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Date Posted: 03:23:39 02/14/00 Mon
Author: Anonymous
Subject: An alternative grassroots perspective-how do my fellow educated PNGeans respond?
In reply to: 's message, "reality check" on 17:35:33 02/13/00 Sun

> OK!! Perhaps so. Now tell us what reality is?

Here is an alternative reality. I'd like to ask what my fellow educated PNGans think.

This was a grassroots poem written some years ago, but which has gotten circulated around through NGOs and grassroots movements. It isn't perfect but it expresses the outlook of many people in the village not blessed with the educational opportunities but observant anyway. These are the types of village people who are smart but aren't out to con others or otherwise yang themselves up ladder of progress at the expense of everyone else.

Anyway read it and tell me if it is a wrong expression of the situatino today in PNG. I've always liked it.

I liked my own old custom ways
Which my ancestors handed to me
I worshipped my Gods whom I adored
For them I killed pigs before

White men came from far away
To change my way of life
They brought with them some peculiar ways
Which affected my whole life

Before they came over to my land
I had freedom to roam
I hunted my food from shore to shore
In the mountains I built my home

When the sailing ships came into my bay
I felt there was no doubt
But I was naked so I ran away
And hoped I won't be found

The land was once my pride and joy
Until white men arrived
They took things over from me that day
Or maybe I was bribed

White men came and bewildered me
They kidnapped people too
Took them away to overseas
Over-worked them til they died.


NB: The last part describes the blackbirding that went to get slave labour for the sugar cane plantations in N Queensland on towards the end of the last century and beginning of this century. Also the forced labour that went to work the coconut plantations in the islands. Our tok pisin language evolved during that time.

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