THE basal tone of the horn cuts through Siuke’s consciousness like a cracker going off in the distance, rousing him from his slumber. His eyes flicker open and he shakes his head clear the cobwebs of sleep and get his bearing, feeling suspended between the time frames of sleep and consciousness.
The sound of the horn blares again, this time louder than before and he realises the sound had risen in volume because it was less than 20m away and that he was now fully conscious.
He was suddenly aware of the darkness around him, punctuated by shards of light from the nearby street light – it was night time and he had been asleep, but for how long, is the question. He does not have a watch to tell the time.
His vision follows the sound of the horn through the open louvers of the window closest to him and he notices the shape of a parked PMV truck silhouetted against the street light, its parking light red and eerie as if in the twilight zone.
There were shapes moving in and near the truck and voices barking out orders, clearly somebody ensuring that the thing they were taking down from the truck were his own.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Siuke cocked his senses towards the source of the voice and recognised the figure straight away.
He sat there quietly for a moment lost in thought. Should he get up and greet his cousin with open arms or sit back and let his cousin find his way around. Afterall, he thought, his cousin wasn’t exactly a stranger to his house.
Why would he come back so early?
Harofere and Siuke grew up together in the village. They were inseparable, like two peas in a pod. A smile crossed Siuke’s lips as he reminisced about their carefree younger years and of all things, falling in love with the same village girl. Each had tried his best to win her love but she had completely ignored them.
The only time that she showed any interest in either of them was when she made a sarcastic remark and waited for the words to sink in so that she could laugh at their pained expressions.
The competition in fact had been so intense that their relationship began to sour up and before each of them could really comprehend what was happening, the girl eloped with a young man from the east and Siuke took off for the big city, hoping to seek and find his fortune.
They had met again for the first time many years later and buried the hatchet and thereafter, Harofere was a somewhat regular visitor to Siuke’s house.
Siuke had considered their friendship much more important than puppy love and besides,
wasn’t blood thicker than water?
Harofere thought likewise, reminding Siuke that if he should come home, his home was Siuke’s.
And so their relationship had developed from the ruins of despair and lost love.
Harofere never gave notice of his arrival but Siuke had come to see a pattern in it. Towards the end of the year, he would turn up in Port Moresby to sell his betelnuts and coconuts. There was always some of both for Siuke’s household.
Siuke would assist him with a small bag of rice, flour, dripping, sugar and tea when he returned to the village. And so the trend continued until about seven years ago when Harofere dropped in to seek medical attention in Port Moresby for a mystery illness. He had come in empty handed but that was to be understood. He was a sick man needing medical help and there was nobody he could turn to in his predicament.
Siuke had obliged out of their friendship to make him comfortable. He took care of Harofere’s needs while he was hospitalised for three weeks. When he recovered, Siuke saw him off with the usual tripping and a bonus of a few bucks for his PMV and dinghy fares. It was the first time that he had given Harofere some money. Previously, Harofere managed to fend for himself with the proceeds of his sales.
Siuke never thought much of this on this occasion. He took it in his stride as a noble gesture to help a friend in need. And his resolve was strengthened by thought of that time of the year – Christmas, when all and sundry are told from the pulpit that this was a time of giving and to give generously.
Harofere had come back the following year at the ‘usual’ time to sell sago, betelnuts and coconuts but did not quite fare well as the markets were full of these wares, thus forcing the prices and the income for the vendors to drop drastically. At the end of the day, Harofere had to seek assistance to go home and his only hope was Siuke.
Siuke capitulated, not because he wanted to. It was an absolute necessity. Harofere was another mouth to feed and the longer he stayed, the more the cost of feeding his family would go up.
That was when Siuke did some serious soul searching.
The times, they were a-changing. He could no longer support another member of the family, even his own sister or brother. During the time that Harofere was in Port Moresby, his family barely scraped through to the next fortnight.
When they saw Harofere off, they barely survived on locally grown tapioca and greens and what they could catch from the sea. He figured that to accommodate a relative in the city for a week in return for some of what he brought to sell was an unfair trade, one that never balances out.
One spends more on feeding and accommodating a rural villager than the villager providing a few coconuts, a handful of betelnuts and a bag of sago. These normally lasted less than a week.
Harofere did not come back for six years and when he did last Friday, he came empty handed.
Siuke learnt from him that the times, they were a-changing too, in the village.
The seas had risen and driven the villagers inland to new locations where they had to grow the same things that had sustained them for generations. Plots of sagos that once supplied generations had been washed away by flood waters and many who had claims on these plots now had nothing to claim for.
Fish and shellfish were diminishing by the numbers for some unknown reason but perhaps because of disturbances to their habitat. The villagers also speak of fleets of foreign fishing vessels plying their illegal trade, most times, close to shore and complain bitterly about the authorities not enforcing the laws that restrict fishing close to land.
Siuke was sad to learn that many of these fishing vessels were trawling for prawns and he has always been an avid prawn fan.
They both agreed that each was facing his own crisis in life and that it was a fight for survival. Both admitted after a long silence that they were fighters and had a good laugh as if that was the only way to neutralise the gloom that was enveloping them.
Siuke spilled his mind then, stressing that the time of giving is over, even if it is Christmas.
“Why should I give and the receiver goes off to enjoy Christmas while my family and I starve,” was the crux of his explanation.
Harofere explained that he was in town to buy rice, biscuits, flour, noodles, sweets and smokes to resell back at the village – the reason why he had been saving all the money he made from marketing crabs, cooked fish and sago in the village over the last six years.
Siuke mused over this for a while and finally suggested they go into business together.
And we are reminded of the Wise Counsellor’s words: “When you have nothing left but God, only then do you realise that God is enough …”

 

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