two hundred kina

Asde, Sarere on the way home from Madang, John spent K200 on bananas, coconuts, buai, kaukau, taro, na pawpaw - enough for all the wontoks in the office. "We do that - it is the Melanesian Way, he told me. "You see that K12? - he had just bought K12 worth of buai from a lady. "It won't stay with her for long. She will send it around the market place to other traders buying bananas na kaukau then they in turn have money to come back and buy her buai. So my K200 today will do a lot of trading and make a lot of people happy today. It's the Melanesian Way".

When he went in to the market, John stood there smiling his big wide smile, fidgeting and you could see him thinking, "Who needs to be made happy first?" He is my boss and acting Head of Department and he, along with Peter my House guard, Father Stanley my priest, the Sisters at the clinic who fixed up my sore leg, the people on the PMVs - but not the conman or the pick pocketers all reflect alike the Melanesian Way - a way which shames my own country which has become deluded by false values and sense of its own importance.

I contrast their way to the ugly fourth world selfish humanity of Australian Treasurer Costello this week. He singled out Moslems (again!) who he imagined come to Australia to set up Sharia Law. This is the same man whose govt did not immigrate legally to Moslem Iraq to set up democracy but which, along with Britain, America and a few Esat European countries invaded and bombed the shitter out of Iraqi Moslems and established their western values in a Moslem country. This man and 52% of Australians who support him plus 90 miserable cowering Labor MPs cannot see the irony and hypocrisy of their own argument: You Moslems can't come here to Australia to set up your values but we Aussies can go to you - by force.

It was a similar story with the Australian Aborigines. They were told "We don't respect your values. We're comin' in with our values whether you like it or not. From now on you must respect our values."

This is the frustration of living beyond my country and seeing my values shat upon by inconsiderate, hypocritical and cynical men who think thir importance in history is going to be reflected upon with wonder in 50 or 100 years time.

What is troubling is that more than half of my countrymen are either beguiled by the craftiness of the important people or are too stupid to realise what is going on. They let their own humanity be robbed of them by these villains. They too condone the Austn Govt's proclaiming to the Moslems, "Your values don't matter, but by the right given to us by America, you'd better believe that OUR values do matter. Get used to it or get out!"

I have to live in this first world humanity Country PNG while the ugly fourth world starving humanity of my own country is transmitted for all the world to see. I won't justify it - I'm embarrassed by it. I wish I could do more to dissociate myself from the attitudes of the 52% plus 90.