the point of the woad story

was to remind how civilisation and sophisication develop. As Joe the military attache said it took 800 years years for order to emerge after the barbarians, you cant expect PNG to do in 50 years what took you 800. Here are Major Sere (OBE), Chief Commissioner of Scouts in PNG and Salvo Officer, and Joseph at the Rotary meeting which was a mixture of expats and nationals, my supervisor and confidante John, national mate running two stores and a business in Sydney and Melbourne and about to set up another in Oxford Street, another national mate who had been at theological college with me - they're all successful in the hegemonic paradigmatic modernist way of progress. I don't know how a nation retains the traditions it holds dear in Melanesian society and adjusts to take advantage of the quality of life benefits through roads, communication, health, education, purpose, achievement. How does a national debate happen? Obviously the thieves wanted my mobile phone for the money it would bring in so they want this side of modernism but they would be the same people who would squat or claim land ownership not for the public good but for their own good. Of 800 wontoks, (Europe might have about 50), how do you get them to think nationally, let alone globally? What is more important - Melanesian tradition or Melanesian nation? Can there be both?