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Published: September 12th 2005
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PNG News #15 Under (July 18, 2004)
This week's theme simply
under
Under surfaces; my counter, PNG culture, and the Pacific ocean
Under my counter Under my counter is a half dozen canned products from Australia
In my fridge most things come from Australia
Except if it is from the Philippines or Singapore
My shopping basket is a lesson in the high cost of AID
This is a country where people fed themselves for 30 centuries
This what remains in the mouth
After swallowing the wisdom of the west for 40 years
All is left is the taste for processed food
Stomach slaves to distant shopkeepers
Let's just have another Coke and forget it about it.
Under the surface PNG is the dependent on aid and the attitude of the cargo cult fights movement towards self reliance. The expectation of cargo without factories lies below this culture. Goods will drop out of the sky as they did when the first white men came. White men were ghosts of their ancestors.
Cargo Cult Doctrine
1. People who join a local government are sinners. They will not have eternal life.
2. Believe in nothing but the bible.
3. Those who stand firm against council temptations will see the face of god in heaven.
4. Pay your $3 annual subscription to us and we shall get cargo for you. We will open the road of cargo and the cargo will flow down to us like a waterfall. We will rule this country, take the plantations, houses, cars, trucks, in fact everything, and we will become the richest people in Papua New Guinea.
5. Don't let other people know about our beliefs. If you do, the white people will block our cargo.
6. When other people come to talk to us, you can either go to the bush and stay there until they leave, or attend their meetings but do not believe them.
7. It looks as if the Administration will ask us to pay fees for our children?s education in a few years' time. Send your children to school but do not pay fees.
8. We are going to wait for a child who will lead us to the life of prosperity and everlasting joy. This child, a boy, will come from a virgin and he will be known as Emmanuel.
9. Go to church every Sunday; pray and read your bible everyday; don?t drink liquor; save but don't give; listen to others but don't try to understand them; go with women, steal food and money, but try not to be found out.
10. Persuade more people to be members of our group.
1 p. 103-104 Matane, Paulias 1972 My Childhood in New Guinea Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia
(The author is the new Governor General) I
hope the doctrine explains some of the undercurrents in this fusion of old and new. Of course with everything appearing so easy and so simple on TV it doesn't help the situation.
(TV actually reduces crime here as it keeps people off the street!) Below the surface is bubbling with tribal and land disputes, an economy fails and corruption thrives. The result is anger, frustration and crime.
Under my house A sly fellow sleeps under my house every so often and a very insect-infected dog sleeps there more often.
Under the water Here is where I find my peace. It is active and luxurious down there, and the traffic only collides intentionally.
Salman Rushdie in his book Shame, says that,
Gossip is like water. It probes surfaces for their weak places, until it finds the breakthrough point; so it is only a matter of time
.. for the university gossip and Madang ex-pat stories to surface in this small community. I guess that is why I live below so much.
Next week going to Port Moresby to work with another theological institute then on to Brisbane to see Travis, then to Vancouver (back to the future?). Back at my computer August 15th.
PNG News- Up in the air (August 17, 2004)
The Catholic Theology Institute in
Port Moresby was populated with young national men choosing religion as a life. One of these men, Joel took me to the Australian war cemetery on Remembrance Day, Friday, July 23rd.
Jeremy, from the Wantok newspaper took me on a glorious tour of the port capital (POM). We saw the legislature building, the markets and stopped at the Holiday Inn for cappucinos.
Here is what Jeremy emailed me subsequently.
Hi Patricia,
Can you remember what time we were at the Parliament on Saturday? Well at 2pm a gang with guns and knives held up a police commissioner and his family, subsequently one of the raskols was shot and killed. See Post Courier Tuesday 27th July Page 3 .
Best Wishes
Jeremy Up in the air 36000 feet, defying time, the pilot announces that the US has a new law that we are not allowed to congregate on an airplane. And we ask what happened to our community?
Everywhere laughter filled the Vancouver spaces. It was a celebration of aging rather than fear of.… Laughter was so loud it bombed the city and lights lit up the night sky (of course the annual fireworks competition
contributed to this). Rolling laughter moved the ocean's waves.
Sitting on Shirley's balcony, my eyes circumnavigate the Science World globe, which separates the Burrard Inlet from the concrete artery of Vancouver. The city is working, cars pulsating through its veins and the white domed spaceship stadium and the glass casino at the Plaza of Nations bring earth, spirit and ingenuity together in a relentless architecture of human possibility.
Brisbane, my son, offers new landscape, new buildings to bombard my senses.
I am an international basket case, having locked the keys in the trunk of my dad's car and misplaced my valued USB cable. Maybe I need to return to the heat and the slow pace of PNG. In any case, I am back. I am off to hike Mt. Wilhelm will be back at my desk on Tuesday, August 24th.
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