Hard to part with his tractor

By PISAI GUMAR
PANG Aquila knows the importance of how to use a tractor carefully and productively.
But whenever his tractor has engine problems, Aquila is bedridden for as long as is engine is in a workshop.
No remedy or prescribed medication can cure his illness. Only when Aquila is back on his machine and slashing the Markham kunai will he be well again!
He makes his money from tilling the soil, planting seeds, harvesting crops and transporting stuff to markets.
Besides farm-relating work, he also ferries timber for building houses and kunai grass for roofs.
He loves his tractor deeply, perhaps more than even his wife, five daughters and grandchildren.
He finds comfort and joy only when sitting on the tractor seat; such joy he rarely gets from anyone, his employee, wife and five daughters.
His life is his tractor and the tractor is his life. It is a passion he acquired at 14 when attending Zifasing Community School in 1967.
It was midday on a Friday in May,
Aquila drove by and stopped the tractor under the shade of a mango tree to cool off, after being in the awful heat of Mongkeng Place slashing kunai grass.
Mongkeng Place is a newly proposed site to build the Huon Gulf district headquarter soon. It will be relocated from current site in Lae along Markham Road.
After an hour, Aquila went on to start the engine to continue his kunai slashing task.
But to his surprise, the engine refused to start. Aquila kept inserting the key into the ignition and tried to turn on the engine but to no avail.
He eventually stopped turning the key, in case he might worsen the situation. Aquila got off the seat, took his waist bag and walked to the house.
He sat on the cement floor under the house facing the tractor, and his mind soon dived into the deep waters of reasoning to reckon what actually caused the problem.
It was a new Massey Ferguson (5710) that he went and drove out from the Boroko Motors Lae yard in March 2021.
Not a single word came out from his mouth because before the key (to the tractor) was presented to him, he was advised that should anything happen, he would be terminated forthwith.
Aquila sat still under the house, facing his tractor without puffing any rolled brus, hand upon bended knee, eyes fixed on the tractor and mind kept reasoning the cause of the engine failure.
He isn’t a skilled motor mechanic. He had gained vast experience since he was 14 and started driving tractors and that gave him an understanding of tractors and engine parts.
Aquila was born in 1953 and is one of those many pioneers of Zifasing Community School from 1963 to 1968.
He was in Grade 5 in 1967 when his father bought a tractor to plough the soil for planting peanut. In 1968, his father then set up a family cattle project.
Aquila then had a privilege to accompany his elder brother to the family farm during weekends and school holidays to cook bananas for lunch watching his brother plough the soil.
Aquila sat under the house for the rest of the day until sunset and kept sitting without even a single word until nightfall.
Dinner was prepared and served for him, but he refused eating. Only smoking his roll brus, one after another.
I sat in silence, observing him but was unable to notice how hurt his heart and mind felt, hoping he would walk to his room to sleep. Instead, Aquila lay down on the cold cement floor and dozed off.
I waited for him till 12 midnight, thinking that the freezing Mongkeng wind would wake him up. But to no avail.
I had to bring down a blanket and a pillow, as such at his age cannot withstand the cold wind flooding down from Erap headwaters at midnight.
“Aquila would rather die sitting on the tractor instead of his bed of roses, and buried sitting on the tractor in place of a coffin. He would rather marry a tractor than a woman, for his undying love deeply rooted in tractor truly knowing its meaningful purposes out on the grazing and farming fields,” I thought to thyself.
Aquila’s dad had given him his first hands-on experience on a tractor. Without attending any driving lessons, he went ahead, sat on the seat, started the engine, shifted the gear, got the tyres in motion, released the hoe and started to plough the soil.
From then on, Aquila even drove the engine without license (Class 7) for over two decades.
“Even the police or road traffic authority are never concerned about us tractor drivers as most times, traffic officers are seen cornering drivers other vehicles.
“For about two decades, I drove my tractor as far as Hunter in Lae to slash grasses and return in the evening driving past traffic police checking PMV trucks and cargo trucks along the highway,” says Aquila.
One day, he was returning home and the tractor ran out of fuel only 300 metres away from his house alongside the highway.
It was 5pm and the sun already set beyond the Onga-Waffa mountains in western-end of Markham plains.
The old fella kept sitting patiently on the tractor, keeping an eye along the highway to see if Maxwell Kensell or Goi Paul, his two pals, would drive up to Klin Wara from Coastal Freighters yard, 14 Mile , so he could advise them to rescue him home.
He waited unwearyingly in vain as night fell. The northeasterly breeze from Labu coastline swept the evening clouds across to Atzera range formed droplets.
The dewdrops soon forced the heavens to open and it rained down on him.
Although the glows of the solar lights was visibly 300 metres away, yet Aquila was unable to walk home, leaving the tractor behind.
Aquila decided to crawl underneath the tractor and prepared a bed of kunai grass he had slashed earlier in the day, folded his two long legs and lay down.
With eyes shut, his mind wandered off elsewhere in search of miracles. Sometime approaching midnight, he heard footsteps approaching him as he was lying beneath his machine.
The footsteps then paused next to where the battery was connected. This unknown figure tried to loosen the battery wires from its locker.
Aquila crawled slowly out from beneath the tractor, shining the flash light unto the face of this suspicious thief that soon escaped into the dark in fear without taking the battery with him.
The sounds the wagtail woke Aquila up the next morning. As soon had his breakfast of rolled brus and buai and sitting patiently a mechanic came to his rescue.
Back in 1980-1982, he was employed by Zifasing Cattle Ranch that paid him K60 fortnightly. Then in 1984 he was working with SY Holdings Ltd of Tararan for K160.
He was assigned to slash roadside vegetation of the highway from Leron Bridge-Nadzab junction every month. He then married in 1983.
SY Holdings Ltd was again awarded another contract by the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA). In 1985-1986 when DCA had become NAC (National Airports Corporation) Aquila was assigned to clean the sides of the runways.
When returning, past Zifasing cattle ranch gate at Tararan, his eyes and mind were fixed on grasses and soil upturned by pigs.
Aquila placed the slasher down and motioned backwards then shifted the gear forward and moved onward after sighting a police jeep that passed Tararan village from afar and approaching him.
The three policemen inside the jeep were on a duty travel to Walium in Usino-Bundi, Madang.
It is usual to Aquila’s ear when the slasher blades hit stones. But not this time, as it was the front windscreen of the police jeep.
The slasher blade hit a round rock that went straight, penetrated right through front windscreen and landed at the back seat of the police vehicle.
The policemen were shocked to see the rock occupying the back seat as fourth passenger without hitting either officers. That left them wordless.
The vehicle came to a stop and the policemen signaled Aquila to stop the engine then enquired to know the owner of the tractor.
Soon after the brief, the officers continue to Walium without assaulting or insulting Aquila.
By 4pm, as Aquila parked the tractor in front of the trade store owned by SY Holdings Ltd, and reported the incident to the owner, the police jeep came to a stop.
The policeman then interrogated the owner of SY Holdings Ltd who was the contractor assigned by the Department of Works to take care of highway vegetation.
The owner of the SY Holdings Ltd then showed the contract document to the policemen and referred them to DoW Lae office for repairing broken windscreen.
On a different assignment at Ngarowafes cattle farm alongside Markham River, his employer, Ross Seymour, (who later became Huon Gulf MP) never knew that Aquila endured engine failure and spent a week sleeping under the tractor without eating anything, only to protect the tractor.
Seymour, after checking employees roll and vehicles, found out that Aquila and tractor were not present and a mechanic was assigned immediately to rescue Aquila.
Aquila started working for Seymour in 2007 and knew exactly how many litres of fuel would complete r grazing and farming fields in Klin Wara, Zifasing, Tararan, Mongkeng and Durung, 41 Mile Dangke market and Munum markets within how many days.
To avoid engine problems, Aquila advises Seymour and wife Marie that no other driver should drive the tractor that was assigned to him.
However, Aquila is upset when fuel supply is delayed for a day or two.
Even worse, Aquila is bedridden for weeks or months once an engine problem occurs and the mechanic has to find new spare parts.
Thus, to keep Aquila happy and healthy a tractor has to be in place when the another is sent to the workshop.

• Pisai Gumar is a freelance journalist.

Tractor Driver Panga Aquila