Jimi son emerges from bygone obscurity

PEOPLE

By PAUL MINGA
ASK and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened, and seek and you will find.
These beautiful words influenced Wake Goi, former health worker and current Jimi MP.
Wake was born into a traditional highlands society at a time when western education and civilisation were gradually changing the face of the country in the 1960s. In some parts of the country that were still under colonial rule at that time, change came fairly easily, like on the coast.
That, however, was not the case for many communities in the highlands where Wake’s village was situated. People there were still uneducated and did not welcome the new changes easily.
Young Wake was one of the fortunate ones of his generation to have come out into the ‘outside world.’ His village was located a few kilometres from the first school established in the area. The close proximity of the school to his village was a huge contributing factor to his eventual success, in school and his other endeavours in life.
This first part of Wake’s story, which will be coming in book form soon, highlights the early part of his life; from his birth to his primary and high school days and onto college, as well as his first job as a male nurse and eventually his decision to become a parliamentarian.
Even though he accessed western education, he still had hurdles to climb because western education promoted a new way of life and also demanded using a language that was foreign, nothing like is local language. But the young highlander was determined to take up the opportunities that were present and pushed on, as it were, into the unknown.
His determination had him overcoming challenges and eventually making it to a CEO position in his profession. From there, he decided he would better serve his people if he became a politician and so he make a career change, which also brought on other challenges, as will be told at other times.
The intriguing stories of his success in education, taking on various jobs and politics should be motivational and inspiring for students as well as new professionals, senior executives and even retirees.

Western influence
In the mid-1960s, western influence had touched the lives of people on the coast of mainland New Guinea and the islands scattered all over the region. For the highlands though, people were still ignorant about the new way of living. The conveniences of western medicine and education had not reached them yet.
It was a time when people from the developed nations of the world such as America, England, Germany, Russia, Australia and others stepped onto New Guinea as explorers, miners, patrol officers (kiaps), planters, traders and missionaries. Some of these westerners were believed to have settled in the new frontier with hidden motives and intentions while others brought with them many good things and development. Such good things included steel axes, spades, shovels and knives which would make the life of a common villager who was living off the land less toilsome.
During his days as a boy roaming around the village, Wake did not know the importance of western education, just like the thousands of others like him all over Waghi valley and many other valleys and mountain ranges in the highlands. Western influence had not entered their part of the world and they were oblivious to what was happening around them.
No one in their family or village had benefited from western education, and therefore there was no one to share and motivate them to find a school and be enrolled in it to learn. Their lives still continued as their ancestors did for thousands of years. However, a wind of change would soon turned Wake’s life in another direction and he would learn to make decisions to persevere despite the odds that were stacked against him, to take advantage of the opportunities that the change was bringing to their valley.
His name is Wake’. Some may mistakenly pronounce it as ‘wake’, in English. Actually, to be phonetically correct, it should be written as Waké, with the second vowel accented to rhyme with ‘café’.
Wake was born to a simple village couple, namely Goi and Ngimbil on June 12, 1968, in a small hamlet called Gope in Jimi District in Kol, in today’s Jiwaka Province. Before Jiwaka became a new province in PNG in 2012, Jimi and other districts in Jiwaka were in Western Highlands Province.
Wake is the first born of the Goi-Ngimbil family. In later years, the couple added four other boys to the family. Kapal was the second in line while the third was named Mollomb. The twins who were born after Mollomb were given names that were significant in that they were named after two different species of parrots – namely Kolip and Walep – in the Jiwaka vernacular. Of the twins, Walep unfortunately succumbed to a bout of pneumonia about two and a half months after birth and died.
The loss of life was attributed to the lack of modern health facilities, just like the many health issues that the people in the valley suffered from. There were no aid posts or health centres near Gope. That plight of the people suffering from various maladies may have also had a slight impact on the young Wake and what career he would pursue in the future. His parents though decided that the name Kolip should be taken off the surviving twin and he be renamed Jack. For simple villagers, they thought it was the moral thing to do and not insult or being disrespectful to the spirit of the other son who passed on. There was no need to keep a name which was linked to the name of someone who had passed on.
Goi learned how to take care of his family by merely watching how his father took care of them while he was growing up. That included making gardens, constructing houses and making fences, among other tasks. Such jobs were tough when compared to today’s standards where people have steel axes and bush knives. One can imagine what it was like to chop down a tree for timber or slashing kunai grass for roofing material in those days before steel tools made their way into the highlands.
A father’s job required him to visit the gardens daily to put in place the support for sugar canes or put wrappings on new banana fruits, harvesting something in the garden, or ensuring that wild pigs do not dig out the root crops. Constructing or setting up a new home was another tough task for a father.
Maintaining a house and looking for firewood for the family are other tasks done by the father. Firewood was vital and it was the man’s job to ensure that there was enough of that for the family to cook their dinner and keep the fire in the hearth burning all night to emit heat for their house. In a highlands valley, the cold in the night could get into one’s bones and that was a real threat. Those were the days before bed sheets and blankets were available and therefore firewood was as important as food for the family.

Division of labour
While the men did most of the heavy jobs, the tasks that demanded more strength, the women also had their own tasks to do. Such tasks for women and wives included planting and weeding as well as taking care of the children and domesticated animals, which included pigs and chickens. Cats and dogs were usually left to fend for themselves.
Pigs on the other hand were regarded important and were valued more since they were used in traditional feasts or were part of a bride price payment, if a family that owns them does not slaughter them to share with others as a source of protein.
In a typical village setting as in Wake’s village, all women would always be busy with various tasks, and that included his mother. One of the heaviest was the transporting of a bilum (string bags) of produce during harvest time over a long distance, as from the garden to their family home. A woman would take on the usual load and would put an added weight of firewood on top, usually on her head. It was tough and it did not make the task any easier if she had a baby or toddler and placed it in another bilum, to be carried as well. The overall load was heavy but many women took it as part of their duty and did that almost daily.
Another challenging task for women was when they helped in transporting stacks of kunai grass from one point to another to be used for the roof of a new house.
For a most rugged and disadvantaged place as Wake’s village, women and young girls would carry stacks of kunai and climb hills or cross rivers and creeks in the process of transporting the roofing material. Women would usually have stacks of the grass hanging down their back from bush ropes as they negotiated through long and rugged bush tracks that were often slippery and filled with mud caused by the never-ending highlands rainfall.
The transporting of kunai grass was difficult, to say the least. Women did that as well as other heavy tasks without complaining. They often did that to impress their husbands or other community members; at other times it was just to keep with their roles, responsibilities and expectations, activities that their mothers and grandmothers did as well without complaining.

– To be continued.

• Paul Minga is a freelance writer.