WORDS of WISDOM

 The dead do not tell

The men who laid the foundation for Papua New Guinea.

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA

‘Louis is dying and so much dying with him…”

I made a note of the line above by historian Thomas Carlyle in his work The French Revolution one night because it sounded loaded to me.

This one month past, I buried my only maternal uncle, David Dilu, in Port Moresby and reflected upon the lives we led together, I came back to that line above and realised how loaded it was.

Not only how loaded and relevant it was to King Louis and his French subjects in his day but to all of us throughout the ages.

Late David Dilu, a wonderful uncle and leader.

My David, king only to his family, died and I saw with a clarity, borne of loss, that so much more had died with him.

I saw, not what we shared, but what we had not.

And the gaps in between frightened me witless. I racked my brain to help put together a credible eulogy and found entire periods of time missing in my memory and essential character references of him absent.

I saw, looking back, what we would miss far beyond his physical presence – his medical training, his accountant training, the missing Nond tribesman, the ranks of Jimi intellectuals diminished and much, much more.

I saw, looking forward, the struggling SME without an accountant, the missing words of advice and encouragement to the flustered MD, the insecurity of a wife and children and the loss of a good, trained citizen to a country in dire need of such class of people.

Beyond the words of praise and platitudes that come automatically at funerals, we hardly know even our own relations.

How much more distant than are the others?

Sir Mathias ToLiman

What gems of wisdom or comforting words of advice can we now draw from the silent lips of Sir John Guise, Sir Mathias Toliman, Sir Tei Abal, Sir Paul Lapun, Sir Paulias Arek, Sir Thomas Kavali, Sir Ignatius Kilage and all the other great statesmen and women of this country, when we find the going tough - and the need for inspiration - urgent.

What lessons can we draw from their lives, both their successes and failures, their words and actions or lack of them?

Knowledge in every country and in every age is advanced by the records passed down from the past. In that manner, the future is safely anchored by the past. Recording history is clearly as important as forging the future.

Great nations meticulously retain a record of the lives, thoughts and words of their finest statesmen and women, their soldiers, their inventors, their educators, their medical professionals, their historians and philosophers, their religious greats, their scientists, their entertainers and their business leaders.

Sir John Guise

We, in our young democracy, retain little collective memory of the way we have wandered in the last 44 years.

We have few lessons from the past to guide our future. And when that happens, we are prone to repeat the same mistakes over and over again - and never quite add to the successes.

One needs only look at each “new” policy that emerges from a new brood of politicians to realise they are but old ones dressed in fresh language and uttered by freshmen.

Little is retained beyond what is contained in the pages of newspapers, radios and television footage archives and a very few books by dedicated fellows like the late James Sinclair.

Every man or woman, great and not so great, who falls, takes a virtual library with him or her.

Gone forever are the sum of their lives, their experiences, their learning, their thoughts and aspirations.

Almost a week before he died, Sir John Guise took me aside at the Government House which he resided at as PNG’s first Governor General. He was visiting and I was on a news assignment.

He pointed to a palm tree in the gardens that appeared to be wilting. Sir John said in that terrific English English of his: “See that palm tree, young fellow. I planted that when I was first here. It is dying. I am afraid my time is come.”

Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare

Nobody knew his connection with the innocent palm tree in the garden or what message might have been luring in its health or ill-health but Sir John knew. Almost a fortnight after his comment to me, he died. On the day he visited every relative in Port Moresby, went home and had a meal of his favourite bully beef and rice and went to sleep forever. A simple, humble man of so much experience and wisdom; he carried with him to the grave everything he knew of the formative years of this country.

What other words I would have liked to have shared with him, his experiences and insights and knowledge.

He was appointed the first Speaker in 1964, the first very legislative assembly of this land. That knowledge lies with him now in the land of no return, beyond our reach.

When the Somares and Chans and Wingtis and Morautas and Matanes and the last of the tutuls and luluais and lapans and tubuans and kukurais and all the other traditional chieftains and all the rest cross over, they rob PNG off a little of itself.

We run a dangerous ship, this generation of ours that so desires to be anyone else but Papua New Guinean. In our headlong rush to modernise, we have quite thrown away the keys to our own identity, to discover and keep for posterity who we are. Who we are.

Let us not bequeath to our children a sorry lament such as the historian at the start of this discussion, passed on for poor King Louis and his kindred and time.

Now there is a thought on how we can take PNG back.

fskolma@gmail.com