So rich and yet so poor

WE live at a time where we are so blessed with abundant resources and yet so poor even the United Nations’ poverty index cannot find us.
While we hope for some comfort in the New Year’s budget the abyss of abuse and mismanagement looms at every turn.
Our landowners are all fed-up with the failed promises and are now on the verge of shutting down the country’s only bloodline.
Our doctors are threatening to walk away, leaving the sick at the mercy of fate. Just as the election petitioners are patiently waiting for a favourable outcome, our students too are eager to find a place next year.
And teachers are still waiting for their leave ticket home to join family for Christmas.
On a larger scale, the world’s super powers are now pointing nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction at each other.
As a nation we must invoke the spirit of unity and nationalism just as we embraced one another as one Papua New Guinea when our Kumuls, Orchids and Hunters took on the world in rugby league.
Let us rise and soar like our Kumuls or like our young men and women when they blitzed the track and field events to win gold in the games not long ago on a stadium we built on our own soil. What are feeling of joy and pride as a nation we had at the games in Kimbe when all the different colours of our different tribes showed up as one.
Lightened by the flame eternally inside us I felt that we could live forever; the feeling of our hearts beating together broke down the walls that stood between us.
And in this Christmas, we stand hand in hand all across the land; we can make Papua New Guinea a better place to live.

David Lepi
Port Moresby