Karen Ingram
When Army officer Mark Kellerton first arrived in Solomon Islands, it took him a few days to realise he was no longer in his home country of Papua New Guinea.

Arriving in Honiara in May to assist in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), Captain Kellerton felt at home immediately.

“The only difference I see is the language we speak,” he says.

“Solomon Islands pidgin is slightly different to Papua New Guinea pidgin, but other than that, the culture and the livelihoods, the way people live, it’s exactly like PNG.”

Captain Kellerton, a senior officer in the PNG Defence Force, comes from the province of Milne Bay, east of Port Moresby, but his Army career has taken him all over the country and now, out into the Pacific region.

In his current role, he is working as a liaison officer, looking after the welfare of PNG soldiers deployed to Solomon Islands as part of RAMSI, the unique regional assistance mission made up of military, police and civilians that arrived in 2003 to help Solomon Islanders disarm militants, restore law and order and rebuild government institutions.

Captain Kellerton’s liaison role includes working with the community—both at home in PNG and now in the Solomons—where he takes part in RAMSI’s Community Outreach programme, regularly visiting schools and villages to talk about what the mission is doing in partnership with the government and people of Solomon Islands.

He recently took part in a visit to a school at Mbokona, in central Honiara, where he and his RAMSI Participating Police Force (PPF) and civilian colleagues talked to students about RAMSI’s role in helping Solomon Islands become a more stable and prosperous country.

He sees face-to-face communication as his best tool for creating a good relationship with the local people, which is the key to the mission’s long-term success.

“It’s important that we are always having more interaction with the community, making friendships and saying hello to people. You need to maintain those friendships, go and see people every now and then, and you hope that sometime in the future, if something happens in this area, that someone will say, ‘Don’t worry, I know these guys’, or that they will help you out by giving you a call if you’ve invested in them in the past.”

When talking to the students at Mbokona School, Captain Kellerton explained that RAMSI’s Military contingent is made up of officers from Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and Tonga.

Its role is not to lead the mission but to support and protect the PPF and Solomon Islands police and of course the people of Solomon Islands.

As the anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s 1975 Independence approaches, Captain Kellerton says he feels that his country’s contribution to helping rebuild the Solomons is heartfelt and meaningful to all involved, and he has great confidence in the Solomon Islanders to lead their country to a brighter future.

“We have had our own problems too, with internal security problems and more recently the Bougainville crisis,” he says.

“Having seen the Solomon Islanders go through a period of tensions, I would like to think that they have the answers to their own problems. Like in Bougainville, the original people are the answers to whatever problem everyone is going through. We all should come in here and help, but the local people are the answer to their own problems in the long term.”

With his family looking forward to his return to PNG in November, Captain Kellerton has a message for them, and his country, on Independence Day.

“We are glad for our people and the Government of PNG to send us down here, and we mean to do well here and to make the people of PNG proud,” he says.

“We will continue to serve and help the people in the Solomon Islands with all our hearts, and we send all the best wishes to the people of PNG on our anniversary celebrations.”

• Karen Ingram is RAMSI's Public Affairs Officer.