Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Beautiful Sandy Beach @ Budibudi Island. Photo: Winduo In 2007 I made it into Budibudi Island from Gizo, Solomon Islands. Budibudi is a coral atoll with a less than a 100 people living a life of fisherman without much modern communication. It is really isolated from the rest of Papua New Guinea. Budibudi is one of the atoll in the Woodland Islands group, in the Trobriands ring. I remembered Budibudi vividly as if it was only yesterday. It remained unspoilt, untouched, and remote to most of us. It’s contact with the rest of Papua New Guinea is infrequent. Until recently that was the impression I had of Budibudi Island. I may have been wrong all along. An article,   (Monday 24 June 2019), in The Guardian , written by Kate Lyons , read: “Bust in Budi Budi: the day a fisherman hauled in $50m worth of cocaine” catches my attention. How could this be? It is possible given the isolation of Budibudi straddled in between Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the rest of Woo...

About this time last year I returned from teaching and research assignments at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. In the course I taught over there I included a component on native features films. The first film I showed was Tukana: Husait I Asua? Soon after my return I took a trip to Bougainville to run a workshop for teachers of Buin Secondary, Bana Secondary, and Tonu Secondary. It was also an opportunity for me to travel through the no-go zone area right into the Panguna mine site. What remains now is only a memory like a bad scar, yet the film has kept alive much of the glory days of Bougainville in my visual memory. The film was produced in early 1980s and released in 1983. Tukana ’s release came seven years after Papua New Guinea gained its Independence in 1975. Three years before the 10 th Anniversary celebration, the timely production of the film helped asked deep questions about the direction to which the country wa...

 Melanesian writers: Regis Tove Stella (PNG), Nora Vagi Brash (PNG), Sam Alasia (Solomon Islands), USP Fiji campus, 1999.    One of the outstanding playwright and poet to emerge in Papua New Guinea is Nora Vagi Brash. She remains the foremost and the only Papua New Guinean female playwright. Nora was involved with acting in amateur theatre, radio plays, and street theatre in early 1970s. Her exposure to the world of theatre in England inspired her to write her own plays on her return to Papua New Guinea. The National Arts School employed Nora as an assistant lecturer in puppetry, dance, and drama. She then moved on to become one of the two artistic directors with the National Theatre Company. Nora wrote her own scripts for the puppets using tradional stories of Papua New Guinea. The National Theatre Company toured local villages and performed in the streets. They went to the Pacific Arts Festival in Rotorua and Wellington, New Zealand. They also danced in Point Venus ...