Kavarong: In Search of my bed #Poetry

Leonard Fong Roka

In the 1960s when BCL landed on Bougainville, the Kavarong River sucked all the dirt created upstream in Panguna. In million tons per day it went down the river altering it old beauty and bed. After the Bougainville conflict that shut the mine, the river is now eroding its siltation in search of its original river bed as we watch. In doing so, however, the Kavarong is changing the Banoni coastline from Matupina to the Koiare area.

Sand and dirt of the white-man I sucked 24/7

To fill the belly of the red-man from PNG and not my Solomons

I could be proud if it were the Malaitans

That traded me duku for my daughters

And dig my gems for the grooms in San Cristobal.

But my sons fought the looters of PNG and saved me

From the aliens that raped my virginity to a village spittle

Thus I am recuperating from agony of my lover’s rejection

Day by day I am weeping in search of my bed with my children

The sun pities me as I rummage the gravel lawns of mystery

The rain cries in mercy and my children help me

To search for my bed

Where I could rest forever and bless my people

Who have suffered and died for me

But we are digging and digging

Shipping the affluent to Marau that is crying

But I tell her not to cry; I will free myself and help her out; so

Days and nights, we are digging history

Discovering new worlds that suffered

From the raping by aliens

We are digging

In search of my bed.

Combatants and Politicians are Liars and Cheats #Poetry

Leonard Fong Roka

In 1988, the BRA stood to fight for Bougainville freedom; but then divided Bougainvilleans, so Bougainvilleans fought each other for the good future of Bougainvilleans on both side of the conflict. When peace dawned, the combatants forgot the cause of their recent past and run after money! They want to be paid for their efforts during the war. Why did they con us, Bougainvilleans? We watch as they disturb the peace and social, economic and political recovery of our Solomon Island of Bougainville.

They—Bougainville Revolutionary Army and Bougainville Resistant Forces and politicians—are liars and cheats!

 

Bougainvillean combatants and politicians

You go reckless after the government for money; money

For the days you fought each other,

Yet you said you were fighting for the freedom of all Bougainvilleans.

You go insane corrupt neglecting the promises you gave

The Solomon people of Bougainville; what does the San Cristobal

Fellow say to you? He calls you

A liar and a cheat to his brothers and sisters of Bougainville!

 

Bougainvillean combatants and politicians

You make Bougainville sick in shame;

You deny our land the freedom it deserves after ages of adversity

In the days you fought each other, you said

You fought to liberate Bougainville from suppression and exploitation but

Now you are the suppressor of Bougainville and the rest of Solomon.

You are the robber, looter…you are the corruption

You are the warlords of disharmony and violence; a

Liar and a cheat to the Bougainvilleans!

 

Shame, shame, shame…Shame on you!

One Way to Peace and Prosperity in Papua New Guinea

Leonard Fong Roka

When the sun rises in the east, every citizen is thinking about what the day has in store for him or her. And what do you think the day has for him or her PNG? Every day life is a search and clash for all citizens in PNG.

Across the land and seas of this beautiful country, there is the scurrying, rollicking and blustering wind of inequity and inequality that is widening the social, economic and political gap amongst the populace in every village. So, all in the house of piercing commotion of the periphery, look to the seats of political setups in desolated portions of the country’s core as the sole sources of livelihood.

Thus every man, woman and child rummage the country looking for green pastures leaving their backyards to dereliction. In their new land they become the dirt and cruelty to the indigenous fellow citizens there; they are the injustice and exploitation, in the name of that freedom granted upon them by the strange Eurocentric state belief Melanesians were not with, before colonization.

That canoe, PNG, has paddled idly and ignorantly through the tempestuous sea of globalism too far; the shore is far, and the horizon is far. Thus, let her reach out to both sides of her journey to help her keep afloat and move with the current below that is heading away from the shores.

Since time immemorial in PNG there were independent tribes, clans and family networks. These establishments were sovereign; they had territorial integrity, they had laws, they pursued trade and diplomatic relations. There was order and those orders were sacred to the man and beneficial to the land. Thus harmony and survival were sustained within the territory.

The key for survival was respect and enrichment of inter-clan or tribal relationships.

But the tide of modernization has disrupted the epistemological world of PNG. The barter system of trade is no more; a marriage for peace is no more; a feast for land dispute settlements is no more; a pig as a token of appreciation is no more; grandpa-children storytelling is no more, since all now needs money to give service to a fellow PNGeans.

As a state PNG was founded on sand and without a clearly defined political roadmap; most state strategies are created from foreign advice or guidelines that does not reflect any PNG relevance or reality. Therefore, in PNG every new government equals new policies that kill the former into oblivion and finally, fate.   

In doing so, the state creates its own enemies; the very people that mandate it to power turn against it with dissatisfaction, then they run back to the old Melanesian institutions as boundaries to disrupt modernization and cause injustice on their own people and country.

Citizens harming citizens and country in PNG clearly show the broader confusion of people who are surprised by the clash of their not-lost Melanesian imprints and the Eurocentric modernization with its enforced ideologies and institutions.

PNG is country that cheats itself with all the imported ideologies of politics, economics and society despite the fact that such institutional norms clash with Melanesian realities. But the elite PNG minority benefit thus PNG had to be tethered for them. 

Intellectually PNG was not prepared to be a country in the Eurocentric world order; and its celebrated founders, were Melanesians engulfed by the sweetness of turning PNG into a state in the western world concepts. Thus they were blinded to see the massive tasks of dragging with them tribes of conflicting dreams in that canoe they built in 1975.

In so far, development in PNG has become the exploitation of PNG by its own arrogant and selfish elite! Massive foreign own investment energize corruption; and the social, political and economic breakdown for the majority of the citizens whilst the few elites bag the wealth of the country from their urban safe havens.

This leads to the citizens seeing peaceful and harmonious life in the struggling urban communities of PNG and with their Melanesian ways; they are sucked into the cities and towns, causing more harm to the ecology of societies and the state system.

A peaceful PNG shall be reached with the calm and open amalgamation of the Melanesian Way and the introduced Eurocentric norms that a now part of the global system. Both realms must be engaged for a mutually acceptable and respectful manner for the betterment of PNG to run parallel to globalization.

In the pre-contact Melanesian world, territorial integrity was the fundamental norm; no one came into a territory (land, river or sea) without any advance notice. For example, for land use for garden purposes, the intending user gave notice to the owner and uses the land temporarily.

After usage, like garden harvesting, a gesture of thanks like a bundle of a first ripe banana and some meat then was given to the landowner first, and then the user continues harvesting for self. This was respect within the society and people.

But in modern PNG, the few elite law makers laugh the old ways as barbaric! But in reality, there is good for the modern PNG canoe.

PNG today, need to revisit all provinces and re-draw all colonial boundaries. This time it has to isolate every single tribe or clan networks and their territory under the dictates of all myths and oral histories in existence; then search for the related neighbor (s) and group these into districts (if too small) or provinces.

Waigani should be the umbrella government keeping the states overseeing mostly international obligations and defense of the PNG canoe.

This done, the next move is to class all related provinces into federal state governments with the highest forms of autonomy endowed with controlled freedom of movement and all other powers and functions. That is all these states must have in place strong vagrancy laws right from the provincial level of government.

Today, the PNG canoe needs a little pain to create long term happiness for the country.

And for the PNG canoe, the states are all obvious. They are the Papua, Highlands, Momase and Islands. However, the present need some re-structuring since there are loopholes, example, the Siasi islanders are culturally more aligned to West New Britain then Morobe thus they had to be returned.

With this the old Melanesian rule of territorial integrity is back and people are safe within and respected from outside because the state government is bold with the autonomous powers and functions.

 After this, the next step is to adopt the most realistic models of Eurocentric development for each state according to the needs of the people within and not the entire PNG canoe.

As seen from a Google PDF article entitled, Six Development Models, the Human Capital Theory that states that ‘improving human capital (education, health, fertility rates) is necessary pre-requisites for economic growth’ in collaboration with the Welfare Concept of Development that says that ‘true development does not consist in increasing the amount of consumer goods but to provide for everyone’s needs for good health care and education and protection from crime’ is the best approach and strategy for all states of PNG.

And these two models are the bases for sustainable development where there is harmony between the man and the resources for the long term benefit of all present and future generations of citizens.   

This is tangible with the little income PNG is and will be generating in/with the mining and petroleum and gas boom currently underway; supplemented by cash crops from the local citizens and nationalization of all firms buying cash crops that rob farmers.

Such a step increases local incomes for villages and increases their buying power thus leading them to progressive drive for positive change. This individual change spreads from the tribe to the province then onto the state.

In doing so, we uphold the old Melanesian concept of utilizing whatever resources available to us for our survival. And when there is a lack in the district, we forge trade relations with the next district; if there is still scarcity, the province come into action by trading with another province within the state; and if one state cannot, then we go to another  state.

This strengthens the domestic economy of the PNG canoe that has long being lied to and robbed by the parasitic concept of ‘no man is an island’ that is suitable for the First World and a few stable countries who have healthy and sound foundations for their countries.

Here PNG’s four states should meet all the needs and wants of their citizens. If they grow peanuts let them process tinned peanuts; if they have cocoa, let them produce cocoa powder for the PNG Highlands state; if they grow coffee let them manufacture coffee for the island, Papua or Momase states.

Where one resource, example timber, is equally distributed across PNG, let the central government distribute product items that a state must work on so that the flow of the domestic market and trade is not disrupted. Having in mind the need for export earnings as well where surplus is attained in production.

Waigani should always be proactive in managing the four states for it is the strength of the four states that strengthens it politically, socially and economically.

All states should have own education systems, too, to create citizens that know the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of their respective states. Each state must have own tertiary institutions with laws that have its citizens to graduate and serve his or her own district or province for a period of time then decide seek employment in another province, state or overseas.

Citizens need to know their states well so as to be good decision makers in their respective state governments and society. Such could have each state knowing which state to look to when need arises before looking overseas.  

With such we hold the will to defend our own territories or states as our progenitors did for their territories in the dream times.

In summary the re-creation of the PNG canoe with a safe and empowered tribal and clan systems; we hope for a stable provincial governments that bind together to form powerful federal state systems for a harmonious and peaceful PNG where equity and equality should rule.

 All four PNG states ought to be autonomous in their social, economic and political decision making for the good of their citizens; this creates free and satisfied PNG citizens who care for each other, their province, their state and their PNG at large.

Bougainville Manifesto 8: The 1990-1991 Crisis

Leonard Fong Roka

To the state of PNG, Rio Tinto and BCL, Bougainvilleans were nobodies of the Solomons that have to be raped off their resources to finance PNG and its citizens who are not at all geographically and ethnically relatives of Bougainvilleans.

But the trio did not know that Bougainvilleans were humans that are adaptive to negative or positive changes; whether the adaptation is planned or not, they need to change to cater for the externally driven changes on their land and society.

The late Francis Ona with every available pressures of change on his shoulder did rush at his numerous goals and history should agree that his ambition for a better Bougainville were not that strategically concrete. Bougainvillean teacher, Lance Itta in his article, A civil war of resources (Post Courier, 23 August 2013 pg 10), implied an organized maneuver by Ona when he tasked a Philip Takaung in recruiting militants; but one as to ask why this turn the crisis of Panguna into a civil war.

The answer is simple; the players were practically incapable of politically leading Bougainville out of the vacuum created by the departure of the PNG state institutions and the demise of the provincial administration.

Let me go to my PNG ATTITUDE article, We don’t want Bougainville as a land of warlords (2012), and start with this scene:

‘All these great military men of Bougainville - although at first fighting to get rid of Bougainville Copper Limited, Papua New Guinea and its Redskins - went off-track in mid-1990.

This divide was created by the late Francis Ona’s inability to administer and control his men and therefore to control Bougainville.

Fighters forgot our cause of freedom and went for war-gains. Think about Ishmael Toroama’s words in the video documentary Coconut Revolution: ‘When I fought everything got into hands…’

Did we fight for personal property or peoples’ freedom? Often, at gun point personal property was removed from owners or guardians; Bougainvillean women were raped, innocent persons were killed….’

According to a BCL webpage post entitled, Chronology of Peace Process (n.d.), on May 1989, the Panguna mine was closed and PNG declared a state of emergency on Bougainville and sent its undisciplined PNGDF to fight Bougainville rebels. But on March 1990, a ceasefire was reached and international representatives were observing the withdrawal of the PNG security forces. 

If Philip Takaung was recruiting the BRA then, what structure was he placing them into? What was his power of influence over these men? Chinese revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong, had Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung (1964) to back his political drive to change China but sadly Bougainville did not have such a determined leadership from the late Francis Ona.

So in March 1990, when the PNG government state of emergency created care center occupants began to head home to their PNGDF burned villagers, the militants headed into the urban areas to experience a lifestyle they had never had before and now they deserve it as heroes or liberators of Bougainville.

One witnessed scene: In one of these days, my parents were in an Arawa clothing shop known as Haus Bilas when a band of BRA men entered. They stood watching as they took new shoes and began helping themselves saying to themselves: ‘Wear shoes boys, we have frozen in the bush fighting for this land’. Rotten opposite!

But in Panguna, Francis Ona, after returning home from his hideout and turning his Guava village into the seat of Bougainville power disregarding Arawa, was creating a power structure and order for his militants amidst tension he was the catalyst to.

Francis Ona, who was now the supreme commander of the BRA, organized the BRA structure with his followers in Panguna. The men were stationed there living and eating like gone BCL employees in the company facilities.

In Panguna, the whole BRA companies were given specific sections of the township to reside on. There was law enforcement on the ground; also, with this each BRA unit leaders were provided with the BCL vehicles to perform their duties. But this was military jobs defined by the leaders and absent was the political structure all these make-ups could function within.

Francis Ona was not prepared to give away his hard-earned glory to the known political personalities like the late Joseph Kabui who was now doing nothing in Arawa, the capital.

His prestige was to be protected outright. He was guarded 24/7 by armed men and women at his village; he also had a unit of witch doctors that also guarded him from sorcerers and kept evaluating his health. With that his home was being maintained. A few BCL plants were ordered to upgrade his hideout and he also took ownership of a number of expensive BCL cars and others.

All these happened as the entire BRA and opportunists watched in disbelief.

So Francis Ona opened trouble. BRA men and opportunist fought each other over the BCL properties in Panguna, especially vehicles at first. After the BCL goodies were done with, the reckless BRA and other rascals ran for private properties as Francis Ona kept silent.

The recklessness also disintegrated the big BRA men into creating own spheres of influence in the fight for personal gains. Vehicle after vehicle and other properties appeared in the backyard of individual BRA commanders and those few dangerous BRA man. But all BRA and opportunist of Kieta had gained something for himself.

In Panguna, the Guava villagers used guns to control Panguna for themselves or scare away people whom—gaining nothing against the armed men—begin dismantling BCL houses and so on, to replace their homes back in the villages that the PNG government had burn.

Seeing this chaos, the former PNGDF soldier and BRA leader, Sam Kauona who had also left Panguna for his home in Tororei, then decided to involve the Panguna brothers Joseph Kabui and Martin Miriori who were doing nothing in Arawa as the result of the August 1990 suspension of the North Solomons (Bougainville) Provincial Government by PNG.

Kauona also got the brothers connected with Francis Ona and in 17 May 1990, the second UDI in Bougainville history happened in Arawa with the creation of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG). But the BRA engineered chaos was already out beyond the perimeters of Kieta and out of reach from the BIG.

Whilst UDI celebrations was on in Kieta, Kieta BRA and opportunists and their followers in other parts of Bougainville were out disturbing peace and justice on Buka Island and much of north and a few areas in South Bougainville and central Bougainville.

To all these the Buka Islanders, according to a online Australian government house committee appendix document entitled, Outline History of the Bougainville Conflict (n.d.), re-invited the PNG army on 13 September 1990 under the blessing of the NEC and eventually leading to the signing of the Kavieng Agreement on the 5 August 1990 calling on the PNG government to establish rule only on Buka and let go Bougainville.

Francis Ona now had some myopic reasons to talk and accuse fellow Bougainvilleans whom, he himself cannot provide the leadership to, many now saw as being betraying Bougainville or much popular phrase then, ‘Salim Bogenvil go bek lo PNG na BCL’ that was known well on the Radio Free Bougainville campaigns and news reels.

The BRA then went reckless as a ‘secret police’ tracking down moles inside Bougainville with orders from Francis Ona. Many innocent Bougainvilleans met their fate; lost their property that were confiscated as punishment by BRA elements thus, leading to spontaneous birth of anti-BRA groups the very first of which was the Buka Liberation Force (BLF) that was created on Buka Island.  

Under the very nose of Francis Ona and his BRA, Bougainvilleans turned against each other; the BIG was late with its leader, the late Joseph Kabui, to exercise power over Bougainville for the now considered military hand of BIG, the BRA had already scared away the Bougainville people.

Bougainvilleans were hunting and killing each other throughout the island as were Francis Ona and Joseph Kabui were playing their own politics in Kieta without control over the whole island of Bougainville. 

A Panguna kid falling in love with business

Leonard Fong Roka

For Paul Monoung (pictured with his canteen below) he was not there before 1990 to witness his Panguna District so cursed with squatter settlements by non-Bougainvilleans of PNG that sailed to his island to exploit its wealth of opportunities and suppress the indigenous people of Panguna.

Born in 1998 with the peace process after the PNG army had satisfied themselves from shelling his island with Australia supplied mortar bombs and gunships from coast to coast, he did not see the pre-crisis reality that caused the rebellion that eventually killed some 20 000 of his people; one of whom is his blood uncle, killed by the PNG government in Torokina’s Papona village.

Drive in a vehicle from the village of Maingku where the Panguna District starts from on the port-mine-access road into Panguna mine site and down Tumpusiong Valley to Jaba where Panguna District meets Nagovis of South Bougainville and one could work out why young Paul Monoung is significant to Panguna.

Along this section of the Arawa to South Bougainville highway you won’t go hungry or thirsty for retail outlets are lined from the Maingku area (Pakia) into Panguna mine site and down into the Tumpusiong Valley by the road side.

The road side business activities within the Panguna District is raising; there are retail stores, tyre services, fuel stations, vehicle workshops, liquor outlets, traditional food and goods stores, cooked food bars when you eat and markets for fresh garden produce that south Bougainvillean travellers help themselves with.

And this change in the Panguna people is being driven by the money culture backed by the alluvial gold mining in the district.

Our Monoung did complete elementary school in 2010 and should be in Grade 5 now but he is forever on and off from school. He spends most of his time panning gold in his Tumpusiong Valley. He is one of the many kids known in the Tumpusiong Valley as the ‘koro batauinanunaving’ which means ‘gold chaser’.

These kids inherited this tag because of their attitude whereby whenever a gold miner taps more gold in a particular spot along the BCL polluted Kavarong river banks; they are seen to migrate there with their home-made equipment. They will stick around the spot till the gold infested block runs dry and they move on.

In the 2012 Monoung made some K5000 and decided to compete with three other kids of his age who also had canteens nearby who were also members of his gold chasing gang.

He ordered his elder sister’s husband to hand-lumber his timber; purchased a few old roofing iron sheets at K600 from his father’s kitchen hut, and with his brother-in-law they began building his semi-permanent house for his canteen.

He is now shelling all goods except refrigerated goods since he has no private mini-hydro of his own but he plans to buy a generator in Arawa which will be dismantled and place in the water system to be built soon to operate a freeze he plans to buy soon.

‘Nephew, that store you photographed me when you helped me to weave the bamboo wall is doing fine,’ he told me over the phone. ‘Stationeries are doing well because of the students at Kavarongnau School. I just purchased a big stereo system to lure customers here and it is happening. My money is growing and I will build myself a permanent house soon after constructing the hydro electricity.’

He said he loves his business but his mother and sisters angers him a lot by doing a lot of credits in his canteen.

Avakori Culture in Bougainville

Leonard Fong Roka

In the Nasioi society of Bougainville there is a saying for males that goes: ‘when you fuck a woman, you must know that you are fucking a garden, a house and everything that will sustain you both’. This is associated with marriage.

This wisdom really is a norm in Central Bougainville to South Bougainville; unlike the north, it is not that evident. And in the proverb above, it is the situation where it tells a man that ‘he is fucking a house the moment he is naked on his woman’ that is the catch phrase here.

In most Bougainville communities in Nasioi, Koromira, Eivo, Nagovis, Banoni and Siwai (areas I am familiar with) the village concept is dying out rapidly. In the post crisis Bougainville, hardly there is a village community in existence in these communities.

The 10-year Bougainville civil conflict did contributed to the rapid dying of the village systems. The crisis scattered people into refugee camps away from the coasts or into the PNG held care centers thus disturbing the harmonious progress of village living.

But in Buin I discovered such massive villages especially Oria, Laguai and Malabita but the proverb still is prevalent in these villages.

In today’s Bougainville homes are being erected within the extended or nuclear family circles. Males in the family turn to make these isolated and family based homesteads into something of a village scale to the distant eyes.

In the Nasioi society it is evident that little boys as young as six years turn to force their parents or brothers to built them one-room houses. This is a culture referred to as avakori in Nasioi which means baby-works (both boys’ tiny houses or girls’ little gardens are referred to as avakori).

Avakori, especially for younger girls’ gardens, when their brothers or parents support it, contribute to the sustenance of the family.

There is this spirit of independence or self reliance for the youngsters with the old tradition of avakori. Males are equipped to built own homes and females are real independent to make gardens that sustains their families when marriage is reached.

For myself, I did begin to do avakori in the peak of the Bougainville crisis in 1992 in the Kupe village.  Influenced by my peer grouping, I began making my own garden backed by my mother and late in 1993, I began a house of my own supported by a relative.

In my Tumpusiong Valley with modern materials and money from gold is at hand, male kids are well engaged with avakori of little houses (as photographed (above) is my cousin, Tabekau, in his own house that also has electricity supplied ) and females also running parallel with their interests.

This has led to change in the said areas where the young are becoming the breadwinners since in their families or they are more financially independent and not being fed by their parents.

The Road of Change for Avaipa: Tumpusiong-Paruparu Road

Leonard Fong Roka

The Avaipa area is landlocked by ranges that sprout west from Bougainville’s main backbone, the Crown Prince Range in the Panguna area. It consists of six major villages namely Kosia (near and borders Avaipa to Panguna), Sipuru, Mainoki, Sirovai, Siuema and Kaspeke before the Bougainville crisis but today it is dotted by hamlets.

Geographically the area is all plain that is sourced from the Banoni coast of South Bougainville but protected by the Crown Prince Range to the north, the Kosia ridge to the east and the Piruo Mountains further west towards the Karato area. It was not linked by a road even though it was just near the multi-million kina Panguna mine that promised Bougainville so much and gave nothing.

The center of activity for the entire area is the Paruparu Catholic station (sub-parish of Deumori), primary school and health center. Popular during the peak of the Bougainville crisis as an educational facility for training health workers and so on, the peace on Bougainville demised it as it pulled people towards the cash economy.

The Australian Panguna mine for funding PNG gave nothing to Bougainville’s Avaipa area as usual. To access government services the Avaipa people walk kilometers across rivers and mountains for hours to Tumpusiong in the south-east or Borumai in the north-east.

But it is the post crisis Bougainville, a Bougainville without a multi-million dollar Panguna mine, that finally blew a wind of change to the people; their hours of shouldering wet-bean or fermented cocoa bags, will be history; stretchers for their sick and death back home will no more because of the newly constructed road from the Tumpusiong Valley into Paruparu.

The road was first dreamt of by the 2005-10 Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) house. This government funded a survey from Borumai and over the rugged Crown Prince Range into Paruparu that cost some K100 thousand in 2009. The surveyors, however, upon completion discovered that Paruparu was so close to Tumpusiong and a road from Tumpusiong would be less costly than what they have done from Borumai.

Thus, the surveyor with local community leaders then did another surveying from the Tumpusiong’s Pingnari section where one of the local leaders, Wendelinus Bitanuma, had his home at a rough cost of another K100 000 of public money.

The surveying team made up of members from the Arawa area of Kieta and Siwai in South Bougainville were rich with two rounds of surveying within 2009 and early 2010. But land related conflicts on the areas the road would run through created by community leaders between the innocent and development needy landowning villagers scared the ABG away and the project was called off; and the village leaders also were not to be seen.

However, in mid 2012, the national MP for central Bougainville, Hon. Jimmy Miringtoro came to the rescue. He allocated some millions for the death project and it was revived to the joy of the people.

The surveyors came back to life with another round of surveying. Groups of people from Avaipa cleared the jungle trail they had used for ages now for the bulldozers to employ to dig up the top soil for the trucks to dump gravel from the Tumpusiong’s Panguna created tailings.

The contract was awarded to Kompaini Transport, a local company from the Koromira area of central Bougainville. They did not waste time when the funding was delayed, but use own money to start the work to liberate the Avaipa people from being slaves of own survival and the state later reimbursed them.

By the Christmas of 2012, transport vehicles were already visiting the Pangtaresi ridge (photo a vehicle on Pangtaresi) that is a center point on the Tumpusiong to Avaipa trail. Situated high on the ridge, walkers rest here having a cool view of both the Avaipa area to the north-west and Tumpusiong Valley to the south-west before continuing their journey neither way.

Rumors also are wide spread that a few Avaipa people and groups were gearing to purchase vehicles that once they had no choice for there was no safe place to keep since their homes were kilometers away in the bush.

Thus the road could be said of as a road of change to the Avaipa people and those peoples surrounding them.