Colleen loves her Forestry Works as Life

By Leonard Fong Roka

‘One of the fundamental reasons of the Bougainville conflict was the environment carnage the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) was doing on our island for the benefit of not us,’ Elizabeth Dapore told me. ‘Our project is now working to uphold that mission of protecting and promoting the preservation of our environment’.

The colleen, Elizabeth Dapore (photographed with one of her trees), is a Buin Secondary School leaver of 2011 that was unfortunate to secure a place in a tertiary institution. She hails from the Tumpusiong Valley of the Panguna District and now engaged herself with the Deumori Parish run Sipuru Forestry initiative in the mountains of Paruparu in the Evo-Torau Constituency of Central Bougainville.

The project was developed by the Deumori Catholic Parish (Panguna) during the crisis periods of the mid-1990s to revitalized awareness of the significance of the ecosystem and the importance of preservation of forest for the benefit of man. Furthermore, the parish saw that such an effort was a financial source for its administrative duties instead of pestering people for funds.

With the coming of the Bougainville Peace Process, many left the jungles in pursue of money, but Honiara educated forest officer, Bruno Irioai, kept faith in the project. He cared for it, that is, he kept creating nurseries and forestation exercise intact around the Paruparu and the Tumpusiong Valley.

In 2010, a local priest Fr. Bruno Dumarinu then revisited the site and teamed up with Irioai and the project began a rebirth and expansion.

Under the leadership of the parish council of Deumori, the project took on a new name Sipuru Forestry Training Centre which Elizabeth Dapore is now the administration officer in charge.

The school is located in the mountains and inaccessible by vehicles, however, it is believed the Paruparu road that is still under construction from the Tumpusiong Valley will further help the community project leap higher with it dreams for the Deumori parishioners.

But from people’s own effort and dedication the site has learning facilities that includes two classrooms for lectures and two dormitories for students and common kitchens. All built with bush materials. Students also grow their own food as part of the whole project.

According to Ms. Dapore, the centre now enrolls 21 students since formal classes were included in 2012. This lot of students will be graduating with certificates of attainment granted by the Deumori Catholic Parish in June this year.

Since last year, the school, at the request of people around Bougainville had toured other parts of Bougainville promoting and giving awareness of forestry, forestry management, preservation, lumbering with own farmed trees, the ecology, herbal medicine and the other significance of the initiative towards Bougainville’s future.

Ms. Dapore pointed out that between October 2012 and February 2013, they visited the Tinputz District in the north of Bougainville, and they had also visited many villages of the Panguna district and the Avaipa area.

With all these awareness, many villages of the Panguna District and the Evo-Torau are now so festooned with plantations of trees—young, and yet to mature trees—that is creating breath taking scenes on the villages. In some areas, cocoa has being removed to plant trees that had long extinct because of gardening. Such trees had to be brought in from distant places where natural forests are intact and put in nurseries then planted.

Ms. Dapore said that reforestation is not a job need intensive labour but rather, it should be made into a hobby by the people of Bougainville.

When asked if she had other plans for life apart from her position with the project, she said: ‘I love my job of promoting reforestation for the good of Bougainville. Land is our home and we have to protect it at all cost. I dedicated to my work’.

Her hamlet is now the nursery center of valuable and timber-worthy trees. From here, interested buyers will come to purchase the tree of their choice and the raise money goes to the Deumori Parish that then pays a little income to each forest workers.

Around her hamlet of Metari, in Tumpusiong, she and her siblings had planted a huge number of 4 000 small seedling of trees that are suitable for lumbering for their family which they plan to sell as well as for domestic consumption.