tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33917179657395250972024-03-05T11:55:20.306-08:00Manui PublishersManui Publishers is set up and managed by Steven Edmund Winduo, Papua New Guinean writer and scholar. The blog features views, perspectives, and points of view I have on writing, books, literacy, education, arts, culture, indigenous knowledge systems, libraries, museums, media literacy, indigenous films and media technologies.The blog features articles appearing in Steven's Window, a column published in The National newspaper of PNG.manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-11854100030604140822010-05-14T20:58:00.000-07:002010-05-14T21:01:53.201-07:00Used Books and Second-Hand Clothes<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #073763; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Appeared in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newspaper's Weekender. Published on Friday 14th May 2010, p.5.</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcE-P-VMDvfNqiTCoDteNImLftqXAxd5WWkAcwOynS2zDYa_nmY-9OSqhdummMA71J-b3cyjebmPYSs-S3qZF2zJtT2cJR4IJQh2HMqJW-mFeHNz6dpRxbKT3k5gi2o_24HMOiQAoSnEQ/s1600/De+Bonos+Six+thinking+Heads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcE-P-VMDvfNqiTCoDteNImLftqXAxd5WWkAcwOynS2zDYa_nmY-9OSqhdummMA71J-b3cyjebmPYSs-S3qZF2zJtT2cJR4IJQh2HMqJW-mFeHNz6dpRxbKT3k5gi2o_24HMOiQAoSnEQ/s200/De+Bonos+Six+thinking+Heads.jpg" width="200" wt="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZUtnZWXxpigqhakv7oSE5GBSIfn8pXGr3b2xL5nRLMyER7627rWeWoiVqfAz1wOpwbkpu4QDw95uTlJnr4GdbuMjjSCZls_nMNqKw10LyqZW5Fdh0iQr8ZQaapQEDdazKoN0qdBbHyE/s1600/Carter+The+Magic+Toyshop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZUtnZWXxpigqhakv7oSE5GBSIfn8pXGr3b2xL5nRLMyER7627rWeWoiVqfAz1wOpwbkpu4QDw95uTlJnr4GdbuMjjSCZls_nMNqKw10LyqZW5Fdh0iQr8ZQaapQEDdazKoN0qdBbHyE/s320/Carter+The+Magic+Toyshop.jpg" width="192" wt="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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 <em>Six Thinking Hats</em>, Witi Ihimaera’s <em>Bulibasha</em>, Vikram Seth’s <em>An Equal Music</em>, Hingi McKinnon’s <em>When the Kehua Calls</em>, and Angela Carter’s <em>The Magic Toyshop</em>. 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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC402Yi8c_oamdYfuDoJZ0o3bK6A4WoPTlw3y62MJadEDj3sNtGwRD7GtZzn14DJsu8WdjNG9sGhyNEMzQOh38l_nUS0CrOCgnvZfWE64Wrw9xsbI8Isd6aqjl6IvesMOiKLAFBkyM64g/s1600/Ihimaera+Bulibasha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC402Yi8c_oamdYfuDoJZ0o3bK6A4WoPTlw3y62MJadEDj3sNtGwRD7GtZzn14DJsu8WdjNG9sGhyNEMzQOh38l_nUS0CrOCgnvZfWE64Wrw9xsbI8Isd6aqjl6IvesMOiKLAFBkyM64g/s320/Ihimaera+Bulibasha.jpg" width="198" wt="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The point of my story: Used books are as valuable as new books and second hand clothes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-24684219313020014822010-05-11T23:11:00.000-07:002010-05-11T23:48:52.574-07:00Universities and Knowledge Production<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA2lkXXV5QwjARzGoSykUwdmPPuNQFdDgYPG3COi4Z2QSxg42p5k02IqMmxSSncw-fO-hcpDNX_D2cyEAhCvYMoflJfQvLJbrJNSQp_haOSzzz8a34AwWkPxeTNERt7VRyo2jAqd8tl5g/s1600/000_1104.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA2lkXXV5QwjARzGoSykUwdmPPuNQFdDgYPG3COi4Z2QSxg42p5k02IqMmxSSncw-fO-hcpDNX_D2cyEAhCvYMoflJfQvLJbrJNSQp_haOSzzz8a34AwWkPxeTNERt7VRyo2jAqd8tl5g/s400/000_1104.JPG" width="400" wt="true" /></a></div><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First impression of the article is in Steven's Window, <em>The National</em> newspaper of PNG. 07 Friday 2010, p.5.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #783f04; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-79307232412230413142010-05-11T21:11:00.000-07:002010-05-13T23:16:21.999-07:00Fiction and Reality Juxtapositions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ1EAQV6K1J_S4g7Um3N-DWAlPPBnuB5rNs6c_d2AaVvL7mMmHv0bn8PKKpYV1sv-qlJPlEOaDhLZWePVH5g78-FOyGYzTdmrNPcwt-0H5vg1F0Nsysd-0mOrVxK8u6A3zBd3j77aiyx4/s1600/000_1828.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ1EAQV6K1J_S4g7Um3N-DWAlPPBnuB5rNs6c_d2AaVvL7mMmHv0bn8PKKpYV1sv-qlJPlEOaDhLZWePVH5g78-FOyGYzTdmrNPcwt-0H5vg1F0Nsysd-0mOrVxK8u6A3zBd3j77aiyx4/s320/000_1828.JPG" tt="true" width="320" /></span></a><span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The published version of this article appeared in Steven's Window, a column in the <em>Weekender </em>magzine of <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 30th May 2010, p.5.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I recommended Moses Maladina’s <em>Tabu</em>, (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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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 <em>Not a White Woman Safe: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby 1920-1934</em>, published in 1974 by the ANU press. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-10221559536414953252010-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:002010-05-02T23:54:05.326-07:00Gender Equality an Uncharted Terrain<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: #f1c232; color: magenta; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This is the orignal version of the article published in Steven'w Window, a column in the Weekender of <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 23rd April 2010, p.5.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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”. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrrIuazdYzGzHW982anzUvCPAIIFjr0hAgeGuYqIsIakXg5lDlfKxupkUWQ4UapMJ9vpUUKRLsMa2-CgSLMRYGjNWQiFEe9bnJLv_ouvI5RMpJ5x93CPS-nHNrHSXS9nNRS06yfdz9vEE/s1600/cartoon+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrrIuazdYzGzHW982anzUvCPAIIFjr0hAgeGuYqIsIakXg5lDlfKxupkUWQ4UapMJ9vpUUKRLsMa2-CgSLMRYGjNWQiFEe9bnJLv_ouvI5RMpJ5x93CPS-nHNrHSXS9nNRS06yfdz9vEE/s320/cartoon+1.jpg" tt="true" /></a><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.” </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.” </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.” </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfOiqkT0GWGbR1yF7a__uo-w632aSFZMMPAO7-i4IcM40sblgFHCOEQYJglMEBXLhoeMCbZ4rOrQJWhQ0PndUhc9pZXy32Ef_4lGZ5I6-Q0L0hoyZdjhsQs3m9l0uYe6aYGjuV7YNbuyk/s1600/cartoon+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfOiqkT0GWGbR1yF7a__uo-w632aSFZMMPAO7-i4IcM40sblgFHCOEQYJglMEBXLhoeMCbZ4rOrQJWhQ0PndUhc9pZXy32Ef_4lGZ5I6-Q0L0hoyZdjhsQs3m9l0uYe6aYGjuV7YNbuyk/s320/cartoon+2.jpg" tt="true" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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”.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The book is a compass for those navigating the uncharted territory of gender balance. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-15505797610220577802010-05-02T23:36:00.000-07:002010-05-02T23:36:37.191-07:00Gender Equality Through Children's Art<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: purple; color: white; font-size: x-small;">The edited version as in the title was published in Steven's Window, a column in the Weekender of <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 16th April 2010, p.5.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7V2bRWHw3Qf_1KqU8KAfPfT4VC2FYd7jFp0mYySmIszSM62Iw3JYuqAL7W4PoFI1gqzBEB3bBp7Pj74taSyRfv5ZRMh5yljZIyXGvgEiAPhDzTc5PNNlZkWTc1UTzODZwsucUZJlecRc/s1600/2007+PNG+winner%27s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7V2bRWHw3Qf_1KqU8KAfPfT4VC2FYd7jFp0mYySmIszSM62Iw3JYuqAL7W4PoFI1gqzBEB3bBp7Pj74taSyRfv5ZRMh5yljZIyXGvgEiAPhDzTc5PNNlZkWTc1UTzODZwsucUZJlecRc/s320/2007+PNG+winner%27s.jpg" tt="true" /></a><em><span style="color: yellow;">PNG school girl's winning drawing in 2007.</span></em> 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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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”. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Parents and teachers must encourage our talented young Papua New Guineans to submit their drawings and stories for the competition. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-36411399491867287602010-05-02T23:23:00.000-07:002010-05-02T23:23:26.262-07:00Keep Writing Arnold<span id="goog_705933293"></span><span id="goog_705933294"></span><span id="goog_705933295"></span><span id="goog_705933296"></span><span id="goog_705933297"></span><span id="goog_705933298"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The edited version appeared in <em>The National</em> newspaper on April 10th, 2010, p.5.</span> <br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi06j-jJHCAjr1FpEuZ0frr4Y8W04ozLpVG9Mxlw44U1mhNgDaImFDbzrf6FRoKVEFR-pCzH-_5k3Y6QNCPpJqL0kxG9r0uCbemxOAo1vUWzux8p1ICrYRBuw559pkwlEkCkFQAdV3NFpY/s1600/Mundua+cover+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi06j-jJHCAjr1FpEuZ0frr4Y8W04ozLpVG9Mxlw44U1mhNgDaImFDbzrf6FRoKVEFR-pCzH-_5k3Y6QNCPpJqL0kxG9r0uCbemxOAo1vUWzux8p1ICrYRBuw559pkwlEkCkFQAdV3NFpY/s400/Mundua+cover+1.jpg" tt="true" width="242" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #351c75;">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. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;">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”.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">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. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span><br />
<span id="goog_705933291"></span><span id="goog_705933292"></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">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.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span id="goog_705933279"></span><span id="goog_705933280"></span><br />
</span><span style="color: #351c75;">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.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;">Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-39079012458311689492010-05-02T23:01:00.000-07:002010-05-02T23:56:05.664-07:00Back on Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYfbWYpHwCj6b57IbD1PEW_wf6Od21tnbRXgLYo7y_CoNRUQ1MJLeqLrxPLg74w3r6nmQHm7f42wq_2caz8FWRgjXkvnVZUiV1mVwFeO3UhsSnyMUNvXhnovPSny4oq8Srs5h_jqz5xA/s1600/000_1187.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYfbWYpHwCj6b57IbD1PEW_wf6Od21tnbRXgLYo7y_CoNRUQ1MJLeqLrxPLg74w3r6nmQHm7f42wq_2caz8FWRgjXkvnVZUiV1mVwFeO3UhsSnyMUNvXhnovPSny4oq8Srs5h_jqz5xA/s400/000_1187.JPG" tt="true" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Dear Friends:</span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">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. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">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 <span style="color: red;">The National</span> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. The last four articles published in <span style="color: red;">The National</span> had not been posted on my blog. </span><br />
<span style="color: orange;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">The published version in <span style="color: red;">The National</span> newspaper is an edited version. I don’t have the edited version in electronic form until after the newspaper posts it on its website. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">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.</span><br />
<span style="color: orange;"> </span><span style="color: orange;">I am now posting the four articles in their original versions. I ask that you update your reading with these articles.</span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">Let me know what tickles you from my views expressed in this genre.</span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">From time to time I will add new unpublished stories to the blog.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;">HAPPY READING!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;">SEW</span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-21474761617761876512010-04-01T23:31:00.000-07:002010-04-01T23:31:06.080-07:00PNG's Poet at Large Remembered<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNs6VMHMVIwmKXs472PTexOaBVVUFFQ9nhWQEXfzLNzZm8ePgSzV1kfHZ6jay4DFIu2HXgzuRhEktHmvQd-p7lSkoJU1Y7PBOXeWlV-Aeb_kb1ajjWFH-iCKo5smrh_VlUOLti6RkGR9c/s1600/DSC00225.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNs6VMHMVIwmKXs472PTexOaBVVUFFQ9nhWQEXfzLNzZm8ePgSzV1kfHZ6jay4DFIu2HXgzuRhEktHmvQd-p7lSkoJU1Y7PBOXeWlV-Aeb_kb1ajjWFH-iCKo5smrh_VlUOLti6RkGR9c/s400/DSC00225.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #c27ba0;">The tribute appeared in The Weekender of <em>The National</em> newspaper on Friday 26 of March 2010, p.5 under Steven's Window column.</span><br />
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THE plan was for me to travel to Manus around June this year to launch Andyson Bernard Kaspou’s book.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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<br />
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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<br />
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Ila Ime Research Centre, a community based organisation. He was there until his death.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.” <br />
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Kaspou derived his wisdom from his father, John Kaspou Yoke, to be able to see life in this philosophy.<br />
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That was the Andyson Bernard Kaspou, the PNG poet-at-large that I came to know and respect.<br />
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Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.commanuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-50439310096919537492010-04-01T23:23:00.000-07:002010-04-02T00:00:49.061-07:00Living in a Candle City<span style="background-color: yellow;">This review of A Rower's Song was done by Russell Soaba in his column Russell's Storyboard in <em>The National</em> newspaper. Friday 26 March 2010, p.4.</span> <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>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...”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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?”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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Sounds familiar? “And watching the dawn break”, continues the persona, “I have forgotten all this time [that] the candle city is their world.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.”<br />
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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.<br />
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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.” <br />
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Responses to this review: anaveramaga@EWCA.EastWestCenter.orgmanuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-24153591075745662392010-03-23T00:18:00.000-07:002010-03-23T15:57:42.401-07:00Our Knowledge System<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVm0ol0AI1mT0gymJyNOxCAO6TzLignAMkQRKvUBtA83ieGK0wka3QGKZyeZ-neZ0q7sR1UONrKiNxD0ouF-z5GbwATErP79ksMeDYYRe54J_0NRP9vJB9HyMRIICl_vhz0pq0DuWbfZE/s1600-h/weekenderdii_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVm0ol0AI1mT0gymJyNOxCAO6TzLignAMkQRKvUBtA83ieGK0wka3QGKZyeZ-neZ0q7sR1UONrKiNxD0ouF-z5GbwATErP79ksMeDYYRe54J_0NRP9vJB9HyMRIICl_vhz0pq0DuWbfZE/s320/weekenderdii_16.jpg" vt="true" /></a></div><span style="color: blue;">The article was featured in The Weekender of <em>The National</em> newpaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 19th March 2010, p.5. Photo credi: The National newspaper.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">In traditional societies every action taken is in response to an event that is of significance to that society.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">“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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">“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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #b45f06;">Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-32333533731740796872010-03-23T00:12:00.000-07:002010-03-23T00:12:46.566-07:00The Passing of a great Melanesian<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">This tribute was made to the late Dr. Bernard Narokobi on Friday 19th March 2010. front cover of The Weekender in <em>The National</em> newspaper. Photo credits to Staff of <em>The National</em>. Thanks to Margaret Daure for editorial.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusmMWYOmW6IJesQfvz8ulrlxrsDk9JUUBOoDpZ0nTaDJPq9V7Qk50gstQiLafIWS3UvuJuXRfpRPt4FtLk_0EHDV5lNCmlNyiFjHjGbVjT_T-CuHpEqFTU4b9ZjiSKrJKa5icpbexOqM/s1600-h/weekenderaii_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhusmMWYOmW6IJesQfvz8ulrlxrsDk9JUUBOoDpZ0nTaDJPq9V7Qk50gstQiLafIWS3UvuJuXRfpRPt4FtLk_0EHDV5lNCmlNyiFjHjGbVjT_T-CuHpEqFTU4b9ZjiSKrJKa5icpbexOqM/s320/weekenderaii_11.jpg" vt="true" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">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. </div><br />
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The lawyer, Bernard Mullu Narokobi, had just graduated from the Sydney University, Australia a year ago in 1971. <br />
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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. <br />
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The Constitution was submitted to the Chief Minister, Michael Thomas Somare in Aug 13 1974. <br />
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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.<br />
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Dr. Bernard Narokobi passed away at the Port Moresby General Hospital on Tuesday March 9, 2010. <br />
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He was believed to have died of heart failure associated with his diabetic condition.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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Dr. Narokobi’s influence in the legal system, politics, and ideological development of Melanesian Ways, remains truly monumental and inspiring. <br />
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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His life was the embodiment of the ideals he believed in and inscribed into the constitution and the philosophy of Melanesian Ways.<br />
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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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Dr.Narokobi’s philosophies, ideas, way of life, and simplicity rubbed on many of us, who held him higher than some of his contemporaries. <br />
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He was in the league of grand chiefs, influential statesmen, philosophers of eminence, and the conscience of a postcolonial nation. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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At this time of his passing the sadness of loss casts its shadows over us in many ways. <br />
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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? <br />
In his own words, we regard such a lifestyle or way of life and ways of knowing, the Melanesian Way. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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”. <br />
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Indeed, Dr. Narokobi’s legacy in Melanesia will remain, with us for a long time, as our guiding light.manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-12751763525185767542010-03-12T21:35:00.000-08:002010-03-12T21:35:11.291-08:00Transforming Memoirs into Books<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxY0kdW3KK8sPQNk0CG5jWZ9ENxClIXITkf3wAG7-CiKHZy4zjQHhNMZeCsPKTBzEjrpU2BHsQPeRrXsH1A2HQWZkofRy-bydox5nee5THGf-2cKVyKDx-cC0bBsq7zmmim2EZZDi-ncg/s1600-h/QXK7BWCAE1SJYQCAMPPNEACAQNAWSNCA0ON51YCA5DBL14CAVKLZFVCATEFH71CA5U58LSCAZQVCSFCA5MHW42CAGELEU9CA86HANLCA42UG20CAD15HEJCAN9EWFXCA10PX4K.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxY0kdW3KK8sPQNk0CG5jWZ9ENxClIXITkf3wAG7-CiKHZy4zjQHhNMZeCsPKTBzEjrpU2BHsQPeRrXsH1A2HQWZkofRy-bydox5nee5THGf-2cKVyKDx-cC0bBsq7zmmim2EZZDi-ncg/s320/QXK7BWCAE1SJYQCAMPPNEACAQNAWSNCA0ON51YCA5DBL14CAVKLZFVCATEFH71CA5U58LSCAZQVCSFCA5MHW42CAGELEU9CA86HANLCA42UG20CAD15HEJCAN9EWFXCA10PX4K.jpg" vt="true" /></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">First published in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 12, 2010, p.5.</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-72490246159089415042010-03-07T22:06:00.000-08:002010-03-07T22:14:15.057-08:00True Measure of Values<span style="background-color: #741b47; color: white; font-size: x-small;">First appeared in Steven's Window, a favorite column in The Weekender of <em><strong>The National</strong></em> daily newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Date: Friday 05th March 2010, p.5.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7uBMBjFZam-8yudfYB9f2TWXLOD9mPmWtrjx-gteXslS-4LRxWjGkl1dLcFIIE6tdbiVghJ1ww8RP9hmQzLNtrttgp5Babx7XxPSN8b7XWZ0oFhuciJrjOcMKV8snbAnwKSOTZxMiZQ/s1600-h/PBBF2HCAQOT13HCAU5PHW0CAMXABXVCASS6GY5CA89BHK5CAURWGWXCA8GY7VUCAP3P0B5CAXDWG4GCA0VC0X6CA5AJ6HDCAVW0XG8CACO6YI4CADHGFTFCA6PHG0WCA4MW4DM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8;"><img border="0" height="200" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7uBMBjFZam-8yudfYB9f2TWXLOD9mPmWtrjx-gteXslS-4LRxWjGkl1dLcFIIE6tdbiVghJ1ww8RP9hmQzLNtrttgp5Babx7XxPSN8b7XWZ0oFhuciJrjOcMKV8snbAnwKSOTZxMiZQ/s200/PBBF2HCAQOT13HCAU5PHW0CAMXABXVCASS6GY5CA89BHK5CAURWGWXCA8GY7VUCAP3P0B5CAXDWG4GCA0VC0X6CA5AJ6HDCAVW0XG8CACO6YI4CADHGFTFCA6PHG0WCA4MW4DM.jpg" width="131" /></span></a><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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: </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8; color: #741b47; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-87090489712011541862010-02-26T23:15:00.000-08:002010-02-26T23:20:11.782-08:00Learn More to Earn More<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #e06666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The article first appeared in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newspaper in Papua New Guinea. Friday 26th February 2010: 5.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. Decrease your television time or storytelling time. Use that time to read for an hour a day. Read inspirational autobiographies of successful people. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. Leaders are readers. Read the books on successful people and successful living. Read a book or chapter of a book every day. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
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</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-18587250260640977282010-02-26T22:22:00.000-08:002010-02-26T22:44:23.047-08:00Book Flood Without PNG Authors<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">First published in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Friday 19th, February, 2010; p.5.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BbjIFq9L33mWPHeDqGU8h5VlupdjvHc7-i_oIhRwefgKMtJNzqXvmyazqaZQRY5MWkxMAXXi01w95z2F_5p0LnBzvY6yX6mXgTwBV8F0UOLPaeJlfjBkdkg8YfFhFNVSakBjcltxuj0/s1600-h/weekenderdii_14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BbjIFq9L33mWPHeDqGU8h5VlupdjvHc7-i_oIhRwefgKMtJNzqXvmyazqaZQRY5MWkxMAXXi01w95z2F_5p0LnBzvY6yX6mXgTwBV8F0UOLPaeJlfjBkdkg8YfFhFNVSakBjcltxuj0/s400/weekenderdii_14.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com; blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-83034603291753578672010-02-17T21:19:00.000-08:002010-02-18T17:58:38.582-08:00To Embellish or Not to Be<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: blue; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The first version appeared in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Date: 12th February 2010.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizk-7DXsO_6ItIsM1RgO6tV2dPuqHN7A_HMiq_891rU6W50q6uEklK964qrIAX1otx74w5jS42Z-kqyltO0RskeJntX8bl1gcl2c-x2_YbjNtwYCtbEglPZlTvp3W97XROYwT1YuAyR4/s1600-h/weekenderfii_13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizk-7DXsO_6ItIsM1RgO6tV2dPuqHN7A_HMiq_891rU6W50q6uEklK964qrIAX1otx74w5jS42Z-kqyltO0RskeJntX8bl1gcl2c-x2_YbjNtwYCtbEglPZlTvp3W97XROYwT1YuAyR4/s400/weekenderfii_13.jpg" width="370" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“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. </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-81277140535778985932010-02-04T22:10:00.000-08:002010-02-04T22:26:01.229-08:00Experiences of expatriate women in PNG<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj21NkE1OWv0WutLKxpaf_9fAwxliaiEuUmoo5F-bkTSbssm1fXDnC0DVw_e7U452tjGjM4g3wZIjqv-sdxdB54ViNJxcnNc_2f9AltzYswGKbSWtIuxDT0E_t8ZPbeLyHXZf0XbXH2MEY/s1600-h/weekendereii_12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="344" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj21NkE1OWv0WutLKxpaf_9fAwxliaiEuUmoo5F-bkTSbssm1fXDnC0DVw_e7U452tjGjM4g3wZIjqv-sdxdB54ViNJxcnNc_2f9AltzYswGKbSWtIuxDT0E_t8ZPbeLyHXZf0XbXH2MEY/s640/weekendereii_12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea published first version in Steven's Window, Friday 05th February, 2010. Picture: <em>The National</em> newspaper.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-20518317899923173112010-01-28T21:16:00.000-08:002010-01-28T21:32:32.148-08:00Success Elements in Our Schools<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcp6McWz0k3cIFw2UZ1uzwknrxRTEEBSRvZWPslt03VEjExelJoV5w36DiyaPaOqKPkTWAGN02XMDFEdXOuhTNt-7E-8dvD6QEg5M5jR0kr3s29V4NvHjHtZrBdZVyvS5AU6GjUTJHqHU/s1600-h/weekendereii_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcp6McWz0k3cIFw2UZ1uzwknrxRTEEBSRvZWPslt03VEjExelJoV5w36DiyaPaOqKPkTWAGN02XMDFEdXOuhTNt-7E-8dvD6QEg5M5jR0kr3s29V4NvHjHtZrBdZVyvS5AU6GjUTJHqHU/s400/weekendereii_11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: #674ea7; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="color: white;">First appeared in the column Steven's Window, <em>The National</em> newspaper. 29th January 2010</span>.</span></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-34854308429513484642010-01-25T19:51:00.000-08:002010-01-25T23:01:18.874-08:00The Great Wall of PNG<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SmPE7P4sBx4Hen0OZczO0i8U_NJQKcIj_lNGah6zQnSMKg5BTv7OBebVqf6jHLBXX4uvXcST8GiJgA_b8XY9YQLdP-HeL-PsyoAmABR3ltn6zeSzYFagn-wWvcu5eXX6lgeCHGvAvHw/s1600-h/000_1832.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SmPE7P4sBx4Hen0OZczO0i8U_NJQKcIj_lNGah6zQnSMKg5BTv7OBebVqf6jHLBXX4uvXcST8GiJgA_b8XY9YQLdP-HeL-PsyoAmABR3ltn6zeSzYFagn-wWvcu5eXX6lgeCHGvAvHw/s400/000_1832.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: #351c75; color: white;">First published in Steven's Window,<em> The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea on Friday January 22nd, 2010.</span></span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span> </span></span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">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. </span></span><br />
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</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-2882105030051823932010-01-18T15:07:00.000-08:002010-01-18T16:38:01.300-08:00Museums and Cultural Institutions<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: purple; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">First published in Steven's Window, column of <em>The National</em> newspaper of PNG. Friday 15th, 2010.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKBIXbPUcfLW-07v9Iv2WJvBmRJPeUpnFTTht3GYsa67ypxtO2lhFjBcvgyrU6RFXkaNjydDPtKPHCjcoOJS1J6P2wWNRwqBdPpVxpPMzGxz2qnJWM2FFp9yf7Wx6nYO_z61_ENQFUsk/s1600-h/DSCF6529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmKBIXbPUcfLW-07v9Iv2WJvBmRJPeUpnFTTht3GYsa67ypxtO2lhFjBcvgyrU6RFXkaNjydDPtKPHCjcoOJS1J6P2wWNRwqBdPpVxpPMzGxz2qnJWM2FFp9yf7Wx6nYO_z61_ENQFUsk/s320/DSCF6529.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: xx-small;">A young guard of cultural traditions in front of Ayugham Bana cultural centre, Aiyura valley, EHP, PNG. Photo: Keisiva Darius.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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).</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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.</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“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.”</span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">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. </span><br />
</div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-72472181883016261222010-01-15T18:57:00.000-08:002010-01-15T19:24:14.000-08:00Modernity's Manifold Chasms<div align="justify"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrR4U8elsVeL8nV1ezXHwetmZCgycSlhkPkqNCEMPjpqFqTuC8qZMEgkMj8Zknb69pnPo0Ojk17Y1bYgorBGs_JdXwTkX_vn1AlUc-_0hVbMp_OOsOWKK6OKndtNLkWqAWCSEKI66947c/s1600-h/Huli+dancers.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 302px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427170235868313202" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrR4U8elsVeL8nV1ezXHwetmZCgycSlhkPkqNCEMPjpqFqTuC8qZMEgkMj8Zknb69pnPo0Ojk17Y1bYgorBGs_JdXwTkX_vn1AlUc-_0hVbMp_OOsOWKK6OKndtNLkWqAWCSEKI66947c/s400/Huli+dancers.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color:#330099;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The article appeared in Steven's Window, <em>The National</em> newspaper of PNG on Friday 08th January 2010.</span><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.</span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-55379070666411283182010-01-06T21:13:00.000-08:002010-01-06T21:36:23.638-08:00A Rower's Song: poems by Steven Edmund Winduo<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#999900;"><strong>New Book from Manui Publishers (PNG) </strong></span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Steven Edmund Winduo: <em>A Rower’s Song</em> (2009), published by Manui Publishers. ISBN: 978-9980-9919-2-8. 146 pages. K69.90 (US$25.86)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;"><em>A Rower’s Song</em> 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. <em>A Rower’s Song</em> 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.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Here is a sample:</span><br /><br /><strong><em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Borrowed Lives</span></em></strong><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Our pockets are torn<br />Living in our pockets<br />We have fallen so deep down<br />Walking the dark smelly alleys<br />Of some cheap Asian backyards<br />Or standing everyday at the same spot<br />Seeing the monotony of life<br />Driving by on the same road<br />We see the crowd swell like locusts<br />Beyond limit at the bus stop<br />Emptiness drops from the sky<br />And blanketed our vision forward<br />There’s nowhere out of this, we declare<br />We have to borrow money<br />To go on living here<br />Our pay packet looks fat<br />Our bank accounts stripped<br />There is no savings<br />To help us through hard times<br />Our hearts cannot bleed<br />Our hopes remain intact<br />Our borrowed lives will continue.<br /><br /><br />The collection includes works published in various journals and anthologies such as <em>Journal of Postcolonial Writing</em> (UK), <em>Savannah Flames: a Papua New Guinean Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture</em> (PNG), and <em>Writing the Pacific</em> (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.<br /><br />To order email me on </span><a href="mailto:steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-75392210740989124012010-01-04T21:45:00.000-08:002010-01-04T22:00:02.674-08:00Large Footprints on Pacific Shores<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNWDtNTB-wjlhCpL_6Vg1iUn6dpEkJabrY_-HRopYHzZOdCSiXlzn-l80vTO3MQWnWIT1y_EMpyodjqy-o0cBtR2xfeQNjCg53ldF6o3kSRxyXZ0kp0eOm8K6j-HhyphenhyphenbJc86rng8ZO45cU/s1600-h/Ron+Crocombe+Sydney+Harbour+1988.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423129143318263186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 270px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 235px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNWDtNTB-wjlhCpL_6Vg1iUn6dpEkJabrY_-HRopYHzZOdCSiXlzn-l80vTO3MQWnWIT1y_EMpyodjqy-o0cBtR2xfeQNjCg53ldF6o3kSRxyXZ0kp0eOm8K6j-HhyphenhyphenbJc86rng8ZO45cU/s400/Ron+Crocombe+Sydney+Harbour+1988.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#ff9900;">The article first appeared in my column Steven's Window, in <em>The National</em> newspaper of Papua New Guinea. December 31st 2009. Picture taken by author in 1988 on a cruise in the Sydney Harbour.</span><br /><div></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Ron’s shoes are too big for us to wear, but we can follow the large footprints left on the shores of the Pacific.</span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-29706250286449089952010-01-04T21:29:00.000-08:002010-01-04T21:44:18.827-08:00The Language Burden<em><span style="font-size:78%;color:#3366ff;"><strong>Cultural Day at</strong></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:78%;color:#3366ff;"><strong> Waigani Primary </strong></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:78%;color:#3366ff;"><strong>School 2090</strong></span></em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbEh7JrVosgBWUwn285-IeZhYbHuwnXkp2Im9PahM92MbYOox3iSgTohntp0kWkvcPXhcEV2ERoq1jREqRkJgnAZEQJFYdSWcRK7d0q-wOTUA7rarbtqej9RXoEIJP9k0ZpXEmISR0sM/s1600-h/DSC00159.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423126557671944434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 225px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbEh7JrVosgBWUwn285-IeZhYbHuwnXkp2Im9PahM92MbYOox3iSgTohntp0kWkvcPXhcEV2ERoq1jREqRkJgnAZEQJFYdSWcRK7d0q-wOTUA7rarbtqej9RXoEIJP9k0ZpXEmISR0sM/s400/DSC00159.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#000000;">The article appeared first in Steven's Window, a column in <em>The National</em> newpaper of Papua New Guinea. December 24th 2009.</span></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;color:#cc6600;">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.</span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3391717965739525097.post-78299441013890848502009-12-19T23:59:00.000-08:002009-12-20T00:06:39.685-08:00Colours of Christmas<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xQkxjDEr9xh65H5BS6QP_XejiMeDVX-_Myaueb1rrVI9GaGX0Gki_R4BsH3KTQKC1zunT2PF8TU83peLLDqZWB1cmZzykYN7a8qW87t9bTJEQwx6ttmVLuMyf1E_xk9RpDDaAzbhyphenhyphenEc/s1600-h/120px-Cassia-fistula.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417226182442030210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 120px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 90px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xQkxjDEr9xh65H5BS6QP_XejiMeDVX-_Myaueb1rrVI9GaGX0Gki_R4BsH3KTQKC1zunT2PF8TU83peLLDqZWB1cmZzykYN7a8qW87t9bTJEQwx6ttmVLuMyf1E_xk9RpDDaAzbhyphenhyphenEc/s400/120px-Cassia-fistula.jpg" border="0" /></a> Golden Shower (above)<br />Royal Poinciana or Flamboyant tree (below)<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrp93XeVad3_g6NW8B4VIe1pPM3CBcK6Te0U72EaTyUp0cdmthZZzg3LtCX92rc_p7A4z2K04ADD6yrdRPIppfqHoLpM31i2I_a3rwhfNRim8NhQhgY9pFicjNd1q3z2Ga1WMv12P5NFw/s1600-h/135px-RoyalPoincianaFlower.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417226170258989202" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 135px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrp93XeVad3_g6NW8B4VIe1pPM3CBcK6Te0U72EaTyUp0cdmthZZzg3LtCX92rc_p7A4z2K04ADD6yrdRPIppfqHoLpM31i2I_a3rwhfNRim8NhQhgY9pFicjNd1q3z2Ga1WMv12P5NFw/s400/135px-RoyalPoincianaFlower.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:#999900;">First published in Steven's Window. <em>The National</em> newspaper. Friday 18th December 2009. </span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">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. </span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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). </span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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. </span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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. </span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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. </span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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.</span></div><br /><br /><div align="justify"><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">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. </span></span></div>manuihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09840171304418123115noreply@blogger.com1