Nigerian Independence Day

---

PNG News #18: Nigerian Independence Day
(October 4, 2004)

This week is exam time and so far I have spared you the inevitable tests of learning. Life has become slow motion for me and fast-paced for instructors. An article in last week’s National newspaper outlined how in the cycle of financial crunches, students have turned against the administration for not allowing them to take their exams. The administration (that includes me) says that they have not paid their fees so of course they cannot take their exams. The students are responsible to pay for the governments’ supposed-to-be sponsored money.
And since this is the end of our academic year we have the awful prospect in this awful economy of next year’s fees needing to be raised. Some students want to complete their degrees as fast as possible because they fear escalating fees will leave it impossible in the future. And I escape to the sea of imagination and the mercy of water..

I go pelagic and commune with the fish. The temperature continues to be out of the realm of heat possibility. Friday I had to get cool. Left the campus by 4pm and spent two hours cooling down in the water and taking the above photos. In the subtle seasons the Lahara, south easterly winds, produced the jellyfish that attacked me last week. First stinging my mouth and chin, followed by wrapping tentacles around my right wrist. The sting produced a sharp smarting, like the wrist was being sliced with a sharp knife, followed by seven days of itch. All this to say, I entered the water fully dressed- wondering if I would ever cool down to body temperature.

After the requisite Friday pizza with anchovies (crave that salt) Christine and I attended Nigerian Independence Day party. October 1, 1960. It was a seagoing night hearing about an Australian’s yacht building, an EU boat project and the maritime law from Emmanuel our celebrating Nigerian.

The house of the party has been painted in the colours of the Nigeria flag which matched the celebration cake (which was eaten all up by the time we arrived but I got to see the cake in the video of the party). The national anthem, like the PNG anthem is in English. With so many tribes’ language to be disputed, in spite of independence from England the country song of independence uses the language of the colonizer. However Nigeria did exert its autonomy and its ability to take risks when they reverted back to driving on the right. They have not done this in PNG, which is too bad for me as I continue to be challenged driving on the left.

And so back to work, editing a brochure for Eco Tourism on the Sepik River, after two of my colleagues separately were held up on the campus at gunpoint on Saturday night.

On on (as they say in the Hash Harriers) to this week.

PNG News
October 11, 2004

Last Sunday was a trip in the cool caves; we would do anything to lower our body temperature.

Then, this week the festering heat and the stifling air - which is enough to pickle ones brain- has given way to the perfume of mangoes and fear. Friday was the beginning of the rainy season. The ocean was calm and the rains came down deafening all other sound. The water danced either up from the surface of the land or filled the dried cracks of the earth. The children took off all their clothes and slid in the mud. Bols was cancelled and the visibility for snorkelling this week was muted.

Today is an anniversary - I have been in PNG three hundred and sixty five days in tropical what? The jigsaw of what it means to contribute to a ‘have not country’ through development work continues to elude me. Certainly there are development words that seem to have shape and form- however one wonders whether they have substance or are merely the jargon of a sector that responds to political whims. The gift of help is just as difficult for the receiver as it is for the giver. In fact maybe it is more difficult. How does anyone respond when they have no choice? When they are given a present which they don’t know if they want or not? Maybe it is true- optimism is a disease.

On this thanksgiving, I guess you could say that I am not suffering from any diseases. Like last year this time when the settlers were being sent back to their villages, fear is surfacing with some aggressive acts. The students leave next week and then the protection of numbers decreases. I am in the enviable location on the campus- as I am right across the road to the buai market in the main movement in the campus- I don’t fear for my TV. It is very difficult to actually understand the impetus for the crimes, last week when they held up the Austrian volunteer they took her laptop but didn’t take the cables- rendering it useless. And they robbed three students who had not much money. And they merely physically attached a national colleague. The value of a life appears different in PNG, and this includes ‘beautiful Madang’.

Things are not that insecure. I was able to bicycle about 10 km to my snorkelling resort and of course see my fish. There were a few new fish as a result of the rains.

It is interesting how I have managed to be at week number 42 of my weekly PNG news when I have been here for 52 weeks!
Until next week (or two),

PNG News: Be forewarned: This news is about my 8 to 5 work

A graduating third year student in the Environmental Health Officer program reported that their treasurer spent their graduation party fund. The VP Academic, who is not an academic, breathed a sigh of relief, with less money they will produce less damage in the community.

A couple of months ago I wrote about my trip to Rabaul, the smouldering volcano in the background and the Japanese tunnels chiselled through the hills. My work was auditing a Catholic Teachers’ College, which was bursting at the seams. They took so many students in that some of the males needed to share beds. The prior principal left as he was selling fast money schemes to the staff and students, as well as using college funds for the same. The new principal is in trouble for intimate entanglement with a student. In this world multiple wives is the norm for the ‘big man.’

The Director of the Catholic Higher Education Council has been fired, in spite of his wife not pressing charges for his bush knife attack. This increases administrative work on our Catholic Brother /VP Academic.

However, it is an article in the newspaper that really stung me today. A Health Worker in training allegedly raped a pregnant woman while he was assisting her to deliver her first baby. The Western highlands Provincial Health Services director gave the following statement.

“…He was only a trainee. And this was his first time to be exposed to a woman’s sexual organs, and he may have had erections after erections while attending to the birth and finally he did what he did.”

At this point we are not sure whether this is one of our Health Extension (HE) students.

Currently the university is reviewing this program’s curriculum as well as assessing the use of the campus in the Highlands for second year practicum. A group of teaching staff and administrators reported on their visit to the area. I want you to appreciate some of the surprising elements of problem solving at work in this country. Work elements like ‘compensation’ and ‘job security’ have unique and different operational definitions than in the west.

This group from Divine Word University first met with concerned local authorities from Kainantu. The District Administrator welcome the Campus Committee and he states his concern with the matter of transferring the students. He says your students are safe here.

Security has been a long running concern at the adjacent Kainantu Hospital such that the Hospital wards have been mostly closed all this year. If security is a concern for the Hospital, then we must be concerned for the students’ security also, although as the District Administrator has said nothing has happened to them. Yet.

The CEO of the hospital said it was disturbing to hear of the transfer, and in fact the news is bitterly taken. Fencing is the whole focus of the present problem, and this is a Provincial matter—this will fix the security issue. And again there have been no student abductions or rapes.

The Hospital closure is due to the demands of the Nursing Union since 1996, when the nurses were being raped and threatening people were prowling the grounds. They work from 8 am to 4 pm from their homes; and the wards are closed. The nurses feel safer in their houses. Even recently there have been men running round with high-powered guns, and there are bullet marks in one of the clinics in the neighbouring area.

The CEO urged that we not give in to terrorists. What he is requesting is that there be no rash decision to close and go. Withdrawal of the program will have a definite negative impact on the community. DWU should support the Hospital to get finances for security to protect us all from petty crime. The fence! That is the key to security. And besides crime is nationwide, and the problems of Kainantu are blown out of proportion. The law and order problems have not affected the students themselves. The hospital is not closed, but scaled down because of security risks. Barula on the Highway is the centre of trouble, not Kainantu itself. The local politician is informed of our problems. Currently there is no operational money for patrols for Community Health training, no food and no diesel for the patrol work. The core problem thus seems to be funding and human resource management. The Hospital is allowed a fax only, while the phones can receive incoming calls.

“The local police have an attitude problem. The old men must retire, but there has been no money for retrenchment. We want young police, but even then, those who have been to Australia find it hard to reintegrate into the community.”

“Yupela i skulim mipela na nau yu karim olgeta samting i go bek long ples bilong yupela. Nogat tok tenkiu long yu. Bai yu tok wanem long ol pipel bilong Kainantu after 30 years?” (Translation: You have taught us and now you are taking all your things back home to your place. You did not say 'Thank you'. What will you tell the people of Kainantu after 30 years?"

In other words if the HE students are pulling out, there should be compensation for use of the land for the last 30 years. There should be payback to the Province for what it has done for training.

In a different meeting a local politician suggested that the HEO program must remain. However given present difficulties, perhaps they could go out for 2 years and then come back.

The Provincial Advisor said they were aware of many difficulties at Kainantu Hospital. One problem had been the local security company. The local village had felt they had a right to these jobs, but they caused so many troubles they had been paid out and terminated.

Interestingly there was a surprisingly balanced evaluation from the students about their Kainantu training. Many students found the living conditions to be OK; the dormitories and the facilities. In fact, the men’s toilets in the dormitory are filthy and dangerous, with a necessary electric pump sitting surrounded by a puddle of water, and rubbish everywhere. The girls’ situation was better. The fact that some day’s meals were lacking, seems not to have caused a great disturbance in hindsight.

They praised the clinical tutor and said he had given them good classes and input material. They were almost unanimous in saying that the Community Health classes and experience were not helpful or completely missing. They felt they had had no useful input from the tutor, and did not even know how they were expected to study for their exams apart from their own general knowledge. A delegation of students from second semester Community Health said they could not accept failure in their CH exams because they had had so little tutoring, and their experience had been limited to a session at the beginning of the semester.

Needless to say the university is exploring other options to Kainantu. And at the main campus where I live, we too are having security issues. And for many people the answer is a fence! We are in a difficult position where if we terminate the security company that is providing inadequate service, there is a very real threat of payback.

Such is the context of decision making in PNG. Reading about the BC Human Resources Management Associations conference this week about the ‘healthy’ workplace makes me laugh and wonder about these different worlds.

---

Photos

Sweetlips
Photo by Jan Messersmith