A Common Goal--And Missing Link

I met him in the IT office. Like me, Exie was at the desk purchasing a username and password for Divine Word University’s wireless internet access, a recent addition to this one of Papua New Guinea’s three main universities. Exie asked for my card even before he introduced himself. He was “making a contact,” he said, and an American woman who had just introduced herself on behalf of an NGO apparently was a contact to be had. (Though I suspect, even without the NGO introduction I would have been regarded as a good contact solely by virtue of my skin—the roots of colonialism still run deep in this country that gained its independence in 1975.)

As it would turn out, Exie too was directing his own NGO: PNG Vision International, founded last year to promote development through projects in education, human rights, climate change, and infrastructure. But in his Pidgin-lilted English, at first I could barely make out his name and inquiry into mine, let alone his own position. It wasn’t until he beckoned me over to his computer in the library 20 minutes later that I learned of our similar purposes.

He wanted to show me the grant proposal he had drawn up for his project, a 50-page document replete with a green background, poinsettias in the margin, and rainbow-colored headers. Yes, the presentation was not what I would have chosen for grant request, but the 50 pages of content was sound. It was addressed to US Ambassador to PNG Leslie Rowe (who ironically, we’d just met with in Moresby). Intrigued, I asked him to send it too me in an email. “Email?” he said, “I don’t have email.”

Now, I’m fully aware that 99.9% of Papua New Guineans are without email access, but sitting in one of the very few libraries in the country, which was full of students fully enjoying the power of online communication—via chat, Facebook, Skype, and Twitter, I was a little taken off guard for a second that the director of an NGO was still relying on PNG’s post. My volunteers were waiting outside, but momentarily content to hear be listening to a Ward Member from Karkar describe his beautiful as ples (home village). I was in the ideal position to help Exie find that last link he needed to get his proposal heard: It took under a minute to get his computer online, and then, even with a slow connection, just another five to set up an email account and help him send his first email. When I walked by Exie and his friends later, the three were still huddled around the open inbox, which had already begun to fill.

Now, I was certainly not alone at the University in my ability to set up an email account. I was just willing to listen to a man’s story and give a few minutes of my time. And I find that so much of development is just that. Yes, PNG like many developing countries is faced with a gross lack of technical resources and infrastructure, but often it is small things like linking someone to email that power the greatest change.

Most PNG citizens say they want development and are very willing to work for it given the platform to make their case heard. This platform is necessarily part material, but more emphasis should be given to individual and community empowerment and their engagement with outside organizations and resources. For a century, Australia has sent supplies—and administrators, plantation owners, and missionaries—to PNG, all with their own strings attached. AUSAID currently accounts for about a third of the GDP, of which many are resentful.

Aid as much of the world knows it needs redefinition and redirection. While donations of materials, technology, and medicine are certainly well used, ultimately it takes the education, training, and empowerment of PNG’s citizens to build sustainable pipelines of these resources and to manage and distribute their own valuable resources on domestic and international markets. This is not a new idea, and I will certainly not be the last to echo it. Many organizations, including our own, are already working towards this new paradigm with education and empowerment initiatives. I am hopeful that these initiatives will enable Papua New Guineans to make use of the resources other organizations and PNG locals have worked hard to establish here.

The most obvious of these resources is technology, perhaps the most visible part of the quickly expanding development platform in PNG, though many like Exie remain unconnected. Cell phones were first introduced to Karkar just last year (we were pleasantly surprised to find on our arrival last summer), but are now widely used. In the coming years, I expect PNG will see the same with the internet.

I’m now writing this post at Tabel Primary School on Karkar, the second primary school in the country to get internet. Just two months ago, eight brand new desktops arrived for a lab here accompanied by wireless access. The computers were paid for by a grant from the local district government and set up by a team of VSO volunteers. The wireless connection is apparently bagarup (broken) at the moment and I’ll have to take the boat to Madang to get access to upload this—nothing in the land of expect the unexpected ever goes without a glitch—but a replacement part is on the way. Already, these eight computers have revolutionized lesson planning for Tabel’s 11 teachers who, in the absence of a library, are ecstatic to finally have reading resources.

It is my hope that as our volunteers teach in schools, learn in communities, and work to help individuals here find ways to achieve their own aspirations, we will be contributing to the rapidly growing platform that is development in PNG.