquire their parents’ traditional tongues. Many of these languages have fewer than 500 speakers. Many of these languages are disappearing everyday. The prognosis of many of the languages with less than 50 speakers is gloomy. The case of Papua New Guinean languages undergoing this linguistic death is more severe than perceived.

In the second week of November 2009 UPNG students of linguistics, professional linguists, and others concerned about the languages of Papua New Guinea gathered in a workshop to discuss language surveys in Papua New Guinea. The workshop is the first of several collaborations between linguists Professor Genevieve Escure of the University of Minnesota and UPNG colleagues Professor Kenneth Sumbuk, Mr. Sakarepe Kamene, Mr. Nick Garnier, Professor Betty Lovai and this writer. The concern with language death, unreliable data, inconsistent reporting, and the status of languages with less than ten speakers brought us together with students to work on a survey of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Languages in Papua New Guinea are under considerable pressure as the nation progresses from the stone-age society to the gas-age culture. “As communication, education, and modernization proceed, there is considerable pressure on many of the smaller languages of Melanesia,” reports The Atlas of World Languages. A small language like Susuami, spoken in the resettlement village of Manki in the Upper Watut Valley of Morobe Province has shrunk from 50 speakers in 1980 to about a dozen in 1990. We have no way of knowing if this language is still spoken today. Many more languages have been pushed off the linguistic map of Papua New Guinea without anyone knowing.

Early in this decade I raised the alarm on some of these languages. From the data made available from the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) and other sources like the Ethnologue of world languages we know that at least more than 10 languages are death and another 12 or more were tagged as nearly extinct. The likelihood of this statistics achieving an increase in the number of moribund languages is a reality. Without concentrated efforts to research and map out local language use in Papua New Guinea this country stand to lose a lot of its languages.

We have no accurate data regarding the languages of Papua New Guinea. The data available from the National Population Census and the Election Census is often very inconsistent, insufficient, and inaccurate as a measure of the survival or disappearance of a language in PNG. No government initiative or programs are in place to deal with this linguistic disaster. The government has turned a blind eye on this national tragedy of languages, cultures, and people. The boastful ultra-national sentiments on the linguistic and cultural diversity are only a window dressing of the darker side of national ignorance when it comes to language survival and death.

An immediate intervention is needed to slow down the rate at which our languages are disappearing. A strategic rethinking and re-evaluation of the path we have taken to avoid the issue of language survival has to eventuate soon. Without doing so we stand to lament the disappearance of unique groups of people with their languages in our midst. Our children too would follow us down this road without making sense of heads or tails of their identities. Consider this, with the global change, a small Papuan language like Rotokas of Bougainville Autonomous region is on the way out. Rotokas has achieved fame in The Guinness Book of Record as the language with the world’s smallest number of phonemes. It has 11, compared, for example, with the 44 in English. Do we know for sure if this language has remained unchanged? We talk about big things, but when it comes down to smaller things we turn away from it.

Let me put it another way. Those of us in the forefront of research and teaching of language know that our children are growing up speaking English and Tokpisin. It is easy to argue that educated Papua New Guineans should be the first ones to teach their mother tongue at home with their children. It is, however, difficult to make that work, especially with intermarriage families, and at urban centres where our children interact with other children in Tokpisin and English. A certain social stigma is also at play with language use among children in many parts of urban Papua New Guinea. Children speaking their mother tongue are often excluded from the games initiated and dominated by speakers of Tokpisin and English.

The issue here is that we consider language as a natural human skill and behavior, but we never consider language bias as a factor driving our Papua New Guinean languages to extinction. Why are dominant languages more than likely to force small languages to extinction? During the workshop on language survey in Papua New Guinea one of the students explained that in his native Kainantu area, he observed that some of the smaller languages were forced out of use by the dominant Kafe language. Why? We need to document the reasons for this language pattern and biases that are forcing some of our smaller languages out of existence. Setting up a well funded national language institute or program might be a start for the government if it cares about national languages of Papua New Guinea.

As I write this article I am as more hypocritical as anyone I know who is conscious of the language use at home with our families that our Tokples is left out of the equation of modern urbanites. We must accept the blame as well for not taking action to speak our Tokples to our children. In the ideal world, unlike ours, it would make sense for everyone to keep their languages alive at home.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Native Films as a National Mirror

2009-11-30T16:06:00.000-08:00

The article first appeared in Steven's Window column The National newspaper. Friday 27 November 2009.

After the first audition for Jungle Child, film adaptation of a children’s book based on the personal diary of a German girl, Nadine’s childhood in New Guinea, my children were recalled for the second casting. My daughter aged 13 and son aged 10 had me drive them to Gateway Hotel on two Saturdays in October for the second audition.

Several people in Port Moresby that I know turned up with their children or for themselves as potential actors in the movie. Seeing the interests in acting in feature films I kept thinking about what Houston Wood, an American scholar of Indigenous films said about feature films.

“Traditional oral storytelling is unlike a cinematic narrative, they fear…Similar fears were once voiced about how movies represent Shakespeare, the Bible, and other classic western styled texts. The point here is that it has become a norm now that “it is generally accepted that film adaptation can reinvigorate older European traditions for a new generation. We need to seriously consider how it is that we ignored one of the powerful medium of communication: the film…. there seems no a priori reason why feature films cannot similarly translate Indigenous stories into new forms that help keep traditional Indigenous cultures alive.” How true could this be?

My friend and colleague, Vilsoni Hereniko of Rotuma, now the Director of the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawaii made his first feature film, The Land Has Eyes based on his personal upbringing on Rotuma. His film makes uses of a Rotuman mythology of a warrior woman, Sina, as the cultural framework for the film. The actors were all Rotuman villagers, school kids, and teachers, except for two characters. During the first showing on the island the entire islanders turned up to watch the movie and wanted more.

Then there was Witi Ihimaera, the Maori writer’s film The Whale Rider, based on his novel inspired by the Maori mythology of a clan with a lineage to whales in mythological time and homeland. I first saw the film in Hawaii, during a writers’ festival I was part of in 2004. The Whale Rider remains one of the popular Indigenous films ever made.

Other Indigenous films one can easily find in any video shops are the Samoan Wedding and the Aboriginal film Ten Canoes. Each of these films has a unique and wonderful story to tell to the world. Watching these films with my children had a powerful and transformative effect on us.

What am I getting at here? Feature film making in Papua New Guinea needs to be encouraged. The last international successful major feature film was Albert Toro and Chris Owen’s Tukana: Husait I Asua? I attended the closing of a workshop of TV production in Port Moresby in the last week of October 2009. The workshop was attended by members of National Broadcasting Commission, National Film Institute, Department of Information and Communication and Albert Toro himself. I had the opportunity to meet Albert Toro and Joe Eladona at that time. I shared with the workshop participants a moment of reflection of the issue of feature films and documentary film making in PNG. It was also good to note that Kundu 2 TV would now have radio drama Kunai Street converted into a soap opera for TV.

I mentioned to Albert Toro that I had read his paper on “Film and National Identity in PNG”, presented at the International Film Festival Symposium in Hawaii in November 1983. The observation he made in the 1980s remains evident today. Here are some of the issues Toro raised at that time:

“The mirrors which the nation uses to see its internal and exported image are found generally in the more public media such as radio, film and the recently introduced home video system. Of the three formats, film is by far the most accessible nearly everywhere because of its easy transferability to television which is immediate and seen world-wide. In the case of Papua New Guinea, however, there has not been any meaningful government support of the commercialization of indigenous film products or of the country (90% of the population is in the rural areas). This can be attributed to several factors: film exhibition and distribution, completely in the hands of expatriates; the government does not have any priorities on the cultural or commercial aspects of indigenous film production, exhibition and distribution, foreign film-makers are allowed into the country to interpret the lifestyle (s) of the people with no intimate knowledge of the intricate factors which go into the process of bush life, hence turning out at best sensational film products made for a prurient western-oriented audience; no policy on-hand, to describe the direction which the Papua New Guinea people themselves want to travel in to control their image.”

Such views from our pioneer feature film maker remind us that the Papua New Guinea government need to step up to the challenge to support the development of local feature film and documentary making. I doubt if Albert Toro’s views have changed much with the introduction of the government owned Kundu 2 TV station under the wings of the National Broadcasting Cooperation. The National Film Institute and the Department of Information and Communication may want to listen to this veteran’s views as he has more wisdom to offer at this time.

The challenge for film makers and TV production in Papua New Guinea is to encourage more local film makers and documentary film makers. The change such an approach would make is that Papua New Guineans can identify with the film and the film maker’s points of view. The opportunity to work on a film with local content led by a local film maker begins a process of skills development in the film and TV industry for Papua New Guineans. At the moment it is rare to find local feature film makers and documentary film makers. We need to cultivate our talents in this area of development in Papua New Guinea.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Buimo Prison Writers

2009-11-27T22:34:00.000-08:00

The article appeared first in Steven's Window column in The National newspaper. Friday 20th November 2009.

The inspiration could have been my stories about the prison writings of PNG’s John Kasaipwalova, Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiongo, or the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks that got the Buimo prisoners and warders to write their stories during a writers’ workshop between October 26th and November 6th, 2009. Doris Omaken and Jill Pijui of the PNG Bible Society coordinated the writers’ workshop. UPNG colleague Sakarepe Kamene and I facilitated the workshop as part of our community outreach obligation.

From the experiences gained in working with village people to get them to write their stories down on paper that was published as the Zia Writers of Waria we agreed to work with the PNG Bible Society in running a writers’ workshop at the Buimo Prison in Lae, Morobe Province. The writers’ workshop in Waria was three days long, but very successful and empowering to the village people used to gardening, fishing, hunting, and feasting.

The Buimo Prison writers’ workshop took ten days. With more time at our hand we introduced other aspects of a writers’ workshop. Enough time meant more time for writing, more flexibility, and space for quality interactions with participants. In the end we developed new friendships through the writers’ workshop.

We approached the workshop with two considerations: First, we believed, that everyone had the skills and interesting experiences to tell stories. The Buimo Prison writers’ workshop began with storytelling. We guided the participants to write these stories down on paper. Second, we decided against using papers, fixed structures, and programs. Our view was that using the techniques used in formal university classrooms was intimidating to learners at the village level or in prisons. Our approach was simple, flexible, and allowed a lot of verbal interactions.

Participants grasped what we wanted them to know without developing learning anxieties. As much as possible we insisted on the writing process to begin and develop without any form of barriers, be they psychological, linguistic, physical or mechanical. Participants were encouraged to express themselves in a free and open spirit. The approach worked for every participant, including prisoners, CIS officers, and prison ministers. Two CIS officers from Beon Prison in Madang attended the workshop as well.

The Buimo prison writers’ workshop is the first we conducted within the prison walls in Papua New Guinea. Buimo prison has the only classroom set up by the School of Hope, a church run facility in Lae.

We introduced the fundamentals of writing and different techniques of writing short stories and essays in the first week of the workshop. We also introduced elements of style and different writing problems. We guided the participants, in the second week, to write their life narratives, imaginative stories, and collective reactions to common issues using a non-fiction genre. The participants impressed us with their understanding of the writing process with group presentations of short stories, essays, and personal stories in the second week. The stories had us laughing and near tears hearing the personal side of the prisoners.
What takes a semester of 14 weeks to teach at the University of Papua New Guinea was condensed to two weeks in the Buimo prison writers’ workshop. Anyone can write with the right kind of encouragement, approach, techniques, and tools of writing. Our approach worked in a village environment and now at a prison setting. The time it took to get someone who has never written a short story or essay before to write again is the best experience to witness.

The prisoners have a lot of time for devotion and reflection on life. Introducing them to writing techniques and having them write down their experiences can serve as a therapeutic exercise and as process of self-expression. The writings produced in the workshop had one strong impression. The prisoners are now equipped with the knowledge and techniques of writing their life stories in short prose or if need be, as a book. Some of the participants indicated that the workshop has given them a new ray of hope in life’s difficult journeys. Sharing their personal experiences with us through writing gave us a glimpse into their lives outside and inside of the prison walls. As it turned out three inmates were friends I have known before, but had no idea they were in prison for being on the wrong side of law. Nonetheless, I was happy to share the moments with them as a friend visiting them in prison.

The writers’ workshop gave us also the opportunity to learn, develop, and sharpen our methodologies in conducting such workshops. We learnt that using papers and adhering to traditional rules and structures of writing is less helpful to participants. Conducting workshop in Tokpisn and code-switching to English and back to Tokpisin helped a lot in making sense of what we wanted the participants to know. Working with prisoners we maintained a none-judgmental, none-emotive, and bias free discourse. Keeping the eye on the ball, we dribbled through the many challenges out there in working in such a situation with such a special group of learners.

Our goal to get completed short stories and essays written during the workshop was accomplished. An anthology of writings from Buimo Prison is expected to be published in the coming year. The prison writers have given us something to think about for a long time to come. The experience also gave us the opportunity to interact with correction officers. Those who participated in the workshop expressed gratitude and appreciation to us for giving an opportunity for them to up-skill themselves to deal with the complex challenges of rehabilitation, especially where additional knowledge is needed.

The success of the Buimo writers’ workshop remains a benchmark in literacy work for the PNG Bible Society and the Correction Services in the country. I hope similar writers’ workshops are possible throughout the country.

The PNG Bible Society can now call itself as the leader of prison literacy and writing projects. The experience gained in the Buimo writers’ workshop can now guide future prison writers’ workshop.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Buka Dialogues

2009-11-26T18:58:00.000-08:00

The Buka Dialogues is an experiment video production.

Building Bridges in Communities

2009-11-26T17:04:00.000-08:00

The first appearance of this article in Steven's Window, The National newspaper is hereby acknowledged. Friday 13th November 2009.

About 10 years ago my colleague, Dr. Regis Stella of Bougainville, launched his first novel Gutsini Posa or Rough Seas at the University of South Pacific in Fiji. I was also there to witness the launching. The novel is centred around the Bougainville crisis and the experiences of that conflict. Many educated Bougainvilleans live outside of Bougainville.

I kept thinking about the Bougainvillean characters in Gutsini Posa. If it wasn’t for the Bougainville conflict the characters would continue to move from place to place outside of Bougainville. Jamila, the female character and Penagi, the male protagonists return to Bougainville to help out their people. Jamila was the first to leave Port Moresby to Bougainville without telling Penagi, her boyfriend. Penagi followed later. Their return home was significant in that as educated members of their communities they have to return to their people to find a way out of the crisis. Now that the crisis is over, the rehabilitation, rebuilding, and reconstruction phase has set in.

I had an opportunity travel to the Buka University Centre of UPNG early this year. On arrival in Buka I was met by the director of the UPNG Buka Open College Centre, Mr. Albert Nukuitu. I have known Albert as a friend and colleague for a long time. I thought Albert would never return to Buin, his home district, or to Buka for that matter. Somehow the lure and glamour of Port Moresby had us all locked into its chasms. Albert Nukuitu, Regis Stella, and my other Bougainvillean friends of UPNG student days lived a phase of their lives in self-imposed internal exiles because of the crisis that ruined their homes.

Peaceful years and strong reform years came by to see the emergence of the Autonomous Bougainville Government. Life picked up again with restoration of services in Bougainville, more so especially in Buka. It was then that Albert Nukuitu, returned to Buka to take up his job as the director of the Buka Open College Centre. That was a surprise to all of us who know Albert, who worked at the UPNG Human Resource Management Division and later as the Executive Officer in the School of Business Studies. He has his reasons. It was none of our business to know.

As we drove from the airport to the UPNG Open College centre Albert showed me a spot where a scene from the film Tukana was shot. The film Tukana: Husait I Asua? and Stella’s novel Gutsini Posa gave us two important windows of viewing Bougainvillean society. The novel gave me a sense of what it means growing up in Bougainville and having to deal with the crisis that completely devasted a people. Albert Toro’s Tukana, a film about young Bougainvilleans and the changing lifestyles in Bougainville before the crisis provided the image I have of Bougainville. The film raises the troubling question: Husait I Asua? A question that continues to haunt us right through our lives, even today.

It is said before you visit a place you must read a book about the place. Little I know from reading Stella’s Gutsini Posa and seeing Albert Toro’s filmTukana prepared me as I visited Buka. So much had happened in Bougainville over the years that nothing I see would reveal the history of the place.

Albert Nukuitu’s local knowledge and sensitivities helped me find Buka as a wonderful place. It was the stories that Albert told me during my time there that I began to appreciate and value the challenges and difficulties people have endured to be what they are today. I began to understand Albert’s reason for going home. The job of director of UPNG Buka centre was a good choice for Albert to return home to help his people. He has transformed the centre and has plans to expand the UPNG operation in Bougainville. As we sat in his office he had two calls from Buin. He explained to me that he was helping his Buin community to rebuild and restore his beloved Buin Secondary School. He showed me a picture of the Buin Secondary School library to get my reaction. It did not look like a library at all, was my reaction. A major rehabilitation is needed. Albert’s community is working together to restore the pride of Buin High School.

Albert is the Board Chairman for the Buin Secondary School. Under his chairmanship they are seeking funding to help rebuilt and rehabilitate the Buin Secondary School. The Buin High school was established in 1968 with its first grade 7 intake in the same year. It had its first grade 10 graduates in 1971. Over the past years Buin high school developed in many ways, especially in terms of its physical facilities and expansion in terms of the area it now covers. Its students output hold important offices in the private and the public sectors.

The buildings were built with funding from the then Australian Colonial Administration during the pre independence period. Since the buildings were put up, they have never being maintained for the last four decades. The condition of the facilities had deteriorated more over the last two decades of the civil uprising due to lack of maintenance. In the last two years there has been very little funding on very minimal maintenance work from the Autonomous Bougainville Government.

In 2006 Buin high school was upgraded to a Secondary level school. It enrolled its first grade 11 students in 2006. Its pioneer grade 12 graduation took place in October 2007. At the moment it is one of the only three top up Secondary Schools on Bougainville and despite its unpreparedness due to lack of facilities to be upgraded to a Secondary School. It is the only school that covers South and Central Bougainville which has a population of 140,000 plus people. Buin Secondary School needs a lot of funding to rehabilitate, rebuild, and restore their pride and purpose.

Albert Nukuitu and many others are showing us the importance of building bridges in our communities.

A Writing Project

2009-11-26T16:57:00.000-08:00

The article appeared first in Steven' Window, The National newspaper. Friday 6th November 2009. Image courtesy of Bill Gammage, The Sky Travellers: Journeys into New Guinea 1938-1939: 92. Orengia or Holonia in front, facing camera.

I read Ignatius Kilage’s semi-autobiographical novel, My Mother Calls Me Yaltep (1980) many times since its publiction. The book was first published by the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in 1980, and later republished by the Oxford University Press. It remains a classic PNG semi-autobiography.

I read the book as a grade 12 student without knowing that I would end up writing a chapter of my Masters thesis on this book nine years later. The story of Yaltep inspired me to think about writing historical fiction. Kilage wrote the book based on the perspective of a Kuman language speaker in the Simbu province. The book centres on the historical events of 1930s and onward to 1975. Through Kilage’s novel I came to appreciate the importance of writing our people’s experiences and from within our own perspectives.

The Australian government officials and American prospectors, and missionaries such as Jim Taylor, Dan and Mick Leahy, Walliam Ward, John Black, Pat Walsh, and Father William Ross had their account of the early contact already documented in many books.

We have read books and seen films about their experiences, but have not seen any books on or by Papua New Guineans on the first contact experience. A number of writers from the highlands such as Benjamin Umba, Peter Kama Kerpi, Ignatius Kilage, Toby Kagl Waim, Michael Yake Mell, Arnold Muna, Fancis Nii, have written about their societies, but their writings are little known to many people.

Inspired by Kilage’s My Mother Calls Me Yaltep I began a writing project of my own. I interviewed my grandfather in the 1980s when he was still alive. He told me his side of the story as a mission boy stationed in Migende Catholic Station between 1933 and 1935. That was the only account of his early life with the Catholic mission based in Alexishafen, from where they walked up through the Bundi pass to set up their station at Migende.

I ploughed through official mission histories and books about that period only to disappoint my curiosity. All the mission boys and helpers were nameless characters assisting the missionaries in their work. I told myself that I would write a book about my grandfather and give a name to these nameless mission boys and helpers.

My grandfather’s name is Horinya Jilaka, a man I came to admire for being a pioneer family member accompanying the missionaries into the highlands between 1933 and 1935. It took me some years to write my grandfather’s story down. I had this story published in 2007 as “Into the Frontier”, in the American Journal of Indigenous Literatures, Art, and Thought, put out by the Southwest Minnesota State University.

In the process of writing my grandfather’s story I began to uncover interesting developments in his life. In 1936, he (going by the name Orienga) joined the police force and trained in Rabaul under Sargeant Ludwig Somare and another Sargeant from Buka. Jim Taylor hand picked my grandfather’s cohort to accompany him, John Black and Pat Walsh on the now famous Hagen Sepik Patrol of 1938-1939.

From a one page manuscript transcribed from my grandfather’s oral account, I began the process of reading written documents and books to get a picture of his place in history.

My writing project has taken me so many years to write. I had help from Australian colleagues like Chris Ballard of ANU and writer Drusilla Modjeska. Chris sent me materials on Wiliam Ward, the American gold prospector whose plane was used for cargo and supplies drop off in various camps, and also about Jim Taylor and John Black. Drusilla brought a copy of Bill Gammage’s book The Sky Travellers. I began reading this book, devouring every detail as I went through the pages quickly.

What I read enlightened me, but also shocked me to know what my grandfather was like as a policeman. Jim Taylor and John Black approached the New Guinea experience in different ways, but policemen were at most times power unto themselves. The policemen did what they did to protect the Kiaps, even if today we judge them to be violent and reckless. In My Gun, My Brother, August Kituai’s study of policemen during this period, we know that the gun was a policemen’s brother and trusting other policemen, kiaps, carriers, and new tribes was a hard thing to go by.

In The Sky Travellers I came across a black and white photograph of my grandfather Horinya (Orienga). The photograph was the only image any members of my family have of Horinya. I noted also that many other photographs of my grandfather are kept in John Black’s private paper collections. My grandfather accompanied John Black after Taylor split from them to travel through Hagen and Enga to get to Telefomin. John Black’s patrol went into the Tari, reaching Strickland, and working their way up to Oksapmin and later Telefomin. Their team reached their destiny before Taylor arrived with his party. John Black’s team built the Telefomin airstrip, a cruelling experience itself, until Townsend from Wewak sent a plane into relieve and rejuvenate them. The airstrip was later to serve as a strategic military airstrip for the Allied Forces during the Second World War. John Black’s patrol left Telefomin soon after the arrival of Taylor’s patrol, making their way down to the Sepik, and later sneaking into Enga to get over to Hagen.

My grandfather’s story continues where the history books ended. He joined the coastwatchers soon after they left the highlands. This phase of his life seems lost in history books again.

The important issue to me is that as a descendent of a pioneer Papua New Guinean I feel compelled to write about my grandfather and others who gave their life and loyalty to the colonial government. I want to give a name, a voice, and history to people like my grandfather who remain nameless and unworthy of mention in history books. We must write from within our perspectives in order to reclaim our erased identities.

Lessons from Successful Writers

2009-11-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

The article first appeared in Steven's Window in The National newspaper. Friday 30th October 2009.

One of the books I have in front of my desk all the time is Jack Canfield, a motivational speaker of grand stature. The book is The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. I have read this book so many times, made notes, and have all kinds of book mark placed in different pages of the book. I have benefited a lot from reading Canfield’s book to remain inspired even though the world around me is full of people who make life difficult at times. One of memorable quotes in Canfield’s book is from W. Clement Stone, former publisher of Success Magazine. The quote is: “When life hands you a lemon, squeeze it and make lemonade.” To me this quote stuck with me for a long time. Opportunities in life are like a lemon that we have to squeeze in order for us to make lemonade for us to enjoy. Opportunities in our lives arrive in unexpected ways. As many would do, seize the opportunity and make use of it.

I first shared this quote with a group of young leaders, teachers, NGOs, and students in Oceania and Japan. The occasion was a forum called Oceania Future Forum organized by the Japan Foundation and the Waseda Hoshien Christian University in Tokyo. I was invited to Japan to coordinate the forum with a Japanese professor. I could not think of a better way of expressing the feeling that as young leaders of Oceania we must take advantage and make use of every opportunity life presents to us. Without doing so we risk the taking the train to our destiny.

The moral fiber of sharing this is that many people are resigned into their depressing world without taking action to improve their conditions and life. Opportunities are always present. Sometimes in an obvious natural way and other times opportunities are revealed through indirect means and ways. It is up to us to take heed of such moral intelligence if we care to make a difference in our lives through our own positive actions. Those of us who write books know that the journey is difficult but the arrival can be rewarding if one persist to hold on to that dream.

Two Papua New Guinean writers in my view who took advantage of the opportunity to write and have their books published are fine examples of individuals with such moral intelligence. Lahui Ako, from Hanuabada Village wrote and published two books: Upstream Through Endless Sands of Blessings (2007)—a life story about himself, his family, and his beloved Motuan people of Hanuabada. The second book published by Lahui Ako is a colourful coffee table picture book about his life as a diplomat in Beijin, China, entitled A Logohu in China (2007). Lahui was generous enough to present both books to me one day.

The second writer is Fegsley Risapi, a former school teacher, who now works with the Curriculum Development and Assessment Division of the Department of Education. I first met Fegsley when he registered for my course on writing, editing, and publishing, offered during a Lahara session at UPNG. Fegsley had started writing a book before enrolling in my course. This year Fegsley had his first book Innocent But Responsible (2008) published. He was bubbling with excitement as he signed and presented me a complimentary copy of his book. Now he tells me his second book is out soon.

Both writers did not have to wait for someone to help fund their publications. They managed to find some money somewhere to have their books published. The admirable quality of Lahui and Fegsley is that they believed in what they did to get what they wanted in life. Nothing could stop them publishing the books they wrote.

They had no institutional support or funding from the government to have their books published. In Lahui’s case, he had approached me early on, in my days as the director of UPNG’s Melanesian and Pacific Studies (MAPS), to have his book published, but with no funds I could not assist him get his book published.

In Fegsley’s case, he almost gave up waiting for the editor of one of the international publishing company to help him publish his book. Gathering enough courage and belief in himself he self-published his own book.

These authors have proven that the spirit of creativity and the opportunities in life are always around us. All we need to do is take advantage of these opportunities by using them to produce the kind of product we want.

So often people express the self-defeating remark that they don’t have the time to write a book. Others with books written are looking out for a publisher or someone to help them publish their books. The simple formula successful writers use is to write a small number of pages a days, say between 1 and 10 pages. Most of us would write 1 to 2 pages a day. In a month of 30 days if I write 2 pages a day I would have completed 60 pages. And in 3 months I would have completed 180 pages altogether. I can then rework my book to reach the 200 to 250 pages mark for a typical book for publication.

We can learn a thing or two from successful writers as in the experience of Stephen King, the acclaimed science fiction writer: “I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three month span, a goodish length for a book—something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh. On some days those ten pages come easily… Sometimes when the words come hard, I’m still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.”

Strong Connections

2009-11-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

The article first appeared in Steven's Window column in The National newspaper. Friday 23rd October 2009.

There are strong connections between all of us. We share the same human experiences and perhaps socio-cultural experiences. If we look carefully at the emotions of joy, sadness, or anger we are bound to recognize similarities.

The video Strong Connections written and directed by Martin Maden made for the Technical Vocational Education has this message: “We Papua New Guineans are rural people at heart. Even as our future and our resources flow into the voids of urban moulds, this one thread continues uniting us across eventuating ethnic and regional disparities, Our understanding and affinity with our land grants us our common dignity and connects all of us together.”

The video showcases some of our talented actors such as Olivia Wilson, Hitch Loape, and France Maden. The primary message in the video is about vocational and technical education in Papua New Guinea. It does not matter what age, gender, or ethnicity one is, vocational education is an important way of learning new trade skills to develop oneself and one’s society. Other than that the video was shot in the New Guinea Islands and the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The video also featured traditional mourning ceremonies and post-mortuary rites in the Mt Hagen area. It also contrasted the highlands culture with the coastal culture.

Strong Connections is an excellent video. I had no hesitation in using it as a model media tool in the media literacy workshop in Kainantu. The workshop participants had never seen the video before. I had no idea what their responses were to be. The responses and reactions to the video were very engaging. The participants felt that visual representations of their social cultural values were recognizable. There are parts in the video with very strong emotive pull that had some of the participants shed a tear or two. Some felt that the video had left out other cultural experiences of the highlanders. To some the video lacked authenticity and cultural sensitivity. Many issues were brought up during discussions on this video.

I think the strong reactions the media literacy participants had on the video suggest one undeniable factor. The film was written, directed, and acted by Papua New Guineans. Papua New Guineans identified themselves with the characters, the setting, and events in the film. As a visual medium of media communication the video captured the interests of the viewers. The images from the video remained in their memory for a long time as indicated by the fresh discussions of the video two days after I had shown it to them.

I asked myself what would have been the response if I had shown them the video documentary Advertising Missionaries, which I had originally planned to use in the media literacy workshop. Advertising Missionaries is a classic postmodern narrative about selling modern Western products and ideologies to the rural populations who may be semi literate or completely illiterate. To sell their products a major wholesale and retail company hired a group of theatre enthusiasts to become its envoy in marketing their products. The group used theatre and short plays to highlight the products the company is selling. They also used the opportunity to educate rural folks about social cultural issues such as population control and HIV/AIDS. The group regarded themselves as the postmodern missionaries replicating what the missionaries had done in the early 1930s to establish Christianity in the highlands societies.

The Advertising Missionaries was made by non-Papua New Guineans, but the strong presence of John Horiawi Himugu, the script writer for the PNG feature film Marabe, is there in the film credits. The film was supported also by the National Cultural Commission and the National Film Institute in Goroka. Many film documentaries have been made thanks to Chris Owen and others committed to this genre.

In book on Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World, Houston Wood makes the point that indigenous films “provide powerful evidence of cultural diversity that indigenous people offer to the contemporary world”. Houston Wood went on to point out that Tukana Husait I Asua? by Albert Toro was the first feature film made by a Papua New Guinean and has set the benchmark for others to follow suit.

Tukana remains one of the first among Indigenous films. We must be proud of feature films like Tukana and Marabe. The question, however, is so where is Albert Toro and the film industry in PNG or elsewhere in the world? The productions of feature films are expansive, but with sufficient financial support and resources the industry could develop further. More than the economics of the film industry Papua New Guineans can find themselves left behind if we continue to remain ignorant of what is going on about feature films and documentaries in the Pacific.

Papua New Guineans should be supported and encouraged to do their own feature films and video documentaries. Let Papua New Guineans write their own scripts, direct, and produce their own films and documentaries. Giving such an opportunity to some of our community based organizations and individuals to take up the calling would see a new trend emerge where Papua New Guineans will feel that using a visual media they can do more to help their people.

With the government’s Kundu 2 TV now in operation I hope that many Papua New Guineans are encouraged to use this media technology to promote their social and cultural experiences. I am confident that the National Film Institute and the National Broadcasting Commission are working on plans to take us beyond where we are now.

There’s a lot of talents in our communities, stories to convert into short films, or narratives to make feature films. Give them a camera and teach them the techniques of filming and what do you get? You get the whole community turning up to see themselves in film or video.

Papua New Guineans must make their own feature films and video documentaries. Let us tell our stories to the world using our own eyes and voices.

Cultural Re-education

2009-11-25T21:50:00.001-08:00

First published in Steven's Window column, The National newspaper. Friday 16th October 2009. Photo credits: Keisiva Darius.

To reclaim our identities, histories, languages, and ways of knowing we need to return to our communities. The challenge to develop community learning centers or information centers are insurmountable to many community based organizations, NGOs, literacy workers, women’s groups, church groups, and youth groups. Some of these challenges are financial, others are ideological, and still many are necessitated by the inherent conflicts between introduced and indigenous cultures, between western and non western dilemmas, and between different generations. Such challenges remain entrenched in many Papua Guinean communities.

Working with many community based organizations, NGOs, and literacy workers I have come to appreciate the wonderful and resourceful individuals in many of our rural communities sweating their guts out just to give their people the opportunity to have equal access and partnership in national development. The support of the community and the network these individuals have with each other is perhaps the only strength many of the dedicated individuals have. The leaders in many of these community based organizations are passionate, dedicated, and open-minded individuals anyone would ever meet. They are people who inspire and lead their communities in various activities organized in their communities.

I was given the honour to officiate the opening of Gadsup Indigenous Knowledge and Communication Centre in the Aiyura valley of Kainantu. The centre is known as Ayugham Bhana or the hausman, built on the original village site on a hillside overlooking the Aiyura valley. The leader of this project is Labu Pungkano and is supported by his Ward councillor, Alex Paimako, Pastor Yana, and the whole community. About 3,000 people turned up for the official opening and celebration of the bhana or hausman with a lavished mumu feast.

The hausman concept is useful as a physical space to coordinate education and training of the young men in reclaiming their positive traditional values, histories, identities, and languages. Many of the young people are alienated by the modern system. Many are into drugs, alcohol, and have no respect for elders and traditions. Many school leavers in the village have no sense of direction. Crime and violence have arrived in the village communities through the complete break down of tradition and absence of traditional leadership. At the time of our visit many people in the Aiyura and Kainantu are were living in fear of the ongoing tribal fights and violence.

As a conceptual framework the hausman can be used to re-insert culture back into the lives of many of the young people. The elders of the hausman will use the bhana to provide leadership, training, cultural knowledge, and positive values to the younger members. The hausman becomes the site of knowledge production where important valuable information on life are produced and disseminated. The hausman serves as the institution of knowledge production and information communication in many PNG communities.

The Ayugham Bhana will become the cultural space for teaching of the local language to the younger generation. Many in the community felt that their languages are gradually fading out that many young people are no longer speaking their Tokples. The first rule of the Bhana is that no Tokpisin or English are allowed in the hausman. The language of business and learning in the Bhana is the Gadsup language.

The second specific need of the Ayugham Bhana is the cultural re-education of the youths in the Aiyura valley community. The hausman will have adult education programs, literacy programs, and media literacy programs led by the a committee made up of LLG Ward Council, youth leaders, women’s groups, church elders, and village elders. This committee will coordinate the development and sustainability of the hausman. The plan is also to build a hausmeri for the women of the valley. The hausman or the hausmeri will become the institutions of cultural re-education in the rural communities of Aiyura valley.

Given the honour to open the Ayugham Bhana in the Aiyura valley was a great humbling experience for me. Returning to the Aiyura valley brought home a lot of memories of my teen years as a student at the Aiyura National High School between 1982 and 1983. I felt honored to officiate the opening of the hausman as a token of my appreciation of Aiyura’s part in my life. To mark this important occasion Mr. Nimo Kama, one of their leading sons and I cut the ribbon across the door to the hausman. In the hausman I lit the fire at the fireplace named in my honour –a symbolic gesture suggesting the importance keeping the cultural re-education alive in this community.

Mr. Nimo Kama, Executive Director of the Media Council of PNG and Ms. Nancy Manukoro Tomwepa, a teacher at Aiyura National High School—two of the elite members from the Aiyura valley are helping their communities to reclaim their traditions, institutions, and processes of knowledge transfer and communication. They are serving as the bridge between tradition and modernity for their people. As educated members of their communities they are working in close consultations with their communities to find ways of cultural re-education founded on valuable traditional knowledge systems. I felt privileged to have been part of their journey as their former lecturer during their university years.

The community learning centers are only sustainable and effective with support from government agencies, relevant institutions, and organizations, and Papua New Guineans who care about the survival of indigenous knowledge and values that are important to our people. Without external support many of these centres can fall apart quickly.

All centers need funding to carry out their programs and activities. Without financial resources many of these centers will eventually fold up. Centers supported through various grants and institutional partnerships are more successful than those without any form of support.

In a basket of community learning centers we know that some are more successful than others. I think the best approach is to assist each community centre and organizations is to develop management and organizations programs, and work with them to reach achievable goals set by the center.

Media Literacy in PNG

2009-11-25T21:36:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window column in The National newspaper. Friday 9th October 2009.

I teamed up with the Media Council of Papua New Guinea, led by Mr. Nimo Kama, the Executive Director and two of his dedicated staff members: Mr. Anton Huafolo and Ms. Elizabeth Turagil. Leo Wafiwa, Head of the Journalism and Public Relations program at the University of Papua New Guinea and I provided the technical support to run its pilot media literacy workshop in PNG.

Why was it important that the Media Council organize a workshop on media literacy in Papua New Guinea? Media literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms—from print to video to the internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society, as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.

Media is constructed by someone for a purpose. As receivers of any constructed information we as readers, viewers, and listeners must ask if it is meant for us. We must unravel the constructed messages in order to understand the embedded meanings.

Accepting media influences without understanding its impact in our lives is like being told to swim up a flooded river without considering the tide that would force us down river to the open sea.

The influence of media in our lives is like the flood forcing us into the ocean of modernity where we are forced to drown in confusion. Many of our folks live in a state of confusion from the onslaught of media overload or media manipulations. How do we get them out of this state into one that makes them become critical receivers of information? How do we get our folks to become active participants in the production and dissemination of information using media technologies? How do we get our people to be active participants in the development of their communities?

Such challenges presented themselves to the Media Council of PNG. Under the Media Development Initiative (MDI) and the Developmental Communication Initiative (DCI) funded and supported through AUSAID, the Media Council of PNG conducted a pilot workshop on Media Literacy Training at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), Ukarumpa in Kainantu between September 10 and 12, 2009.

The Media Council of PNG approached the workshop as an opportunity to learn from community representatives about their responses, expectations, and reactions to media in Papua New Guinea. The Media Council in its efforts to remain a governing body knows that it is important to develop greater awareness among PNG communities about the process of information construction and dissemination. The workshop allowed the Media Council to link its development initiatives with the wider PNG communities.

The workshop was also supported by SIL Ukarumpa as a partner in the development of PNG. The participants were drawn from the MOMASE and Highlands region. The participants were primarily from community based organizations, NGOs, women’s groups, church groups, community learning centres, literacy programs, the law and justice sector, and agricultural extension services. Most of the participants attended the workshop to learn what they can about media literacy tools to take back to their communities in the provinces. The workshop introduced them to world of media communications and some of the tools used in media to make a change in their own communities.

Some of the media technologies have penetrated the diverse cultural and linguistic communities of Papua New Guinea. Media organizations continue the important role of information production, packaging, and dissemination. Other media vehicles such as theatre performances highlight HIV/AIDS, population growth and control, and law and order problems. In many cases media technologies are powerful tools of advertising products.

To get Papua New Guineans to be literate in media’s role in their lives or to use media tools in their environment the Media Council of PNG began supporting various community initiatives around the country.

The workshop format was derived from Five Key Questions That Can Change the World: Lesson Plans for Media Literacy, written by Jeff Share, Tessa Jolls and Elizabeth Thoman of the Centre for Media Literacy (CML) in Canada and Australia. The Five Key Questions are: Who created this message? What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? How might different people understand this message differently? What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message? Why is this message being sent? The five key concepts complementing these questions are: All messages are ‘constructed, media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules, different people experience the same media differently, media have embedded values and points of view and most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.

The Five Key Questions and Five Core Concepts evolved from traditional categories of rhetorical and literary analysis. Over the years, media literacy practitioners around the world have adapted and applied this analytical construct to today’s mediated ‘texts’—from television and movies to billboards, magazines, even bumper stickers, and T-shirts.

The effective use of media technologies has seen information transmitted across a broad spectrum of PNG society. Using these media technologies people have constructed information targeted especially for those receiving the messages. Some of these messages are useful and others are not, but one thing is clear. There is a need for media literacy in Papua New Guinea. The vision of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea is for a free, pluralistic and vibrant media that profits from promoting democratic governance and human development in Papua New Guinea by 2020.

The media literacy training workshop in Kainantu is an eye opener. The Media Council of PNG affirmed its critical role in the relationship between the media and Papua New Guinean communities.

I salute the Media Council of PNG for taking this bold approach in making our people literate in the kinds of media influences in their lives, but also in working with communities to use appropriate media technologies to communicate with each other or with others in the country.

Folktales are National Treasures

2009-11-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

First published in Steven's Window column in The National, newspaper as "Folktales Are National Treasures". Photo credits: Keisiva Darius

So much happened in the early 1970s in the period leading up to Papua New Guinea’s Independence in 1975. Institutions such as UPNG, UNITECH, Administrative College, and the Goroka campus of UPNG were hubs of cultural and political consciousness.

Students at the University of Technology in Lae contributed their folktales to the student yearbook called Nexus between 1970 and 1971. In 1978, Stokes published a representative of these stories as retold by Barbara Ker Wilson in The Turtle and the Island. The Oxford University Press published a later edition as Legends from Papua New Guinea: Book Two (1996).

These young writers heard these folktales as they grew up in their villages. The student wrote their stories from their memory. These stories give explanations, moral lessons, and descriptions of the natural beauty of landscapes, cultural values, explanations of the mysteries of nature of things, and about the intricate relationships humans have with the natural, physical, and spiritual environment.

These university students realized that cultural maintenance, self-explanations, and collective consciousness are defined by their different cultural and language backgrounds. If they are to live together as a society they need to teach each other their own cultures.

Cultural nationalism begins when those who consider it important enough to privilege it against the pervasive foreign cultures. These pioneer higher education students recognize the need to provide their own cultural explanations of the world and their social relationships with each other.

They used stories from their own societies to explain their cultural background and explanations of the world. They also learned from each other the importance of cultural diversity, cross-cultural fertilization, and multiple explanations of the world. They treasured the folktales from their societies.

One of the stories in Legends from Papua New Guinea captured my attention. “The Great Flood” written by Adam Amod, from Ali Island near Aitape, in the Sandaun Province explains how the Ali Islanders settled on the island and their relationships to Tumeleo and the mainlanders of Aitape.

The flood story had spread across the Sepik region, though the flood myth is also a universal one as documented in Allen Dunes book, The Flood Myth (1988). The Ali Island version begins with the villagers killing a talking eel who had warned the villagers to remove the fish poison (Walamil) used to kill fish for a mortuary feast in the village.

The eel was carved up and distributed among the villagers. The head part of the eel was given to a young boy. The head of the eel warned the boy not to eat it and instructed him to tell his parents what to do. The father planted the eel’s head near a tall coconut tree, dug a hole near the tree so that the boy and his mother can take shelter from the flood commanded by the eel.

The flood destroyed the entire village, except for a neighboring village tribe known as Yini Parey, on the way to the feast. The Yini Pareys were swept away by the flood on a breadfruit tree, ending up on a reef that became known as Ali Island.

The boy’s father had climbed the coconut tree as instructed by the eel. The boy and his mother remained sheltered in the pit near the tall coconut tree. The father, Kairap, ate coconuts to remain alive in the tree. To see if the flood had receded he threw three coconuts down from the tree. The first two coconuts sank into the water. The third coconut touched the hard surface of the earth. The smoke rising from the pit where the boy and his mother took shelter confirmed that the flood has subsided.

The flood myth is about the arrogance and foolishness of villagers in observing the link between humans, the natural world, the animal kingdom, and the spiritual worlds. Knowing and respecting this link is the key to a balance in nature and the world. Human carelessness and lack of respect of nature lead to ecological catastrophe in the world.

Another key element in this story is about the genealogy and migration of people across vast land, rivers, and sea. In the Ali Island version we learn how and why the Ali Islanders had moved from the mainland to settle on the Island. It also tells the story of how the survivors of the flood had come to form the basis on which generations of people from this ancestral place had come about.

The myth is told with the intent to instill in younger generations about cultural taboos, their cultural heritage, and the traditional principles and values younger generations have to follow. The eel symbolically represents the ancestral wisdom and spiritual forces that guide and direct people’s lives.

In my trained eye the flood myth explores the metaphor on human’s relationship with nature and through which the complex relationship of man against nature and nature against man occurs.

Papua New Guineans must write down the folktales and legends of our people and for the future generations. We must write books based on our traditions and culture. I do hope many educated Papua New Guineans find the time to at least record in print one folktale or legend.

We have thousands of folktales in our multilingual and culturally diverse societies. In our race with modernity we left behind the stories of our ancestors. The challenge is to link our traditional societies, our past, and our history with introduced modern cultures and traditions.

The question to now is: How serious are we in capturing our oral traditions in print or electronic forms? It would make sense for the government or other developmental partners to fund research, writing, publishing, and media broadcasting programs to preserve our national treasures.

Folktales will remain an important source of inspiration and medium of education if we care to acknowledge its place in our society. I appeal to authorities to fund research, writing workshops, and publications of our wonderful folklore and oral traditions instead of paying lip service in the guise of cultural promotions.

Spheres of Knowledge

2009-11-25T20:36:00.000-08:00

First published in the column: Steven's Window, The National newspaper, Friday 11th September, 2009. Photo: Keisiva Darius

The timeless lessons in life are learnt from our own traditions. We learn them by observing, listening, and imitating those who impart them. We learn about our people, about the land, about the social customs and traditions, and about our own believe systems. Now-a-days scholars describe these as indigenous knowledge systems.

Every time I think of the indigenous knowledge systems I am reminded about the notion of ‘Melanesians Way’, a term closely associated with its eminent proponent Bernard Narokobi. He explored the concept of ‘Melanesian Way’ in a series of newspaper articles published later as a book entitled: The Melanesian Way (1980).

In his preface, as if chiseled in stone, Narokobi says: “Some people say this nation of ours will be united through parliament, public service, roads, bridges, armed forces, and the like. I say, maybe, maybe not. The one thing that can unite us is ideology, or philosophy. Many people are frightened at the mention of the word philosophy. I do not pretend to be a philosopher. But it is my soul’s dream to probe the spheres of knowledge in Melanesia.”

The spheres of knowledge in Melanesia provide some of our finer ideas and values. One of the valuable models of knowledge transfer is captured in Narokobi’s short novel Two Seasons (2002), published by the Divine Word University Press. The book was written during his days as a law student at the Sydney University in the early 1970s and published 30 years later.

The book gives the account of, Kandy, a boy’s coming-of-age story. Learning the traditional knowledge systems through stories, songs, customs, and in socially productive activities of hunting, fishing, tending to gardens, and following the wisdom of elders in our communities make the kernel of the story. We must write such valuable lessons down or even document on basic audio or video technologies.

The Melanesian Islands share similar cultural knowledge systems. I recall the experiences of visiting Ambryn and Ureparapara Islands in Vanuatu. The dances, costumes, and dance patterns are similar to those performed in West Britain, Manus, Morobe, and Madang provinces. Across Vanuatu and in the Solomons boarder are the Santa Anna Islanders. The highlight on Santa Anna was the grand display of the Bonito or tuna fishing dance. Almost everyone in the village is involved because of its significance to this island community.

In some of the Melanesian countries the government and donor agencies support research, performance, media, and educational programs of cultural education and research. New Caledonia boasts about the Djibaou cultural center. The Vanuatu cultural center remains the pride of Vanuatu. Fiji has the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific. The excitement and interests these centers generated in the last decade say a lot about the importance of organizing indigenous cultures and institutionalizing cultural knowledge systems. Institutionalizing cultures seems the only way to get government funding for cultural activities.

The issue for me is not about promoting Melanesian Way or any other way, but about the indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing passed down from our ancestors. What are we doing to learn and promote some of our indigenous cultural knowledge anchored in our traditional societies?

One of the most extraordinary examples of bridging the indigenous knowledge system of Oceania and Western science is on the Big Island of Hawai’i. My interests in indigenous knowledge systems have led me to this new wonder in Oceania. The ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii was opened in February 2006. The world-class facility intertwines the indigenous Hawaiian cultural and navigational understanding of the stars with real-time information direct from Maunakea’s world famous astronomy observations. Various activities are organized at the center to celebrate the superior Polynesian knowledge of astronomy and navigation. ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawai’i is a part of the University of Hawai’i at Hilo and encompasses 40,000 square feet. It has a main exhibit gallery, planetarium, restaurant, classroom, Moanahoku (Ocean of Stars) special events hall and a museum store. The center is complete with an award winning landscape featuring indigenous, endemic and ‘canoe’ plants (plants brought by early Polynesian navigators). The landscaping mirrors the changing plant life found as one ascends from the oceanfront to the volcano.

Our indigenous cultural knowledge systems are part of us. We can talk about them the whole day. After that we can repeat the same conversation every day. We can do the research and documentation of our indigenous cultural knowledge system in our own little ways, but is that enough? Our conversations and researches must produce results: publish them in books, produce audio and video documentaries, and create programs of cultural re-education of our people.

The reality is that our cultures and societies are changing very fast. We need to reinvent our institutions for cultural research such as the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS). The complete neglect of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies has seen it go from being a cultural hub in Boroko to a derelict of obscurity.

Immediate attention is to have a redesigned structure fitted with indigenous architectural motifs, complete overhaul of its current research programs, and make it become the national center of cultural research. This will create spaces for art and cultural exhibits, book launching, a bookshop, theatre performance, writer’s recitals, music performances, film studio, library, restaurant, a classroom for cultural re-education programs for our children and adults, and research studios.

Increased funding, provide new equipment, and insert innovative education and research programs to involve everyone in the community to have the 100% support of the government. If the current site is a legal wrangle then move it out to a wider and bigger space.

Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies must be separated from the National Cultural Commission so that it can have its own funding and powers to pursue a broader vision, wider research agenda, and realign itself with the changing national aspirations of Papua New Guineans to see cultures and knowledge systems documented in print, audio, video, and electronic technologies.

A Book of Thousand Words

2009-11-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

Lasting impression from Budibudi Island, Milne bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Steven Winduo's article on the experience published in The National newspaper of September 04th 2009.

On one of the isolated islands in the Laughlan Group in Milne Bay is the atoll village of Budibudi where an experience with books and reading had an unexpected impact in my life. I was among the primarily Australian tourists on board the cruise ship Oceanic Discoverer, who visited the atoll village after we had crossed over the boarder from Gizo in the Solomon Islands. Woodlark Island is the nearest government post and administrative centre. The villagers depend on the ocean and what they can grow on the atoll, though not much to be spoken off as plentiful in the language of mainlanders.

I had walked further away from the village, along the beautiful sandy beach to see if I can walk around the entire length of the island. Coming towards me was a village youth in his twenties. He appeared to be lost in his own world, trapped, perhaps by the sheer isolation, and abandonment as it were. Nothing else mattered to him more than the book he carried with him that day. As he came nearer I noted he seemed happy being alone. The book was not the Bible, but the way he carried and displayed pride in the book showed how much the book meant to him. The book and the youth were connected, somehow, through some force beyond the likes of me.

Of all the people I had met on this trip, this Budibudi youth with the book was the most invective. The book he was reading was Dame Josephine Abaijah’s autobiography: A Thousand Coloured Dreams; the story of a young girl growing up in Papua. Obviously, the book was not just about someone from his province, but also about the experiences of growing up on isolated islands scattered in Oceania, remaining vulnerable to the geographical isolation, and exposed to natural disasters such as cyclones and Tsunami, and affected by the lack of political influence from Waigani or Alotau, and cut off from all matters of modernity sweeping through the rest of Papua New Guinea. I asked him if he has been to school and beyond his village. Woodlark was the furthest and for school, he has never been to high school.

The tourists visited Budibudi to learn about the people, their way of life, culture, and to admire the beautiful sandy beaches, marine diversity, and to understand the island life, away from the trappings of modern cities and towns. The youth with a book on Budibudi Island, in contrast, wanted to learn about the world outside of his small island village. The prized possession of A Thousand Coloured Dreams was his window of escape, the canoe to sail away across the ocean to other places, and his dreams about another world, another reality, another life. The visitors to his island were the physical link between his island and the outside world. After we left he had only the book to indulge in for all he wants.

The reason I recount this experience is to highlight the issues of books and reading. If more Papua New Guineans, regardless of education, where we are, what our socio-economic status is, or if reading is or isn’t part of our culture, can read books written by Papua New Guineans then I see this country on the way to making sense of itself. Would it hurt to reprint some of our PNG classics for every school child in the country? Would it make sense to have our leaders write their memoirs for every child in their electorates to emulate?

The kind of responsible approach to address this national challenge is to redirect our attention away from the path we have been traveling all along. Encouraging steps are being taken. The Education Department has announced during the National Book through Jacob Hevelawa, the acting director-general of the Office of Libraries, Literacy Awareness and Archives that starting next year onwards it becomes compulsory for all schools in the country to have a library. It makes sense also to consider the non-formal education sector’s need for information and reading resources to assist them to participate in the development of the country. Another sector of the population without access to books and reading materials are the ever increasing out of school population in urban centers and rural districts. Ignoring this slice of the population is not the way to go about addressing the development and acceleration of the literacy rate. Many of them are engaged in street vending, endless search for employment, and becoming the undesirable members of the society.

In November 2008, the Department of Education through the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat released a situational analysis report on literacy initiative for empowerment in Papua New Guinea. In his message in this report the Secretary for Education Dr. Joseph Pagelio acknowledged that the growth rate of literacy is 1% per year, less than 3% per year for our population growth. It is a national dilemma and a national set back. “Political will and adequate funding from the government to support institutional strengthening of NLAS [National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat], the coordinating agency, to boost the morale of literacy stakeholders and effective collaboration network” is needed now than to wait another ten years, says Dr. Pagelio.

The issue is not about books and reading as a Western concept, but on how we deal with books and reading in our lives? What importance do we accord them? How much are we willing to spend on buying books than on other everyday items? The concern is not about print culture replacing oral culture, but about how we use print culture to broaden our perspectives of the horizon. We can go on thinking books and reading are not part of our culture, but the success of anyone’s survival in the world or any students in the education system is determined on the basis of how much one has read to broaden the knowledge base anyone needs to participate in a meaningful and productive way.

Syllabus Without Learning Resources

2009-11-14T22:09:00.001-08:00

Steven Winduo's reaction to the PNG Department of Education's Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus, published in The National newspaper of August 28th, 2009.

The Department of Education has made available an electronic version of the Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus (2008) a year after publication.

The Language and Literature Upper Secondary Syllabus for grades 11 and 12 has come a long way from the days when I was part of the Syllabus Advisory Committee. In the early 1990s we changed the subject name English to Language and Literature at Jais Aben meeting. As UPNG representatives on the committee Ms. Garua Peni and I suggested the subject name change to reflect the study of language and literature at the higher levels of education. The committee agreed and thereafter all upper secondary schools teach Language and Literature, with the final imprint of the same name on grade 12 certificates.

Several observations on the new syllabus are due. First, the syllabus, a broad guideline provides the most intelligent document to guide teachers and students in their learning environment. It is simply an instruction to teachers and students about what they need to do to achieve a specific knowledge gap, what they are expected to achieve as the final outcome, (but not in finality), and the list of resources they need to enable the wheel of knowledge to work.

The Secretary for Education, Dr. Joseph Pagelio introduced it in these words: “The Upper Secondary Language and Literature Syllabus contribute to integral human development as it is based on the students’ physical environments, societies and cultures. It links to the National Education Plan’s vision, which is that secondary education enables students to achieve their individual potential to lead productive lives as members of the local, national, and international community.”

According to Dr. Pagelio students will “relate their learning to society, the local culture and the global culture; and to influences that direct the course of change in these environments. Students learn the art of effective communication and the skill of sound decision making, and accept and value views other than their own.” Such a vision is valued for its desirable outcome.

The issue that seems to pop its ugly head up, however, is that the effectiveness of the Language and Literature Syllabus is measured, eventually by its outcomes. Right away one would ask: What are the instruments for measuring the outcomes of the new syllabuses? Are there study resources and manuals to assist teachers and students achieve a measurable outcome? Are there programs to assist teachers to achieve effective delivery of the subject?

My observations are in no way a measure of the outcomes of the Language and Literature Syllabus, but indicate my concerns for the instruments and methods of delivery used in achieving outcomes. The units have a basic structure: introduction, learning outcomes, content (more like outcomes, text types and recommended texts. The syllabus says nothing about how and what to teach in each contact periods, weeks, or a term. It is too general.

The syllabus says nothing about how to plan a course, how to teach the unit, or give model lesson plans to follow. There are no directions on how to deal with pedagogical and learning issues and challenges in effective delivery of the subject.

Consider this: How will a teacher teach about Paliau Moloat when he or she doesn’t have a book on or any knowledge about the person? Are there books about Moloat and the Paliau movement? Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare’s autobiography Sana is out of print and has never been reprinted since 1975. How many schools have a copy of Sana in their libraries? About 99 per cent of recommended textbooks, films, and readings materials in the syllabus are to the best of my knowledge NOT available to teachers, students, and their schools. Many schools do not have advance information technology and internet facilities to access electronic learning resources.

The designers of the Language and Literature Syllabus should have recommended or suggested commissioning local language and literature specialists to write how to study language and literature handbooks, how to research and write literary essays, how to do book, film, essay reviews, how to teach and not teach literary texts, and using of critical study or essays about novels, poems, plays, short stories, writers, and their works. The so- called outcome based Oxford publications do not correspond to the texts listed on the recommended reading list for each unit.

Can a teacher in Buin Secondary School, for example, teach Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider or show the film version, if he or she doesn’t know or have access to studies done on the novel and film by scholars and critics of the Ihimaera’s work, the Maori culture, indigenous knowledge systems, or the New Zealand society? Can a teacher in Brandi Secondary School teach the greatest Eighteenth Century British writers in the likes of Blake, Bronte, Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Tennyson, and to the modernist poets: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the Irish national poet William Butler Yeates? How many teachers know that Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart was derived from W. B Yeates’s “The Second Coming” poem? The second coming was about the fall of the great civilization of Byzantium and the vision for its rehabilitation and glorification in the modern European cultural imagination.

Apart from the major discord with the recommended list of drama books, books, films, and other resource materials I am more concerned with the impossibility of finding a film like Wokabaut bilong Tonten (1976), Billy Eliot, The Color Purple, Betelnut Bisnis or books such as Wole Soyinka’s Ake: The Years of Childhood, Malcolm X’s Autobiography of Malcolm X, Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity, or Steven Edmund Winduo’s Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest. This is unreal and will not work.

An immediate revision of the Language and Literature Syllabus for Upper Secondary level must take place. Develop how to teach manuals or resource books for teachers to use in teaching Language and Literature courses. I also suggest running short courses or in-service workshops in conjunction with specialist academics from our universities to make the syllabus work.

Life and Literacy

2009-11-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

Steven Winduo published this article in The National newspaper of August 21st, 2009.

In the 1990s we had done well with the concept of critical literacy and cultural awareness. The work done by various groups and institutions around the country saw our people becoming aware that learning to read and write is one thing, but understanding and accessing information to move forward was another. We knew the sense of imprisonment by illiteracy and poverty arrested our conscience as a free people.

This week the Minister for Education, Honourable James Marape opened the stakeholders consultation workshops on the implementation of the literacy development project in Papua New Guinea. UNESCO Pacific Cluster Office in Apia with support from UNESCO offices in Paris, Germany, Bangkok and the UNESCO national office in Port Moresby initiated the workshop. The lead agency coordinating this workshop is the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (NLAS) under the Office of Library and Archives of the Department of Education, led by Mr. Willie Jonduo, its Director.

In his opening speech Mr. Marape challenged the task force and stakeholders to rethink strategies and plans to achieve a 75 percent literacy rate in the next 10 years. Among his challenges he wants the task force to come up with an accurate literacy map complete with details of the success and failures of literacy programs in different parts of the country. The Minister also challenged the stakeholders to set out achievable tasks and identify mechanisms and instruments to accelerate literacy programs to achieve a higher score. Some of these include: having all stakeholders and developmental partners working in partnership, reorganization of programs and reinventing institutions, strengthening capacities, and providing of basic literacy services to all Papua New Guineans.

UNESCO Apia Office—Cluster Office for Pacific States Director Dr. Visesio Pongi’s challenge to all partners in literacy development to work together rather than duplicating policies and responsibilities. UNESCO stands ready to support Papua New Guinea’s efforts to accelerate literacy rate reach 75-80 percent in the next 10 years. As its commitment to PNG, UNESCO has included it on the list of countries receiving LIFE (Life Initiative for Empowerment) from UNESCO.

LIFE and UNESCO-CapEFA are two principle programs that UNESCO is flagging in its partnership with the people and government of Papua New Guinea. LIFE is a framework of collaborative action for enhancing and improving literacy efforts, a process in support of literacy which is country led and country specific, a support mechanism embedded in national policies and strategies, and an initiative for technical support services and facilitation by UNESCO in the areas of policy, advocacy, partnership, capacity-building and innovations.

The UNESCO-PNG CapEFA (Capacity-Building in Education For All) programme aims to accelerated national efforts in PNG to achieve EFA (Education For All) through LIFE. UNESCO’s success in Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal and Niger under this program now includes Papua New Guinea. I welcome this UNESCO initiative to PNG as it will enable us to strengthen capacities for design, implementation and management of good quality literacy programmes, as well as curriculum and material development, training of senior and middle-level management, assessment, monitoring and evaluation.

The questions begging immediate answers, however, are: Have we achieved any significant changes in our efforts to eradicate literacy and enable a critically literate society? Why have we abandoned or marginalized some of the outstanding organizations and institutions in the communities, civil society, and even in the government, committed to building basic literacy and strengthening critical literacy programs in PNG? Two of these that come to mind readily are the PNG Trust Inc. and the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (NLAS). The later should by now have an elevated status of being an autonomous government Department.

The national government must now firm up its commitment to increase literacy rate by making NLAS become a separate department known as National Languages and Literacy Department, with wide ranging powers and sufficient funding to organize and mobilize national literacy programs in the PNG.

The lack of critical cultural and social literacy is affecting our responses to the modern global cultural, social, economic, and technological changes such as the changing social demographics and associated socio-economic activities in our urban areas, global epidemics such as HIV/AIDs, and the impacts of new communication media and technologies, patterns of unemployment, underdevelopment, and transitional tribal urban surge of cultural communities crowding our urban centres.

We are all affected by these sweeping changes. To deal with these changes we need to reinvest our efforts and resources in key programs, organizations, and institutions. We need to organize and assist our communities to give up counter-productive activities robbing their dignity, pride, and future. A nation with a high percentage of illiterates always struggles with dissent, negative responses, and stubborn refusal to abandon socially disrespectful attitudes and backward behaviours.

The need is to re-examine the yardstick of human development priorities and where we have channelled massive funding without achieving any measurable positive outcomes. How much have we achieved in the last 10 years? The surveys, carried out in the National Capital District and the New Ireland Province, by PNG Education and Advocacy Network (PEAN), a civil society organization in 2006 and 2007 reveal a troubling trend in literacy growth in Papua New Guinea: (1) A crisis in school participation with an alarmingly low participation rates among youth aged 15 and 19 years with many of them missing out on school, (2) a crisis in school quality reflected in low literacy rates for those who have completed school and (3) a crisis in literacy with pronounced low literacy rates in the community, dramatically lower than officially reported rates.

It is difficult to ignore the evidence of a systemic failure in accelerating literacy rates in PNG. In the words of Nicholas Faraclas, one time advocate of critical literacy and print literacy in PNG: “the way in which print literacy is implemented must not be counterproductive to the ultimate goal of critical literacy.” Literacy is LIFE. These words echo so loud in our ears, yet we choose to ignore them by shifting our focus elsewhere to trite and banal developmental discourses.

Information Paralysis in PNG

2009-11-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

Another Steven Winduo article published in The National newspaper on August 17th, 2009. The column where this article first appeared is Steven's Window on page 5 of the newspaper.

Information paralysis begins when students and teachers have no access to library facilities or the closest library. The educational institutions acknowledge this problem, but are limited in their capacity to provide a library to serve the students as well as the general public. The small and limited capacities of public libraries cannot serve the national demands of the population needing specialized and technical information and knowledge. Existing public libraries do not even have the technological edge to provide online searches and access to relevant technical information needed by special groups of users.

The non-existence of public libraries and the lack of library services in our country make learning and access to information for Papua New Guineans one-hell-of an experience. Over the years I have shared similar sentiments with advocates of library services like Oseah Philemon and the Governor General, Sir Paulias Matane, that our government must fund school libraries and public libraries. Serious commitment to the development of libraries and expansion of library and information services to the people is needed. Recent announcement on making school libraries a compulsory requirement for all schools is refreshing, but seeing it through is the difficult part.

A nation without libraries and information resources that libraries provide is a nation that struggles to make sense of the changing global environment. In bookshelves of school libraries and public libraries there are no new titles or the kinds of titles someone needs for specific purposes. Journals and electronic search and research facilities are needed in these libraries. Book related gatherings and activities are the public services of libraries.

Existing school and public libraries have no funding and cannot afford to order new books. The same old response is heard over and over again. The cost of buying books from overseas publishers is astronomical. This is a story that is all too familiar to the dedicated library and information personnel throughout the country. Some of our urban schools are still yet to build school libraries.

For example, the Waigani Primary School, a prime school in the city, build on the grounds of the University of Papua New Guinea, where my children and the children of other top public servants attend school adorns the school ground. Instead a section of a building that houses the administration is converted to a library. So much for a city school with a room labelled library, but on inspection one would see how unfriendly, disorganized, and frightening such a place is for our children.

If we are concerned about improving the quality and standard of education of our children through the pursuit of knowledge in published forms such as books, and now-a-days in electronic forms, we need to make the decision to improve the standard of our existing libraries by building standard libraries in our schools where students can go to discover the magic of knowledge.

I may sound contrite to some for expressing my views about this issue, but as someone who is both a learner of new knowledge and a scholar who has to research, teach, and write about Papua New Guinea I have had the good fortune of accessing relevant and up-to-date information from different libraries around the world. Others have excellent collections of books and publications about Papua New Guinea, making them become the self-appointed custodians of knowledge of PNG.

I acknowledge that one or two provinces have committed themselves to building a new or redeveloping an existing public library. Other provinces need to be persuaded into undertaking similar commitments. In my recent visit to Wewak I was shocked to see the old Wewak public library is now converted to the District Treasury Office. I appeal to those in the know and who control the funds to Wewak and the East Sepik Province to build a new Wewak Public Library as a repository of knowledge and restore the history of the province, but also as the site of knowledge gathering, research, education, and reading pleasures of the beneficiaries.

While our schools remain the primary providers of library and information services, school administrators and boards, need to give priority to the establishment or development of a school library. Giving the same old excuses of insufficient funding is counterproductive. Apart from setting aside annual funds, coordinating of activities and fundraising activities for a school library, and using part of the project fee for building a school library, school boards and administrators need to seek out help of the community.

I make this point as a parent with children attending the Waigani Primary School in the nation’s capital. I have not seen a building that is called a school library or heard from the School Board about activities to raise funds for building a school library. I have not even seen my children bring home a book borrowed from their school library. There is no commitment from the school board to do so. As far as my kids have been in this school nothing good has come out of this school, not to mention the complete disregard for a parents and citizens meeting or even voted for new board members. A certain individual from that school is rumoured to have used the school money to buy a CRV four doors. The same individual abused, risked to thugs, and wrecked the previous school bus. The children have no school bus or vehicle to transport them during school related activities. I paid my children’s project fees for the school to build a school library or a science laboratory to enhance their learning. I hope someone in authority will investigate this non-transparent and irresponsible practice.

Our primary schools, secondary schools, and major centres need public libraries. The government need to fund the establishment of public libraries with the aim of improving the provision of services and making accessibility to information and knowledge of the world easier to our people. Without continuous support from the government our libraries and schools will remain weakened by a system of information paralysis.

Impoverished Reading Culture

2009-11-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

The first of several articles on reading culture, books, libraries, literacy, cultural knowledge, indigenous knowledge system, folklore, education, media literacy and technology, film documentaries, writing, and publishing in Papua New Guinea by Steven Edmund Winduo, published in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea under the column Steven's Window.

People are having a lot of problems with reading. I observed that students at the University of Papua New Guinea are not carrying textbooks around to read. Students walk in and out of lecture rooms without any textbooks. I see them carrying a rolled up writing pad, a folded exercise book, or their bilums, baskets, and bags. Most of them don’t seem to care whether they carry a textbook. They are happy without textbooks. I see them gather in small groups talking and laughing. I see them sitting around the forum, but without reading any books. I see them walking around holding hands or talking on their cell phones. It is odd for university students to fill the campus without having texts books in their possession.

I have traveled and lived in many international university campuses where students are seen buried in their textbooks, or rushing off to their classes with textbooks under their arms, in their bags, or next to them in coffee shops, cafeterias, and even under a shady tree. Students walk in and out of libraries with many books. Bookshops are filled with students buying textbooks, supplementary texts, and even books of general interest. The busiest places on a campus are the library, the bookshop, and the cafeterias. Books are everywhere. They are the inseparable gear of a student on campus.

I decided to take it on myself to tell my class one day about my observation. I was teaching a course on literature ad politics. I had about 60 students registered for the course. I began my course with some theoretical and conceptual frameworks influenced largely from the Marxist school of thought. In my first lecture I noticed the students were not with me. The key thinkers such as Karl Marx, Hegel, Emmanuel Kant, Theodore Adorno, Antonio Gramsci, Jean Paul Sartre, Ferdinand Saussure, Frederic Jameson, Stuart Hall, or Raymond Williams were not their cup of tea. For two weeks I talked to students attending my class without textbooks or any supplementary texts.

I am convinced photocopying lecture notes costs a lot of money. I believe lecturers should not photocopy lecture notes, books, or journal chapters to give to their students. Students should not be spoon-fed or have their tuition subsidized by the university. Students should pay for their lecture notes, readings, and textbooks. Every year staff at in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, for example, run down the poor photocopy machine several times a year because of heavy photocopying load, let alone running high the bills for photocopying. Students must buy their photocopies whether lecture notes, journal chapters, or textbook chapters. Students are led into believing that they can attend lectures without buying their own textbooks because lecturers will give free handouts, lecture notes, and readings. This is a false sense of responsible learning.

I raised the awareness of this poor learning attitude in class one day. Soon after that lecture three quarters of the students dropped out of my course. How could students understand theoretical and abstract ideas only from a lecturer’s notes? A lecturer is not the gospel truth of the subject he or she teaches. A lecturer guides the young raw minds inexperienced in the path of knowledge to achieve a competence sufficient enough for national duty after graduation. Students are expected to read beyond the readings set by a lecturer. Lectures are only understood when students have read the required readings and other relevant texts before they attend class. Instead, students attend classes expecting a lecturer to spoon-feed them everything. Such learning expectations do nothing more than making a class of lazy students pontificating a lecturer as the only source of knowledge.

Somewhere along the line something went wrong. I know that the curriculum and syllabuses are carefully designed and published to effectively develop the reading and learning skills of students. If these are taught and delivered properly students should be properly equipped with reading and writing skills by the time they get to the university. With teachers who are good at teaching reading and writing skills their students too benefit from the skills and confidence of the teacher. With teachers struggling to deliver the right skills of reading and writing students too fumble and stumble.

The problems of reading among university students are like a cancerous growth within our young society. We should not allow it to grow or gain footing in our education system and learning environment. Our goal should be to end such poor attitudes among university students. It should not only be the responsibility of university lecturers. It should be everyone’s responsibility to encourage and instill in our young people’s minds the values of reading and making books become an important part of growing up and developing successful foundations to reach one’s dreams.

I shared this observation with the Governor General of Papua New Guinea Grand Chief Sir Paulias Matane at the Government House one day. He was shocked to hear that our university students are not reading or buying textbooks and carrying them around in traditional scholastic fashion. Shock it was to him because His Excellency is both an avid reader and writer in his own right. He had come from a very oral society to one that is dependent on written texts and electronic material cultures.

A nation is strong if its foundations are build on a well read and literate population. Good leaders and wise man can lead their people, but their people can fall behind and be a burden, when they cannot understand what is happening around them. Policies on improvement of quality of life and national development have been made and shelved because then no one reads them or implement policies The implementers do not understand them owing to their inability to read such documents in the first place. The language of some of these policies is written in difficult technical languages that people have different kinds of interpretations and takes on a policy.