Simona Noorenbergh

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(sometimes credited as Simona Noorenberghe, Simona Noorenberg, Maria Noorenbergh or Sister Simona)
(ref. Journals The Times of Papua New Guinea, The Papuan Post-courier, De Standaard')

Simona Noorenbergh

Born: 1907
Ypres, Belgium
Died: 1990
Fane, Papua New Guinea
Occupation: Nun, Social Worker, Founder of Fane at Papua New Guinea
Nationality: Belgian

Simona Noorenbergh is one of the founders of the small mountain village Fane in Central Province of Papua New Guinea.
She was born in Ypres, Belgium in 1907 as Maria Noorenberghe but was known in Papua New Guinea as sister Simona.
At the age of 84 Simona Noorenbergh died in an airplane crash in the Papuan mountains on July 5, 1990.

Contents

[edit] Award

Port Moresby, October, 1989
Medal of Knight of the Order of Léopold II, for services to the people of Goilala and Papua New Guinea as a whole, awarded by Wilfried De Pauw, Belgian ambassador to Australia and Papua New Guinea.

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Born: 1907
Died: 1990
Funeral celebration of Simona Noorenbergh at Fane, Papua New Guinea
Occupation: Nun, Social Worker, Founder of Fane-Papua New Guinea

[edit] Quotes

  • "Having one big nose might be better than having two little ones."
  • "I'll never go back to Belgium. To do what? Is there still something to be done? Papua New Guinea is where I belong and were I'll die."
  • "My people in the tribes would consider it an honour if I offered them my body to be eaten. Having a look at myself it would for sure be a long extended meal."

[edit] Personal life

(ref. The Times of Papua New Guinea, Post-courier, De Standaard, La Libre Belgique, Het Nieuwsblad, Het Laatste Nieuws')

In 1923 at the age of 16 Simona Noorenbergh did read a story in a French magazine on Papua New Guinea. She told her parents that she immediately wanted to leave home to live in that country.
This was refused.
When she became very sick and her parents feared for her life they promised her that, when she would get better, she would be allowed to go to the Papua's.
Soon she was cured.
As the only way to get there was to be send by a religious organisation she studied to become a nun at the congregation Lady of The Sacred Heart at Stockel, Brussels.
In 1928, after she finished her novitiate she finally took a train from Brussels to Marseille and then left on a 3 month packet trade ship to Port Moresby where she was dropped off. She arrived at the age of 21 in the Goilala mountains by horse on December 8th in 1928. She worked and lived successively in Popole, Ononghe, Bema, Kosige, Boroko, Boregaina, Waima, Inauia and Fane.
During many years she was confronted with the dominant decease Yaws, with heavy never-ending tribe wars and with cannibalism.
In an interview with Elizabeth Kogomoni-Sowei of the Post-Courier in 1989 she mentions smiling that she was asked several times "to voluntarely offer my body for celebration. It would be considered an honour," she contineous, "to be entirely and literally consumed and eaten, as in certain tribes they believe that then my spirit would stay forever in their village."
She gained respect by learning several local languages and became a jack of all trades: teacher, nurse, singer, welfare officer, designer of clothes, organiser of primitive hospitals and elementary schools and educational services, and co-founder of Fane (quote Simona Noorenbergh: "This is where I belong, this is where I'll die."), the mountain village in Central Province.
Due to her respectable age, the local chiefs and people looked at her as a guru and grandmother of all (the oldest age of Papuans at that time in Papua New Guinea was 50 to max 55 years) and they came by foot from far through the jungle to get her opinion on family issues and tribe problems.
At the age of 83 she went to Australia to have an eye-operation as she became practically blind. The operation succeeded but she crashed with an airplane when she got back to Fane in the Papua's. Due to a typhoon the Britten Norman Islander light aircraft hit a ridge-top in the Owen Stanley Ranges and slammed into a tree in the rugged terrain of Woitape in Central Province. Noorenbergh, sitting next to the pilot, was one of the 8 people who died, 4 survived.
She is burried in Fane where she got a local funeral.

[edit] Dedication

The operatic trilogy "The Accacha Chronicles," a secular, contemporary classical, music drama in latin about Death, Birth and Love by Nicholas Lens, published by Schott Music Mainz/New York, has been entirely dedicated to Simona Noorenbergh by the author/composer.

[edit] References

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