Weeping as survivors arrive home

By ALEXANDER NARA
A MOTHER, who lost her daughter in the mv Rabaul Queen disaster, could not hold back her sorrow as 22 survivors arrived on an Air Niugini plane.
The 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.
On a truck parked on one side of the car park, a four-year-old boy and two-year-old girl stared at their weeping aunt, not knowing that their mother Gorethy Laupu, who is still missing, would never see them again.
Around the fences, relatives broke down as the casket containing the body of Agnes Konang was carried from the plane by six young boys to an ambulance which would take her body for burial at Waloka village, in the Hoskins area
Provincial administrator Steven Raphael, members of the provincial executive council and senior government officers wept openly with scores of people as they formed a guard of honour as part of this welcome.
Many came to welcome and received their loved ones who survived, while many others were painfully and helplessly weeping for they have lost their loved ones who became victims of the worst maritime disaster in Papua New Guinea.
The ferry sank in bad weather, claiming the lives of over 180 of the more than 350 passengers on board.