I wonder if you knows to which district in Bougainville have NGOs, government departments, the UN, churches, Australian Aid, private business, political leaders and corporations directed the most funds since the peace process began?

I think you guessed and as a Panguna man I will say it: it is us, the Panguna people.

The world is splashing us with hundreds of thousands of kina every year. The handouts of cash are immeasurable.

Since Rio Tinto came in our midst we have been a changed people. We gleaned the taste and understood the smell of money.

When the 1990 ceasefire was reached to quell the armed struggle, instead of boosting the political engine of Bougainville, we fought over materials like the cars left behind by the Bougainville Copper Limited.

Our egos drove us to destroy any Bougainvillean standing in our way. So we took Bougainville down the drain.

As a sustainable peace process slowly returned around 1997, it was not a peace that entered Panguna.

My people were focused on the money from scrap metal from the by now closed mine. It brought a certain peace. We were anti-peace but allowed trucks to come and collect scrap metal or we traded it for cash at the Pakia Gap landslide.

You play politics and I play money, since Panguna is ‘money valley’.

As the first phase of the light scrap metal business wound down so came alluvial gold mining. With the gold panning came foreign companies interested in the heavy metals from plant and equipment left behind by BCL.

BCL and the Bougainville and PNG governments poured in money and millions of kina slipped through our hands. Peace building was commercialised for the benefit of a few.

Then the Asian companies cleaned the mine site of metal and took out the gold and we were a bit shocked. An entire virgin forest of the Crown Prince Range was consumed by deforestation as we dug for gold everywhere.

Those who cannot work the hills for gold watch the few hardworking citizens of Panguna like eagles and grab a bit. If they are resisted they will not sleep till they get something by all means available.

Few Panguna people know the world now knows us inside-out. We were silenced by money but wanting more we are screaming for the re-opening of the Panguna mine.

But yesterday we forced the mine to shut down. Why? We were not given enough money and opportunities for advancement. And now? Re-open the Panguna mine for we need money and development.

The Panguna cycle is nothing but a lust for money.