Comments

Bal excellent summary of what has happened previous years til last year. There are alot of outstanding issues that you’ve highlighted that need to be resolved.However, your summary has reflected that those issues are not solved properly. My fear is that there will be more coming this year though the Government may think the country may go smoothly. Thank you Bal for your highlighting. Great article to start the year.

Thank you Tess for pointing that out. The article is now updated. Regards

Thanks for this Bal it is a great summary of what we can expect for PNG this year and has certainly helped me get some key issues clear in my mind. One small correction regarding the Vanuatu case you referred to. The number of MPs imprisonedin November was 14 (15 convicted) which constituted half of the government but not half of the parliament which numbers 52

Thank you for this review. To clarify, then: As I believe I told in the book I had never planned to go to PNG, preparing for a more expected placing in Indonesia, until AVA offered me the PNG job, in late 1991, giving me a week to think about it. That was when I approached anyone I could find to tell give me background; that would have been when I met Elizabeth. I had never intended or wanted to write a memoir at that point; I would have hoped for some inspiration for new fiction. The part Cleo quotes in her comment, written when the process was fresh, reflects the move to writing the book I had not at first wanted to write.

Great article! Can someone with a lot of money build seawalls around those Islands to save the erosion of the shorelines. As much as we blame the climate change, one other thing that may contributed to the rise in sea level during high tides are the countless submerged debris, those man made Islands and ocean oil refineries to name a few. As far as the land purchase and all that. I for one don't really care about the land or money that involve in all these. There's something even greater then the two above our GOD given LOVE for one another as Pacific Islanders.

Many thanks Robin. I'll be very interested to read the essay in Meanjin, and will add it to the notes at the end of my post.

Many thanks for your comment Elizabeth. Your interaction with Inez Baranay was different then I think to her recollection in the third paragraph of the first page of the book, in which she says: "Two or three months ago I had never given Papua New Guinea a second thought. I had applied to AVA for several reasons which kept rearranging themselves in different patterns of priority. Eventually AVA offered me this job. Eventually I said yes." As to her desire to write about the experience, she says in the Afterword that her publisher put the idea to her and at first she only promised to think about it. (p.203) I understood this as happening after she had been in PNG, but perhaps it was before? In re-reading this section of the book again, I think she makes a very insightful comment about her volunteering experience and why she did end up writing the book, when she says: "The process of writing it made it possible for me to put a structure, a shape, story, a kind of meaning, to what seemed like a strange mess of experience all happening simultaneously. Having written it, I could clear my desk and move on."

Thanks Jason for this and especially for your thoughts on the intersection between the Matai system and democracy in Samoa

Just a correction to the note on Baranay: "She had not planned to write about her experience, and from comments she makes early on in the book, she had not entirely planned to go to PNG as a volunteer." Inez approached me in the early 1990s indicating that she wanted to get to PNG, had applied to AVI as a way of getting there and that she had a very conscious plan to write about her experience there. Whether writing was her motivation to become an AVI is a matter that only Inez can clarify.

Thanks Tess and happy new year. Recent press from <a href="http://fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=333952" rel="nofollow">Fiji</a> and <a href="http://www.looppng.com/content/png-supports-fiji%E2%80%99s-stand-pacer-plus" rel="nofollow">PNG</a> certainly suggests a bleak outlook for PACER Plus.

Thanks for your feedback and contribution. Fiji plays a very significant role within the region and managed to maintain a degree of influence even when considered a 'pariah' state by some, including by establishing the PIDF and taking on a larger role within the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Since the elections in 2014 global powers have sought to re-establish ties with Suva including military ties. However, in the 8 years of military rule, new friendships have been established and so the landscape has changed quite a bit.

Note also Baranay's essay: 2003. "Fraught territory (The reception and impact of 'Rascal Rain, a Year in Papua New Guinea')." Meanjin, 62(3), 223-229. and for a comparable experience-, this recent book: Trish Nicholson 2015. Inside the Crocodile: The Papua New Guinea Journals, Troubador Publishing. "Inside the Crocodile is a ‘travel memoir’ and it provides a series of glimpses into the author’s experiences of working in human resources development for the provincial government of Sandaun Province (West Sepik). Nicholson arrived in Vanimo in 1987 and spent five years working on a World Bank-funded development project. The book is compiled from the journals she kept whilst living and working in one of the remotest parts of PNG, and it provides a fascinating and compelling blend of personal and professional interactions, mishaps and successes, and clear-sighted observations of the surrounding and changing natural, social, cultural and economic environments...." Tess Newton Cain, <a href="https://devpolicy.org/in-line-insights-five-years-in-vanimo-20150916/" rel="nofollow">In-line insights: five years in Vanimo</a>