This is the busiest market in the place I call home.

It's Kokopo.

You can hear buses arriving, cramped full of people from miles around.

And if you listen very carefully, you can hear the sounds of waves and the puttwood of

boat engines, faring shoppers from the capital town of Boka, which I can see across the

water in the distance.

Here there are people selling everything from vegetables and food to the local colorful

blouses and shirts we like to wear.

You can hear by viewing, chatting, talking and laughing.

It's a hot sunny day and there's energy all around me.

This is the heart of life on Bogenville, which if you've never heard of this place before,

is a province on the very eastern edge of Papua New Guinea, a country with lies to the north

of Australia in the Pacific in an area known as Melanesia.

Geographically and linguistically, Bogenville is actually closer to the Solomon Islands

than the mainland of Papua New Guinea.

In fact, we Bogenbillions have always thought of ourselves as distinct from the rest of our

country.

So a couple of years ago, we voted to secede from Papua New Guinea and become fully independent.

The story of how we came to vote is a long one, full of violence and exploitation.

Not just against my people, but also against the land itself.

The challenge of what we do now, how we prepare to become the world's newest country, is

very, very complicated.

...