The air I breathe,

The food I eat,

The water I drink,

Hey I’m alive,

Then along you came,

Turned my whole universe inside out – topsy turvy!

The air I breathe – NOT ENOUGH!

Constantly outta breath!

The food I eat – hmmmmm…nah!

Harder to find food now!

The water I drink – well beer tastes better and is probably safer too.

No more clear wells!

Half the time…

I’m sitting, complaining about development, infrastructure and money.

Once I looked into your eyes – I was GAWNEH!

A mess!

The words above describe the love affair that happens after a Papua Niuginean is ensnared by the ‘resource industry’. Words that have been echoing in my head the more I research and learn about the extractive industry in PNG.

These words became painful shouts after I watched EMTV’s (PNG’s only commercial television station) replay of Allison Langdon’s report on India’s, Jharia Coal Mine.

So the story was about this village that’s been turned into a coal mine at a place called Jharia. The report aptly described Jharia as ‘a place worthy of Dante’s Inferno with 60 square kilometers of nothing but burnt ground, toxic smoke and people that look like they have lost all hope. The report showed footage of children and haggard looking adults carrying huge baskets of coal up these hazardous mountains for US$ 0.50 (K1. 05) a basket. Then a man called Ashok Agarwal was interviewed. It was told that he was educated and wealthy enough to leave, but he stays on to fight for his people. What he said struck a chord so hard that I think if you were nearby you would have heard the loud ‘clang’ go off in my being. Ashok said,  “We are the people who are suffering. In fact there is a paradox - rich land and poor people. This is perhaps the richest land in the country and you see the poorest people here. So it’s a human tragedy.”

Oh my goodness – lewa buruk na aiwara kapsait wans! I sat there for a good 10 minutes dazed after he said those words, because I thought of Papua New Guinea.

We constantly hear people saying that we are one of the world's most resource rich nations in the world and yet we are also rated as one of the poorest in the world!

Poverty is SERIOUSLY one of those ‘eye of the beholder’ principles then. Compared to those people in Jharia we are RICH! We have food to eat as long as you’re not lazy, shelter and have something that no non-Pacific Islander can really understand. We have strong family ties that go beyond genetics and bloodlines.  As long as we have family (whether related by blood or not) we are secure.

Let us not be fooled by ‘experts and scientists’ na ol kain kain ol so-called save man, who come and lie and say ‘We have better options, we can make you rich, we can make you someone’. When in truth we have everything! We just need to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day.

*lewa buruk na aiwara kapsait wans = heart (lewa) breaking (buruk) na (and) aiwara (tears) kapsait (spilling) wans (ones/moment)

*na ol kain kain ol  = and (na) all sorts of (ol kain kain ol)

* save man = knowledgeable/experts/educated

©Klaireh...