The porker

menace at Panguna

From Lynette Mckenzie

in Panguna No-one complained at first when one trotted down from Moroni village, dashed across the port-mine access road, then scrambled up the hill towards camp 10. Drivers were well aware of local customs on Bougain ville. They knew better than to hit a pig. Then it became a constant flow of four-footed traffic and drivers were finding it hard to miss one as they made the swing around the mountain road enter ing the mine at Panguna.

The pigs of Moroni are on the move. It is quite simple, their owner tells Bougainville Copper staff. He is so busy these day with his carry-out food business at the market, that he can’t spare any time for his pigs. It was his custom previously, on his way home in the evening, to collect vegetable peels and leftovers from the kitchen at camp 10. The pigs gave up the day-long rooting and snuffling about and grew fat.

Now, he explains, being smart animals they are simply attempt ing self-service, no doubt in the tradition of the owner’s business.

If the marauders had quietly munched out of the garbage bins at the camp, there would not have been much fuss. But instead they have gone whole hog! The hungry humans are rudely shoved aside in the dining hall; ignored are the security checks at the door as tons of black flesh push to the front of the line. If not served pronto, in they go and find their own tucker.

Most of the camp residents and staff are Highlands men whose respect and reverence for the pig is unequalled elsewhere in Papua New Guinea. Therefore, they were shocked when one BCP manager suggested that a few kicks and whacks with a stick might persuade the visitors that they were not welcome. Anyway, the cooks are cynical of such mild deterrents. “See, it’s not like having flies, rats or even cockroaches in the kitchen. These b- -- s are like elephants, they’d

stomp on you, beat anything to feed their faces”, moaned one.

At the last food foray the numbers had risen to 30. For lack of defence, naked aggression and pandemonium, it resembled a rugby scrum.

The ominous feature of what would be just a funny story, is, that the pigs have spread into the rest of Panguna. A report came in from a fellow at Karoona Creek who likened them to dogs with their nosy habit of robbing rubbish bins and shedding fleas.

A woman in the same residential area, fed up with her husband’s Sunday afternoon snoring, woke him up. The snoring grew louder and after a search they found the culprit, a huge porker asleep under the house.

A shift worker was eating his dinner in Karoona Haus, the single men’s quarters, the other night.

He asked his companion to pass the sauce. This was done, which prompted our diner to ask politely if working on the ball mills in the concentrator made one’s hands go that odd shape. The reply was a grunt!

After mutual discussions with BCP, the Moroni owners (now revealed as several) have agreed to mend the fences, round up the strays and employ a herder. But having tasted the miner’s life, these wily chaps won’t stay at home. Remember George Orwell’s Animal Farm? His pigs led the way with superior brain power!

But, the pig challenge can be met by the mining skills, techno logy and managerial expertise of Bougainville Copper. The answer lies in the laws of supply and demand. Keeping in mind world food shortages and modern trends —why not a merger? In Panguna’s vigorous productivity, there’s scope for both pork and porphyry. • Mr Nason Paulias, of Ratung village on the Gazelle Peninsula’s north coast, left school at the age of 12 to be a teaboy on a plantation, but returned to school three years later and completed his education.

Now he has been made acting Princi pal District Superintendent of Educa tion. He has taught at Mendi and Madang and in 1969 spent 11 months at the Claremont Teachers’ College in Perth. For the past three years he has been district superintendent in Manus, East Sepik and the East New Britain districts.