AT THE ripe age of 70, Mahuru Dadi Toka is far from life in the old people’s home, wherever that may be in Papua New Guinea.
The colourful man about town is certainly going places, following what the doctor said: “Follow your heart.”
And his heart is telling him to retire to the Royal Papuan Yacht Club on the bayside of the Port Moresby Harbour and reminisce about his exploits over the years.
In fact, he wants to sit and watch the hive of activity that is booming on the waterfront and take in the reality of the whole situation in the knowledge that he played a role in some of the major development now taking place there.
Mr Toka is a popular businessman, musician, sportsman and socialite, and not forgetting another jolly good active bloke about town.
He also goes by a few other nicknames in both the local Motuan language and English – all referring to the septuagenarian as a local Peter Pan of sorts, referring to the young boy who refused to age in folklore.
Chasing 71 years, Mr Toka is like good wine – getting better with age but earning him the latest nickname of Diba Tauna – meaning “knows all” in the Motuan dialect. The first letters of the nickname spells DT and are Mr Toka’s initials.
Indeed, Mr Toka knows it all and every year of his life is a chapter on its own if you’re willing to write a book about his lifetime experiences.
Personally, I would like to do that and hand him a thick tome with a deep sigh of relief and say: “Mahuru Dadi Toka, this is your life”, after the television series of the same name.
Mr Toka may be moving on in age, but he’s a living symbol of a successful struggler over a seven-decade period.
According to Mr Toka, he has never stopped working since the age of 16 when he landed a job as an administration clerk in the office of the colonial administrator in Konedobu after the Second World War.
He was educated to grade six, got a job at age 16, married at age 19 and lost his wife of 41 years on the same day as his oldest daughter in 1998.
“Well, it wasn’t actually the same day but for us, when the day drags on into the night, we would consider that as one day. The mother was sick and hospitalised and the daughter was her guardian at the hospital.
“When the mother succumbed to her sickness on May 18, 1998, the daughter passed away too in the early hours of the next day. I had two coffins to bury at the same time. We laid them to rest in one big grave.”
At age 25, he watched his father die after a heart operation on Nov 21, 1962.
“He had come out of the surgery but never came out of his coma,” Dadi recalls. “These were the most emotional moments of my life because I was the only child and I grew up with a lot of attention by way of guidance from my dad.”
In fact, Mr Toka attributes his achievements during his lifetime to his father’s stewardship.
“I guess, you could say our fathers were way ahead of themselves in their time and age and they wished very hard for us to follow the footpath that their wisdom dictated.”
Ironically, last Nov 21, Mr Toka himself went under the knife in an Australian hospital.
“I thought this was it. It was the same date my father went under the knife in 1962. I laid in bed after the triple bypass thinking that I will never fully recover, just like my dad. But as I slowly opened my eye and sat up, I realised that God had other plans for me …”
Indeed, Mr Toka followed his heart and it told him to seek the truth from the Bible. He found his answer in the book of Jeremiah: “… I have a plan for you …”
With those words, and the doctors advice to “follow your heart”, Mr Toka admits, the latter has told him to “ease up a bit”.
“That means cutting down on the holes I play in golf, the numbers of beer I could swig, whether I could spend hours at the social club or not and so on and so forth.”
“Easing up a bit”, is certainly, a “foreign language” for the man who lends credibility to the term Golden Oldies.
Over the last two decades, Mr Toka had been a regular face in representative events both in Port Moresby and overseas and is “following his heart…”
He has found his niche in serving God in his own way.
“I’ve started up my own library at Hanuabada for young Christians to use in their quest to spread the Word of God. It’s open to everyone who follows the calling …
“By the way, did you know that for the last 70 years, I have never lived out of Hanuabada village?”
I ask him about what the milestone in his entire life and he answers: “The Royal Papuan Yacht Club.”
He continues: “In 1988, as a landowner on the Port Moresby waterfront, I arranged for the club to relocate to where it is now.”
Mr Toka says if it wasn’t for his involvement, the club should now be located at an obscure sport somewhere near Gabutu.
You: Any regrets?
Mr Toka: Yes … (after a long pause) Not being made a life member of the yacht club … and … not being knighted.
Mr Toka has an MBE to his name for services to business and community.
He has planned his retirement from active life and set up a place on the Port Moresby waterfront to live out his years.
And what better place is there than aboard Diba Tauna, a luxury yacht that Mr Toka bought from a Kokopo businessman last year.
Diba Tauna is going live aboard Diba Tauna. That adds up to Diba Momo, wouldn’t you say, Dadi?
As the Wise Counsellor tells us: “To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion …”

 

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