Tags
Arawa Clinic, Bougainville Copper, Bougainville Island, Bougainville War, Panguna, Papua New Guinea, poem, poetry, sonnet, Tropical diseases and parasites
In paradise if you got sick you died,
Until the miners brought the modern drugs.
The dead were many and the graves were wide;
Utopia is strewn with deadly bugs.
The natives from the bush, with skirts of grass,
Their jungle rot, it ate right to the bone,
But ’twas no match for potions sealed in glass
That healed the sores of men who crafted stone.
Malaria, the fever killed them young,
Until the quinine quelled the parasite.
The maladies of liver and of lung
Were treated, and the darkness turned to light.
Some think the tropic places paradise;
Reality is not so neat or nice.
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