Greatest of insults to Sir Brian

WHEN death approached, Sir Brian Bell nominated, we are told, where his final resting place would be.
He desired that he would be buried beside his dear wife.
His wife had died some 20 years back, we gather, and was buried at the 9-Mile cemetery on the outskirts of Port Moresby.
The man from Chincilla in the Australian state of Queensland had come to PNG at a tender age in 1954.
Everything he owned he carved out of this country. He became a citizen and loved the country immensely.
Although he remained quiet and unobtrusive throughout his life, the measure of the man can be seen in the remembrance messages that continue for a full two weeks after his death.
He had enough money to buy land and create a grand private cemetery of his own to hold his remains in this country or anywhere else. Instead, he chose to be buried among common Papua New Guineans alongside his wife.
Common Papua New Guineans, we say, because we take great pride in sending our dead back to their place of origin, regardless of the cost.
We often wonder at the amount of money that is raised for the dead when, alive, he or she would never have raised that much, even if they begged for it.
Those who are buried at 9-Mile are those who had no relatives or whose relatives were too poor or as those whose bodies were never claimed.
Sir Brian’s choice was to lie among the many nameless infants he helped bury on numerous occasions. He chose to live with adults who had died of AIDS and whose relatives shunned them or disowned them. He chose to live with the hundreds of others whose relatives could not afford the money to pay the morgue fees.
It is common knowledge that, on many occasion, it was Brian Bell money which bought the coffins for the nameless hundreds who had to be buried and Brian Bell money that paid for the land and other burial expenses. There was no funeral.
And, it was there as he rested fresh in the ground alongside common Papua New Guineans that the greatest dishonour and disrespect was shown him.
His body was dug up only days after his burial by unknown criminals who, perhaps, thought that he would be buried with some valuables. They did not know the man, stupid people.
The insult leaves us speechless and even ashamed.
We can only say that mercifully, the man himself is dead and might not know the insult visited upon his body.
We say “might” because we can never know for sure whether his spirit can ignore such an act.
This is one more indication that Papua New Guinea is changing and changing for the worst.
Once upon a time, this would have been unheard of. In the dim recesses of the past, graves might have been dug at nights but those practices followed customary traditions that have been forgotten and are abhorrent today.
We respect our dead.
Only last week, we reported the case of a gangrape perpetrated upon female mourners from the Western Highlands who were accompanying a body through Nipa in the Southern Highlands.
Again, disrespect for the dead and for tradition.
But this insult upon Sir Brian cannot be forgotten. He had no natural heir to the multi-million-kina business he built up from scratch.
We know he had several adopted children and doting managers and staff of his company.
Once his will is read, it will be known who he has bequeathed the bulk of his wealth to.
If we understand the man enough, it is highly plausible that he will not have left out charity organisations that he had struggled long and hard in his life to support.
For a man who, living or in death, can reach out to touch Papua New Guineans in this way, we – each one of us – owe him a debt in apology.
The bulk of Papua New Guineans cherish the man.
We must not dwell on the work of the few demented people who choose to live their lives below the line of thinking humans.