by Leonard Fong Roka
Ovau island is my heart
Torau Bay knows that...Olava knows that...
Moisiru knows that, and
Tokuaka likes that...
Ovau island is my heart
Kamaleai knows that...Ghaomai knows that, and
Harehare longs to see that...
Ovau island is my heart
Toumoa knows that...Kariki knows that, and
Birambira dreams for that...
Ovau island is my heart
Nukiki knows that...Poroporo knows that...
Malivanga knows that and
Polamai cries for that...
Ovau island is my heart
O heart,
Of my divided Black Solomons.
Thoughts to Ovau Island is My Heart
Any conscious Bougainvillean or the rest of Solomon chain knows how painful it is to think of our home islands being handled as cheap commodity without our knowing with that artificial lines drawn to the good of the colonialist and today, their lover girl, Papua New Guinea.
Sitting on the fine beaches of Ovau, Poroporo and others in what is now the Western Province of the Solomon Islands, one could shed tears trying to figure out how cruel the British and Germans were to dumping our biggest island, Bougainville was dumped into a strange society of PNG in 1975 against the will of the people.
Ovau island, is the nearest largest island outside Olava in Buin but separated from its motherland, Bougainville, by the infidel PNGean border.
In minutes, on a fine day, one paddles his canoe to Ovau from Olava...Can one paddle a canoe to New Guinea and back in a day? No! So that means we, Bougainvilleans are in a cultural, political, social and economic hell with our colonisers, the New Guineans.
This poem tries to set light to a Bougainvillean or a brother Solomonist that it is time to think and work back our way down history.
Then, we can get Bougainville in its rightful place.
Standing on the Kangu wharf and in the background are the little islets surround the larger Shortland island
Also from Kangu, are the islands divided off from Bougainville by the cruel British, Germans and Australians as they dumped Bougainville into the state of Papua New Guinea.
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