Matane’s 45th book to be released in 2010

Oseah Philemon





The Governor-General of Papua New Guinea Sir Paulias Matane is a walking computer—a true human data base of information about his country.
Anyone can talk to him about anything anywhere and he will provide useful historical background which one can rarely find in books.
This is a man who first learnt his alphabet—the ABCD—at the age of 17 in a village school in East New Britain Province.
He is fond of telling the story to children everywhere he goes in Papua New Guinea. But he does so for one very important reason. 
Matane is the most prolific writer and publisher of books and wants every children in the country to follow his example.
He wants them to read books after books after books to educate themselves.
But more so, he wants them to grow up with an interest in writing and publishing books so that Papua New Guinea will one day have a large collection of books written by Papua New Guineans for Papua New Guineans.
So far, he has written 44 books and another is on the way to be released early in 2010.
It is called From Jungle House to Government House and chronicles his life as a village boy living in the jungle to the modern age and ending up at Government House as Governor-General. It will be a ‘must read’ for every Papua New Guinean.
Matane goes to bed around 8pm and wakes up at 2am to work until day break. It is during those quiet hours that he writes his books.
Matane was in Vanimo early in August to officially launch the 2009 National Book Week celebrations.
The event is celebrated by schools throughout Papua New Guinea each year for the past 29 years to highlight the importance of books and reading.
Matane wants the children of PNG to develop a culture of reading books and to also learn to write their own books when they grow up.
His interest in writing books came about because of his real life experiences with many foreign books. 
He maintains there are enough subjects on PNG to warrant hundreds of books being written about them.
This year’s National Book Week theme was: “Building Our Own Knowledge Society (BOOKS)” and Matane emphasised the critical role books play in the education of children.
Matane is a world traveller having travelled around the world. He says the only place he has not been to is the moon because of the high cost of flying there in a rocket.
He has written books about all his travel experiences and those books are on sale. The money raised goes to charity.