LIFESTYLE

Weekender

Betty loves selling handcrafts

Betty Nomorwari Simeon selling items at Tabari Place. The former public servant now earns in three days what she was earning in a fortnight.

By PAUL MINGA
I WAS on one of my aimless “spins” to Tabari Place a week after Independence celebrations and something, or rather someone, caught my attention.
It was the glamorous display of crafts by a middle-aged Sepik woman.
She was once a career public servant and travelled extensively throughout PNG during her work with the National Judicial Staff Services (NJSS) as a court reporter.
She introduced herself as Betty Nomorwari Simeon from Angriman Village in the headwaters of the mighty Sepik River in the Angoram electorate of East Sepik. Betty attained a business studies certificate from Madang Technical College in 1985. Prior to that she attended the girls-only Yarapos High School in Wewak.
Betty said her first job since leaving college was with the NJSS as a court reporter for the Department of Justice and Attorney-General where she worked for about 25 years from 1993-2017.
Her most recent job was office manager with the Apec Joint Security Task Force from August 2017 – May 2019. The former public servant who is unemployed at the moment does not sit around doing nothing as other women do and only expect their husbands to put food on the table or meet other family obligations.
Betty is determined to do something meaningful to supporther Solomon Islands husband with the craft sales as a family venture which she says she really enjoys doing daily.
During her court circuit assignments outside of Port Moresby she bought various arts and crafts like baskets, bilums and beads home and stored them away for future use.
“When I travelled to Buin, Arawa and Buka I bought neatly made baskets from these places and brought them home,” she said.
“While on job travel or on holiday to my home province of East Sepik I added to my collection of arts and crafts; the Sepik beads from Maprik, the Wosera and Yamuk bilums. After my return from court circuits to other provinces, I bought and brought to Port Moresby were kept safe in two patrol boxes at home,” she said.
Also during family trips to her husband’s home in Malaita they brought in stocks of various sea shells, crumbs of Solomon Islands corals and reef pellets which then were handcrafted into nice necklaces and ear rings.
From her Solomons collection of long necklaces she then cuts them up to make ear rings and necklaces of desired styles.
She also says not all of her crafts were produced with materials sourced from out of NCD. Some are from other sources in Port Moresby like the Ela Beach craft market. Betty said her younger sister willingly volunteered in helping out with the making of ear rings from local fibers and shells.
Her own daughter at times travels to Lae to bring in new stocks of Morobe bilums to supplement the dwindling stocks. Betty herself travels to Wewak for the Sepik arts and crafts when they run low with Sepik products.
Betty says at times her partner goes home to SI and returns with whatever they need to produce new items and that ensures the constant supply for their arts and crafts sales. As an art and craft dealer, Betty decided to name her small enterprise Nomor’s Arts and Crafts.
Since the small business generates a good income she says she is now more focused on her art and craft market with the order and purchase of materials and products from other provinces to maintain a constant supply.
She says some of her customers who buy her items resell them to other people as retailers with their own mark-up prices.
“Being an employee of an organisation I was looking forward to my fortnightly wage in 10 days but with what I earn from my SME now I make what is equivalent to my 10 days’ pay in two or three days which is interesting and worth working for. I earn between K80 and K300 a day. But on very busy days I earn between K300 and K1,000. So roughly I make about K1,500 -K2000 a fortnight. My monthly income is about K4,000 to K5,000.
“I count this as a blessing. I have a variety of different items on sale such as ear rings, key tags, necklaces and other fast selling items,” Betty said.
Betty would like to see the Tabari craft market improved.
“The Tabari craft market attracts a lot of visiting tourists and other customers daily. Therefore the city authority must recognise the big potential in this SME activity and build a decent shelter for the city arts and crafts market to flourish as one a tourist attraction.”
In closing Betty appealed to unemployed women to not look at jobs as the only source of income but to use their abilities in other informal activities to generate incomes to sustain their families.

  • Paul Minga is a freelance writer.

Rigo villager carves a living

By NATHAN LATI
WHILE attending the University of PNG Tourism and Hospital Management students’ 13th tourism convention, my attention was caught by this lone stall towards the end of the display arena.
There were many business houses and SMEs with stalls that were showcasing products ranging from crafts to catering and body care which made the event a great success for the students.
The focus of this story is, however, 57-year-old father of seven, Lohan Rove who comes from Karawa village in Rigo, Central.
Rove dropped out of grade six in 1985 at Wood Lagoon Primary School. Whilst in the village, he learnt some carpentry skills to help is dad who was already into his carving business which he started in the 1970s from his student days at Idubada Technical School now Port Moresby Technical College.
Rove become a builder in the community and started building houses but there was no way he could earn a consistent income with his carpentry skills and he opted to help his father with carving.
Life in the village became harder for Rove when he got married in 1989. Karawa village is inland from the sea so there was no easy option available for Rove and his family to make money or venture into any fisheries business or cash crop farming activities to earn a living. The difficulties in reaching Port Moresby also contributed to the hardships.
In the late 1980s, Rove became involved fully with his father in the carving business and learned all the skills to be as his father. When they completed their various creations of rosewood, walnut and mangrove trees, through brought them to sell at the Boroko Arts and Craft Market or at other convenient places in the city. Rove admitted that selling carvings in the city was quite hard and sometimes it took weeks or months to sell a single item while living with close friends and family.
Carved items like coffee tables, kundu drums and ukuleles are not easy sell. Sometimes when he is lucky, few of customers do place their orders for specifically carved items and that makes his work easy.

Lohan Rove, showing one of his products, and the writer at Tabari Place.

When asked if he had received any big orders since taking over from his late dad, Rove said: “We do not take bulk orders but less than 10 pieces as our limit since we started but we can take more than that.’’
His coffee tables have stylish folding frames skilfully curved out of a single piece of log which can give three or four legs to support the wooden table top, either square or round).
According to Rove, the skill of designing and carving out folding leg frames from a piece of log was learnt by his father in the 1970s at a market stall at the Koki Girl Guides centre in the 1970s. The design was apparently brought by Indian teachers at the Idubada Technical College.
Rove is a creative carver with expert skills to fashion dinner tables, coffee tables, ukuleles and other souvenir items. One of his fastest selling items in Port Moresby and in the village is the eight-string ukulele curved out of rosewood and mangrove trees. Local churches and string band groups have been using his ukuleles which sell for K250 each and come with standard frets he obtains from Keynote Music House, and double strings for higher pitch and better tone quality.
Asked if he has any other interests apart from carving, Rove said: “I took this trade from my dad who raised us with income from carving and now I have done it for my family and I will maintain what I’m doing to keep my father’s legacy. I have been teaching my children carving skills while the Karawa community youths are also into carving to earn an income.’’
Competition within the Karawa community seemed to have raised standards and Rove’s products originating from a well-equipped workshop have the quality and prices to match. His price range: Large coffee tables – K1,200; small coffee tables – K800; standard size kundu drum -K550 and standard-size ukulele – K250.
Rowe’s kundu drums are in fact the hardest and most time-consuming items to produce because of the hollowing out and fine-tuning of the sound plus the final artwork. Apart from carving he also finds time for carpentry work in the village and Rigo area. There are few challenges that are beyond his control. His dream is for a market specifically for carvers from Rigo in Port Moresby where there is storage area for safe keeping of their products as well.
Indeed carving is really a tough artwork which comes with commitment that turns time into creativity. The work of artisans, carvers, potters, artists and painters are some ways of looking into our past to ensure those items of cultural significance coexist with the modern influences of the 21st century.
It would be rational for a leader to provide incentives for such people who, for their survival, hold on to skills that are important to our society.

  • The author is a product development officer at the PNG Tourism Promotion Authority.