CHRISTINE STEWART,
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Jason Lavare was the Port Moresby Area Coordinator for MSM in the Save the Children PNG Poro Sapot Project (PSP). This meant that he was in charge of coordinating the HIV awareness program, the drop-in centre at the Project office in Port Moresby, involved in meeting, reporting, training. I’m still not sure of the full extent of his duties, but I do know he discharged them wonderfully and efficiently. He was young, vibrant, active. The news of his death last January came as an enormous shock. I first met Jason in 2006 when I started my PhD fieldwork, before he started work at PSP. He was one of my first interlocutors. Short, bright-eyed, an infectious grin, bubbling with stories and opinions and responses to my amateur questions and probes. After the interview, he was so exhilarated (it must have been quite cathartic for him), that he twisted a laplap around his waist, draped some Christmas tinsel around his head, donned his dark glasses, put some music on the CD-player (it was someone else’s house) and started dancing around the floor.
We communicated as well as we could despite frequent computer and email problems at his end, for example:
When the news arrived of Jason’s passing, I, like so many others who had known him, was stunned. One friend wrote:
|
|