PNG's Poet at Large Remembered

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living in a Candle City

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Knowledge System

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Passing of a great Melanesian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transforming Memoirs into Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

True Measure of Values

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Learn More to Earn More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Blog: www.manui-manui.blogspot.com

Book Flood Without PNG Authors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Embellish or Not to Be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experiences of expatriate women in PNG

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Success Elements in Our Schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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