Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Professor Frank Griffin, Executive Dean of School of  Natural and Physical Sciences, reading our names of graduates in 2013 UPNG Graduation ceremony. Getting a job in Port Moresby is a very competitive experience. A new graduate will need to take the advice that the degree or diploma is only the starting point, but having additional personal skills, marketable qualities, and highly motivational skills developed through one’s life can make getting a job easier. The NCD Governor Honorable Powes Parkop, who was the keynote speaker in the afternoon session of the 2013 UPNG Graduation Day drove home a very powerful message of great wisdom and the direction taken by the current regime of O’Neill-Dion led government. Governor Parkop said something like this: “Let’s not be a nation of job seekers; let’s be wealth creators and employment creators. Go back to the rural areas where land is and use the knowledge you gained to create wealth. The government is putting the...

So many issues and ideas seem to fly by, waiting for me to catch them in their flight, as if it’s a battle of ideas for me? Whatever it is I need to write down such ideas for the sake of making sense of the confusing random ideas that flood my world almost every second. I have already settled for something to begin this discussion. I have decided to write about the burden of responsibilities. We owe it to our families, our communities, and our nation for shouldering our burdens. Our society has instilled in us the values of responsibility and responsible behavior expected of us in our daily lives. The most demanding of these is that we must take on the responsibility of leadership. Many of us take on the burden of responsibility as a result of the social, political, and economic environment we are in at the present time. Taking on the responsibility means to deal with a situation that no one else would. It also means that the decision to take on responsibility goes...

In the last few weeks the issue of understanding ourselves and our ways had dominated the discussions that I had in both my professional life and in this column. The importance of understanding our ways begin when we return to what we know and lived as Papua New Guineans. Only then, do we begin to make sense of ourselves. Without which we will remain sterile in the fast changing world of global influences through imported cultures, ways, technology, and those things that are the products or results of global cultural movements. In a small classroom that can fit about 30 students a seminar on cultural studies touches on the importance of framing the problem of Papua New Guinea ways. The discussion is led by two students who are completing their fourth year of studies in Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea.   Their journey began with an innocent entry into the academic corridors of learning behind grey walls of UPNG’s hard-knock learning environme...

Beautiful Wewak Beach Centre for Sepik Heritage Meeting Honorable Luamanuvao Winnie Laban of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand last month at the Council Room of the University of Papua New Guinea was indeed memorable. Honorable Laban is an Associate Professor and Assistant Vice Chancellor (Pasifika) at the Victoria University. I had the rare moment of discovery that she was the first Pacific Islander Member of Parliament in New Zealand and is a close relative of the famous Pacific writer and elder, Albert Wendt. Honorable Laban’s grandfather was one of the first Samoan missionaries to Papua New Guinea. UPNG VC Prof. Albert Mellam  Meets Hon. Luamanuvao WInnie Laban Her invitation for collaborative research and learning from each other strengthened my thinking about the kind of cultural research we do in Oceania. I am now researching folk narrative structures in literary and cultural productions of Oceania. My interest in teaching...