Paul's PNG Collection |
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VSO Placement With PNG Assembly of Disabled People 2008-10 |
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Chapter 2 Characters and RoguesPeter Bonny's Five Minutes of Fame and Lifetime of InfamyOnce, as I entered a small guest house in Brazzaville, I was greeted by a tiny young man with almost no legs, in a wheelchair. As I opened the door to my room, a blur of movement swirled around my feet. By the time I had focussed on what was happening, the tiny disabled man had scuttled on his stunted legs along the corridor past me into my room and sat up on top of a bedside cabinet. This was the start of a two-day love match. I pushed him around Brazzaville, whilst he greeted bemused acquaintances with the pride of a king. He showed me around and talked endlessly. Meeting Peter Bonny was like renewing acquaintances some twenty years later. You see Peter has the same tiny legs, sits in a wheelchair, but does not depend on it. He too will suddenly arrive at the office and scuttle in on his hands. “Where is your wheelchair?” “I left it with some boys at Morata market and came on the PMV ( mini bus )” Peter is a forty-year-old Tari man with a large, strong, weathered face and a deep loud voice. His fingers are calloused with tough skin scoured by years of scraping on pavements and floors. His small legs are withered to the point of being skeletal and his knees are similarly calloused. He wears a brightly coloured knitted Tari beret on his large head. He carries his disability with no self-consciousness and approaches the world with vigour. He emerged into a circle of light on the stage of my world from the darkness of the street outside. You see, Peter is a man of the street, tempered and hardened by the tough, improvised, rules and justice of survival. He is a street-seller of buay (beetle nut for chewing) and smokes. Life takes place wherever he wakes up and there is no compromise with desire. Whatever he wants takes place there and then – appetites must be satisfied, and ways must be found. The street always provides. At first my feelings for Peter were of admiration and fascination. This larger-than-life, loud, gregarious bulldozer made no excuses, required no sympathy and rolled over anything that came his way. If he slept on the street he simply found someone with a razor and washed in our toilet. If he was hungry, he found a kindred street-spirit who would share some kai-kai. Within days of his arrival from Lae, everyone around here knew Peter Bonny. He had come to Port Moresby from Lae because we had yet another crisis in the disability world. Tole – he of the angel-child smile and long-decayed innocence – had forged two cheques and had to face his peers. Peter was the deputy chair and smelt the opportunity for blood and pillage. So confident was he of the expedition that he asked for a one-way ticket. “How will you support yourself?” “I will stay with wantoks (clan members). Blood was indeed spilt. Tole and Peter – highland pit-bulls – argued for an hour and a half over who should chair the meeting, before we even began the issues at hand. Tole won the battle but lost the war – he was suspended, and the bulldozer became the acting chair. From the moment Peter tasted the forbidden fruit of power he grew, like Alice In Wonderland, into a giant with an insatiable greed. He confided that he had waited twenty years for this opportunity, spurned by the electorate of Lae and ignored by disabled people who preferred the educated people who stole the money. We humoured him, confident that his un-educated, ill-informed chairmanship would be comfortably contained until we could hold an AGM. What took place from that morning onwards was a fight with a monster sired by obsession and given life by greed and corruption. Peter was a match for us all, with a fierce incorrigible will and a focus that brooked no opposition. His obsession was so consuming that rationality was a tool without a function. At first Peter was more irritant than danger. He would appear at the office each day to take up his role as chair/dictator. He would give gruff orders which produced gentle explanations, nodding heads and little action. We got on with the work of setting up a small secretariat and working towards our big event, a weeklong workshop to re-invent the organisation and elect a new leadership. Our plan was working. Then one day he arrived at the office with a young wantok . The committee had agreed to appoint a temporary manager until the AGM, when the post would be re-advertised. We were to advertise the post locally, with the incumbent a favourite to fill the position for a couple of months. Peter, however, had seen his chance. “This is Jackson ”. He handed over an envelope. In the envelope was a typed letter - Peter could not write. The letter offered Jackson a full-time job and was signed by Peter. “Peter, you can't offer anyone a job. Firstly, we do not have money for a full-time job and secondly this was not agreed by anyone.” Discussions ensued with Jackson, a young, highly educated Engan, who had obviously written the contract letter himself. By this time Jackson had been paying his dues. Peter arrived with new clothes, was seen lording it in Jackson's car and was generally living the high life. When we explained the situation to him, Jackson, understood and retracted his threats to go to court over the contract. He told me that he had forgiven Peter but still wished to apply for the temporary post. Ross was appointed as the temporary manager. Peter decided to change his tack. By now we were getting close to running our workshop. Indications were there that funding would arrive. We all agreed that an office support worker would be needed for a month to do the hundred jobs that would be needed to arrange everything. Peter told us that he would appoint Jackson. “No Peter, there are several people interested including disabled people.” Peter fought every inch of the way. He was chair and could do what he liked. The other candidates were thieves, liars and murderers. We needed a worker now. We had a meeting at which we agreed interviews. Jackson and another disabled man waited outside waiting to be interviewed whilst inside Peter fought his colleagues to a standstill. The two applicants were sent away. Peter insisted his man should be given the job. Instead, interviews were re-arranged, this time with the Government staff conducting them. The disabled man was given the temporary post. Written reasons were given. We asked ourselves why a young man with a degree, recently engaged as a consultant by a highland land consortium, would want a temporary administrative post at low pay. We didn't like the answers we were coming up with . Peter also did not like the answers he was given. He would continue fighting. By now the pot was nearly at boiling point. A meeting was called. The meeting was supposed to take a couple of hours. It lasted six hours because Peter fought every point and it ended with demands from him for money to live in Port Moresby, even though he had promised that he would look after himself. He had been living in the office until forced out and now slept on the street. As the light faded from the day Peter threatened the blind treasurer that he would come to his home to hurt him. As a street man Peter had access to people who would do his bidding for a six-pack of beer. I solved the immediate problem by paying a room rent for a month. We went home in the dark. The next day Peter came in and unexpectedly said that he would allow the disabled man to take the administrative post. But if we expected things to quieten down, we were wrong. He continued to come every day , as we tried to organise sixty disabled people to come to the workshop. He demanded that anyone who might beat him in a vote for the chair should be excluded. He wanted money to pay people to vote for him. “You must give them something that is how it is done in PNG.” We all resisted his demands. As the workshop grew close Peter's obsession intensified his feelings of desperation. The smallest item turned into a row. Peter's chair wheeled up and down the corridor at increasing speed – a barometer of his growing temper. Another meeting agreed the list of people coming, Peter ignored it and ordered names to be removed. “But Peter the airline tickets have been purchased.” “I don't care remove him.” It was at this point that Peter sat and talked to my Ugandan friend. He was deeply unhappy that Ross and myself were blocking his tyranny and the blind treasurer his money. “If I don't become chairman I will hurt those people.” The next day Peter repeated the threat to another disabled person. “If I don't become chairman I will cut people. I will bring a truck load to the AGM” We now had a week to go before our denouement. I confronted Peter with the threats and asked him to withdraw them at our final meeting. The meeting ended in shouting, and he didn't retract, but at least it was in the open. I decided it was not a good idea to come to the office during the final few days and worked from home. I only found out later what occurred in my absence at the office. Monday : Peter is given his airline ticket for the workshop and agrees with Government staff not to come to the office again. Tuesday: Peter comes to the office and slaps a written demand for K15,000 (£3,500) on the table to cover his living costs. The demand is written by Jackson. Wednesday: Peter comes in again and demands payment. The blind treasurer refuses. Peter picks up a walking stick and smashes it across the face of the blind treasurer. The bloodied treasurer goes for hospital treatment; Peter spends the night in the police cells. Thursday: Peter is bailed by young wantok , Jackson. He goes straight to the bank and gets them to put a stop on the bank account. When they phone the office to confirm it Peter answers the phone. There is one day before staff leave for the workshop. A hasty meeting is called, and they agree to pay Peter K4,000 (£1,000) to get him to unfreeze the account so that the workshop can take place. He and 3 other Engans are given similar amounts by a corrupt wantok in the Government Dept. Peter now has money to buy his re-election.
The Last Chapter – Peter Bonny's Bid For Power.I was the last to arrive at the workshop in Goroka, a highland town. Someone had to stay behind to make sure that disabled people coming from all corners of PNG caught their flights in Moresby. I had made arrangements that people flying into the highlands centre of Mount Hagen would be met and had hired a bus so that all highlands' people would travel together. Our manager was to send his assistant to Hagen a day early to ensure that all went smoothly. That night I had a worried phone call from a catholic sister who had lost the 2 disabled people sent from far distant Western Province. Why had they not been met as arranged? The next day I found out why. I questioned the manager. “Why did you not send Susuve to meet the bus and the arrivals?” “Peter Bonny went instead.” Peter had spent a drunken night in Hagen and filled the bus next day with women, wantoks and people he knew from the highlands. The two arrivals were left, ignored and stranded at a strange airport and were only saved by the kindness of strangers. Worse was to follow. Peter was already campaigning. He bought plenty of beer for the 5-hour trip from Hagen and began to dish out his largess. By the time they reached their Goroka destination everyone was drunk including an uninvited blind man and his mistress who Peter brought with him. They set about persuading the centre administrator to give the blind man a room. This they achieved through banging on the door and swearing until she gave in. That same night as the blind man and his partially sighted mistress liaised in his room blissfully unaware that the curtains were open, his wife arrived. She, being a highland woman, did not wait for marriage guidance. Instead, she pulled out a knife and stabbed the offending woman above the eye and on the arm. Happy hour passed at the hospital and justice was done when the wife appeared next day with a swollen and bruised eye courtesy of a beating from the blind husband. I wondered how relevant our human rights messages would be in this climate. The rest of the workshop week passed relatively peacefully . Peter went about giving people K50 for votes and giving out beer and women to those who would vote for him, while the rest us went on planning the future of The Assembly of Disabled Persons. Tole, the suspended chair did much the same in a more sophisticated manner. We later found out that his stay at a posh lodge away from the rest of us was funded by opening a new bank account in our organisation's name and then writing cheques that bounced. By the time the AGM came at the end of the week election fever had taken over. More uninvited people arrived from Lae. Tole invited some disabled women to his hotel room outside the compound and got them drunk. Peter wheeled around in a frenzy, Kina notes flying from his grasp. He had produced election posters and a strategic plan. It was then that Susuve stepped to the plate. He called a meeting of all of the coastal and Island people and would not let highlanders in. He reminded them of the workshop and the need to choose good leadership. They agreed a strategy. Finally, the AGM arrived. We had meticulously planned that only those invited to represent their provinces would attend to ensure fairness in the voting. A blind ex-policeman had arranged for his police chums to be present to stop gate crashers. However, this tightly planned security strategy came to nothing when the ex-policeman arrived late and still drunk from an all-night drinking session. The manager also discovered that he had not printed the financial report – chaos ensued. Peter arrived in his wheelchair resplendent in a new, old suit and tie topped with a leather cowboy hat. In his method-acting mind he thought that if you looked like a chairman then you surely must be a chairman . By the time Ross, the manager, had arrived, everyone had been let into the meeting room and the ‘crooks' had already forced a decision that all present could vote even if they were not invited. The carefully prepared agenda was abandoned. No-one wanted reports, the vote was the thing. Disability Big Brother was upon us. Who would be thrown out of the house? Ross forced them to at least look at the accounts, even if they didn't want to hear from the chairman . Tole tried hard to defend his forgery even though no-one had raised it. “I did make out cheques for K11,000, but I only got K1,600. I had to use the rest to bribe Department officers.” At last the vote came. A secret ballot. There were three candidates, Tole, the disgraced chair, who had spent money to bring people from Lae, Peter Bonny, who had worked tirelessly for three months to get his hands on the purse strings and Ipul Powaseu , the sensible academic candidate for the Coast and Islands. The votes were announced by the Government teller Tole Wia 15 votes Peter Bonny 12 votes Ipul Poweseu 22 votes Cheering erupted, the organisation had been saved – the pirates had been repelled. Peter and Tole wheeled out of the room in disgust. Peter's hired wife for the week on seeing her nest-egg reducing before her eyes took immediate remedial action, taking the rest of his ill-gotten money from his room before departing on the next Hagen bus. The greatest pleasure was in seeing that they had been defeated by their own greed. If they had put up only one candidate, they would have won. Susuve had become the hero of the hour. POSTSCRIPT It is strange to say that for all of the threats and lunacy that took place before Disability Big Brother, it seems that Peter has accepted the result. I have seen him in Moresby since and there is no feeling of threat. He is sleeping on the street and making a half-hearted attempt to get the rest of his claim for K15,000. Now he and Tole are working out how they can get to Lae in July to stand for chair of the other disability organisation for service providers. “It is the PNG way ”, they say. You get what you can in any way that you can. No embarrassment, no shame, no conscience. If it doesn't work look for another scam . This time we were lucky. PNG Assembly of Disabled Persons now has an open door. If they can find a way to step through it there is a possibility that the organisation can succeed – at least for now. SOME TIME LATER I did not see Peter Bonny selling smokes and buay outside of the shops this weekend. I have just heard that he has achieved his aim. He now has a roof over his head and there is an article about him in the newspaper. His new home is Bomana Prison, and the article is about the alleged abduction and rape of a young woman by a man in a wheelchair – the ex-chair of PNG Assembly of Disabled Persons
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