A senate of poets and philosophers

Tototo, once a trade center of Milne Bay and Oro Provinces, as it is today.

                 

One of the things that prevented the Warakouta from delivering goods and services to the people of the Anuki Country was the slow disintegration of its senate over a 40 year period. There are today few that are willing to form the senate. Thus, for the last 40 years that region of the Milne Bay Province would see no development, and its populace consisting of Anuki, Doga, Dimadima, Kukuya and Dawakerekere would merely sit back and wonder what the Warakouta would do next. The Warakouta senate was thus virtually non-existent.

Times have changed. The syndrome of “once were Warakouta” began seeping in as early as 1969 upon the death of the Gaesasara, Romeni Bogerara. With members of the Warakouta aristocracy spread all over PNG in whatever vocational calling they found themselves in, there was no one left in Tototo to uphold the principles and administrative strategies of the senate. The best the successor of the Gaesasara could do was to appoint a nephew to assume the role of a custodian for Tototo village itself. But even a custodian would need a senate to govern at all.   The Warakouta senate, which has proven its worth as the most powerful governing body of the Anuki Country for centuries and as sanctioned by the god Maimaitua or Raganiwonewoneyana, consisted of Mara Gaesasara, Mara Kerina Mamadeni and Mara Matasororo Payayana – in that order. To enhance its status as a resourceful governing body, it formed unshakable alliances with various tribes and clans comprising Damwapa, Gunuara, Kimoya (now known as Gabobora), Doga, Dimadima, Dawakerekere and remnants of clans from Maisin and Ubir (Oro Province), not to mention the Are, Gapapaiwa and Ghayavi factions of clans and sub-clans within the Rabaraba District itself. With that sort of administrative set-up in place outsiders, with the exception of the Anglicans and the Bible perhaps, found it impossible to conquer the Great Anuki Country.  

It is often lamented by many people, not merely by the Warakouta themselves, that had the colonial administration as much as the present day PNG sovereignty recognized such a traditional form of government in existence it is true that today our modern versions of Local Level Governments would have no difficulty whatsoever in utilizing such entities to successfully translate and transfer power and service deliveries to the people. But come each LLG elections and the slogan turns out to be not “united we stand, divided we fall” but rather “It’s every man for himself, for the ship is sinking.” Bad politicking and lack of consultation with the appropriate elders of the Anuki society often leads young men into getting elected, getting into power, and then ending up doing nothing at all for that area of Cape Vogel today. The villages themselves, once great centres of trade around the border areas of Milne Bay and Oro Provinces, grow wild again, with weeds and moss, bog and mire and thick undergrowth. Everything and everyone goes bush again.

                                                                 

One other contributing factor to all this disintegration in traditional forms of government is the lack of dialogue between the old and new generations. Part of that blame goes to the sort of culture shock experienced during the sixties and seventies, not only by the Anuki people of that region of Milne Bay but with every little community of traditional settings throughout Papua New Guinea. The new think they know better than the old and so on, and that subsequently leads to so much that has been discarded by way of traditional knowledge systems, giving way to inevitable deterioration of well-ordered community settings such as the Anuki Country itself. What the Warakouta would experience in utter severity during the last 40 years was watch its own senate turn into a school (so to speak) of poets, philosophers and thinkers. How much such a group of people achieves by way of development need only be seen by the practical realities of what they talk about at the end of the day. We know that poets and philosophers are not workers; they are thinkers. And a senate that spends days on end thinking does nothing. All it need do is lament those days gone by.

                                           

                                          O Tototo, time-worn

                                          In your solitude and anonymity

                                          What is this silence you bring down

                                          With you from Ribua? How often have

                                          Dreams walked by your spare hut upon

                                          The hour of waking? In the high kwamra

                                          Your mapa trees meet the season; leaves fall

                                          And no son returns to a father

                                          No conch shell blows

                                          Nor drums beat.

                                          The coconut palms mourn over the fallen.

 

Now to come straight to the point of this article: storyboard believes that there are in existence such traditional societies throughout Papua New Guinea. Given the leeway these will contribute enormously to the aims and objectives of Vision 2050, particularly at LLG levels. Every little rural project spelt within that vision must be translated into the framework of such senates that will indeed insure their workability and sustenance. But for as long as we ignore the existence of these very senates at traditional level, it is true that we have rendered ourselves as a nation to yet another 40 years of economic carelessness and self-neglect.

Storyboard’s recent visit to his own village setting, however, reveals that every positive step is being taken through various partnership activities both with government and NGO agencies to help revive such traditional norms of governance as much as accountability. The LLG factions must learn to respond favourably to these.