Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

 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 ...

 Ahuia in later years at Kilakila   (courtesy of Eric Johns, PNG History Through Stories Vol.2)  The emergence of indigenous literary traditions across Oceania goes far back to the early introduction of European technologies, ideas, writing instruments, literacy, and print media in the 1880s. Reverend W. G. Lawes, who settled with his family in Hanuabada in 1874 translated the four gospels in Motu. The translation of the gospels was completed in 1885. Lawes held the view that to establish the Christian church it was important to develop the abilities of people to read Christian literature. By 1920s a reasonable number of Motu Koitabuans knew enough English to communicate with the missionaries and the administration officials. Many Papuans, however, were uninterested in using English to capture their experiences or to express themselves in writing. The English language was viewed as an uncultured language with the power to corrupt the cultural and social fabric of the Papua...

  With so much going on around us we tend to forget about important foundations of our history. I could not get out of my mind the much neglected discussion on the first Papua New Guinean writer. Every now and then we need to acknowledge the important parts of our history as we move forward. I would like to acknowledge the first Papua New Guinean to write a book in the 1930s. A New Irelander by name of Ligeremaluoga wrote and published his book under the title The Erstwhile Savage: An Account of the Life of Ligeremaluoga in 1932. Ligeremaluoga is from Kono village in New Ireland Province. Ligeremaluoga’s book is by all accounts the first written account by a South Pacific Islander. Most of what we know as Pacific writing is dated to the 1960s and 1970s. Last month I presented a paper at the University of Hawaii to discuss another early Papua New Guinean writer by name of Ahuia Ova of Hanuabada, who published his memoirs in 1939, six years after Ligeremaluoga’s autobiography. ...

The threat of international intervention and involvement of Sandline mercenaries in the Bougainville Crisis was sabotaged by a military faction. On the economic front the Papua New Guinea Kina was devalued, government’s external reserve was depleted, and a slow decline in economic growth began. Social conditions and lifestyles of people changed: increased rural urban drift, overcrowding and overpopulation in urban centres, increased law and order challenges, uneven development between major centres and districts, and the increased number of young people out of school without formal employment. This social political canvas served as the context for my colleague, Dr. Regis Stella, a Bougainvillean, to write Gutsini Posa or Rough Seas, his first novel. Dr. Regis Stella completed the book through a writer’s fellowship at the famous University of Iowa Writing School in USA. The Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, published the book in 1999. Since its...

 Callan Services worker examines girl --courtesy of Callan Services   We hear little about the world of deaf and hard and hearing in Papua New Guinea. In recent times I was contacted by an old friend and colleague, Steven Wawaf Labuan. I was thrilled with the contact after so many years. Wawaf, as I had known him, was teaching linguistics as a tutor at the University of Papua New Guinea before he returned to the Morobe province. The first thought I had was that Wawaf had completed a book of poems chronicalling a bohemian life outside the corridors of high learning in the great grassland of Markham Valley. That was possible, rememberingWawaf as that radical poet willing to recite nationalisticpoems along side those streect preachers at the crowded Boroko commercial center. But not so, I would soon discover several emails later. Steven Wawaf Labuan is a different kind of poet altogether. He is someone who is more interested in working with teaching language to the deaf an...

The link between literacy and democracy in contemporary Papua New Guinea needs our attention at this time. The general election is around the corner few months away. Papua New Guineans will vote their favored leaders to represent them in the National Parliament. The election process is both cumbersome and challenging for most people. The educated ones will find the voting exercise meaningful and easier to do, but the majority of Papua New Guineans living in our rural villages will need more than a helping hand to participate in the election process. More than 50% of our people have no basic literacy to help them with the election process. Most times we assume they understand the meaning of, democracy, election, voting system, and what makes good leaders. Most people who vote do so because of what they understood as an important exercise in citizenry. Last Christmas students in some of our tertiary institutions used their vacation period to educate and inform their communities about...

I sometimes envy writers in our society who struggle so hard to have their writings published. I have been writing since the early 1980s through sheer conviction that what I do is for the sake of doing what I do best even without having to get paid for it. That conviction has led me to do extraordinary things and discover extraordinary people around the world. Over time I managed to have my own writings published around the world. I also managed to give readings of my work in PNG, Fiji, Sydney, Hawai’i, Canada, and Minnesota, USA. The life of a writer is never one that is static, but it is one that is full of creative spirit and commitment to transfer human thoughts to print with as much honesty, passion, and integrity. Writing helps a writer to breath life where there is no life, no conscience, and truth making. In the journey I made as a writer in this country I discovered interesting aspects of such a life. To write a good book takes many months or years before it is published. Th...