Buai, gems and solar lights

LIFESTYLE

Musings of a native returning home like a newcomer

By ALPHONSE BARIASI
KEROSENE lamps to 10-year-olds are antiquities here.
It was only a few years ago that a kerosene lantern or two were found in nearly all households, including the teachers’ houses in the mission school up on the hilltop.
But today, they no longer buy kerosene in one or five-litre plastic bottles from the Mobil or Puma Energy service stations in town. Instead they have solar panels, rechargeable batteries and solar lamps from mostly Chinese shops.
And at night the homes are lit with solar lamps and or LED flash lights. The once favourite Tiger Head brand flash light using National Panasonic batters is no longer to be found.
That was the first notable change.
The second: Cocoa pod borer has practically decimated the crop and where there were dozens of brown bags loaded on trucks you now get white bags of buai taking up much of the space, squeezing the human cargo into uncomfortable sitting positions in 30-seater Isuzu PMVs. The Toyota Dyna, the once favourite PMV in this country is not to be found anywhere.
Mikarew (say Mkar’v) buai has to reach Madang and make it to the highlands. Its price is crazily erratic; much more volatile than the price of crude oil when the Opec gets a whim to play with the west.
At the best of times buai can earn up to K400 per bag but the last time it came to as low as K50 per bag when we visited recently.
We were told of a truck driver carting 70 bags of the carcinogenic nut (when combined with mustard and coral lime) from Mikarew all the way up to Wabag where a cool K28,000 in “Enga-cold” hard cash was netted in a day. (But not without a near-accident far away from home though!)
Buai has unofficially replaced cocoa as income earner number one for this part of Bogia district when only a decade ago, cocoa ruled and betel nut was only sold at the local market, not as the “export commodity” it is today.
Although lucrative at times, the betel nut trade comes with a lot of negotiating and heckling, like any other commodity trading on the world market. There is no designated trade post; bargaining by the hardy highlander buyers can happen right at the doorsteps of the seller up in the hills or down along the North Coast Road somewhere. It does get a little heated with exchange of stern words and threats but in the end the seller gets his money and the buyer his bags of nuts loaded onto a specifically hired truck or bus headed for Eastern Highlands, Chimbu or Western Highland mainly. From there the betel nut can get to further into places like Porgera, Laiagam, Tari or Samberigi.
Some of the Mikarew buai gets to Mutzing, Nadzab, Lae or Bulolo in Morobe, but indications are that the Markham nut is returning with a vengeance after it had been decimated some years so ago by a pig-headed beetle. That may push the Mikarew buai to the periphery.
You would reminisce with sadness the good old days when cocoa was king here. From a small plot of about 200 trees, one could fetch a handy sum for soap, salt, kerosene, and maybe a can of Besta too! And the smallholder cocoa dryer was able to produce up to five bags every two weeks for the Madang-based exporters.
Sadly the crop has been dealt a hard blow. Ripe pods appear healthy from the outside but when cracked open, the beans are deformed or cemented together by the viral disease. Cocoa plots have been neglected for some time now.

Gemstones
The third change story, and one tinged with a bit of mysticism, is that precious stones long hidden under the dust of the earth are emerging. This to compensate for the economic losses in agricultural crops such as cocoa? One can only surmise.
We heard of and met Peter Aguvaua, aka Mops, who has a gem which he had tried to sell but could not agree on the offered amount. He was told it is a jasper, but it appears more like a sapphire.
His story kind of confirms the mysticism or spiritual connections to these things.
Peter’s story goes that he dreamt on occasions of someone telling him that something special and precious was hidden in a certain part of his clan’s land.
Also, on a number of occasions, he had heard voices from that particular area, the upper reaches of a stream. “It sounded like a whole village was there; I heard adults talking and even children playing,” Peter says.
One day, without giving much thought to these bizarre events, he went for a shower in the stream. Squatting he began to clear dead leaves and other debris from the stream floor when he saw two translucent blue stones, one resting on the other. He quickly cupped them with his palms from the water but when he opened his hands, alas, there was only one.
The story goes that you can only get one at a time!
Holding this strange object in his hand, he was reminded of his dreams and believed this was what was meant.
He first took it to a fellow villager who had worked with a senior geologist and has some knowledge of minerals and precious stones. After examining the stone, that villager told Peter, “Boy, you are somebody!”
The stone could fetch several hundred thousand kina, he added.
Peter then took the gem to Madang town to sell it. An initial offer was declined because he had been told that the stone could fetch a lot more than that.
Not satisfied with the offer, and advised to have the stone assayed at a professional laboratory, he travelled to Lae. However, apparently did not have that assay done.
We were told that an overseas buyer had been made aware of the stone and would like to travel into PNG but would want to at least 20 other similar gems for him to buy.
Others came forth with their gemstones too
A number of other people from around his community and the province who have found similar gemstones have known about Peter and approached him with theirs and asked him to find a buy for them all.
Peter currently has a number of gems in his possession and is looking forward to assays to determine their real worth before selling them to any interested buyer in the country or abroad.
Tragically, while he was away from home on an extended period, Peter’s wife fell critically ill and passed on early this month.
Peter and others in possession of these gemstones look forward to a confirmation of the worth of their finds hoping to make a windfall that would change their lives forever.
And why not? All around Mikarew, change is happening. Solar lights are lighting up semi-permanent homes of corrugated roofing iron and rough-sawn hardwood from the nearby forests with the use of portable sawmills.

A stop along Momase Highway?
Mikarew sits along the tail end of the mountain rangef stretching from inland Madang and Sumgilbar districts, lowering into the lower Ramu plains. From a wide-eyed non-engineer’s view, this presents quite a feasible connection along the proposed Momase Highway. Running the link along tdistrict centre would encounter myriads of swamps and mangrove areas around the mouths of the Ramu and Sepik Rivers.
Instead, from Mikarew, the highway could cross the Ramu at a much narrower section with higher banks, to link East Sepik via Angoram.
An exhisting road connects Mikarew to Giri and other villages on the banks of the Ramu.
Due to ongoing ethnic tensions and the poor state of the Base Camp-Bogia road, the Giri communities now use the Mikarew connection.
In fact this is a much shorter and more convenient route for not only the communities immediately at the back of Mikarew but also people along the banks of the river further up into the Middle Ramu district as well.
That Momase highway could be years, possibly a couple of decades into the future. And it will be one mega catalyst to development in Mikarew, Momase and PNG.
Hopefully, there will come a day a Mikarew man wakes up in the morning and debates with himself whether to drive to Madang or Wewak for business.
He could take the longer route all the way to Jayapura even!
For now solar energy, portable sawmills and buai are turning lives around gradually. Soon, for some, precious stones will as well.