“HAPPY AROB DAY – A time for all and everything that gives meaning to life, love and existence on the island and together with PNG -to celebrate together :
It is this little but grandiose star that is also among Bougainville’s live stars today. “
Simon Pentanu Speaker of the House 15 June 2015- 15 June 2016
Happy Bougainville Day. Happy 11th Anniversary 2016 on this Day, in the middle of the year, the middle of the month as we find ourselves in the middle of every conceivable challenge we are faced with.
A friend asked me the other day why my posts on FB are more so about plants, animals, creatures of the sea and land, insects, crustaceans and vertebrates, volcanoes, landforms, beaches reefs, atolls, metoras, and so and so forth.
My spur of the moment response was like: “Really!?
I didn’t realise that”.
No sooner had I said that than I realised that, it is true.
Even my timeline profile is not a photo image of me but of a paning-badora, my favourite star of the sea. But my short explanation was, and still is, and always will be, this.
We share this planet with other living things. In our busy schedule with our own kind we often forget to concede, acknowledge and realise this. Can anyone imagine Bougainville – this planet – without bird life, plant life, sea and land creatures and the heavenly bodies above?
If it were so, we’d be keeping a blank page, a planetary ledger that had zero balance in terms what else we value and care about in this world other than our own kind.
I suppose the best response is to keep doing it, keep posting and batting for others. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, as people that run charity organisations might tell you.
Some of the most grandiose creatures that co-habit, don, and decorate our seas (and on land) come in simple life forms.
At a casual glance the meaning of life, love and existence they convey to the beachcomber, a diver, snorkeler, a fisherman or a child building sand castles by the seashore can be simple but profoundly powerful.
Like this five pointed star of the sea. I see it’s used by Nusa Resort in Kavieng in its ads and pictorials, advertorials. But it is a simple, blue enamelled, innocuous creature that does its share of adding spice and colour to our world and to the business of enticing tourists to our shores.
It has no backbone but moves and crawls around as if it has five, each along its fingerlings. It’s maleable, pliable, can expand, lengthen, or shrink depending on the threat it senses.
It is this little but grandiose star that is also among Bougainville’s live Stars today.
Today is also exactly a year to the day when I assumed the Speaker’s role in the Bougainville House of Representatives.
When the House is in session, looking about and around and across the Chamber I am encouraged and enlivened by the sea of faces that I see of those that chose, for a time, the noble profession that is politics, and with it the mandate to lead Bougainville.
Outside the business of the House, there is also always time to think, even muse, about who else and what else is out there sharing this world with us.
Bougainville will be poorer if it ignores the life value to the Island of its land and sea creatures, the trees, the plants and vines that flower and animals that abound with us and as part of our make up.
This is what comprises our real capital to build and prosper on. God is Great.
And if He created us in His own image there must be a little bit of Him in all of us. Let us be godly and be responsible in caring for Bougainville and everything and everybody that makes up Bougainville. On the blue planet and the evergreen Island that defines us we must not forget what this represents:
Life other than humans that exists in all shapes, sizes, forms and representations with whom we share and co-exist on the Island.
On Bougainville Day let us celebrate at home and with PNG as we tread carefully together to deal with what lies ahead along the political path.
You must be logged in to post a comment.