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.
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