Literature as betterment road for Bougainville: my dream

Leonard Fong Roka

Having submerged into the spell of literature or writing since my Arawa High School days from 1997 to 2000 I have seen change in me personally; I have learned a lot about Bougainville, my people and the problems we have.

Before actually paddling the writer’s canoe I narrowly believed that the Bougainville crisis was a Panguna mine created setback for Bougainville and Bougainvilleans. But having to write, that actually gets me into a little bit of other literary checks and balances since 2011, enhanced my scope further.

I now feel that I am standing on a peak by honestly advocating that the colonial masters over Bougainville, British, Germans, Japanese and Australians gave all their powers of eradicating Bougainville and Bougainvilleans from the surface of the Pacific to PNG; and there are three tools now with Papua New Guinea for this job.

Exploitation, the very first, came in 1767-68, the years of discovery by Europeans. It oversaw the stealing of Bougainville’s mostly natural resources by non-Bougainvilleans; reaching peak with the development of cocoa/copra plantation to mining since the 1930s. The next tool is indoctrination. Indoctrination was started off with Eurocentric education that did not consider Bougainvillean ways, knowledge and technology marriage to the introduced ideas. Hitherto the PNG state and people still indoctrinate Bougainvilleans to forget that they are Solomon Islanders but rather New Guineans; stand a Bougainvillean next to a New Guinean, but he does not look like a New Guinean. And the two tools, lead to one grave for Bougainville identity and dignity and that is the third tool, genocide and that is why there is the right for Bougainville to be independent and save itself.

PNG, from its constitution to its education curricula, supports genocide to gobble the Bougainville people. Bougainvilleans are geographically and ethnically Solomon Islanders but, for example, the PNG education system does not uphold and respect that fact. Under PNG Bougainvilleans do not learn Bougainville history, geography, and politics and so on so that they have the awareness to be good decision makers of their island.

And as a writer/author this is where I love to come in to tell my people this is what we are going through since the westernization landed on our island home. I told Arawa Secondary School my dreams in 2013 (pictured assembly waiting for me).

 

My 2013 books, The Pomong U’tau of Dreams (poetry collection) and Moments in Bougainville (short stories collection) shoulder those old problems. From the covers down to the content they are awareness of the anti-Bougainvillean tools exploitation, indoctrination and genocide.

And the writing spree I am going through is so powerful since I went through that war and I cannot hide that fact in the third 2014 book (crisis memoir), the Brokenville (pictured in my hand). I have no reason to hide but tell my suffering and endurance in that 10 year war that foreigners created for us. 

And as a writer I am finding blessing and the will to write on when Bougainvilleans react with love to my works. When I first walked the streets of Arawa in 2013 October returning home from Madang, an old teacher, broke into tears shaking my hands and telling me: ‘You are doing Bougainville good; keep telling our side of the story that PNG keeps polluting us.’

Another father of 6 children was driving to work but spotted me wandering a lonely egret and halted to shake my hands and express his feelings. ‘Thanks. I just saw the cover of your book and anointing enveloped me. Keep writing for you are the true son of Bougainville.’

Since my 2011 books entered the Arawa Secondary School, my former school from 1997 and 2000, students are always rushing to sit with and copy of the books. One of the students sent me a Facebook message saying: ‘Real Bougainvillean writing.’

Getting such comments makes my heart whole. That was the purpose of writing as a Bougainvillean and that is for Bougainville to love my works since all my work is for Bougainvilleans. Impact will come with time and my dedication to my career of writing.