Don’t leave us big brother Bougainville

Letters

DEAR brother Bougainville, Mother Nature nurtured us as four siblings attached to mainland New Guinea.
I would have never known you were feeding on mum’s other breast until the white man came and opened up the horizon allowing us, your three siblings, to note your presence.
What a marvellous feeling to note I had a big brother in Bougainville and New Britain and another brother just older than me in New Ireland.
We all came to understand mum more over time and her home in Melanesia.
The bondage between us grew stronger and we loved each other very much as we should from the beginning.
Because you are the big brother, the three of us can only follow you and all the time.
What you discuss with mum interests us, like you declared to us that “your valley was changing”, which was portrayed in a short film documentary in the 60s.
You had a pot of precious stones which the white man wanted all for himself.
We did not understand what it was that the white man was interested in.
You went to great lengths to tell the white man he should do things with your approval but he was not listening.
All he wanted was to take as much as possible in the shortest period of time before you and the three of us realised what he was doing.
You became agitated and you grumbled but mum was too slow to respond and we your three brothers never had a chance to come to your aid.
We were caught between you and mum but the white man had fled.
We and mum became the scapegoats, for everybody on the face of the earth turned upon us, blaming us over something we did not do.
You have called for bigger shares of what little mum had and you wanted it so desperately that you have made your own rules and threatening to run away from us all, for what? May we ask?
The person who had an issue with you is coloured ‘white’, we are as black as you, so why are you blaming us for something somebody else did?
Can’t you understand that all four of us have been feeding from the same mother?
Can’t you see the tears in our eyes and mum’s wailing because you decided to forsake us?
Please listen to our mother’s plea and be the big brother you are so we all can stand tall like the kwila trees all around us.

The Youngest Brother

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