Tropicalities

“Divisive” Festival

I WRITE of my concern regarding the Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts just held in Townsville. After this Australian ex perience, it is obvious to me that future Festivals should never again be given to a metropolitan country.

The island performers were well pre pared, colourful and exciting but we, the festival audience, and many of the visiting delegations thought we were in a police state and not in the joyous South Pacific.

We were oppressed by the constant high profile of soldiers with walkie- talkies, pri vate security guards and liaison officers peering closely if you spoke to any old friends, even of many years’ standing there was a closed, divisive atmosphere where people European antecedents were definitely unwelcome.

Instead of the wonderful lift that was expressed throughout the four other fes tivals, this one was too political. Activists mainly Aboriginal and Maori were prominent, aiming to indoctrinate discor dant views as widely as possible among the islanders. It was a blatant exercise in political propaganda hiding behind the fa cade of an artistic festival. Activist flags were always visible and even the logo cho sen by the Townsville committee was sel fishly and exclusively Aboriginal and Islander Australian so disregarding the fact that the festival is for ALL South Pa cific countries.

This insult disregarded the tradition followed by all other festival hosts, where the logos were required to include ele ments common to all South Pacific Com mission countries; the sun, the Pacific Ocean and canoes. Sadly, all this has turned the emphasis away from the joyous mood of other festivals to one of disrup tion with strong political overtones.

Future Festivals of Pacific Arts should stay in the island countries where they ob viously belong.

Sina Powell Pago Pago American Samoa

“Tremendous” Festival

HAVING returned from Townsville after two weeks of wonderful camaraderie and enjoyment, I would like to say “thank you’ to all who participated and organised the Fifth Fes tival of Pacific Arts. It was a celebration of sights and sounds of a tremendous stand ard. May you all feel well loved for sharing your efforts with us.

Brian Wray

Sydney, Australia

New Caledonia’S Remarkable Men

AS Pacific Islands Leaders of the Year for 1988 I nominate New Ca ledonians Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Jacques Lafleur, for their remarkable con tribution to a long-term peace solution for the future of their country.

F Grossini

Rome Italy

Anarchy In Png

I WOULD like to support the opinions expressed by Chris Ashton in the June issue of Pacific Islands Monthly. I thoroughly agree with four of the points he made about he mentioned the country’s “misconceived education system”, and he was correct. There seems to have been a misunderstanding between the former National Government, the Education De partment and academic institutions such as the University of Papua New Guinea and Unitech. This leads to improper plan ning in catering for those leaving schools, especially at the lower levels. This is clearly seen in the community schools and the high schools; there are not enough tertiary institutions and vocational centres for them, so they turn to direct means of in come earning. As a result, the number of juvenile crimes is increasing, especially stealing and drug- trafficking.

It doesn’t surprise any Papua New Guinean and not only those in the Western Highlands to see PNG “slip ping into anarchy”. This was expected to happen because it was never the intention of Mr Wingti’s Government to improve law and order: rural economic development was its priority, not an area that needed radical action.

Mr Ashton’s detailed description of crimes just highlighted a few of the crim inal activities that have been increasing over the past few years. Public places are becoming unsafe, especially at night. The streets of the main centres such as Port Moresby and Lae have become danger ous; homemade guns seen in the Western Highlands are also found in the Eastern Highlands to hold up the public travelling along the Okuk Highway.

Break-and-enter and armed robbery are the main causes of many companies with drawing from PNG. The withdrawal of the plantation management company in the Baiyer River, as mentioned by Mr Ash ton, is typical. Expatriates often leave the country for similar reasons, and because they cannot tolerate threats to their lives from criminals who demand money.

It is true now that the task lies with the

police force and the judicial system. How ever, they don’t have the money, skills and manpower to overcome anarchy: the re sponsibility rests on the shoulders of the new Papua New Guinea government.

Morath Maire

Sogeri National High School Boroko, Papua New Guinea

Solomons Housing: Brickbats ...

I AM writing in response to Larry Writ er’s article, “Islanders Help Them selves To New Homes” (Pacific Islands Monthly , July) concerning housing recon struction in the Solomon Islands follow ing damage by cyclone Namu in May 1988.

I read Mr Writer’s article with distaste and shock. As one of the co-ordinators of the Guadalcanal Province Cyclone Namu Rural Housing Reconstruction Assess ment Project, and having lived in the Guadalcanal Plains (where most of the se vere flooding took place), I find the article horribly erroneous. It is a grave injustice that Mr Kitchener has presented the pro ject as being near completion when; Not one of the 1600 homes on Guad alcanal reported as having been destroyed has, as of August 20, received even one sheet of roofing iron.

The National Disaster Council and Mr Kitchener’s program have decided that seven wards will be excluded from the roofing iron program, when they have for the past two years been leading people to believe that they were indeed going to re ceive roofing iron.

In May this year Mr Kitchener went to Malaita to inspect progress of some 800 packages of roofing iron, to discover that only seven homes out ofBoo had iron roofs.

The only housing reconstruction that has taken place in the Guadalcanal Plains was the introduction of one chainsaw, given to the area’s local government only five months ago; no demonstration houses have been built for the people of Guadal canal Plains, and only six on the entire is land of Guadalcanal.

Guadalcanal Province decided to put together its own assessment of damaged housing because assessors were unfamil iar with their areas of assessment, missing affected villages entirely and lumping other villages together. Not realising that some groups would have to abandon their partially destroyed homes because of flooding, loss of gardens and so on, asses sors “wrote off complete villages.

I could continue, but the fact remains that this program has been littered with controversy from its beginning, with ship ping delays, funds being unavailable and management confusion. That certainly ►

4 doesn’t sound like a success to me!

Nor would I think the funding agencies involved from the Netherlands, New Zealand, the EEC and the United States would think so.

Which brings us to the real tragedy of this program: the rural people who have been waiting and waiting for their roofing iron, and who have (partly, I will admit, because of my own naivete) been de ceived by radio broadcasts and newspaper articles telling them the materials are coming. It now appears that after 26 months, some of the people of Guadal canal will receive what they’ve been promised.

As for those people on Guadalcanal who have been excluded, maybe Mr Kitchener should go out to their villages and tell them personally that the program has been changed. Your magazine, sir, and your readers, have been duped!

Vincent Paris

Guadalcanal Solomon Islands

... And Bouquets

ON behalf of the committee respon sible for the housing reconstruc tion program in the Solomon islands, I would like to clarify certain mat ters raised by Vincent Paris.

Concerning distribution of materials in Guadalcanal, distribution was delayed by the failure of the provincial administra tion to provide accurate materials. Distri bution began in Guadalcanal in September and will be completed in two months.

Concerning exclusion of certain wards in Guadalcanal, this is not true: these wards will be assisted when funds become available and materials have been received.

Concerning construction of houses, the project’s job is to distribute materials and assist with training and advice; its job is not to build houses. The villagers are re sponsible for building their own.

Concerning teaching of new building methods and provision of sawmills, since January 1987 the project has had teams of builders working in the worst affected areas teaching disaster-resistant building tech niques and has been operating five port able sawmills in these areas since December 1986.

Concerning assessment of damage, the National Disaster Council sent trained, impartial observers to the areas con cerned directly after the cyclone to assess the damage done to food crops, roads, houses and so on. Guadalcanal Province made its own assessment 12 months later by sending out blank application forms to provincial staff to distribute as they saw

fit. The results were laughable, and were not accepted by the people in the areas concerned nor by the national government.

Concerning controversy, shipping de lays and funding problems, it is correct that we have problems with funding and that distribution of materials has been delayed by bad weather and unavailability of ship ping. There are, after all, only three ships in the whole country capable of carrying this amount of material.

It is not correct that there has been “a lot” of argument and controversy: there have been approximately eight disputes about ownership of materials, out of the 4150 families who will receive materials in the first phase of the program. It is signif icant that it is Mr Paris a Peace Corps volunteer who is complaining, not the Solomon Islanders living in his area.

Funds were not available to assist everyone at the same time and priority was given to those areas that were most se verely damaged. Mr Paris lived for some time in one of those less severely damaged areas and was not intimately involved in the project; he is therefore speaking from an unrepresentative and very limited perspective.

My committee would like to clarify one further point: it is the first phase of the project that is almost completed, not the whole project. The second phase of the project is being delayed until a proper evaluation of the first phase can be made and funding finalised. Otherwise the ar ticle is correct, and we welcome this ac knowledgement of what has been a successful project to date.

Richard Pezzulo

Chairman, Rural Housing Rehabilitation Management Committee Honiara Solomon Islands

A Dumping Ground For Old Food?

AS a housewife in the island para dise of Western Samoa, my great est challenge has been to produce a daily menu that is both tasty and nour ishing. It is through this effort that I have become aware of one particular problem, for which I hope someone has at the very least a better explanation than I do and ideally an answer.

I cannot buy milk with a shelf life of more than four months, and lately only of three months. I have three boxes of cereal in my cupboard, all with a “use by” square ... but with no date printed. Recently I had to throw out a box of cereal due to rancid

raisins, and weevils in spaghetti and noo dles seems to be the norm here.

These are a few examples, but the amount of short-dated and near short dated food here is overwhelming (let me add that I purchased these foodstuffs at one of the major retail outlets in Apia, and in no way is this a criticism of their business).

I have discussed my concerns with a number of expatriates here and am told this is not a problem peculiar to Samoa but one that occurs in most of the Pacific is lands. As a North American I am well aware of the many consumer protection agencies operating in the Western world and believe manufacturers are dumping what they consider to be unacceptable food on the smaller developing nations.

I have never before been motivated to write to a magazine and ask “Why?” or openly to criticise, but I find this situation appalling and would love to be proven wrong. At the risk of sounding completely naive, may I say that once again it appears the almighty dollar takes precedence over humans.

Amy Parker

Apia Western Samoa

Penfriends Wanted For Png

I AM a 17-year-old Papua New Gui nean in search of a pen-friend within the Pacific islands and elsewhere.

Would you please publish my name and address in your magazine so someone willing to do so may write to me? If I re ceive many letters I will pass some on to my friends.

Herman Huate

PO Box 761 Lae, Papua New Guinea

Tabai Walks The Tightrope

MY choice as the Pacific’s Leader of the Year is Mr leremia Tabai, President of Kiribati.

In 50 words: “President leremia Tabai walks the tightrope with on one side tra ditional life {te katei ni Kiribati ) and on the other side the modern, Western world {te katei ni i-Matang ) very skilfully con necting both worlds but not compromis ing. In these fast-changing times he is the best leader a small nation can have.”

Thank you for reading the opinion of a Dutchman on Pacific politics. Please accept my compliments for your excellent magazine, which I read every month with pleasure.

Mark Overbeeke

The Hague Holland