Share more stories of Sir Michael

WE appreciate the messages shared by many in Papua New Guinea and the world during this time of Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare’s passing. However, for someone who was privileged to use our taxpayers’ money to travel the world with Sir Michael’s official entourage, it is disappointing to note the unnecessary full and half-page portraits of someone who says he was the “closest” to Sir Michael until his last breath but is not saying much.
We do not want to waste our time reading about your “custom drinking” and occupying a spot in the team where someone else could have done better.
The money you spent travelling world came from the sweat of our mothers and village people selling betel nut, sago, tulip, copra, coffee and paying taxes to the Government just to make sure someone like you can travel with our chief and report back to us around our bon fire, our kunai huts and our hausman what you saw that we could not, people you met that we were not able to meet and languages spoken by the chief and his team with the Chinese, the white man or the Russians which convinced them to befriend PNG.
Sir Michael represented us with an extra eye, an extra ear, an extra sense of humour that we too, would like to share around our fireplaces and in our kunai huts, bamboo huts and sago leaf houses.
To many, our chief and his team represented humans from the far away south seas where the birds of paradise originated and found its way to the Russian and Egyptian royalty’s palace, well before Christ was born.
Their physical appearances made people of other cultures and other religions appreciate that these were human representations of the land of oil, strange carvings made out of sandal wood, kwila, water gum, wild ton and traded around the world but their origins were largely unknown.
Look at what happened to indigenous Canadians, American Indians, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, New Caledonian Kanakas and, now, West Papuans.
Sir Michael and his team of “no push back papas” propelled us out of possible dominance and over-exploitation by other countries.
We are lucky and we should be very proud of their achievements.
Let their stories be told in words to the future Melanesians and in writing to future citizens.
Let there be an extra curriculum in schools devoted to the pioneering fathers of PNG for our children to learn, just as what Americans do for George Washington.
That is why we need people like Rodney Kamus who spent time with the chief to speak out and not occupy our pages with silence.

Sokou Choweh