Christmas ‘homecoming’ to Goroka

By MALUM NALU
CHRISTMAS Day 2016 in Goroka, Eastern Highlands, with its famously-beautiful perennial springtime climate.
The delightful flowers are in full explosion everywhere, every colour of the rainbow and more, on this glorious morning.
It’s indeed flower power in Goroka on Christmas Day, which happens to be a Sunday, and the blooms are testimony to this.
My daughter Moasing and I are at the Good Samaritan Lodge, West Goroka, a wonderful block of apartments where we’d been staying for the last couple of days with family members from Lae.
Goroka, I explain to her, is a place that is very special to my heart.
Mum and dad were here in the early 1960s, where dad taught at Iufi-Iufa Primary School outside Goroka, and my elder sister (now deceased) and brother were born here.
We returned here in 1975 when I was a child, at the time Papua New Guinea gained Independence from Australia, and spent three delightful years in a town which at that time was like any in Australia, maybe even better. Sadly, like everything else in PNG, things have regressed over the last 41 years.
In 1998, I returned to Goroka, I tell my daughter, her late mum joining me from Australia in 1999, and we’d stayed here until 2002.
Her two elder brothers were born here in 2000 and 2002.
Back to the future, on this Christmas morning, we are following the yellow brick road to neighbouring St John’s Lutheran Church.
It’s an institution that’s been part of my life since 1975 and I feel very much at home here.
We join in prayer and song with the local congregation, something which for me, is very spiritually uplifting.
It’s an unexpected honour and privilege to be asked by Pastor Grahamme Baital to address the congregation at West Goroka today.
I tell them of my relationship with the church going back to 1975 as a child, and later from 1998-2002 when
I was here with my wife. The church turns 50 in 2019 and I’m privileged to have been part of this great institution.
After Christmas service, I have a chat with longtime church usher Joe Kaupa, a dear friend of my wife and I during our Goroka days and introduce him to my daughter.
Joe, 61, is from Koge in the Sinasina- Yongomugl area of Chimbu.
“I’ve been here for the last 32 years since 1984,” he tells me.
“I’ve seen so many people going in and out of Goroka during this time.
“I’m glad to see you back at this church.
“This is God’s work that I’m doing.”
After church, we go back to the lodge, change, and take a Christmas Day drive around Goroka. We first drive up to Mt Kiss, overlooking Goroka, to take in panoramic 360-degree views of the Goroka town and valley.
My daughter is simply mesmerised.
Next stop is North Goroka where we have mumu corn, sweet bananas and barbecued lamb heart for Christmas lunch…simply the best.
We then venture up the hill to the water supply area of Goroka for more breathtaking scenes.
From there, we drive back to town, where we take a look around.
There are four things that sadden me the most on this Christmas Day in Goroka.
Firstly, is the fact that the Goroka Market has become a pigsty, with pigs freely wandering around with people simply because the political leadership cannot work together.
Secondly, is the fact that the majestic, sentinel-like pine trees at Peace Park, icons of Goroka since colonial days, next to the airport, havebeen chopped down.
Thirdly, rubbish is strewn everywhere, with little care shown by an apathetic population.
Fourthly, Goroka like everywhere else in the country, has a large population of “drug bodies” fuelled by homebrew and marijuana and who pose a serious threat to the peaceloving community.
I cannot understand why we have allowed such a beautiful town like Goroka to deteriorate like this. To end off the day, we go to the Bird of Paradise Hotel, to order some pizza. As we await our pizza, a cool breeze blows down from Mt Kiss, dark clouds gather, a light drizzle starts falling, and I notice the beautiful flowers.
This is the true beauty of Goroka.