Dancing In a Redskins’ Arawa

By Leonard Fong Roka

Ami’au listened attentively to the sound of crushing dried leaves and twigs littering the forest floor.  ‘Is this another silly wild dog wandering about?’ she wondered.

‘Bekenenu, is it you there?’ she called out to her husband she had just left further uphill inspecting their cocoa plot.

Not an answer came so she ignored the strange sound that was now gone and lowered her body into the hole she had dug tracking the huge yam tuber.

Now, a heavy foot was approaching her, crushing the dried leaves of the galip-nut and cocoa trees that hosted her yam. She ignored it. But exhausted with constrained back, she dragged her head carefully out and spotted through her armpit; it was no black foot but rather, a muscular red skinned feet of a New Guinean about to attack her. A rapist!

‘Oiiiiii, Bekenenu! Bekene…nu, ere’rengkong mosika¹,’ she screamed hysterically for survival.

They rolled holding onto each other down hill under the consoling shade of the cocoa trees. Ami’au had her muscular body determined for liberation from her New Guinean rapist struggling to strip her.

She, as they hid a rotting bole, removed the infiltrator’s sweat ridden palms and yodelled: ‘Help! Someone help!’

‘Where are you?’ Bekenenu called.

‘Here!’

To Ami’au’s freedom, the Redskin darted off as the sound of running feet crushing dried out cocoa leaves littering the ground grew clearer as Bekenenu swiftly approached the scene angrily to attack.

‘Did the infiltrator of Solomon touch you?’

‘No,’ Ami’au sobbed in shock.

Bekenenu tracked the foreigner with his bush knife down Kirokai Creek but withdrew early in fear of been killed by the defensive strangers of the land.

‘Did you see or talk sense to the Redskins?’ old Taruko asked, with sympathy as Bekenenu returned with sweat freely rolling down his balding face.

‘Ee, send me not into the red ants’ camp for I shall return to Doko’toro as a firefly, uncle,’ Bekenenu sniffed brusquely as he sat on the mat of dried leaves.

Taruko eyed the couple thoughtfully. With the sun burning above their heads, their anger and self pity was the magnesium burning in the night sky.

The Redskins’ town below was booming with heavy traffic. Taruko’s aged eyes were locked to the great Arawa General Hospital. Slowly, his blinking eyes released the hospital and crept up Siopa Place (street) and settled at his feet.

‘This was our land when I was a child,’ he said, wiping off tears, ‘but today it is the Redskins’ land, not yours.’ The couple listened like children adsorbing every bit of parental advice. The grey haired prudent one sneezed and continued, ‘ When their government muddled us and impenitently begin the Panguna mine, planes and ships bring them day by day into our land. Here they make money to build their country that is so far away across the sea.’

‘Really true,’ Ami’au spoke after a long silence, ‘all schools in this town belong not to us, all is for these foreign rapists, looters and terrorist of Bougainvillean harmony. At Toniva, Kieta, down here, at Loloho and Panguna, it is they who roam with absolute freedom as we are the dogs having our tails glued to our bellies. In our mountains we dwell’

‘That’s why I often say always don’t be a lone bird in the tree for a sick dog to harm you. This race of people is parlous to our Solomon ways,’ Taruko said, and unskinned an areca-nut to ease his mind. ‘You are children, I saw that fading sun before you, as this town was developing the Whiteman feared not a Bougainvillean, but rather was afraid of the Redskin that raved their ways in the night like the bats.’

The trio climbed—a troop of defeated warriors—up the Sirovii brae for the ridge so infested with swaying orange trees. Like those fruit trees, fear was snarling and scurrying in the air they breathe into their lungs for Bougainville was not theirs.

Taruko spat reddish betel nut phlegm into the bush with a sigh and calmly called out to the couple, ‘As long as the New Guinean is on your land, there will be fear and tears.’

1. Red skinned dog