Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Media Literacy Workshop Participants in SIL Ukarumpa, 2009. Photo credit: Steven Winduo Writers are never at home with themselves because they live a thousand imaginary lives. Interesting moments do arise with the meeting of fellow writers and others who admire writers. Often, one is left wondering how a Papua New Guinean writer makes sense to other fellow writers. How then does a writer relate to others, especially to the readers of their works and tribal members? The declaration: “So you are a writer. What do you do?” is used by those who do not know what a writer does. Many people tend to think a writer is someone who lives in the world of imagination without any sense of reality. Many people tend to think of a writer as someone who has no time for other interests or occupations in life, except the world of the books. I have lived my life as a writer for the last 25 years. I don’t know the reasons I became a writer or the reasons I chose to write. All I remember now is that m...

Picture: Regis Stella (PNG Writer), Nora Vagi Brash (PNG playwright), and Sam Alasia (Solomon Islands writer) in USP campus, Fiji. The intensity of the emotions I felt in losing my mother 20 years ago surfaced a day after the anniversary of her passing. I felt the intensity in the words of the poem that came to me on that day. I began to compose the poem with the keyword “special” as I sat alone in the car outside Taurama SVS shopping area. It is not the method I use in writing poetry, but a spontaneous outpouring of the refined subconscious I have been living with and breathing for the last 20 years. Later, in the comfort of my home, I tried reciting it without writing the poem. The recital was flawed, but the poem in memory of my mother remained uneasily lodged within my subconscious that whole Saturday. In connecting with the subconscious where poetry resides I met T. S. Eliot reciting The Wasteland as if he was standing next to me beside the Gavamani Road linking Manu Autoport...

Young Waigani Community School Dancer In a show of unspoken satisfaction on the Education Department’s efforts to have sufficient learning resources provided to Papua New Guinea primary schools the Waigani Primary School was again chosen to host the launch of the 2010 Textbooks Distribution. The event was no small event considering the presence of the senior officers of the Department of Education, representatives from NCD schools namely Boreboa, Noblet, Hohola Demonstration, Wardstrip, Carr Memorial, and the Diplomatic presence of the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Papua New Guinea Ambassador Aldo Dell’Arriccia and his Excellency the French Ambassador to Papua New Guinea. Credit must go to the Headmaster Mr. Kala, the staff and students of the Waigani Primary School for demonstrating the leadership in setting the benchmark for facilitating national educational events such as the launching of the National 2010 Textbooks Distribution. I say this as a proud parent ...

After Vanuatu, the Oceanic Discoverer entered the Solomon Islands waters, beginning at Santa Anna, where a fiesta of activities, were staged to welcome us. As soon as we anchored the early morning had begun on Santa Ana. This friendly Island is 7.5km off the San Cristobal’s eastern tip, and 77km from Kirakira. Formerly called Owa Rafa or Owa Rah, the island is a raised coral atoll. From certain aspects Santa Ana can look like a peaked cap. Mt. Faraina, a 143m plateaus in the centre, dominates the whole island. After the welcome we moved to the entertainment area. The tourists gathered in a small shade, made of timber and corrugated iron roof. The entertainment began with panpipe music, a women’s dance, and a couple numbers on fishing rituals. Santa Anna Islanders are very good carvers and bead makers. Most of the woodwork is made from hardwood and ebony trees. The carvings depict the life of the islanders such as fishing and myths about sharks, bonita, and other marine life. From San...

The unfavourable weather denied us the opportunity to go ashore on Tanna Island in Vanuatu. We stayed on board the Oceanic Discoverer. I just watched in disappointment as the inclement weather kept us at bay. That night I felt seasick for the second night. This was part of the job, I assured myself rather than complain. By the time we arrived at Ambrym I was up and ready for the day. I felt much better. It was the first time on this journey that I was very comfortable. I had had a good night’s rest. In the morning I woke up to the calm waters off Ambrym. As we journeyed into the bay I realized that since we are in Vanuatu waters I felt much more at home. Ambrym Island is an interesting island. Ambrym is a volcanic island. The Explorer took us ashore to Ranon Beach. Ranon has a black sandy beach. Volcanic eruptions deposited their volcanic elements around it. A welcome ceremony was performed on our arrival. As part of the official party I was given a present of a wooden garamut carvi...

Melanesia, a concept developed out of the need to categorize, a particular group of people with certain characteristics, distinct from the other groups, namely the Polynesians and the Micronesians, who occupy the vast expanse of Ocean known as the Pacific—another term first inserted by Europeans to describe the huge body of water dividing the East and the West. In daily use of these terms we forget to ask ourselves if we really know what we are talking about. We say we are Melanesians, but it is difficult for us to describe what it means to be a Melanesian. The easiest route for our response is to list Papua New Guinean features of customs, belief systems, and traditional way of life. That is probably where our understanding of what it means to be Melanesian lie. It is never stretched far enough to include other Melanesians in other countries. Melanesians are scattered across the south-western Pacific islands with many distinct languages, cultures, and unique political experiences tha...

The Kanak Apple Season is a book of short stories by the Kanak writer Dewe Gorode. The book is a selection of short stories written in French by this prolific national figure and one of Pacific’s powerful woman in politics, Dewe Gorode. She was born in 1949 at Ponerihouen on the central east coast of New Caledonia. The Kanak Apple Season is an anthology of selected short fiction penned by the Francophone speaking Melanesian of New Caledonia, whom I had met briefly in a conference on Indigenous epistemology in Suva, Fiji back in 2006. The book was published in 2004 by Pandanus Books for the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in the Australian National University. Peter Brown translated and edited the collection with the assistance from Australian Research Council, Australian National University, as well as the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in New Caledonia and the French Embassy in Australia. The Kanak Apple Season interested me for a very good reason. For...

We often assume that our tribal art expresses the symbolic commemoration of ancestors and the representation of clan spirits. Masks and carvings are supposed to stand for such figures, making them become the canonical icons of primitive cultures that predate the arrival of Europeans. Appropriating them to suit the modern fashions, uses, and in institutional adaptations raises the question of incongruity. The perceived notions of cultural conflicts and contradictions are underscored by one simple rule: culture is always in a flux and so too are our needs, perceptions, and notions of who we are and what we do to maintain that identity in the face of change. In his book Oceanic Art (1995) Nicholas Thomas explains the significance of our tribal art: “Ancestors and deities, however, are important not simply because they are dead or divine, but specifically because legends concerning their accomplishments frequently account for the ways in which life, work and political relations are organ...

Our arts, literature, and cultural knowledge systems were employed to define the nation we are proud of today. If we need to make the Vision 2050 work let us put our money into reaffirming our sense of what it means to be a Papua New Guinean through our arts and literary culture. My boldness in making this statement is derived from the foundations set by our early writers and artists. Under Ulli Beier's guidance, young Papua New Guineans used writing, drama, poetry, and arts to capture national sentiments and to promote PNG cultures. Beier’s book Decolonising the Mind is not just a memoir that recalls the Beiers' time in Papua New Guinea; it also tells of the activities and people with whom they associated during the period leading up to independence. It covers the vibrant period of literature, art, performance, writing, and publishing at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). This was a time of quick planting and harvesting of the literary and artistic talents that the Be...