The name Rocky Mitio is synonymous with the PNG coffee industry. He is considered as the walking encyclopedia for this industry, which today, contributes up to a billion kina in foreign exchange to the PNG economy. I had met him many times in my career in his office in Goroka, Eastern Highlands or in the coffee fields around PNG, to discuss work and learn to appreciate what he was doing, as head of the PNG Coffee Marketing Board (PNGCIB) and then as the Chief Executive Officer of the Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC), the predecessor to PNGCMB. He has since retired after spending 33 years since 1979, leading the industry body. Two weeks ago he walked into my office with a gift bag, a wide grin, and as always, cheerful. I looked into the bag he gave me and inside I found Ovu ga’hoe! (I will not go!, his autobiography. “I want someone to review this book,” he said when I took the book out of the bag. Sometime around May, I read that he has launched his book at the Lamana Hotel and I was curious to read the book. And here he was handing me a copy and after he left, I decided to start. He had written about his exploits from growing up as a young boy in a Lutheran missionary parents’ home in a remote village in Okapa in Eastern Highlands Province, going to school and later finding employment with the coffee industry. It was no easy read as the book is 310 pages long but once, I started, I became engrossed in it – from start to finish. Ovu ga’ hoe is a book Mitio’s adventure over the years, starting with the posting his Lutheran Evangelist Pastor father and mother, Mankeo, to a strange land called Rihongka, which is Okapa today. Rihongka was the gateway for the Lutheran missionary work into the heart of the Highlands, led by Heinrich Bergmann, Georg Philhofer and local missionaries from Morobe. He discusses how the early missionaries worked hard to pacify the people, brought peace to the rural communities through the Word and allowed the colonial administration to move easily into the highlands. Schools went up, health facilities went up, roads were built and we were on the way to become what we are today. “There were, however, some disagreements between the missionary and the gavman kiap based in Kainantu who insisted that the mission stop the expansion. Flierl (Johann) then put to the kiap that it was the mission that tamed the people and encouraged them to embrace new peaceful ways. If the kiap stopped this movement, then the kiap himself must do what the mission was doing. When the kiap heard that, he understood that he must work with Flierl,” Mitio wrote, adding an agreement was reached there and then to foster good relationship between the government and the mission. As a young man he grew up witnessing tribal fighting, initiations, the use of different languages and many more customs and traditions. He started his education at the Kote village school, then to Okapa Primary school between 1959 to 1964. He was good at running and soccer. He talked about how an encounter with another boy sent him to the Kiap to be disciplined. “I learnt to reason the hard way – by knowing right from wrong,” he wrote. His story about his exploits in school shed light on the education system in those days, the challenges and the opportunities. “I undertook a wide range of extra-curricular activities to complement basic academic subjects. Most important to me were life skills in carpentry, metal work and small agriculture farming,” he wrote, a skill which was to become the center of his entire life later on. He entered the Vudal Agriculture College where he graduated with a Diploma in Tropical Agriculture in 1972. At the time of graduation, the PNGCMB advertised a position for Executive Officer to the board. He was encouraged to apply by the college principal and he got the job. He never left the coffee industry. From Executive Officer to CEO, Mitio spent 33 years with the coffee industry, He shares his experience in a way one easily understands dedication to his work, his commitment to country and family over the years as he travels the world – from PNG to Europe, USA, the North Pole, South America and Africa in the name of PNG Coffee. THE coffee industry has its own struggles and achievements driven by dedicate people like Mitio to bring it to where it is today. Ovu ga’ hoe is a a testament of a resilient young man during the early colonial days who has seen both worlds of change and transformation from 1950s to independence and post-independence. It is a book that looks at PNG and how it had come this far through the eyes of one man. I highly recommend this book anyone who wants to know the PNG story as we live through the independence year from September 16, 2025 to September 16, 2026.