Winning a house ‘God’s’ gift to family facing eviction

JOSEPHINE Hasimani sees as a miracle is what everyone else is seeing as good luck.
She is from Yangoru-Sausia in East Sepik and is married with six children.
In 1989, she and husband Paul moved to Port Moresby where Paul was transferred from Wewak to work with Post and Telecommunications Corporation, now Telikom PNG,  as a technician.
They lived at Gerehu Stage 6 in a  house given by Telikom under the company’s home-ownership scheme. She became pregnant and was unable to work.
In 1991, after the birth of their first daughter, their family house burnt down. “So we lived in a Telikom rented property at Tokarara,” Josephine said.
Because their home was insured, a new home was built at the same spot at Gerehu. That, too, burnt down.
Josephine said when they moved to Tokarara in 1992,  and being a stay-home mum, she needed to support her husband cater for their day-to-day needs in the city.
“In 2001, I started selling rice balls to students in school markets at Tokarara,” she said.
She started with three 1kg packets of rice.
“Then, I decided to try selling the rice balls at the Tokarara main market where I saw that the demand there was very high.”
In 2005, Josephine made it a family business where all family members participated in cooking three 10kgs of rice a day to sell at the market.
“From those three bags of rice, we earned a daily profit of K180.”
They saved and bought a vehicle which they converted into a taxi.
Josephine said that while she was selling and helping her husband they were given an eviction notice from their Telikom-rented property. But they stayed on for two years because there was just no where else to go.
In 2007, a newspaper was doing a Win a Dream Home competition, she said.
“The competition ran for two months from February to March.
“When they did the draw in April, there was only one winner and that winner was me.”
Josephine said it was a miracle.
“Winning this kit home was not luck,” she said.
“God saw our needs and came to our aid in the right time.
“After I won the two-bedroom house, someone sold the land next to the Tokarara market to us for K60,000.
“We got a loan and bought the land and built our home on it.”
She said when Telikom was about to kick everyone out of the rented property in 2008, their new home was ready and they moved in.