9 minute read
The wisdom of Gabriel Pepson, former PNG ambassador
People WISDOM
GABRIEL PEPSON FORMER PNG AMBASSADOR TO THE EUROPEAN UNION
BY CARMEL PILOTTI | PHOTOGRAPHS: GODFREEMAN KAPTIGAU
Gabriel Pepson was born the first of three children in Kimininga in Western Highlands Province in 1956.
He went to school at Koglamp Primary School, Mt Hagen High School, and then the University of Papua New Guinea to study economics in 1974.
His first job was with the Department of Finance in 1978 where he worked under the late Sir Mekere Morauta.
He went on to work for the Office of International Development Assistance (OIDA) where he became Director in 1991.
He was posted as Ambassador to the European Union in 1995 where he served for 10 years until his return to take up the position of Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade. He retired in 2010 and now sits on several boards and serves as a member of the UPNG Council, and Chancellor of the Institute of Business Studies.
Pepson unsuccessfully contested the Western Highlands regional seat in 2007 and the Moresby North West seat in the 2021 byelection. One of my earliest memories is being taken to school in 1964 by my mother to be enrolled. I didn’t want to leave her. When the English headmaster came to take me to the other children I cried and held on tightly to my mother. A boy from my village was brought to talk to me, and I was told other boys from my village were there and I would not be lonely. That was the beginning of my schooling. My two mentors were the late Sir Mekere Morauta, who was my first boss in the Department of Finance, and the first Chief Secretary to Government, Mr Robert Igara. In my early years, the public service was a disciplined, professional and respected authority. Institutions of government maintained good governance and never indulged in corruption. Sir Mekere enforced these virtues in me. Mr Robert Igara became my boss at
the OIDA – he was also a very disciplined man, down to earth and an effective manager who always had foresight on policy and management matters ahead of other executives. His ascension to the post of Chief Secretary was a natural progression. Like Sir Mekere, he was a role model who upheld the virtues of the public service. He was a man of high integrity and he enforced standards on those below him. He is a close friend to this day.
My message for young Papua
New Guineans is to always uphold integrity. You have to think about your children’s future; this culture that is now creeping in does no good for anybody.
If I was giving advice to my
younger self, I would say whatever you do, execute it to the best of your ability, and produce the best because you will be handsomely rewarded. And, even if others don’t respect you, respect yourself.
Gabriel Pepson: “Never open your mouth and say or do anything until you have all the facts.”
Important lessons I have learnt
in life are to never open your mouth and say or do anything until you have all the facts. Also, that you will not be disappointed if you remain focused and work hard. Dream big because you can only go as far as your dreams.
My three keys to success are
(1) to be a person of integrity; people will respect you, both good and bad, and doors will naturally be opened for you. (2) Commit your life to God, and let God be the foundation of your family, career, and everything else, and it will all fall into place. (3) Work hard and you will always be rewarded. I’m inspired by helping others in desperate need.
If there is anything I would
change in my life it would be entering politics earlier in life so I could have made a positive impact in the development of PNG. It is the political leadership that determines the destiny of the country.
People SINGING PNG’S PRAISES
NGAIIRE ON LIFE, MUSIC AND LOVE OF COUNTRY
BY PAUL CHAI | PHOTOGRAPHS: SAMARA CLIFFORD
As a young girl growing up in Lae, Ngaire Laun Joseph – now known simply by the stage name Ngaiire – would wait for her mum to return from trips to Australia with a very special gift for her. Her mum would bring one of the compilation CDs that was attached to Smash Hits teen music magazine and Ngaiire would then wear it out in her CD player, absorbing all the information that she could about the music and artists.
“I also had a Mariah Carey CD, and I would replay and replay it and try to imitate her voice. I would read the CD leaflet cover to cover and study the producers and songwriters,” she says.
For as long as she can remember, Ngaiire wanted to be a singer, but her early life was filled with a lot of moving and upheaval that, at the time, felt like distraction but would turn out to be inspiration.
From Lae she moved to New Zealand, then she moved back to Papua New Guinea to live in Rabaul, just in time for the twin eruptions of the Vulcan and Tavurvur volcanoes. She lost contact with her mother after they fled the volcanic eruption and was only reunited with her after her mum put out a call across the radio.
After meeting back up with her mother, it was back to Lae once again, then a permanent move to Australia. But throughout it all Ngaiire has maintained a deep love for her home country.
“I would say that they are the best childhood memories that one could possibly wish for,” Ngaiire says of her early life in PNG.
“I remember Rabaul being paradise for me and my family. It was always filled with laughter and
Singer-songwriter Ngaiire’s music is saturated with her experiences growing up in PNG.
weekends at the beach with my grandmother in Nonga.
“I got to experience what it felt like to be around family, and not just siblings and parents, but grandparents and aunties and uncles and cousins, and experience what it felt like to be a part of ceremonies and witness sing-sing groups; I miss that a lot.”
Not that she hasn’t been keeping herself busy. After moving to Lismore in 2000, Ngaiire enrolled in Central Queensland University to study jazz where she discovered a love of Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald. In 2004 Ngaiire was discovered herself, via the TV singing competition Australian Idol, which led to gigs with the band Blue King Brown and producer Paul Mac before launching her solo career.
Her first album, Lamentations, was released in 2013 and the follow up Blastoma (named for her cancer battle as a child) came in 2016.
But it is her third album, titled simply 3, that she is most proud of as it fully explores her experiences as a Papua New Guinean woman.
“Papua New Guinea completely saturates my work, I can’t get away from it because PNG is quite a mammoth entity in itself,” she says. “Anyone who has been to PNG for a significant amount of time will know that the country gets under your skin in a way that people don’t really expect, and for someone who is from PNG it is the engine room from which I draw inspiration.
“One of the things I have carried into my music is the subject around death and how we celebrate that within our cultures in PNG. I often wondered how I had this obsession, and now I know where it comes from. When I look back a lot of things are centred around celebrating the lives of people once they pass on, from art to music to kai.
“All three of my albums have at least one or two songs about people who have passed on in my family and it is my way of having that ceremony for myself here in Australia, while not being able to do that with my community and my family back in PNG.”
But 3 goes even further, with Ngaiire having made research trips back to PNG to Goroka in the Eastern Highlands with the purpose of trying to capture the essence of the country in her songs – but she soon realised the mammoth task she had set herself.
“What is Papua New Guinean?” she laughs. “And how do you tell someone what that is, because PNG is 800 mini nations itself and not just one identity. So, it became more about my journey as a Papua New Guinean woman.”
Rather than capture what PNG is, she instead focused on what it meant to her, and the result is a passionate, personal set of songs that explores everything from female sexual identity in PNG to the strong women that have always surrounded Ngaiire.
Another unexpected result was that she realised it was time for her to return home. Plans were made and then upended by COVID-19, but she still insists a return to PNG is on the cards with her husband and four-year-old son.
“I miss the heat, I have really bad psoriasis and every time I go back to PNG my skin rejoices and completely clears up,” she says. “It is one of those things that makes you go ‘I am connected to this country and even my body is telling me I must be here’.
“I miss family, I miss the drama that comes with being around family, I miss the ebbs and flows of relationship with family and the politics. It can be a headache, too, but I miss how alive PNG feels.
They (Papua New Guineans) are very much a people that live outside, and it is one of the things that I found strange when I moved to Australia. I remember saying to my mum ‘where are all the people?’ because I could not see anyone out on the streets or on their porches.”
First, however, is the chance to tour 3, after releasing it in the middle of the pandemic. Ngaiire is known for her live performances, and she is passionate about taking to the stage.
“Performing live to me is as important as breathing and it has been really difficult this past two years,” she says. “The first lockdown in Sydney we were all ‘it’s a bit exciting’ and then the reality started to kick in and I just realised how grey everything became because we self-therapise on stage.
“When I can’t get on stage and work things through, I must do it in a different way and as performers we are conduits for other people in the audience to process their emotions; and people have not been able to process that. It is like a co-dependent relationship, and it has fractured, and it will take a lot of time to get it back to where it was.”
