Sunday, 6 July 2008
Honiara is abuzz this weekend. Solomon Islands is celebrating 30 years of independence and people from the island provinces have descended on the capital join in. The Solomon Islands have the highest population growth in the Pacific: 70% of the population are children and youth.
At the Commonwealth Youth Programme’s South Pacific Headquarters, which is in Honiara, I met up with some of these young people. We shared lunch while they talked about their hopes and dreams for their country.
17 year old Jean Sahu, is setting up a recycling program at her school. She told me Honiara doesn’t have any recycling and her plan is to start small, in her school community and then extend to other areas. At 17 I would never have even thought about doing something so ambitious, let alone actually doing it. 22 year old Harry Alick, is a youth representative who is involved in some of the constitutional reforms that are currently being developed to recognise traditional ways. He wants to go to university and study constitutional law.
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Friday, 4 July 2008
I flew out of Port Moresby today for hot Honiara. 2 days working, 3 nights playing. That’s Moresby. The place has changed as you would expect it to after 10 years. That was the last time I was here. I was disappointed to find the old clock with four faces that was in the middle of the main intersection in town was gone.
Back in the day, a policeman would stand underneath it with long white gloves directing traffic. I used watch with fascination at this strange kind of dance. Madonna may have made “vogueing” popular, but the PNG police officers in the sixties and seventies were way ahead of her. That clock should have stayed. I should have been heritage listed.
The Papua Hotel is gone, so is the RSL at Ela Beach. I wasn’t game to go and check out old parliament house because that would just depress me. This building is where PNG took its first steps to nationhood. I heard there are plans to build a replica of it somewhere in Port Moresby, which is terrific, but it’s not the same as preserving the real thing. I can just picture a group of school kids being shown through the place where the first parliament sat on Independence Day – 16th of September 1975. It’s something that I’m sure would inspire them. To know our history and where we’ve come from helps us to go forward.
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Tuesday, 1 July 2008
The bilum is an iconic symbol of Papua New Guinea. Wherever I go around the world, if I see someone with a bilum, I always go up and talk to them. “That’s a bilum? Where did you get it?” “Have you been to PNG?”, “Who gave it to you?” These are the questions I ask. I have made many friends and heard many stories thanks to the bilum.
The latest and most dynamic of my “bilum friends” is Florence Jaukae, known around her home town of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea as bilum meri, bilum lady. Florence is the creator of the bilum dress – a dress that’s shaped using this unique weave.
I met up with her this morning at the Goroka bilum market, the largest one in PNG. Florence gave me a crash course on how to spot a good bilum. It starts with the twisting of the fibres of particular plant material, although these days wool is used more. But the string still has to be twisted to make it a good bilum.
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