A Petal No More

Late Dr. Regis Stella.PNG writer and scholar

His father was killed during the Bougainville Crisis. After the Crisis his mother and sisters fled in-land and settled at a plateau on a rolling hill at Bana in the Nagovis area. They planted coacoa to regain their strengths and lives back. Last Christmas he returned to the village to put up his mother’s headstone.

On leaving the village to Port Moresby, the late Regis Tove Stella told his sisters that it was the last time he would return home alive.

Instead a few months later his body was flown back to his village to lay next to his mother. For two nights and two days the people from all over the area to mourn his passing.

On the week he died I did a book review of his latest book: Unfolding Petals: Readings in Papua New Guinea Literature, which would have been launched a day more if he had remained alive.

Dr. Regis Tove Stella was someone I shared part of my life with for the better part of our university years and later as a writer and scholar. Our friendship began 28 years ago at the University of Papua New Guinea. Our journey in those 28 years was one I would describe as the journey of a lifetime.  Our dream was to write the greatest book ever written by a Papua New Guinean.

The late Dr. Stella was born on 3^rd of May 1960 at the Tearouki Marist Hospital in Bougainville. His parents Mr. Maurice Tove and Maria Nogo were proud parents with the arrival of their son in this Banoni speaking region of the Autonomous Region of Bougainvile. The village of Matsunke celebrated the arrival of one of their brilliant son and had now farewelled him forever.

He began school in 1968 at St. Joseph Murua Primary School. Later he was transferred to Our Lady Queen of Peace Haisi Primary School to complete Grade 2 to 6 between 1969 and 1973.  His Grade 7 & 8 was completed in Buin Provincial High School in the years 1974 & 1975.  Grade 9 & 10 was completed in St. Josephs Rigu Marist High School between 1976 and 1977.

In those days St. Josephs was one of the best schools in the country that saw its top students enter the University of Papua New Guinea to do Preliminary Year. The late Regis was one of those students who entered UPNG in 1978. After 1979 he withdrew from studies to seek employment in 1980. He began work with Tubu Advertising, a local advertising company in Port Moresby. From there he moved on to work as a Public Relations Officer with the Japanese Embassy in Port Moresby between 1981 and 1982.

Before re-enrolling at UPNG again he went back to Bougainville and took up employment with the then PNGBC in Buka, as a bank teller in the year 1983.

In 1984 he re-enrolled at UPNG. That decision to specialize in Literature was important to the late Dr. Stella because his interest was in writing. After his BA Honors degree in 1987 he took up a teaching job at Aiyura National High School in 1988. For his BA Honors sub-thesis he wrote about the forms and styles of Banoni Music—the first ever written by a Papua New Guinean.

In 1989 he was recruited as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Papua New Guinea at a time when the National Academic Staff Association was pushing for localization of all academic programs at UPNG. So began the next phase of his journey which saw him attend the University of Wollongong, Australia where he earned a Masters with Honors, under the supervision of Professor Paul Sharrad, a leading authority on postcolonial and Pacific literatures. His MA thesis was written on the plays written by Papua New Guineans.

He returned to UPNG, for a couple of years before taking up his PhD studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, under the watchful eyes of one of our former teacher at UPNG, Professor Bill Ashcroft, a guru in postcolonial theory and practice. His PhD thesis entitled “Reimagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject” was later published by the University of Hawaii Press under the prestigious Pacific Islands Monograph Series, put out by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Dr. Stella’s influence goes beyond the borders of PNG to cover Oceania as well. The following are his books:

• Moments in Melanesia—important book in PNG high schools.
• Gutsini Posa (Rough Seas)—first novel.
• Melanesian Passages—co-written with Lynda Maeaniani, short story collection.
• Mata Sara (Crooked Eyes)—second novel.
• Unfolding Petals: Readings in Modern PNG Literature.
• Reimagining the Other.

These works are monumental works that generations of Papua New Guinea will benefit from, but the man had lived a life without the riches and fanfare that accompanies great writers and intellectuals anywhere in the world. He was truly a man without glory to boast about or a man who fuzzes on the impossibles. He truly understood life and celebrated it without sharing a tear about the hangovers of yester years. He lived a life that is unassuming, often predictable, and most times jovial, especially when we shared a beer to share out notes on literature, life, society, university, and the world as we know it.

We took a road of writing and scholarship without knowing where we were heading to. Most times we depended on each other, our informal notes, and our professional mutuality based on common struggles and visions. I had him to bounce off a few intellectual tidbits and he had me to do the same. We were the same coin with two sides. He was reserved, but was a very hard working individual and a private person his whole life.

May God give the late Dr. Regis Tove Stella eternal life and rest for fulfilling what was expected him when he first arrived in this world in 1960.