Tupou Vere
Lalanga Pasifika: Weaving the Pacific—Stories of Empowerment from the South Pacific is both honest and inspirational. Honest in that it takes the postcard ‘palm, sand and surf’ image of the Pacific, flips it and offers the real images and stories of the region as it is - marked with poverty and violence. Inspirational in that it shows how these problems are being successfully addressed by four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) comprised of strong, tenacious women.

Edited by Arlene Griffen and written by a trio of women from Tonga, Samoa and Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), the book is the fourth and final in the Commonwealth Foundation’s series on Lessons in Empowerment and has been preceded by three similar publications—one each from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. The foundation’s programme has allowed NGO leaders to reflect on and document their experiences in community development.

Lalanga Pasifika is not for those who are content with considering only the touristy side of the Pacific. Griffen opens the book with an analysis of Pacific history and politics and the consequent problems that beset the region.

She lists urban drift, poverty, monocultural economies, small internal markets, hurricanes, droughts, floods and anthropogenic disasters like global warming, military coups and civil war. Struggling to cope with all these are the representatives of Pacific civil society, the NGOs addressing democracy, human rights, the environment, well-being, institutional and corporate accountability and peace and conflict resolution. Griffen lays the background for the four subsequent stories of effort, endurance and triumph.

Lia Maka writes about two Tongan NGOs—the Catholic Women’s League and ‘Aloua Ma’a Tonga (‘two people paddling for Tonga’). The former is remarkable in that the women comprising it have emerged to pioneer the provision of crisis care and human rights education in Tonga.

From Samoa, Adimaimalaga Tafuna’i records the creation, development and success of the Women in Business Foundation (WIBF).

Merely 15 years old, the organisation has contributed to the financial self-reliance and independence of women and youth in Samoa, a society dependent largely on remittances and plagued by community breakdown and urban drift.

Under the auspices of WIBF programmes, women in a third of Samoan villages are now running businesses such as producing virgin coconut oil and the Samoan ie sae (fine mat), in the process reinvigorating these traditional activities. WIBF is instrumental in coordinating the programmes and finding buyers and niche markets for the products.

As Griffen states in her introduction, the last story in lessons in empowerment from the South Pacific is ‘both heart-rending and liberating’. Brenda Tohiana documents the work of Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency (LNWDA) in conflict resolution and peace-building on her home island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

The island was the scene of the Pacific’s first civil war—a bloody war that lasted several years. Waged over a landscape devastated by copper-mining, it was marked by the persistent demands of Bougainvilleans for autonomy and control over their own land. Although thousands were killed during the war, LNWDA was eventually instrumental in restoring peace in the hearts of people as well as in the province of Bougainville. In 2001, in recognition of its work, the LNWDA was awarded the Millenium Peace Prize.

Every page of this publication speaks volumes of the endurance and vision of Pacific women and Pacific people. Whether it is a woman offering counselling, a woman weaving mats to buy groceries or pay her children’s school fees, or a woman raising her voice in the pursuit of peace, the vision and the act are one, and together they demonstrate the will of the human spirit to rise above pressing circumstances.

This book is a must-read for the truth it tells, the vision it portrays and the triumphs it celebrates.

Tupou Vere is Director, Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, Suva, Fiji