Lessons learned from Kokopo

By KEVIN PAMBA
DATELINE Kokopo market, East New Britain. It is Thursday, Nov 30, 2017.
There is no perimeter fence enclosing the market. There are no tough-talking market minders barking instructions to vendors and customers.
No pile of uncollected rubbish litters the area with the resultant foul smell and flies. There’s no betelnut stain anywhere nor are people wantonly spitting out the reddish concoction wherever they like. This indiscriminate spitting of the reddish concoction – even at close range to passersby and motor vehicles – is an entrenched norm in public spaces of urban centres and squatter settlements on the mainland of PNG.
But, not in the New Guinea Islands regional capital. This is despite every third or fourth person passing by chewing buai. The people here respectfully mind their refuse and dispose of it appropriately. By and large, the Kokopo market is as clean as it can be. Vendors, especially women, selling cooked food are required to have them in sealed containers.
Occasionally a male voice comes through the public address (PA) system reminding market users about rules, appropriate civic conduct, the closing time and the prayer to end the trading day. The announcement of the market closing prayer is a first for me. I’ve never heard of an opening or closing prayer in the markets I’ve been to on the mainland.
The neat Kanua-influenced Tok Pisin emanating from the PA system brings back nostaligic memories of the voices over the NBC’s Radio East New Britain on Short Wave One band on a trusted old National Panasonic transistor radio on quiet nights growing up in my neck of the woods all those years ago.
In the centre of the market is a circular space. The space I’m told is for public presentations including those by church groups and lone preachers.
Outside the southern edge of the market I see vehicles neatly parked. On one side there is a PMV pick-up and drop-off point.
There is no pushing and shoving at this PMV stop. Nobody seems to be in a rush to get ahead of another. Everyone waits patiently and when a PMV pulls in, the people allow the passengers to disembark and once that is completed they get on board.
The scene reminds me of what used to be the norm at the Madang town market bus-stop back in 2000 and 2001 as I wrote in my former The Notebook column in this newspaper back then. It also reminded me of the bus-stop and train station scenes in Sydney I first saw during my study sojourn in Australia’s largest city in 1997 and 1998.
Scenes at Madang town’s bus-stops of today are something else from the orderly and self-respecting public spaces they once used to be 18 years ago.
Down on the eastern side of Kokopo market, along the main thoroughfare, is one of the town bus-stops of PNG’s fourth city. The conduct of the public at this bus-stop is much the same as I noticed at the market PMV stop-over. The town buses are all 15 and 16-seater mini vans.
These town buses grab my attention. They are neat and tidy and well-cared for. In the three and half days I was in Kokopo, I did not see a town bus or rural PMV truck that looked like an un-serviced and faulty wreck that has been forced on the road like happens elsewhere in the country.
At the market and across the town there are no street vendors or hawkers armed with the cheap imported goods pestering the people in public spaces in their bid to make a quick sale. This is a new phenomenon that has caught on like a contagious disease in the urban centres on mainland PNG.
Across Kokopo, there are equally clean and tidy vehicles clearly marked “taxi” stationed at strategic carparks or transporting passengers around town.
This was the first time I’ve been to East New Britain. So I share my marvel of the orderliness of Kokopo with a former school-mate John Mathew who is a staff of the Divine Word University Rabaul Campus at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) Kabaleo while attending the campus’ Missioning Ceremony at the Sacred Heart Cathedral of the Rabaul Archdiocese at Vunapope.
John tells me that community organization is fairly strong in ENB, as we take in the hilltop views of parts of Kokopo and the sea below from the vantage of the Cathedral vicinity.
John says as part of the community organization, it is the norm in the area that members of every council ward are required to do community work on Thursdays. He says Sunday is a designated rest day and everyone is expected to be either in church or resting from their weekly routines.
The orderliness I found in Kokopo also exists in Rabaul although a significant section of the old town including the airport is still under the ashes and debris of the twin volcano eruptions of Sept 19, 1994.
The drive between Kokopo and Rabaul is a pleasant experience of scenery barring the occasional dust (immortalized by the ENB musicians as “Radaaz” or Rabaul Dust) and silt from the remains of the volcanic debris that are washed onto the road surface every now and then. The scenes include those of the old Japanese World War II tunnels. The scenes of Simpson Harbour and the Tavurvur and Vulcan volcanoes from the seaside view at a locality called “Blue Lagoon” near the Malaguna area is picture perfect.
The sense of civil order I saw between Kokopo and Rabaul actually begins at Tokua Airport with its neat and welcoming environment and the friendly staff of hotel courtesy buses and PMV buses.
Two glitches at Tokua at this time though is a bit of paintwork and repair that are needed at the passenger check-in and check-out hall and the lack of air-conditioning.
The scenes of order and respect for authority described here provided me a glimpse of why ENBP is embarking on greater autonomy from the national government in Waigani and the province having a tough stance against squatter settlements. Behind the call for autonomy is the view that if certain powers and functions are decentralized from Waigani to Kokopo, the East New Britons can forge ahead from what they have been able to achieve under the present provincial government system.
How the East New Britons organize themselves can also be seen in apparently mundane things like managing well their semi-professional rugby league club, Agmark Rabaul Gurias so well over two decades with no infighting or political interference affecting the club.
As a result, the Gurias club is a regular finalist and grandfinalist in the semi-professional competition each year. And because the Kokopo-Rabaul community was better organized with an appropriate football field ahead of other rugby league playing towns, they hosted the PNG Hunters and their home games while the National Football Stadium in Port Moresby was under construction.
East New Britain, which is home to the Tolais of the northeast Gazelle area, the Kol and Tomoip of Pomio and Kairak and Qaqet of the Bainings – have history behind them as a province that was successfully managed under the first provincial government system with its set of community governments until it was replaced by the current system in mid-1995.
Older readers may recall that ENB was one of the provinces that opposed the provincial reforms that came into effect in 1995 because the old system was working well for them.
As they work to the future, the ENB people have a Provincial Vision. The Vision reads: “ENB to have an educated, healthy and wealthy population living in a socially peaceful and wise community.”
Notice in their vision that being “educated” and “healthy” takes precedence over being “wealthy” so you can see why health and safety of the people in public places like Kokopo market comes first before the quest to make money.
The Kokopo and Rabaul areas offer a lesson or two to other districts, mainly on mainland PNG, that face challenges in managing their urban markets, public amenities, people and the ever-growing illegal squatter settlements.

• The writer is a journalist and regular contributor to Weekender.