PEOPLE

Wanpis thankful for city experience

By GIBSON GEORGE TORASO
FLYING on a plane and seeing the capital city was an unforgettable and once-in-a-lifetime experience for Wanpis Taia as he never thought one day he would visit Port Moresby for the first time.
It was a coincidence for the man from Jiwaka’s Jimi Valley – the back page – popularly known in the Waghi Valley due to its rugged landscape and remoteness. Wanpis was thankful with his employer, The National, for giving him the opportunity for the experience when he was selected for a two-week intensive training in Port Moresby.
Born to parents Mathias and Maria Taia at Upper Jimi’s Abwunum village, they named him Wanpis because he was the only boy in the family out of four girls.
Wanpis, grew up as any other ordinary Jimi boy learning to explore and adopt the roles of men in the society by hunting, breaking firewood and doing other things that boys must learn to be men. Never thinking that one day he would move out of Jimi Valley, leaving his Abwunum to live and work in a city like Lae, Taia said hunting in the virgin forests of wide and vast Jimi Valley was a favorite childhood activity.
Recalling the hardships the children of Jimi face, he said chances of getting educated were always rare for most children and like many folk in the valley, Wanpis never attended school and cannot read and write only his name.
Everything changed for the village boy in 2006 when Tobias Taia, a relative of his, returned from Lae to celebrate Christmas at home. According to Wanpis, Tobias was a former employee of The National, who helped him find a job. Tobias took Wanpis with him when he returned to Lae after the Christmas break.
He started working as paper inserter in the Lae printing factory in 2007 when “I was paid K95”. By February, Wanpis said he was moved to work as a cleaner, a job he said he was not happy with but stuck to it never knowing that it would bring him to another level.
“When as a cleaner doing my work, I could see a man cleaning the printing machine daily,” Wanpis recalls.

“After I completed my job, I started helping him because it was too much for him as I thought we all worked for the same company so I must help him complete his work.
“Every day, after completing my task, I started giving him a hand to clean up the machine for the next printing job. That’s when I learnt to know the printing machine and how parts worked to print newspapers.”
He was transferred to work in the production unit in April. Production supervisor Hera Nana, when he was the junior printer in Lae, told Wanpis to continue with the work he had been helping the man with as a cleaner. Everyone started praising him, saying ‘Wanpis stap na masin klin’ (Wanpis was here and the machine is clean).
“I was making sure that machine was clean, including all its parts, for the next printing.”
In June, after two months, Nana asked him to work in the night so that he could learn how the machine was operated to print newspapers. Then the junior printer taught Wanpis how to operate the machine to print newspapers for two days. Nana returned to Port Moresby in 2009.
“I am the only long serving employee in the production unit (in Lae) and this training is a reward for me for being faithful to my employer,” Wanpis said, smiling away expressing his gratitude for the experience of a lifetime.
“I have learned a lot and I am equipped to do some of the things that I found difficult to do in Lae after this training.
“I am a villager. I am grateful to my employer for giving me this opportunity to jump on a plane and see Port Moresby for the first time. I think it’s a life time opportunity. I thought it’s impossible but my employer had made it possible for me.”
The two weeks of intensive training in Port Moresby “increased my ability to work and gain basic knowledge on printing newspapers and fixing minor problems.
“There are many vehicles here. Tall high rise buildings. I am surprised to see them. Lae is not like this. Port Moresby is really amazing,” he said of his two weeks experience in Port Moresby.
Taia urges educated employees of organisations who think that what was paid on the first fortnight was not enough compared to their level of education to stick to the job and rise from the bottom.
Wanpis and his colleague Jeremy returned to Lae on Saturday, Oct 5. They were replaced by two others for the training.
Taia now works and lives with his wife and two children – four-year-old Melison and two-year-old Conrad at Voco Point in Lae.

Heartbreaking echoes from the sea

By ALEXANDER NARA
IT WAS Saturday Feb 25, 2012. Splatters of heavy raindrops that beat down on the tarmac of Hoskins airport in Kimbe, West New Britain had slowed.Gutters from the joined old terminal buildings ran with garbage and puddles filled with debris formed on the cracked pavement.
A sudden lightning forked its way down in the nearby east, illuminating the dark shape of infamous Mt Otto behind the heavy fog, crouching like a wounded animal.
Its crooked terrains shaped the Nakanai Ranges to the west before unfurling down into the coastlines of the island of New Britain.
The northern end stretched into Talasea and Point Bulu which sticks out into the outer waters of the Bismarck Archipelago then turning back in to meet the sandy beaches of Gloucester on the other side with the Bali, Kove and Siassi Islands drifting outside in vast open seas.
A male’s voice crackled from the terminal speakers, announcing the arrival of an Air Niugini Q400 aircraft as I pulled the hood of the black jacket over my head and succumbed to the blustery weather.
The Whiteman Ranges further inland that formed the spine of the island had also disappeared behind the haze and low crackles of thunder rolled lazily behind the black clouds before fading into the juddering sound of the approaching plane.
A small boy and a girl chased each other through the already filled car park.

Their happy little hearts were too happy to realise the tears as their aunt who stood nearby ran over to pick them up, cuddling the little girl close to her heart with her other hand, holding tightly the little boy.
On the wet car park, a distraught mother beat the tarmac with her bare hands and called out her daughter’s name, knowing well that she was not on the plane but somewhere in the Bismarck Sea.
They have all gone down with the ill-fated Rabaul Queen when it sank into rough seas off the coast of Morobe, taking with it over 350 passengers in the early hours of Feb 2, 2012, the worst maritime disaster in PNG history.
Hundreds of families, relatives, friends and loved ones crowded around the old rusty wire fences of the airport that morning as the remaining 22 survivors disembarked from the plane.
Many came to welcome back their sons, daughters, relatives and friends.
Some just came to see the plane, knowing very well that their very own were not onboard the flight.
This year is seven years since that gloomy morning.
The last post from late Peter Batari that was uploaded onto Facebook those early hours of the morning had remained to this date a historical photo of the rising seas during the last moments before the sinking.
Loved ones of those never found still held sea ceremonies ever since, where flowers, letters of love and tears were cast into the ocean to remember those lost forever. One afternoon during those days after the sinking I walked into a family residence to pay respect to a personal friend.
An old sad looking woman emerged from the dimly lit canvas hut and headed towards the chopped firewood neatly piled alongside the brick building.
Grey smoke from the cooking area somewhere within the outer layout kitchen steamed out of the chimney above as well as from the sides through open ends of the canvas.
It is evident that dinner, probably a simple family dinner of sweet potato, fresh greens and mushroom would be quite late that evening for the family.
It would be one of those many dinners where their young son David’s plate would be left untouched or pushed to the back of the cupboard because he is never coming home again.
Old James Saap, David’s father stared at me when I walked into the smoky canvas shelter that afternoon with a “did you bring some good news,” look.
He coughed bitterly and spit out the output product of the cough into the fireplace before motioning to me to take a seat beside him.
The sad half smile on his face still could not wipe out the weary and tired wrinkles around his eyes that indicated many sleepless nights since the sinking.
Unexplained shock and pain from the long wait was evident in his eyes which one can see that to remain silent is probably the only way to overcome the soreness and grief that is eating slowly into his old heart.
He knew deep inside that the pain of his son’s loss and the inner desire to have justice prevail would only be forgotten when death knocks on his door.
Along with the others, their faces have faded away with time and the echoes of their names have grown fainter but the Feb 2, 2012 will still be remembered as one of the worst maritime disasters in PNG’s history.