Bougainville is not 10 Years behind compared to Madang

Leonard Fong Roka

Papua New Guinea, the country that the colonial powers in the 19 century annexed my island Bougainville for, is so celebrated by its citizens and the world economic literature as the natural resource pot of the Pacific. It is the fastest growing economy in the Melanesia.

But celebrated though, Papua New Guinea is one of the poorest states in the world with institutional corruption, crime, inequality and so on so systemically and systematically widespread.

Few benefit from the high levels of resource exploitation occurring in the country.

Worst, I see their students in Divine Word University dressing like some Magazine cover girls or speaking English like their mother tongue but visiting their homes, one is shocked that they dwell in conditions of outright poverty.

In one of the late days of July 2012, I and my student mates undertaking course Interpreting Cultures with our lecturer Dr Sibona Kopi made an excursion to extract information on the meaning, practice and understanding of kinship for the Mediba villagers.

To me, this was the first intrusion of any village setting in Madang Province of PNG. Poverty was there in the level I’d never seen in my trouble-torn and civil war cursed Solomon island of Bougainville’s Panguna District.

My hopes from the onset  was to walk into a modernized Madang village because to us Bougainvilleans, the people who rule us, Papua New Guineans, are said to be 10 years ahead of us in terms of educational or economic development.

But, I was so stunt! The DWU transport employed a sealed North Coast Highway of Madang. It carried us through farms of horses, cows in certain areas. Beyond we pass through swaying cocoa and coconut plantations some of them having their minders sweating the day out with them.

It one section of the highway we passed the RD Tuna factory, a company own by nationals from Philippines with surrounded by pre-colonial housing villages belonging to the indigenous people of Madang.

Beside the highway, there was the power line, also, that ought to provide electricity to every household. I admired this because in Bougainville my people suffer by laboring to construct own home-made electricity supply that help further improve our lives.

But, I was confused, that every approach had not an appropriate standard of housing that should be more than my post-conflict Bougainville life styles.

We arrived at our study location, a place called Mediba, by 9 am.

My expectations were not there.

The village had all its housing made of kunai or sago leaf thatched roofing with some housing so old and ready to go. There were domesticated animals like pigs sharing the same roof with their human masters. There were hens clucking here and there with their chooks in search of food.

In my society in Panguna, this sort of living is not acceptable to every villager for health reasons but, this sort of lifestyle is present on the northern areas of Buka Island (and it must be changed).

But I ignored all these, and looked forward to bump into a high standard elementary classroom because the primary school was further down the road.

We were gathered around circular setting of houses when a course mate prompted to me that this is their elementary classroom. I was sick. I do I when I am at home in Bougainville tell people that we are 10 years behind in terms of development and so on? Sad. These Papua New Guineans are far too worst in terms of development than us!

Mediba Elementary School classroom, Madang

To them, development I believe is the more number of resource extraction industries and the improvement of their Madang town. Whist, to us in Panguna we are always concerned to improve the housing or living standards in our homes.

Parakake Elementary School classroom, Panguna in Bougainville

The crisis is rightfully claimed as a university of learning to us in Bougainville.

To me, thus, the concern towards development for Papua New Guineans is that, the moment these people realize what development is, the natural resources that should drive their development will be sucked by the Asians they befriend in the dirty Madang town’s streets.