Poet Ambi’s verses on Bougainville

Weekender
POETRY

Both Prime Minister James Marape and Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama at the Joint Post-Referendum Consultation Meeting in Kokopo, East New Britain, on May 18 declared that Bougainville must have its independence by June 2025.
Talk of independence has been around for some 25 years, much has been reported and written about it.
What was it like in Bougainville some 25 years ago, in the people’s strive for Independence? Perhaps a foreword, written by Franzalbert Joku (then journalist and chief of staff, Office of the Prime Minister, Port Moresby) in the mid-90s for poet R Ambihaipahar (Ambi) may shed some light into the dreams of Bouganvilleans.
In Ambi’s Lingering Memories’ collection of poems for Papua New Guinean children and adults, there was one poem that was dedicated to Bougainville (see image). This was Joku’s foreword:

LIKE many people I know, chance or luck simply do not form part of my English vocabulary.
Life’s destiny, I believe, is pre-determined. What each of us encounter in life do not occur just by chance or through sheer luck without reason or purpose, as everyday conversations would have us to believe.
So as usual, I burned with curiosity, as I quietly pondered and probed, in the weeks that followed my first meeting with Mr Ramalingam Ambihaipahar (affectionately known simply as “Ambi”) in Port Moresby some years ago, for the divine sources to unravel the mystery and give meaning to my face-to-face meeting with this man of reputable scholarly pursuit, one of Sri Lanka’s well-established and internationally renown Tamil poets and educationists.
Whatever the reasons, I find the experience of my frequent personal exchanges with him to be pleasantly rewarding and intellectually enriching. Ambi is not just a poet and educationist. As a devout Hindu and well-acquainted with the Holy Bible, he is the embodiment of an amazingly extraordinary socio-cultural and religious personality, alert, inquisitive and receptive in the mind, with a revealing heart and a deep appreciation for the greater humanity.
Not surprisingly, therefore, that the verses in Ambi’s Lingering Memories, apart from providing an enjoyable reading and conveying their intended central messages, reveal the depth of appreciation for humanity and intellectual capacity in this writer.
In his collection of poems, expressed in simple language and cleverly arranged in this book form, he talks about life and nature’s other gifts of Papua New Guinea; our values, attitudes and habits; as well as recognising and paying tribute to a great many contributions of some of our own greats.
In our hasty strides to keep pace with “development”, we often forget to pause in gesture of gratitude for the good deeds of those who have been justly called to provide stewardship for our State ship. In the process, we overlook the fact that these very men and women, are not only pioneers but should be hailed as national heroes. These “first generation” leaders need our understanding, sympathy, support and recognition, and deserve to be accorded a fitting place in our society and in the annals of our history.
I am, therefore, particularly grateful to Ambi for kindly extending my advisory role in the compilation of this book to include making a suggestion for the inclusion of a poem each in memory of the four great men, who, at various junctures in their lives, bravely answered the calls of duty and offered themselves to the service of their beloved Papua New Guinea as Prime Ministers in their own right.
I am also grateful for the poem The Black Pearl, composed at my request, which gives currency to the publication and doing justice to what has turned out to be a major national issue of the past decade. This special poem, dedicated to our brothers and sisters of Bougainville, will help us to reminisce on the promise the province once held for itself and Papua New Guinea, highlight the human misery, pick up the pieces and carve out a sure path to lasting national peace and unity.
The publication of Ambi’s Lingering Memories is a welcome development, especially against the background of a conspicuously prolonged literary vacuum in Papua New Guinea in recent years. The scholarly creativity and enthusiasm in and for drama, poetry, short stories, novels, biographical presentations, and even the activities designed to spur along students’ spiritual development once characterized our university and college campuses of the pre-Independence era, unfortunately, appear to have been replaced with parochial activism and baseless passion for parliamentary career among the student leaders.
Desired changes, political or otherwise, can be brought about through literary works. If Papua New Guinea’s pasty twenty years can be likened to the Biblical analogy of the prodigal son, who had dissipated life and spent a fortune in dangerous riotous living, then I am sure self-redemption and the possibilities of new life for our nation and its people are not an unattainable objective to set for ourselves for the next twenty years.
We must draw strength from drawing discovery that life might possibly have a new focus. Parochialism that tends to colour important debates about our people and our future must cease. Persons, situations and structures can be changed. It is possible for a sour person to become sweet, a proud person humble, and selfish person generous. The pen is mightier than a sword, it is often said. We should not underestimate the extent of influence of concerted literary undertaking. Its immense power can equally turn creative, undoing even the most powerful societal structures, transforming them into more humanising and just institutions.
Ambi is not new to Papua New Guinea or Papua New Guineans. He has been associated with the country for the past 15 years, having initially arrived in Port Moresby in 1981 to work with the College of Distance Education at Konedobu. He went on to becoming head of its mathematics department and later, science curriculum officer, before retiring in December 1992.
Owing to his unquenchable thirst to seek out knowledge, and the ever-present eagerness to extend to others his hand of friendship, which often meant crossing cultural, religious, ethnic, and national barriers, the author has developed quite an amazing familiarity and understanding about the country, its people, and the issues of significance to them. He is able to confidently articulate and reflect on them so effectively through his verses. He has captured well the events, issues, personalities, and even the circumstances and moods, about which he writes.
Ambi’s Lingering Memories, therefore, is aptly dedicated to one of Ambi’s many friends, the late Sir Serei Eri, one of the country’s well known teachers and literature enthusiasts, with a book to his own name. The verse in “Sir Serei Eri” reveal the depth of the author’s feelings about the friendship he had shared with this great leader, while “Adieu”, the poem appropriately chosen for the author to sign off the collection, loudly speaks of his deep affection for Papua New Guinea. He bids farewell to a country and the people he has come to love.
Finally, in commenting Ambi’s Lingering Memories to all Papua New Guineans, I will remain forever indebted to the author for the privilege and honour of being invited to provide counsel throughout the book’s compilation.
I am sure the verses will be an inspiration for all leisurely readers, literature enthusiasts as well as to serious scholarly researchers, as they have been for me.