Teenager remembers missing uncle

Story by LARRY ANDREW
GRACE Kunsei, 18, and will be doing her Grade 11 this year at Lae Secondary School was returning to Lae, Morobe, from holidaying in Kimbe, West New Britain, when she met her fate.
She told of how she freed herself from the sinking mv Rabaul Queen after the memorial service held at St Mary’s Cathedral at Top Town in Lae over the weekend.
She said she was with her uncle Philip Batari on the left side of the boat which had more weight than the right side when the first waves hit the bow of the ship and water rushed in. They could not hold onto the rails on the side of the ship because of the force of the sea.
Kunsei said her uncle pushed her off into the sea but manage to pull her back and that was the last time she saw her uncle.
She said when she was pulled back into the boat her leg got stuck in a metal door of the boat as it sank.
The boat was now filled with spilled oil which she took in, affecting her lungs making breathing hard.
She manage to free herself from the boat and swim for safety without knowing that she had a broken bone below her knee cap.
She is now at the Angau Memorial Hospital under observation.
Below is a part of her poem that she had written for her missing uncle Philip Batari.
The poem was read at the memorial service and is titled “I reach out to find your hand”.
“Almost days for me, You’ve been there, My foundation stone, The walls around me, The limit of my sky, The structure of my day, The colour of my Life, My future and my past, So much the part of me, I lost the feeling of just where I ended, And where you begin.
“Then you went away but you’ve often been away for weeks and months before, And always you’ve come home.
“So somehow the fabric of my life seem little change, Except your absence which was always in my heart, And the waiting, Like the backdrop the whole of Life, Waiting, To hear you walking through that door, coming home at last.”
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