the dull drumming, Yes of the flat drums. Thud dada thud da thud dada thud

Writer

My late Kandre, Vincent Warakai, a robust scholar and intellectual, left a lasting impression on me as a Papua New Guinean with this poem “Dancing Yet to the Dim Dim’s Beat”, which was first published in Ondobondo, a literary magazine of the Literature Department of UPNG in the 1980s, when I studied Literature as a degree program. The poem was later republished in Albert Wendt’s Nuanua: pacific writing in English since 1980s, making it one of the most powerful pieces to have been written by a Papua New Guinean since Independence.  Below is the poem:

Dancing Yet to the Dim Dim’s Beat

We have been dancing

Yes, our anklets and

Amulets now are

Yes, grinding into our skin

No longer are they a décor

Yes, they are our chains

We have been dancing

Yes, but the euphoria has died

It is now the dull drumming

Yes, of the flat drums

Thud dada thud da thud dada thud

Yes, it is signaling, not the bliss

But the impending crisis.

It is the period young Papua New Guineans took up the urging to participate in the dancing, but found ourselves dancing either to the flat beat of the drums, or to the Dim Dim’s Beat, which was still in the background even after Independence, a decade ago.

It was the time some of us join forces to start the PNG Writers Union in an effort to keep the literary flames burn. We did not have the support of the government, from the UPNG, or funding from development partners or even companies. We struggled to get our works published. There was no help from the University either. 

A decade past before the two students who studied Literature joined the teaching staff and decided to start Savannah Flames, a literary journal to help publish the writings of our students. This too did not last. There was no funding for such projects. Our struggles must not be watered down to failure or lack of efforts on our part to help others get their works published in whatever form. Everything we want to do in this country needs funding. For my colleagues and me, we struggled through our lives, to get our works or other writings of other Papua New Guineans published. We arrived where we are through hard work, perseverance, and a lot of sacrifices. In our own limited way we have contributed to the growth of literature and writing in the country. No one is going to take that fact away from us. Our critics have no right to belittle the contributions we have made.

With UPNG Literature Students. Gaire Beach 2018

The late Kumalau Tawali, a PNG poet whose works remain the goal posts for scoring winning points, is often recalled to mind about the postcolonial condition we find ourselves in as in his poem “The Bush Kanaka Speaks”:

The Kiap shouts at us

forcing the veins to stand out in his neck

nearly forcing the excreta out of his bottom

he says: you are ignorant.

He says: you are ignorant,

but can he shape a canoe,

tie a mast, fix an outrigger?

Can he steer a canoe through the night

without losing his way?

Does he know when a turtle comes ashore

to lay its eggs?

The Kiap shouts at us

Forcing the veins to stand out in his neck

Nearly forcing the excreta out of his bottom

He says: you are dirty

He says we live in dirty rubbish houses.

Has he ever lived in one?

Has he enjoyed the sea breeze

blowing through the windows?

and the cool shade under the pandanus thatch?

Let him keep his iron roof, shinning in the sun,

cooking his inside, bleaching his skin white.

Former UPNG Literature students
with Kalo Villagers, Central Province. 2001.

The Kiap shouts at us

forcing the veins to stand out in his neck

nearly forcing the excreta out of his bottom,

He says: you will get sick.

He says: you’ll get sick

eating that fly-ridden food.

Haven’t I eaten such food all my life,

and I haven’t died yet?

Maybe his stomach is tender like a child’s

born of yesterday. I’m sure he couldn’t

eat our food without getting sick

Every white man the government sends to us

forces his veins out shouting

nearly forcing the excreta out of his bottom

shouting you bush Kanaka.

He says: you ol les man!

Yet he sits on a soft chair and does nothing

just shouts, eats, drinks, eats, drinks,

like a woman with a child in her belly.

These white men have no bones.

If they tried to fight us without their musket

they’d sure cover their faces like women.

Reading this poem again sends chills down my bone and freezes my blood!

I will never subscribe to a Dim Dim’s Beat or music from its flat thuds. After 43 years of Independence, are we still answerable to the Dim Dim? NO. NO. NO. I have learnt to speak for myself, and will not let others speak down on me. For Papua New Guineans who have read Tawali’s poem cited above or John Kasaipwalova’s poem: “Reluctant Flame”, I ask: Is there a need to dance to the Dim Dim’s drum beat? Papua New Guineans speak for yourselves! And respect your fellow Papua New Guineans for resisting such neocolonial ‘mastas’ yelping like a sick dog. Before you glorify the Dim Dim ask yourself what you have done to help other Papua New Guineans prosper in their lives, not just in writing but also in other areas of life?

Gayatri Spivak asked a question that demands the Dim Dim’s attention: Can the subaltern speak? This question is only answered by those who are in the subaltern category, such as those in postcolonial spaces such as Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guineans can speak for themselves and no one else should assume to have the moral authority over them, let alone former colonial power (Australia) or its agents be they individuals or agencies.  “In fact, Spivak’s essay is not an assertion of inability of the subaltern voice to be accessed or given agency, but only a warning to avoid the idea that the subaltern can ever be isolated in some absolute, essentialist way from the play of discourses and institutional practices that give it its voice” (Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin 1998: 79).

Primary School Students at the National Book Week in Lese Oalai, 
Gulf Province 2018

There is no place for accepting neocolonial masters in Papua New Guinea societies. We do not have to answer to late colonials or anyone assuming the voice of a helping hand. Instead we should be aware of such vindictive malice. Franz Fanon’s body of work on neocolonial masters and the new postcolonial elites have taught us to be weary of the remnants of the old emperor, whose cloth is silk, shinny, and spotless. We must recognize the difficulty of acceptance of the shadow of the emperor haunting us in our own house.

The term neocolonialism was coined by the first President of independent Ghana, and the leading exponent of Pan-Africanism, Kwame Nkrumah in his Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965): “Nkrumah argued that neocolonialism was more insidious and more difficult to detect and resist than the older overt colonialism” (Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin 1998: 162-3). The existence of neocolonialism in a former colony is disguised in different forms and strategies, which are often extended to the spaces occupied by the new postcolonial masters and elites. The perpetuations of old mistakes and same old same old excuses as a helping friend cuts right across, through the veins of people who have come out of the nightmares of colonialism. We should be weary of those wolves in a sheep’s skin.

Again, the point to be stressed here is that the term neocolonialism has “since been used to refer to any and all forms of control of the ex-colonies. Thus, for example, it has been argued by some that the new elites brought to power by independence, and often educated and trained by the colonialist powers, were unrepresentative of the people and even acted as unwitting or even willing agents (compradors) for the former colonial rulers” (Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin 1998). Is it right for me to support the agenda of the Dim Dim as the former colonial master? Of course NOT! Simple, I was born in the colonial period and witnessed all that has happened to my father, who has been a victim of colonialism and its systematic subjugation of a people to subscribe to the ideas of the Dim Dim without questioning its validity and negative psychological rearrangement as victims, infantilized, and powerless people always needing help from those with access to power and means of production.  

When are we going to learn that we do not have the same priorities, let alone responsibilities? Our mandates are defined within the social political or economic spaces we occupy in the society. What good is it to winch and whine as if my resistance is affecting the Dim Dim’s project? I resist even the slightest suggestion that I am responsible for anyone’s failure? I resist subscribing to the ideologies promoted wittingly or unwittingly as vindication of all that I am not.  For those who support the Dim Dim’s rancorous display of spite, I challenge you to come out of that hoodoo dance and dance to your own rhythm.

I am reminded that Edward Said was very particular about the tendencies of orientalism taking over formerly colonized societies. “But, most broadly, Said discusses Orientalism as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient ‘dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ ((Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin 1998: 167-8).

In this formulation, we become aware of the Dim Dim’s power play in this Orientalist formulation. We know that the “Orient is not an inert fact of nature, but a phenomenon constructed by generations of intellectuals, artists, commentators, writers, politicians, and more importantly, constructed by the naturalizing of a wide range of Orientalist assumptions and stereotypes. The relationship between the Occident and the Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin 1998: 168). If I am seeing this at work, how senseless is it to submit to such relationships of power play? I say this not lightly, but with much concern about the exploitations of intellectual property rights of Papua New Guineans trapped in this relationship. I’d rather be on my own then jumping on a ship full of pirates and misfits.

Having said that, I have this to say to my critics. I have earned my keep. I have taught so many young Papua New Guineans coming through the University over more than 25 years. Many have benefited from the creative and intellectual input I offered to them through various courses I teach at the University. It is my job to teach them how to write, but it is NOT my job to hold them by the hand to take them to an editor, publisher, or their agents. I have contributed to the country through various engagements in outreach programs organized in communities, institutions, organizations, and national government departments. I have helped many people find their calling as writers and assisted many more that I chose to help. I have my priorities and these are important to me and in what I do. I have my contractual obligations, which define what I can do and what I cannot do. 

Academic spaces are not clearing houses or publishing houses for writers and would be writers.

Final Year Students with Lecturer (Aundo Aitau) 
& writer

I do not need a reminder about what I need to do. I have done more without government funding, donor funding, or even private companies funding of literary projects in the country. I have done what I can only do because I feel it is my doing and not because someone else wants me to do. Funny how people always feel that all I have done were for my own sake alone. Ridiculous how twisted people can be in promoting their personal agendas! Self-gratifying blunder!

If I did do things for myself it is because I have learnt to struggle as a writer when there was no funding, publishing houses, or any publishers in Australia or elsewhere willing to publish any works written by Papua New Guineans. Even now the same challenges remain. That is the reality. I am not going to have sleepless nights over it.

The life of writer or even that of a self-publisher is a struggle. Better to dig deep into one’s pocket to have one book published. Whether money is made or not is irrelevant. There are no free handouts or free lunch boxes for those crying out loud for not making an effort to be independent. We are not better off now then we were 30 years ago when I started writing.

My good friend, the Australian writer, Drusilla Modjeska, wrote in Meanjin on PNG these endearing words as a reminder to all Australians and Papua New Guineans sharing the literary journey: “There are many anecdotes of glazed indifference when it comes to PNG. But if you speak to Australians who have lived there, even briefly, it is a different story. They know that there is a spirit to the place that can make everything else seem somehow flat, and it doesn’t take much prompting for them to talk of the way it has shaken them around, changed their perspective, and even their lives. This is perhaps why, outside journalism and the academic disciplines, so much Australian writing about PNG has taken the form of memoir… As a textual response to cross-cultural experience, memoir can be problematic” (Modjeska 2003: 51-2). The problematic arises from the question of agency of speaking voice. Who is speaking for who and whose voice is being privileged? Much has been written about Papua New Guinea by Australians and other Westerners, but the voice of the Papua New Guineans have remained silenced within the pages of those memoirs: “Writing that comes from the experience of ‘being there’ raises contentious questions of speaking position and audience. Who speaks to whom, and for whom, and to what effect? When the postcolonial Australian writes of the mind that is engaged and changed by PNG, how do they represent the mind of the people among whom this change occur? Whose story is it, and whose can it be?” (Modjeska 2003: 51-2). I can go through the list of Australians writing about PNG since the colonial times, up to now and give a detailed critique of each one, but I will leave it for another time.

With National Libraries and Archives Board Members &
@ Kerema Coronation High School with Principal and Head Teacher, Gulf Province.

Writing culture has yet to find a firm root in PNG. At this time different people and agencies are doing their part to promote and encourage writing. We all are doing our part in this country. We do not get the credits for the work we do.

There is no point arguing that only one project is important than others.

I am happy with my contributions to various educational activities and literary projects that promote writing, books, reading, and literacy in PNG over the last 30 years. I have developed mutual respect and valuable relationships with writers in PNG, Australia, and within Oceania. I do not need to change that for anyone.

The life of a writer is a full time commitment. It is not one for those seeking overnight success, fame, and glory.

A writer is a product of the society in which he or she has anchored his or her life in.