Meeting Francis Ona – from my Panguna journals.

My six year appointment as Chief Ombudsman that began in January 1995 ended on 31 December 2000. This time was also the end of my national public service career. It was a relief after serving without taking any furlough leave since I began as an interpreter in pre-independence House of Assembly in March 1969. I mention this because after a long absence from home I was looking forward to a year’s sabbatical in the village during 2001.

I decided I would use my time at home to secure a one on one meeting with Francis Ona early in the new year 2001. I began deliberate efforts to do so through my village Chief who had his intermediaries and contacts up the road. I was glad and grateful when I was advised the request for the meeting was granted.

I left Pokpok village in the morning and traveled to Arawa to leave from there to Pangkuna. It was a pleasant surprise too, that Ona’s security escorts were there for us for the road trip. It was an expectant journey but I did not have any expectations of any chiefly welcome or any security check when we arrived. Gladly there weren’t.

After a few bends and turns up to Pakia Gap and the descent from there we finally arrived at Ona’s new settlement where he moved and built his family home away and out of old Guava village that is perched on a high ridge overlooking the valleys below. I have also been up to old Guava twice, once on New Year’s Day 2007 and later.

Today’s meeting was in Ona’s hamlet where he resettled his family away from old Guava village. The meeting would be on his terms. We had no preparations, no agenda, no forewarnings what I might expect or could discuss – or not discuss – with him.

We met in a small bare earth courtyard and greeted each other with good mornings, hellos, and how are yous in Nasioi. Mine was: Tampara maata barau (good morning brother).

After a breakfast of fresh taro harvested in the morning and a chook that lost its head to go with the taro and ferns for greens, Ona said to the others (minders and elders) we would have some time for a group chat some time after breakfast. The overwhelming fresh forest air and scent at this alpine attitude went quite well with breakfast on a pagoda-like veranda looking into the open courtyard.

Our meeting this morning was in a meeting room venue where we were sat in our places prearranged in the room. It was obvious this is where he welcomes and meets his guests for all manners of discussion and discourse. I had decided well beforehand I would not ask any questions but let him start the conversations. I would pay my courteous respects and comments and respond to any questions and see where it took us. In short the meeting was informal.

Ona spoke of his desire for Bougainville to be self sufficient with people standing up on their own feet. This was predictable given that he pronounces this at every public meeting and rally. He spoke repeatedly of sowing and harvesting from the land. Bougainville was rich and had more than enough to support everyone. He both hoped and was sure it was a matter of time before the Island would be Independent. Being self sufficient was very a part of his own preparation toward being independent.

Another theme he repeated was family and spiritual nourishment. Kastom and rituals were important to keep Bougainville on a good footing. He was aware that it needed more than rhetoric to achieve a state of governance that was credible to outsiders. He suggested that retirees coming off employment like myself are useful in guiding and advising elders and leaders in a future Bougainville. I openly agreed and shared how I started in the village and the relief I felt to be back in the village, even if only temporarily.

I actually liked and enjoyed the informal nature of our chats. I was happy my village chief who accompanied me was with us. For, there were almost instantaneous moments when the thought of being suspected a spy flashed in my mind. But I dismissed the thought as fast as it entered my mind merely by asking the question, who on earth would I be spying for anyways!

Ona harboured a lot of thoughts and ideas and I thought his train of thoughts was remarkable for a person in self imposed isolation, perhaps immolation. This is not to say he also gave considerations to the amount of time, effort and the costs associated with achieving his dream and ideas. They were precise one liners from him about the abundance of resources, well thought out, that would bankroll a future, thriving Ona’s Bougainville. I restrained from quipping like ‘and who do you have in mind would be prepared to come home and take on such an enormous task after the devastating turmoil and crisis’.

But he impressed me that for all the desire for an independent, self-sufficient Bougainville I’m not sure he appreciated the enormity of the task, the capacity and human effort and human resources it would take from the start. He simply said, this is our land, we are taking it back to protect it, we can do it, we will do it, there is no turning back from the political turnstile.

On the other hand Ona was a part of long line of leaders at different generations that emerged at different decision periods and moments towards the same goal who carried the mantle and hope of a better Bougainville. Others would follow after him — and so on and so forth it goes.

On why he wasn’t being readily involved in the machinations of the peace process at the time, he explained he had his principles. Without saying so I think he was hinting that for a good tactician there must be a fall back position, that we can’t put all our political reconciliation eggs in one basket.

Ona made no mention of the ten billion kina compensation demand. And I had decided before making the trip I would keep my tongue tied on this. But he impressed me as someone who was clear in his head, fit and healthy, fit and bouncy, independent and self assuring and confident whenever he mentioned a wealthy and prosperous Bougainville.

I wasn’t here to ask questions and raise eyebrows but came to listen. It wasn’t my place to ask about the K10 billion demand; besides no one would or will ever pay this so any discussion around it would be rather futile.

After the group meeting I took the opportunity to meet and mingle with others outside. I shared my own stories about coming up to Pangkuna on a high school vacation jobs in 1967 and 1968 before the mine was built. But this is another story on its own.

Lunch was avacado from a tree at the entrance to the hamlet, and local fruits and some smoked fish from the boxful of supply my Chief and I brought from the Island.

After lunch I was shown my room and bed for the night at the end of the day. The night was restful
and cool at this altitude. The only intermittent distraction before dawn was the course voice from what sounded like an old transistor radio blurring out early round up the pacific news in Tok Pisin. I thought: Wow! the man does keep himself up to date courtesy of Radio Australia PNG service.

I can still figure out the elders and some of Ona’s staunch supporters and close minders and confidantes who I thought I knew. They were Meka’amui through and through. We retired to a ‘kavoro’ with a central fireplace where all manners of discussion, advice, tales and stories take place in the local Nasioi tradition.

Dinner was fresh sweet potato and tapioca and greens that Ona dug and gathered himself. Another village chicken lost its head for protein at dinner – owing to my visit. I joked in thanking him I had to come all the way to Panguna to get enough fibre from the garden foods he was serving. A rather good break from fish protein we mostly live on along the coast.

On the following morning, cool with clouds hanging low in the valley greeted the beginning of the new day. It was time to leave. Breakfast was light after two heavy meals the previous day. We had wild ferns, wild greens done in a herbal mix. It was sumptuous and light on the guts. It all smelled and tasted nice.

In Nasioi tradition, perhaps common to all traditional societies, when you leave you are given something to take with you. It is usually garden food, today it was some of his best taro from his garden. In the old days a smoked possum could have been included. But there aren’t many possums in the peripheries of the mine anymore with most of their habitat denuded and lost to mining.

Any possum around would not have withstood the noise pollution of the blasting, the roars of humongous Euclid trucks and the continuous noise of PH electrical shovels day and night.

Pangkuna was around the clock operation that paid good bucks and other enticing benefits to workers commensurate with the nature of work and risks involved.

We took back a basketful of avacados. Someone must have passed the word I love avacados. I could see they must fall off the trees to rot away on the ground. Reminded me of Ona’s conversation how he was enjoying living off the land and food and fruit bearing trees.

Francis Ona was not a fool. He decided someone from Pangkuna had to stand up and be counted. He was an innocent rebel, a tough nut to crack, decided to keep everything close to his chest by choice. I thought he developed a quiet contempt for people he knew but he thought that abandoned him even though some of them still spoke favorably of him for standing up to the BCL.

It is unfair to write and comment too much or any more about Ona after only a day’s encounter and without any stories and research of his life background.

My travels to Pangkuna before actual mining began, during mining and post mining gives me a good feel writing about the place. My acquaintance with some of the landowners and villagers there has given me an appreciation of the deceit they feel, including by their own kind they often talk about in conversations about BCL.

At the same time the level of annoyance and anger that people bear is understandable when one considers that really, after the mine was closed, there is no real development in the communities up there. In many ways Pangkuna and its people are no better or happier today than they were before mining despite the mineral wealth they witnessed being carted abroad under the Bougainville Cooper Agreement.

Foothold on the Land

For Ona, it is the duty of man to fight to keep his land, care for the rivers, jungle, creeks and everything to do with their meaning of what makes life’s happiness and satisfaction to its lowest denominator. To him this has been worthwhile living and fighting for.

It is not to do with humongous projects that promise so much, including limitless amounts of money that turn out, and in many respects become, a false sense of their security, including as food security if they have been left deprived and devoid of their livelihood and know they can’t eat money.

May be it was what and why they have not bought the argument or view from outsiders that Francis Ona was a rebel and criminal but, rather, a hero to them.

The simple, but the most profound utterance, from Ona is one which earned him the popular quote: “The duty of man is to protect his land”.

I don’t doubt there is a more profound message, even if it is not so obvious, in this. A message about what or how people regard development. It is not something that others can do or force on anyone else. Put it another way, development is much too often confused with aid and welfare.

Our national security is tied to the security of all the people in the region in which we live and it is therefore important that we know these people and willing to work with them. Development— this is not something that anyone can do to anyone else. Too often we confuse aid and welfare with development. Some NGOs have not, and will never, comprehend this.

Whilst I went up to listen to Ona, I left Pangkuna thinking I wouldn’t have probably quietly mused some of the thoughts above if I didn’t listen to Ona’s desire for development and the the political dreams he expressed freely even if he didn’t appreciate that investors, donors and developers keep and guard and counsel, perhaps sing from similar hymn books when it come to development.

Elsewhere, before my visit with Francis Ona, I wrote he was a local hero that came to prominence when he took a stand against his own family members and relatives and BCL for what he saw as unfair and unjust payments and distribution of royalty, lease, inconvenience payments and other payments through a vanguard of local RMTL Executives supported by BCL. There was a mounting dissatisfaction of younger landowner generation that Ona represented that saw this as unfair and unjust. If we must learn from some of the experiences from Panguna it is this.

At the time I finalized these notes for my own journals – and even now – this wasn’t meant to be a criticism but an observation that we should learn from even after Francis Ona has long gone from Panguna