Our Bougainville Story Song

By Leonard Fong Roka

Facing north she curls her wade;

An elver in the serene Pacific

With a troop of family fading south

She labours in agony of leading

What is tomorrow?

She was cute

Elegant,

Innocent,

Supple,

Angel so violet, in the tranquillity of our sea

Our sea…the water of love

What is tomorrow?

Songs she sang

The voice she had

The breast she is bestowed with

Scent she travelled with

Captivated

Seduced and soothes

The rapacious and the hedonistic

In the west and the Redskin country

What is tomorrow?

To the rascal:

They is love

They is bushman

Bush woman

Uncivilized; empty

Heads waiting to be filled

Insane, and to be streamlined

Into perfection

This is tomorrow!

To Bougainville,

Education he brought

Money he poured

Curiosity and ecstasy he farmed

Emptiness he nurtured!

This is tomorrow!

Cocoa he pumped

Copra he injected

Barrenness still, he saw

So, mining he started!

This is tomorrow!

Panguna,

Our land they dug

Copper and gold they turn into money in London,

Canberra and Port Moresby…

Arawa they built

To house aliens so strange to our Solomon

Panguna they planned

To bucket Whiteman and Redskins

Oh Bougainville,

This is tomorrow!

Rich she was in the paper

But, roads got tar

Torokina saw no car

Rivers changed bridges day-in-day-out

Kongara was glued to dear mother tongue

A landowner was a scary mongrel in Arawa

Towns were owned by aliens

This is tomorrow!

This is tomorrow

Our land is theirs

Our towns are theirs

We fall in love with our economy and nation

In the media of high praises

Yet we dwell in the make-shift shelters

And slums

With hard earned K50 note

Collecting litter

In the streets

They tell us that is ours!

This is tomorrow!

This is tomorrow!

Rescue my Bougainville people

Liberate our Solomon island of Bougainville

To where it belongs;

Where our apical mothers left us, there is freedom

There is calm

Because the sea is Bougainville

The land is Bougainville

And the family, is Solomon

Oh Bougainville,

This was tomorrow

This is tomorrow

This will be tomorrow,

Free Bougainville!