ORO..ORO..ORO!! (Oro means "Welcome" in the languages of the Northern Province of Papua New Guinea). The word conjures up images of graceful dancing warriors adorned with flamboyant headdress made from Bird of Paradise feathers and hornbill beaks, jabbing spears into the air, chanting "Oro...Oro..Oro" to visitors. With the same passion, I say "Oro..Oro..Oro" to you. Stories of my village Begabari, my province (Northern/Oro) and my beautiful country, Papua New Guinea will feature here.
Women have intensified their lobbying of Members of Parliament to vote in favour of the bill to have reserved seats for women get through the first reading in the July sitting of parliament.
Four groups of women leaders have travelled to the four regions of the country - Highlands, Southern, Islands and Momase talking to women's groups to lobby their local MPs to support the bill.
Julia Gillard has become Australia's
first woman prime minister after Kevin Rudd stood down from the position during
a Labor Party leadership spill.
Ms Gillard has been elected
unopposed to the position and Wayne Swan will become deputy prime minister.
The spill came after a newspaper
report claiming Mr Rudd had instructed his chief of staff Alister Jordan to
ring around the caucus to see whether MPs were still behind him.
The occasion was marked by cultural performances by this Manus Dance group. The ground
breaking was performed by (below) Lands Minister Sir Puka Temu, Chairman of
Nambawan Super Sir Nagora Bogan and Mr Kostas Constantinou from Lamana
Group of companies.
Nambawan Super has again
embarked on a new property development in Port Moresby in order to alleviate office space problems for the National Lands Department.
The development is taking place in Waigani and is being purposely built at the cost of K44 million to
accommodate the specific needs of the Department of Lands and Physical Planning
in serving the people of Papua New Guinea.
This is a plea to FIFA from Papua New Guinea where many of us
are glued to the TVs at odd hours of the morning to watch the World Cup….please ban the vuvuzela or those plastic
horns.
They make the ugliest sound I have ever heard, annoying
particularly as its monotony overrides the games broadcast on television. The
humming sound goes on for hours. We have now renamed it the “sound of blow flies
buzzing over a rotting bull carcass”.
It’s probably the most un-South African thing to say but
bear with us. We have to wake up at midnight or 4am to watch the games
and…..yes you can imagine our frustration at not getting a clear crisp
broadcast and commentary.
My 8-year-old nephew, a sports-mad junior soccer player, sat
up after the Opening Ceremony and kept asking me when vuvuzela noise would stop.
“If it was me, I would have stopped a long time ago, from
the pain in my mouth,” he quipped. But he sat and thoroughly enjoyed the
Argentinian’s fancy footwork and equally superb performance by the Nigerian
players.
Sadly “our” Team Socceroos were not spared by the German
mean machine. The humiliating mauling left the Soceroos supporters across
Australia and the world deflated. That awful decision against Tim Cahill is
unforgivable. We can only hope that the Soceroos can take away the experience
as a learning curve and do better against the Ghanians, or whoever they play.
Elsie Dobunaba is a woman of substance from the Oro Province. She is the Credit Manager at Westpac Bank with an office located on the 5th Floor of Delloites Tower building in the Central Business District of Port Moresby. As the bank celebrates its Centenary in PNG this year, Elsie celebrates her 32 years with the bank.
The Operation Open Heart program has been going for 17 years and it is
regarded as the most successful non-political partnership between PNG and
Australia. It is a program whereby about 50 Australian volunteer specialist nurses, doctors, anesthetists and other support stafftravel to Port Moresby every year to perform miracle surgeries to give life to numerous Papua New Guineans with heart defects.
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