We must confront our internal ‘masta’ head on
29 February 2016
JOE HERMAN
SELF-preservation and self-worth begin when we admit and deal with the overarching presence of the demon “masta” planted in our collective psyche.
In every facet of our lives, we are seeking approval and acceptance of our conduct, both consciously and unconsciously, by our internal masta who is ever present in our minds.
This was evident when I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a newly constructed bridge on a rural road in Papua New Guinea.
A government minister was speaking to the singsing bilas-adorned villagers and a handful of educated elites from the ministerial party.
As the minister addressed the crowd in English, I stood there scratching my head. Why didn’t he deliver the speech in Pidgin, a language all the people in attendance understood?
A minor incident, I agree, yet it spoke volumes about how we continue to enable the internal masta.
The Minster, a high office holder, felt obliged to demonstrate his great achievement to his internal masta, talking, and posturing as if to say ‘how well am I doing?’
This sad example was the manifestation of the inferiority complex buried in our collective psyche.
It was an attempt to show the achievement of the masta’s skillsets, however inappropriate it was in this rural location.
The outsiders officially left PNG on Independence Day. Yet the scars of their psychological footprints were left behind to become part of our psyche and forever haunt us.
This is seen throughout the fabric of PNG society. A security officer gives a pass to an expatriate but not to a local fellow, irrespective of the local’s qualifications or status in the community.
Local women are assumed to be shoplifters or at least untrustworthy. Their bilums are searched harshly, but not so the shopping bag of the expatriate lady.
Expats who are ill are reluctant to consult a local doctor, or forcefully second guess their considered medical opinion.
Such less preferential treatment is a regular experience of our people. But we accept it as normal.
We internalise it as our fault and feel obliged to apologise, mi sori tru boss, as if we had done something wrong.
And these are our own people treating fellow locals as if we were less worthy.
Such perverse behaviour is reinforced by the continuing presence of expatriate consultants of dubious expertise; their presence alone perpetuating the notion that locals are not good enough.
Many organisations spend a fortune hiring experts to continue to subjugate local knowledge and expertise.
That said, some of our own countrymen are the worst. They feel they have made it, so they project themselves like a masta.
Employment processes and system are used to validate the concept that Papua New Guineans can never measure up. Locals are confined to a junior status, to be managed by and answerable to expatriates of often unwarranted rank.
Promotion seems to be based on arbitrary standards, subjectively established to keep qualified locals away from upward mobility. In every profession, many Papua New Guineans experience such double standards.
And so we have riveted in our psyche the masta-kanaka relationship. It looks like it will require generations to detox ourselves and get it out of our systems forever.
The internal masta, who we constantly feel we have to please and which generate misplaced arrogance has to be understood.
Because it is about understanding ourselves, our self-worth, our dignity and our self-esteem.
We must embrace values grounded in the Melanesian virtues of humility, identity and peoplehood.
Appreciate your comments, Chris.
Posted by: Joe Herman | 01 March 2016 at 01:25 PM
I think that Joe Herman has done a great job in talking about the persistence of an internal masta, at least for some Papua New Guineans.
I interpret this as an undue deference towards Caucasians, irrespective of their personal behaviour or merit.
Of course, this type of behaviour is neither new nor exclusive to Papua New Guinea.
In centuries gone by undue deference was given and expected by people who, by accident of birth, occupied a certain position in society or came from a certain social class.
In ancient Rome, the members of the ruling Patrician class wore togas marked with a broad purple stripe, with the next ranked Equestrian class sporting a gold citizens' ring. The lowest ranked Plebian class, if they wore a ring at all, had to wear one made of iron.
During the mediaeval period heaven help the serf or humble freeman who did not immediately recognise and defer to the nobility and their henchmen. Insults, a beating or worse could result, depending on the mood of the person whose pride had been offended.
In fact, for most of human history undue deference to those of higher rank was necessary, even when they behaved very badly or were obviously stupid.
Fast forward two millennia to modern Australia and deference based upon birth or social class or position has largely disappeared. Nevertheless, there is still undue deference given to many people who do not deserve it including radio "shock jocks", sports stars, celebrities of all kinds, certain religious figures and so on.
Many of us seem to recognise merit where none, or very little, actually exists.
I hope that Papua New Guineans will heed Joe's call and reject the inner masta once and for all.
By all means defer to those whose knowledge, expertise and wisdom clearly warrant it, but merely being a Caucasian is not evidence of any of these qualities and, conversely, being a Papua New Guinean does not mean that you do not or cannot possess them yourself.
In relation to Trevor Shelley's comments about the imminent demise of Neo-Melanesian Pidgin, I think that he is entirely wrong. The language is far too useful, adaptable and, sometimes, lyrical, to simply fade away.
I think that it will further evolve, co-existing with English as the working language of ordinary people.
Some of the poems in Pidgin published on this site are exquisite examples of just how marvellous a language it is and I look forward to reading many more.
Posted by: Chris Overland | 29 February 2016 at 09:41 PM
This might interest you also.
Tonight on ABC TV Four Corners.
Hope you can tune in.
CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
Monday 29 February at 8:30pm
"I ended up with nothing but the clothes I had on. I lost everything I had at home, documents, photos of my children." Survivor
"Of course it will affect our bottom line." Andrew Mackenzie, BHP CEO
The Melbourne headquarters of Australian mining giant BHP is a world away from the small Brazilian village of Bento Rodrigues, but what happened in this faraway place will cost BHP billions.
"The mud would come and drag me down, I would come up, it would take me down again...I screamed, calling my children, calling them, but nobody answered." Survivor
Three months ago a horror mudslide swept through the towns and villages in the Gualaxo River Valley in Brazil, destroying homes, businesses and taking the lives of 19 people.
A tailings dam, holding back more than 50 million cubic metres of mining waste collapsed, unleashing a wave of mud several metres high. The waste in the dam came from the huge open cut Samarco iron ore mine, half owned by Australia's BHP Billiton. Brazil's chief environment officer calls it the biggest environmental disaster in the country's mining history.
"This mud wave has killed anything that was alive in these water systems." Marilene Ramos, Brazilian Environment Authority
Brazilian police have announced they will seek the arrest of six Samarco executives and managers on charges of negligent homicide, and offences against the environment.
"A dam doesn't break by chance...There is repeated, continual negligence in the actions of a company owned by Vale and BHP." Brazilian Prosecutor
Reporter Ben Knight arrived in Brazil within days of the dam collapse as the search for victims continued in atrocious conditions. Now in his first report for Four Corners, he returns to Brazil to investigate whether multiple warning signs were ignored. What he finds is a catalogue of failure, where even the emergency alert system didn't work.
BHP has distanced itself from the operations of the mine, but the company's bottom line has taken a hit. This week BHP announced a $US5.7 billion half year loss, writing off more than a billion dollars due to the dam disaster.
And in a feature interview with the BHP CEO, Ben Knight asks if BHP is making good on the promises they have made to rebuild the lives and communities affected, and what responsibility it will take for the disaster.
Catastrophic Failure, reported by Ben Knight and presented by Sarah Ferguson, goes to air on Monday 29th February at 8.30pm EDT. It is replayed on Tuesday 1st of March at 10.00am and Wednesday 2nd at 11pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturday at 11.00pm, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners .
abc.net.au/4corners
Posted by: Vikki John | 29 February 2016 at 05:30 PM
Excellent article Joe and may the Melanesian Way flourish big time.
Congratulations.
Posted by: Vikki John | 29 February 2016 at 05:13 PM
Thank you for sharing your experience, Trevor. But my article has little to do with the expat community or the English language. Even if you replaced English or all the expats tomorrow, the symptom I described would still play out.
It is about us understanding our motivations and the possible underlying factors about how we project our selves.
Thank you for your comments, Phil. I know enough to say that the Kiaps command tons of respect from the grassroots people of PNG.
The Kiaps, along with the teachers, didiman, missionaries, etc did more with few resources in a short period than our politicians with billions of kina have over the last 40 years.
Thank you for your comments, Paul. Gaining wisdom is indeed a lifelong process.
Posted by: Joe Herman | 29 February 2016 at 01:11 PM
I am talking from a position of being embedded on both remote sites and around the country with PNG Nationals of all persuasions and I think that this Masta Syndrome you talk about is overrated and a cop out. Your quotes about the expat women not being searched does happen but generally these days PNG is overzealous on its expats and often an expat will get the rough end of the pineapple It balances out and is generally down to the expat and his behaviour. I almost always speak pidgin, but that's for clarity. It is a common known fact that Pidging is a dying Language and within 50 years it will have generally died out and you will have English and some of the larger Ples Tok groups as the language of the country. That is just evolution.
Posted by: Trevor Shelley | 29 February 2016 at 09:19 AM
A very interesting article Joe.
It cuts both ways too. As a European in PNG I have often been asked for my presumed expertise on a range of subjects for which I don't have any real knowledge. The assumption is that because I'm a 'masta' I will know.
This is currently very evident in the assumption by many of the PNG writers I interact with that I know what I'm doing and can offer advice when the reality is that I'm simply another writer feeling his way.
Environment makes a difference too. In an urban environment Europeans seem to dominate but in a rural environment it's the other way around. As a kiap I was often in situations where I was the babe in the woods and the patrol police were the 'mastas'.
Things are changing slowly I guess. I'd be very wary about trying to tell Michael Dom anything about poetry these days. And heaven forbid telling him how to feed pigs!
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 29 February 2016 at 09:16 AM
Congratulations Joe. A good, thought provoking piece.
As you know, it's not a PNG custom to point the finger and anyone who does forgets where the other fingers are pointing.
I suggest you have identified a real issue in today's PNG and one that has yet to be fully confronted in many other nations.
The issue I suggest is one of culture. It takes a long time to change an entrenched culture. The mistake that was made and is still being made is that simply by showing and educating a person from another entrenched culture that in order to cope with a new culture, 'Just do as I do.'
If we were to travel back in time for many hundreds of years we would see much the same situation as you describe occurring in Britain and Europe where priests and the nobility spoke different languages and interpreted the laws and religious texts into the local language as it suited their purposes at the time.
It is only by understanding that we as a people can progress. The first step along that journey is often self examination.
Well done Joe.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 29 February 2016 at 08:03 AM