South Sea Gold: Chapter Ten

Tom received a phone call soon after getting to the office next day. "Good morning, Tom," said a friendly voice, "Jeremy Blake here. Our CEO, Mr. Li, and I would like to invite you to lunch with us, if you're free today."

With ulterior motives on the menu? thought Tom. "Jeremy, I usually eat lunch at my desk here at work," Tom said.

"Consider this a working lunch at our expense. Mr. Li wants to get to know you better, and hear your ideas." Jeremy urged. "It shouldn't take long; we know your time is valuable."

Might be a story in this, thought Tom. "Okay, Jere, I'd be glad to, thanks." They set a time and place.

When Tom entered the air-conditioned and tastefully decorated Chinese restaurant at noon, Jeremy and Mr Li had just arrived. A waiter led them to an alcove allowing them some privacy. "This place has excellent dim sum," said Li, when they were seated. Waiters circulated among the tables, pushing food trolleys, each bearing several Chinese delicacies from which the customer might try as many as he liked.

After they had made several selections, and hot tea had been poured, Li turned the talk to business. "I've been very interested in your recent series on mining, Mr. Akani," he said. "South Sea Gold has the controlling interest in three mines in PNG, with two more in the exploration and development stages. Jeremy has been describing your thoughts on limiting the spread of mine tailings. We've heard of paste back-fill methods, of course, but our parent company in Hong Kong has found tailings ponds and deep sea disposal more cost-effective."

"I'm an outsider in such matters, Mr. Li," said Tom, "but has your company considered the added long-range costs in PNG of traditional tailings dumping?"

"We prefer to consider the benefits that can result from our mining ventures, Tom―may I call you Tom?―such as the scholarships our company furnishes for deserving young New Guineans to study abroad, that are made possible by our mining activities. You have children, don't you, Tom?"

Tom nodded. "One, so far."

"Think of the increased opportunities available to him in later life, if you could choose to send him to any university in the world―Australia, UK, United States . . . "

"And how are these scholarship candidates chosen, Mr. Li?"

"An independent committee selects them from a list of nominees furnished by the corporation. The grants are quite generous, intended to cover cost of tuition, travel, and living abroad."

"The grant applications are not open to all high school students, then, based on merit?"

"The committee would consider merit, among other things, of course." Li's expression and tone were bland, but something seemed to change in his face; something more distant about his eyes, maybe, Tom thought.

"Mr. Li, that's certainly very generous of the company. Of course, my newspaper's focus has always been chiefly on those people adversely affected by mining. People whose farms were down-river from a collapsed mine tailings dam, for instance, or the failure of the promised school house to appear at your own Owego Mine in Milne Bay."

Mr. Li leaned forward earnestly. "Let me assure you, the Owego school has not been forgotten. At a staff meeting earlier this month, one of the top executives from Hong Kong directed that the school construction be speeded up. We expect it to be ready later this year."

Another thought apparently struck Li. "And that reminds me," he said, "our public relations weekly newsletter has recently lost it's editor. Would you consider working for South Sea Gold as editor, keeping our world-wide enterprises informed on new mining developments as they occur? It's a paid position, of course," he added.

"Let me think about it," said Tom," as they all got up from the lunch table. "I would have to clear it with my editor, to be sure there is no conflict of interest."

"Of course," said Li. "Let me know soon, so we can discuss salary and travel perks."

As he drove back to the office, Tom considered what he had just been offered. Clearly, it had been an offer. They had been talking about tailings disposal, until Li had suddenly switched to college scholarships and world-wide travel. He had never given much thought to his children's future education. He had always thought that university achievement depended about 20% on the university and 80% on the student's character and motivation, and he saw the University of PNG as the natural place to go. But what if he was wrong? What if local schools deteriorated so much under the current culture of greed and bribes that a local diploma fifteen years in the future would be worthless?

He recalled the advice from his mother, a minor government official well acquainted with bribe offers: "Tomaka, my son, if you don't want to be tempted, don't even unwrap the gift, no matter whether it's a bottle of whiskey, or money, or whatever. Temptation is much easier to resist if you don't gaze at it."

I won't solve anything by becoming part of the problem, he thought. And yet. . . .

"I've had quite a day," Tom told his wife when he got home that evening. "A free lunch and two bribe offers."

"Oh? Can we take that vacation in New Zealand, then?" She held out three-year-old Morris, who was reaching for his Daddy.

"That wasn't in the offer," he said, lifting his son to his shoulders, "but a full university scholarship for Morrie when he grows up, anywhere in the world, covering tuition, travel and living expenses. You want to go to school in New Zealand, Morrie?"

The boy nodded enthusiastically. "After dinner!"

"And the second offer?" asked Kim.

"A part-time editor's job with a mining newsletter. Good travel perks. I'm supposed to let him know soon, so we can discuss pay."

"And what do you have to do to merit all this?"

"He hasn't said yet, but I'm sure it will involve some message like, 'Mine tailings are good for you,' " He set Morrie down.

"Are you serious about this, Tom?" she gazed at her husband wonderingly."You've never spoken like this before."

"I don't know." He was thoughtful. "It would be interesting to see how far they are willing to go."

Tom was taking a coffee break with Matt Lin the next morning. "So, Matt, how much success did you have yesterday tracking down the Gender Issues Office?" Tom asked.

"Sophia and I finally found an office near Parliament House." Matt gently blew on his coffee to cool it. "Easier to find than anything in the Mining Ministry maze. It opened up a whole new aspect of mining for me―small-scale operations by a single family or person, gold-panning a stream or maybe working a sluice. One of the papers the gender people handed out estimates there are eight or ten thousand women trying to make a living this way, and four times that many men.

"It's mostly bare subsistence living," he continued, "and there aren't any national regulations, but the Mineral Resource Authority runs a Small-Scale Mine Training Center at some place called Wau. Sophia says she grew up in a village near there."

Tom grunted. "Morobe Province, south of Lae. Some of the mines there aren't working any more, but there are new, bigger ones a little farther south."

"The government people are mostly neutral about these little places," Matt went on, "I guess they can't really inspect and enforce rules at that many thousand small mine sites. But these are mostly amateurs, they may know that mercury can extract gold from the heavy sand in the bottom of their sluice, but they don't know the dangers of mercury poisoning. Maybe they don't wash after a long day's work, maybe they use the same pot to cook their food that they used to cook the gold mix to boil off the mercury. Almost surely they breathe some of the mercury fumes, and most of them dump the sand residue back in the river for the folks downstream to drink."

"So, if these small-time miners are uneducated and live in some other part of the country, what good does this school do them?"

"That's where the women's groups come in. Sophia talked with the women at this gender issues office for quite a while. Women's empowerment is her favorite subject."

"Yeah, I've noticed," Tom said drily.

"She's a remarkable woman. In many ways." Matt's voice trailed off as he gazed into space.

Tom brought him back to the subject at hand. "You were saying . . ."

"Oh. Yes, well, PNG women are starting to realize that there's more to life than gardening, cooking, and babies. Until lately, they weren't allowed to mine at all. But now, things have turned around. Most male miners out in the villages are glad to have their wives and children help with the work. That makes other problems, of course, like kids dropping out of school, if there's even a school near by. Sophia says that women have more instinct for business, in finding the best buyer for their bits of gold, or having an eye for chances to buy and sell items in demand in the village. Men in PNG, she says, usually have less interest in saving money. As soon as they sell their gold, they spend the money. Women are more likely to look ahead, willing to spend some for their kids education or other needs."

"My question was, " Tom prompted, "how does the miners' school at Wau help those who can't afford the travel or pay the school fees. I assume there is some cost involved, not to mention time away from work?"

"That's still in the planning stage. One source said satellite schools will be set up in other mining areas, another said there will be a traveling team that can go anywhere that has a road nearby."

"And what do they teach?"

"The center at Wau sets up two-week sessions each covering three or four topics. One of their main concerns is safety in handling mercury—it's a health problem for the miner, for his family who breathe the fumes, and for the villagers who drink the contaminated water. But it's the only way they can recover fine particles of gold from the river sediment. Cyanide, that big mines are trained to use, is so poisonous that it's out of the question for village use."

"But not out of the question for big mines to dump residue in the rivers and ocean, if they so choose," said Tom. "What else do they teach?"

"How to prospect for gold, so they don't waste energy tearing up whole hillsides; how to avoid physical injury, how to handle the business-end of the work, avoiding environmental damage, things like that. You know," continued Matt, "living in Singapore, and now working in Hong Kong, I haven't any idea how people out in tiny villages handle their banking and business matters."

"There have been micro-banking projects from time to time here in PNG," said Tom, "but none I know of that reach a large part of the country. Security against robbery is a big problem here."

"A friend of mine in Singapore tried bringing banking to the villages, I remember." Matt smiled in reminiscence. "His bank sent him to Africa to see a successful enterprise a few years ago. They solved the robbery problem with an armored car carrying a computer system with the bank's complete database for the thirty villages in that region. Some of their clients couldn't read or write, but each account was registered to a client's thumbprint. Deposits, withdrawals, and small loans could all be done just by the computer, through the person's thumbprint ID. They even reduced the payroll of one government department by half when they got rid of all the fake names on the roster that couldn't match a print. Four armed guards deployed at each stop discourage robbers.

Tom grinned. "We might have to add a feature for rural PNG. Have a second armored car with four more armed guards locked inside to protect the deployed four from being out-gunned by our raskol gangs. But thanks for the tips, Matt. They should make a good base for next Friday's feature article."

"I'll trade them for some information I want," said Matt."

Tom raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"Tell me about Sophia. She's a fascinating girl."

"Well, I only know her from working on a few projects here at The Journal. Twenty-seven years old, divorced, no kids. Aggressive reporter, looks for facts, verifies her material with at least two sources; that kind of stuff . . ."

"What happened to her marriage?"

"I've never asked her. I kind of assumed she had an abusive husband, but that's only a rumor."

"Do you know how she feels about Chinese?"

Tom smiled inwardly, tempted to answer, "she prefers pasta." But this wasn't the time.

"I've never heard her make any racial remarks. She has a temper, and doesn't suffer fools lightly, but you probably already noticed that."

"I'd like to ask her out. But I don't know the social customs here in PNG."

"Best way to test that is to ask her," Tom said. "I think she likes you." Actually, he had no idea whether she did or not, but a friend is a friend.

"Yeah. Well, thanks. See you tomorrow."