Luck will find you

when you are worth looking for. This is one of my favourite sentiments from a children's story of the fifties or sixties - Margaret Paice I think it was- Valley in the North? I'm not sure now. I used to teach it to y6 children. The sentiment reflects something of the old jungle say of the Phantom: The Pigmy Bandar would come across a stranger in the Deep Woods and when told they were looking for the Phantom, the Bandar would reply, "You do not find find Phantom. Phantom find you!" Then the tom-toms would start and Phantom would allow them to come into his presence. And so why is it that luck has not found PNG? With the start of the rainy season, the red betel not spittle runs into the puddles and the mud and you can't help but get it on your thongs and feet. The filth is soggy now. Spittle, cardboard, plastic, buai husks. Filth. There is no other word for it.
And yet at church yesterday there was so much refined dignity. One young boy who is to be confirmed just beamed righteousness as he came back from his blessing at communion time. Why does his country not reflect the same righteousness? PNGns are homo sapiens - they must know filth when they see it so why do they make this boy and every other one of them grow up in a circumstance which looks like the arse end of the earth?