Know your country

by guest writer Charmaine Sialis

 

I was stunned. I felt like pinching myself and probably I would wake up. Am I dreaming? But I was not dreaming. It was Friday morning of week 12. And this was really the last class of Literature and Politics. How did time fly so fast? I wondered. Mr Soaba had just wished us all the best in our studies for our exam in two weeks time.

He then looks at us and smiles. ‘The content of the exam will basically be testing how well you know your country. Do you know your country?’

“’Do you know your country?’” Did we? Was the question my course mates and I were pondering that day. As David, Clyde and I headed back to the library after class we could not help but question each other: ‘What did he mean?’

David spoke what we all were thinking. ‘I think he means we must know how literature has influenced political development – from the colonial period to Independence.’

Clyde adds, ‘Also if we know who was the first Papua New Guinean to write a book or something like that.’

‘That makes sense,’ I replied.

And it did. Suddenly it was as if someone had switched on a light bulb in my head just at that moment.

It was a bright beautiful Tuesday morning when I had entered ALT for the first class of Literature and Politics at the beginning of this first semester of 2011. While making my way to ALT, it had been obvious that the students were excited to ‘kick off’, as many would put it, with school. I too was excited but also anxious. Excited because I could not wait to see what this course was about. But I also was not sure whether I would be capable of handling this course in addition to my other three courses. So I thought I had all the right reasons to be anxious, why not? Little did I know that I would learn so much and yet so little from this course.

Our lecturer had already entered the ALT. After greeting us, he took down our names and said that he just needed our names, so we could leave and come back on Thursday. Sandra and I left the classroom together. I knew her as my brother’s girlfriend and was surprised but pleased that she would be my course mate too, even if it would only be for this one course. As we were walking out we tried to figure out what we would be learning from this course because our lecturer had not really gone into detail in the introductory lecture. But we wanted to know what was in store for us so we parted knowing that we would meet up again on Thursday and attend the Literature and Politics class.

Thursday afternoon saw my course mates and me sitting anxiously. Sandra and I were murmuring as quietly as possible to each other in the second row of the ALT. The rest of our course mates were scattered around ALT also talking quietly with each other. We all were awaiting the arrival of our lecturer, Mr Russell Soaba. I must say, when he entered and started his lecture and gave us a course outline, as he puts it, I really did not understand what to expect from this course just yet.

I looked at the course outline and noticed he had stated that the course would attempt to examine how much literature has influenced the political developments from the colonial period to Independence and right up to the present.

How will we be examining literature’s influence? How does literature influence the political development of PNG? These questions were just swarming through my head at that moment.

‘Do you know what the course is about?’ Mr Soaba is asking.

I jerk myself out of my dilemma, hoping no one noticed that I was doing 60 kilometres per minute in my mind. We all looked at him expectantly. Surely he would tell us. He would not leave us confused.

But he does not.

He merely chuckles and says, ‘I do not know too.’

‘Great!’ I exclaimed to Sandra. ‘So how are we supposed to know?’

There were some prescribed texts listed on this handout. Mr Soaba went through the handout with us.

‘After reading these prescribed texts and the recommended texts, you should know what this course is about.’

So that’s it, these books have the answer. I understood. I knew I had to read them if I wanted to learn something from this course. So I set out to read these books, thinking that it would be that simple. I would read and boom! Lights would flash and I would know how literature influenced politics. After reading through these books, however, I know now how wrong I had been to think like that. I see now that it is how I analyse these books that will count in the end because that is only how I began to understand how literature influenced politics. In the process, I learnt about Papua New Guinea.

I did not understand at first how the stories and articles which Mr Soaba issued to us to read and analyse would help us in this course. Also why every time we asked him about the next assignment, he would chuckle and say, ‘It will come, it will come.’

But I do understand now. In a way, he had started us on an extraordinary adventure through literature and then let us loose so that we could discover for ourselves its beauty and uniqueness.

Today, as the sun is shining through the curtains of the New Guinea Collection Section (of the library) I cannot help but smile. As the sun is lighting up this room, my mind is also being enlightened.

‘He knew what he was doing all the time.’ I chuckle to myself.

When he instructed us to read all the prescribed and recommended texts, Mr Soaba was equipping us with the tools that will help us to know our country. Through these books and through the seminar presentations that our class had throughout these past weeks I’ve learnt that literature moved my country to fight for its (political) independence and continues to guide her to becoming a better country. But is that enough? I cannot help but wonder. I realize I have learnt so much about my country yet so little to actually know my country.

  

                                                                       

Postscript

A third year literature major at UPNG, Nick Tundem, who comes from the Wau Bulolo area, pointed out not long ago, and correctly so, that since Soaba’s Storyboard is a forum of opinions and views on PNG Literature, ownership by way of contributions should therefore go to every other Papua New Guinean writer as well. Subsequently, Nicko was invited to provide an article on Then Thousand Years in a Lifetime, but since that is taking a while to arrive we have invited this week a fellow student of his, Charmaine Sialis, a second year literature major, to take up the services of a guest contributor (as noted above).

Guest contributions are welcome at: ribuadakaipune@gmail.com.

Richard Kini, a realist

Kini's project covered by overgrown grass, weeds and moss...

The late Richard Kini of Riwalirubu village in the Balawaia area of the Rigo district was a realist, not a dreamer like most of us. But he would not stop dreaming big for his people and community. Whether those dreams were about his own Balawaia surroundings or those of his in-laws’ in the remote Anuki Country of the Milne Bay Province, he often did his dreaming much more realistically than even his closest of relatives could tell.

Visitors/relatives from the Anuki Country regarding the abandoned project.

One such dream was building a new primary school in place of the old one called Bina Primary School. Now Bina is located up the side of a hill just below Riwali village. It is so lopsided in appearance anyone can tell it needs a flat sort of landscape that can cater for school buildings, class rooms, teachers’ residences and sufficient space for sporting activities. Moreover, the school is located where much of the arable soil is for staple garden crops such as bananas and yams.

Where Richard wanted to build the new school was a mile down from there and upon the savannah plains, much of which consists of bog and marsh. The soil there would not do much for luxurious garden produce such as the prized yams or the longish looking bunches of Rigo besa and other crops both for subsistence consumption and market sales in town. It therefore needed only a good drainage system and some levelling at certain points to accommodate what would become a fitting location of a school, able to take in pupils from prep up to perhaps Grade 8.

After some negotiations with the landowners of the lower plains, it was agreed that the new school would be located there. A Japanese foreign aid program was invited to assist and within months three classrooms were successfully built. But then Richard became terribly ill and the project came to a halt.

The fact that no one offered to continue with the construction of class rooms and residential buildings after Richard’s death could imply that not everyone was in agreement with the prospects of the project itself. Several other factors come into play here. As it is with any other Papua New Guinea rural and semi-bucolic setting, our attitude to new ideas, new ventures into business or other, are not so much encouraging as positive. We tend to devalue ourselves with self-criticism more than look at ourselves from an optimistic perspective. To top all that we over-kill ourselves with so much of that self-pride. This is a terrible hangover affecting virtually all the southern regions of Papua New Guinea.

Bina Primary School at its present location. The house higher up is Mavis's, a cousin of storyboard and  widow of the late Richard Kini.

Thus, these could have been the causes why the project could not continue. But storyboard did ask around to find out more about why the project came to a standstill after the passing of Richard Kini. Wherewithal he would discover, and quite to his dismay, of course, that really the snag came from the biggies up at the top, meaning the elders of Riwalirubu most of whom are to be found in town, not at the village itself. The claim for ownership of Bina Primary School was noted to be strong up there. The elders did not want the school to be moved to a new location thereby denying them that sentiment of ownership. Of course, there is nothing wrong with such a sentiment. It is just that a school is a school, and it is meant for children, quite preferably children from all over the great Balawaia country itself. So it must be given a location which is spacious to cater for buildings and large playing fields. But too much bread and butter instead of the delicate diet of besa and bamboo-baked prawns can slow us a bit in our judgement of things, eh?

Today, what remains of the new site for Bina Primary School are state-of-the-art classroom buildings encroached slowly by overgrown grass, weeds and moss. The surrounding sparsely distributed gum trees offer no solace whatsoever, and the general atmosphere thereafter remains sombre as much as foreboding. For an outsider like storyboard and his Anuki party visiting Riwali at the time the atmosphere seemed like walking through a ruined kingdom. The ancient drum beats, the conch blasts were nowhere to be heard or seen and the building themselves offered more of an air of abandon than anything else.

Nonetheless storyboard’s party was there for a special purpose and that was to attend the guluma in honour of the late Richard Kini. The great Anuki Country felt and knew that the time had come when it would visit its partner clans, the Vetailubu, Golotauna, Gwalai and Burogolo, equal in rank to the ones in Milne Bay, in order to reclaim their daughter, sister, and mother after her years of service to those clans of Riwalirubu. But they did not do so without gratitude, especially with thoughts surrounding the fact that in honour of the woman once married to them a trade embargo was imposed upon their own community so that for many months no food crops would be transported to town for marketing until the guluma feast was observed and completed successfully.

What was saddening, however, was to come away from all that with thoughts that projects like those of Richard Kini’s might never be completed. But we trust that the elders of the hilltop clans will read this and with a change of heart complete the task that Mr. Kini had started. Bina Primary School does need a new and spacious homestead for the benefit of the children of the great Balawaia country. 

                                                                                  

Poem: a trilingual experiment by Ruth Kamasungua & Irene Kawakami Gashu

                                                        

THE LEARNER (English Australia)

Tall, short, thin, fat

Young and old

They come in all sizes and shapes

They swarm this place

In the sea of busybodies

Books, books, books

They sink (bury) their heads

In the quick sand

Of knowledge

With great determination

Their thirst never quenched

Nor does knowledge ever end

MAN I KISIM SAVE (Tok Pisin Papua New Guinea)

Longpela, sotpela, bunatin na fetpela

Yangpela na lapun

Ol i kam long kainkain seip

Ol pulimapim dispela ples olsem bi

Buk buk buk

Ol i painim het bilong ol

Long wasan

Bilong kisim save

Wantaim strongpela tingting

Hangere long dringim dispel wara bilong save ino save pinis

Na save tui no save pinis

(Tr: Ruth Kamasungua)

EL ESTUDIANTE (Spanish Argentina)

Alto, bajo, Delgado, gordo

Joven y Viejo

Vienen en todo tipo de tamaños y formas

Arrebozan este lugar

En el mar de ocupación

Libros, libros, libros

Sumergen sus cabezas

En la arena movediza

Del conocimiento

Con gran determinación

Su sed no se apaga nunca                                                                    

Ni el conocimiento termina

(Tr: Irene Kawakami Gashu)

                                                         

The above poem THE LEARNER was written by Ruth Kamasungua.

Exile and the kingdom recalled

Mr. Mike Kuta at the Waigani Campus.

When Albert Camus wrote about the phenomenon of “exile and the kingdom” in the fifties of the twentieth century, he had in mind the plight of individuals ensnared somewhat in the sentiments of obligation on whether to serve the self or the establishment of which they were part. There is a strange sort of pull in this, towards the philosophical arena of whether one is part of a group or not.

But Camus did offer some options for the mind that may be curious. Either serve the kingdom or be done with it all.

That philosophical brooding, looked at closely, simply means that one can either be part of that crowd that believes (for example, in the existence of a nominated deity) or does not. Thus, the endless debates on whether there is God or there is not, whether one is a scriptural being or a scientifically evolved one, and so on.

Whatever the situation, and in the final analysis, and this is where Camus excels as a literary artist and philosopher, the choice is absolutely that of an individual’s. We are free to make choices for ourselves.

On the subject of freedom of choice, Camus’ contemporary, Monsieur Jean-Paul Sartre, had this to offer. Feel free to choose what you want to do. But do so with commitment and responsibility. Here, of course, we are reminded of that oft-quoted Sartrean phrase, “Man is condemned to be free.”

And so the philosophical rigmarole of the hours drones on, as endless as time itself can contain it. Now when we translate all that Western philosophical jargon into our own PNG setting what do we have? Choices abound. Indeed they do. Our PMV driver, for example, can change course right in the middle of thick traffic any time he wants to and at will. And we as his faithful clients or passengers render support because that is the PNG way of doing things, especially in cities or predominantly urban areas. 

No so in the rural areas. There they think differently. Thus, if our PMV driver (and assuming by PMV we mean personal mind valuation) along with us, his faithfully and worthy clients, found himself conducting similar antics in the village of which we would all be familiar, the reprimanding encountered by the villagers there would be enormous. The driver along with his passengers would be posing as total strangers to that environment, more as intruders than guests or visitors. When that feeling of difference became visible we would automatically consider ourselves as “outsiders” in Camus’ sense of the word, albeit the same sort of meaning as the word “exile”.

A feeling of “exile” comes about when one feels unwelcome, isolated and abandoned simply because one’s conduct and behaviour differs considerably from the norms accepted by the majority. It is the same sort of feeling that enables man to take a different direction once in a life time. And in that change of direction he finds himself doing great things, achieving so much which he would not have done in his former setting. But all that has to start somewhere, such as learning and adapting to new rules, new codes of conduct and most importantly making new friends along the way.

Thus, an isolated geographical setting such as Paiamanda or Kepa villages somewhere in the outskirts of Kikori, Erave and generally the southern higher altitude parts of our country, would certainly be the areas where we would feel all the more isolated and exiled. There would be nothing unwelcoming about the people of that area but that our presence and unusual modes of human conduct and behaviour would prove reproachful to them. There things are so well organized, particularly in traditional settings, that our city conduct and manners would warrant rebuke and amendment on the first day of our arrival there. But we would have to conform to such a setting in order to share that wonderful moment of exile with them.

And here’s storyboard’s point for mentioning that area of our country. Imagine finding yourself as a teacher somewhere there. City born and bred what would your reactions be? How would you feel? Exiled, of course.

When a colourful personality like Mike Kuta who comes from that same general area describes life in that part of the world we are awed as much as moved. And as he explains the setting of each village, the location of schools and the simple ways of the people there we get that general feeling that this particular area can be considered one of the most exiled in our country. Some reflections on his life as a simple school teacher serving that area for almost 20 years reveal to us the meanings of the words exile, abandon, isolation and neglect. In his classrooms or what appear to be so we see images of traditionally attired adults having just interrupted themselves from work at their kaukau gardens to listen to this man tell them about school. Some come with offerings of kaukau and kumu and that seems to be all: you cannot find tea or sugar, rice or tinned protein there. But they are all happy, content. And yet so much isolated and exiled.

Mr. Kuta has certainly done a lot for that are and he must be commended. One of his touching anecdotes is the one about how, at a school close to the Porgera area, which is supposed to be one of the richest areas of our country, he and his pupils are honoured by the presence of a district school inspector who comes to visit but only for a few minutes by helicopter. Amazing. That simply aggravates our sentiments of exile and we have reasons enough to hear our teeth gritting at the thought of this. How can Papua New Guinea do this to us, the simple teachers of the rural areas?

In the end, of course, Mr. Kuta would make a choice of a lifetime for himself. Go to university and that way try to gain enough knowledge and experience to return and start re-building what he had started. There are various schools around that area which had been successfully helped with permanent buildings through his negotiations and hard work.

Mr. Kuta is currently undertaking studies at the Open College, NCD Campus, of the University of Papua New Guinea. During seminars and tutorials of the various courses that he participates in he stands out as the most colourful and wise member of the university community whose populace is dominated by a very young generation of scholars.

Recent graduates of UPNG.

                                                                      

Some finer moments of writing

This article marks a year of storyboard’s appearance as a column in the National Weekender (excluding these blogs). This would certainly call for celebration but as storyboard looks around, the world rather appears grim and desolate.

There are several things that make storyboard feel this way.

First, the loss we feel when we see all our privileges get undone. In literary terms, this means unlearning all that we have learnt throughout the year for no other purpose than to better ourselves in order to look at the world from a fresher perspective. It also means getting rid of the past in order to assume a new meaning in existence. All that, looked at seriously and from a philosophical angle, means precisely our sure progression towards that which needs to be understood and accepted.

Second, the need we see of re-orienting ourselves after that process of unlearning. This simply means accepting things as they are but doing something else more, like explaining these to the minds that are curious.

Third, making do with the new ideas we have adapted and treating them as our tangible moments of reality. These become our points of reference, our goals to strive towards.

Thus, and coming to the point of this article, the very idea of putting thought onto paper.

Now if we have been paying attention to the sentences above we would have noticed that none of the ideas expressed therein are storyboard’s own. They are merely repetitions of ideas first expressed by post-colonial/literary critics such as Spivak and her followers. They believe sincerely that we should do away with what we have learnt such as in the craft of writing and adapt new ways of representing thought and opinion on paper. What they are asking for there is this sentiment of originality. So now you get storyboard’s point.

He has been contributing views and opinions to this column for over a year now and even so does not seem content with what he has done. He sees no point in celebrating anything. And that is the true value and meaning of wanting to be a writer. To be a writer you must be prepared to accept that what you have produced so far is still left wanting in so many ways. And you must never give up trying even if you have no followers at all.

Here are some reasons why storyboard does not feel content with what he had been offering through this column for over a year.

Firstly, we have not succeeded in establishing a writer’s association even though the prospects looked good. It is true that over the years we have talked about such an organization, but that it was often difficult to find the necessary manpower which would commit itself to becoming that organization’s office bearers. This does not mean that we are not capable of forming an association. Point is that we are not committed enough.

Secondly, we lack that self-publishing drive. This means simply coming up with a good manuscript, soliciting the necessary funds to cover editorial and associated costs and then of course finding the publisher to print the finished product. Now there are many who may argue that this not be an encouraging practice in Papua New Guinea. But storyboard will insist that this is the only way to get published in our country. The question of distribution and marketability will have to come later.

Thirdly, we have conducted too few if not no workshops at all in writing which would help us re-charge the batteries for creativity in our chosen fields of vocation: feature writing, poetries and fictions, all modes of writing. Malum Nalu of The National newspaper and storyboard considered this possibility for the young writer (particularly around selected work environments) but this did not eventuate.

Finally, and because we lack that sense of originality as noted earlier, what we write now and which we regard as creative literature, are merely borrowed ideas. We have become stereotypes more than creative writers and that is sad. The list of our shortcomings would go on.

And now to look at the bright side of what storyboard has been offering throughout the last twelve months or so. The reader will probably realize that following storyboard week by week meant that we have indeed been learning the craft of writing all this time. Your best teacher in literature and creative writing is the one who lives and writes by example. Here, let us give storyboard a bow.

However, rather than elevate the man to the point of self-submersion and all that stuff (some people do get carried away), let us pin point those areas where storyboard might have posed as a source of influence on the young writer. The first and obvious one noted is the way language itself has changed in the life of that young writer. The writer became simpler in his choice of words and whatever it was that he wanted to say was clear enough to be understood. Do not try to be difficult. No one will be pleased with you if you do that. If you feel you are an academic then say so in the language that can be best understood by the layman. Otherwise he won’t follow you.

The writer also learnt the dangers of the cut and paste syndrome. Never copy another’s work. This is an important point. Last Friday’s editorial of The National Weekender carried that warning.

The writer, as well, learnt what it means to believe in oneself, to accept that he can write and that he can be marketable. On the subject of marketability a lot of those groomed by storyboard as students of literature and creative writing in their time now boast of being themselves in demand for jobs here and there. That is good to see. But the point worth noting here is that all those lessons learnt were not entirely restricted to the classroom environment. Some of those young journalists outside, we are aware, cannot do without the pages/page views of storyboard nowadays.

But enough palaver. The last twelve months have been good for storyboard. And we do believe that he has proven himself to be a living example of what finer poetry there is, what finer prose there is and what finer moment of writing can be for a Papua New Guinean willing to become a writer. It was worth the trouble after all, those last twelve or so months. And we do, of course, acknowledge our stakeholders for making storyboard ever accessible to that reader who wants to become a writer.

Sandra Kwafen, a third year political science major at UPNG, spares a moment for a few thoughts on paper.