The foolishness of youth

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
TOKARARA, once an infamous suburb of Port Moresby, has undergone a major image overhaul following the construction of a four-lane highway last year that connects Konedobu and Waigani and makes driving to town much faster.
The infrastructure has also opened up the place a bit more with more people, who once never dared go there, drive through the area, even at nights under the street lights that illuminate the main road, giving the place the feel of openness and security.
Many Tokarara residents no longer fear walking the main road at night, and there is a marked increase in the number of people take up walking exercises in the evenings. Spilling out from the Hohola suburbs, Tokarara has become an address where well-to-do Papua New Guineans also choose to live.
Back in the 80s though, the suburb was renown for crime, mainly streets fights and carjacking. At that time, the area was predominantly lived in by people who were not too well off, and had a bad reputation.
Crime back then, however, was not aided by illicit drugs and homebrew like we see today.
It was all muscle then with youths mobilizing to protect their neighborhood from arch rivals from other parts of town. Territorial rivalry was common and fists fights were the main entertainment of the day.
I remember escaping the clutches of our arch rivals in one of those encounters.
There was a weeklong church crusade that ran in the evenings. The meeting attracted a sizeable crowd each night at what is now the Tokarara Secondary School area.
One night during that week, my friends bashed up some of our ‘enemies’ as the meeting closed for the night.
Word quickly got around the next day of a ‘rematch’ between the two groups. That evening, many of us attended the crusade, but our thoughts were elsewhere and not on the sermon.
Our group was prepared, and confident, of giving our rivals another belting. We wanted them to know not to mess with us again.
The church meeting soon came to an end and people were moving out of the area to go home.
We had already spotted some of our enemies and swiftly gave chase. They sprinted for their lives and we were right behind them.
They were seasoned street fighters and their plan was to give us a thrashing too.
Little did we know that we were running into an ambush.
Fortunately for us, their comrades who were supposed to be waiting in the dark, didn’t stick to the plan, coming out of hiding before we were within their reach. We stopped dead in our tracks.
The shock faded off as quickly as it arrived and we did a quick about turn. The tables were now turned as we ran for our dear lives.
As we zigzagged through the last of the crusade crowd, our only thoughts were to reach the safety of our neighborhood as fast as we could.
The consequence of our being caught was already stamped on our young minds.
We passed through the yard of a police officer as we made our getaway. Sibi Debege from Masingara village Western (now deceased) had just finished his night shift and arrived home just as we retreated through his property.
Still in police uniform, he heard the commotion and rushed towards us to see what was happening. At that moment, we heard our rivals s
hout “police, police.” They backed off and we lived to see another day.
In another encounter, I found myself almost being busted by policemen for having in my possession a weapon. It was nightfall, and I was heading to another neighborhood to watch videos (there was no EMTV then).
Our relation with the boys in that area was not always on good terms- at times cordial, other times frosty.
I took a knife with me for protection. On the way, I noticed a vehicle coming straight at me, its lights at high beam. Sensing that it could be a police car, I quickly offloaded the knife into a patch of thick grass.
The car stopped beside me as policemen rushed out. Beaming their torches into my face, they frisked me all over and asked what I was doing walking around at night. I explained that I was on my way to the video place up the street. I’m sure this story would have read very differently had they found the offending weapon on me.
But yes, those were the days in ‘old’ Tokarara. The young men from those times, me included, have all grown up and become besties, or save pes as they say in Tokpisin.