By Reginald Renagi

I invite the public to take time to read a series of interesting articles by a Port Moresby Street blogger, Martyn Narmorang in the popular Keith Jackson blog: PNG ATTITUDE. 

Here Martyn is very perceptive and  raises many real-life daily issues that confronts Papua New Guineans on the streets. I would like to just address a few aspects of what our young neotribalist talks about.

NO, NOT ALL Papua New Guineans use the ‘K’ word, but yes, you do hear such words every day on the street, at bus stops, and in markets, settlements and middle-class homes.

Many people do talk like that.  As an expletive, the ‘K’ word is used by a person when they are trying to attract attention to someone or something. It may be evoked for mundane reasons or under extreme provocation or duress.

I enjoyed reading Martyn Namarong’s “Heart of the matter is in the mind of a man”, but it left me with a lot of mixed emotions that I have constantly faced for many years.

Martyn’s insights were a good catalyst for some meaningful discussion by PNG Attitude readers. CUMA’s Lydia Kailap summed up well:

Martyn has a greater understanding of life in PNG than any of the pampered big men who live in their insulated luxury.  Honestly, the street boys of PNG have far more to offer than the Fat Cats. The most valuable natural resource that Papua New Guinea has is going to waste on the street; like Martyn. These people have nothing left but the human spirit to carry on and survive; to make something of themselves against the odds. Because of their suffering they have first-hand knowledge of what is going on in PNG and know what they need.

I agree with Lydia that our marginalised youth and young adults know more about what life is in PNG today than the Prime Minister, Cabinet and Opposition. The politicians and many community leaders are so caught up in their own world that they have allowed the system to badly fail Martyn and a growing number of young intelligent, displaced and marginalised neotribalists.

Every day I see and talk to young people like Martyn in my neighbourhood and on my daily walks on the streets of Mosbi.  Some of my urban nephews and nieces are similarly caught out in this vicious trap. They say their family and village kinship links have grown weak and relations with the homefolks have eroded over the years their parents have lived in an urban area. They find comfort in a setting they are used to, and not the village.

It’s a real paradox in PNG.  Resource rich but cash poor. Why should a country so blessed be saddled with a situation where it sends people to the streets to survive.  They become the forgotten people.  Many die still in their prime.

Martyn is one of a growing number of young intelligent people pushed out to the margins of mainstream PNG society. What’s the point of an expensive education to Grade 12 when the government cannot create jobs for the neotribalists hitting the streets in their thousands every year?

What a sad state of affairs we have and what a bleak future for young PNGeans when the politicians have no answers. So, in the final analysis, it’s not the government but the citizens who must organise themselves better from here on to change the country’s future.

The future now lies in the hands of its neotribalists whether working or still searching for that “something”.  They all have an important part to play in what PNG will become in future. Yes, the heart of a nation lies in the hands of its people!