Family history across the seas

This series of blog posts is part of the A to Z 2019 Blogging Challenge in which I will write snapshot memories of my early married life in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea.

Verbal jungle drums beat…

We’re on leave overseas

When the rumours hit town

My job is gone when I return

I am a temp after all.

We’re on the move again

Goroka to Gerehu[i]

Life in Moresby – the “big smoke”.

From Education offices in Konedobu

He wields his purple audit pen

On inspections country-wide

His “been there” knowledge

Makes his peers nervous.

On the home-front life goes on

But why do things always break –

Or the children get sick –

The minute he leaves town?

Sequential chicken pox anyone?

Later I join the family ranks

in Education at Konedobu.

Full time employment

The start of my career.

Quonset huts and old buildings

Corral the compound

Files crowd the walls

Subsidies for school kids

In Australia or overseas

Fees and fares

I come to know every surname and school.

My first boss leaves and a new one arrives

Our friendship leads to another K place

As she leaves for Kathmandu and we visit.

One day a Papuan Brown[ii] slithers among the files

 

Staff leap on the desk and I end a phone call

“Sorry, we have a snake, I’ll call you back later”

Far away there’s indifference to our plight.

Driving home the back way past the villages and squatter’s camps

The raskols[iii] block the road….

With two small children in the car

It’s a case of hold your nerve.

A new identity all my own

And a turning point

No longer “just” his wife

or Les’s daughter-in-law

Albeit temporary staff for ever

Just like his mother…

What’s a decade or two of work

For women who are married?

Forever a “Mrs” not just a misis[iv].

K is also for Kavieng where my in-laws lived (and sent us cray tails as treats), or Kainantu, Kabiufa, Killerton, Kerema or Kieta.

Tok Pisin:

Kiap – a government patrol officer

kaikai – food

kaikaim – eat

kainkain – all sorts of …

kina – PNG’s currency but also shells used for currency previously.

kakaruk – chicken

———————-

[i] Then a new suburb of Port Moresby, out past the University. Now known for gang trouble.

[ii] A potentially deadly snake…not one you want to have to look for in an office full of files.

[iii] A euphemistic word meaning raskals but really more like gang members.

[iv] A European woman, not necessarily a wife.