When her relatives demanded to know why she was in such a state, she honestly told them how she ate two eggs she found in the bush.

She bore a beautiful child unlike any earthly offspring and named him Lelyakali Kimala – the legendary superman who protected poor and ordinary people from the harm inflicted on them by a cruel, one-eyed giant Keoakali Takaupin.

I was looking forward to attending my first Christmas church service to see how Jesus was born in a manger. We children were tasked with gathering a dried pitpit called sambai kendole to use as torches during the midnight mass.

We made several bundles and tied them with vines and placed them to dry directly over the fireplace in the ceiling or iki of our houses.

When the much anticipated day arrived it seemed everyone in the valley were going to celebrate mass. The small track was congested with people carrying torches of burning bundles of pitpit.

The night air was filled with excitement and people greeted each other and shared jokes and laughter. There was the occasional sound of shrieking children as mothers tried hard to control them.

The Catholic mission at Mariant is situated on a hilltop and, as I climbed higher, I could see more people coming from all directions, their burning pitpit moving slowly along the bush tracks. It looked like a multiplicity of comets traversing the heavens towards a central location.

After we arrived, my mother took us to a small hut built by Elias, the mission carpenter. As my mother joined in the conversation, I soon fell asleep on the bare earth. When I woke up, the bell was ringing signalling the start of midnight mass.

I followed mother into the bush material church. The place was crowded with many people from all the surrounding tribes. Two Coleman lamps lit the altar. Candles flickered like orange stars in the interior that was decorated with fresh leaves, flowers and small bushes.

And there it was – the manger where a tiny figure lay. It was a waxen image of the baby Jesus. Mary and Joseph looked on as shepherds worshipped the new born king. A couple of sheep lay around the manger. This was what I had come to see.

I gazed at this wonderful sight and gradually dozed off. I woke up as my mother roughly pulled me to my feet. Christmas mass had ended and I stumbled through the door in a daze. Everything seemed like a dream.

I came to understand the meaning of Christmas when I started school. Fr Gerald Jerry Theis from the Divine Word Mission (SVD) was my teacher and parish priest. He came in 1961 and established a mission at Kombames and then relocated it to Mariant.

He preached that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save humanity and all men should love their enemies, forget past rivalries and live in peace and harmony. On judgment day Jesus would take those who obeyed him to heaven.

This was a new religious concept taught to people whose sworn enemies were the neighbouring tribes. Since time immemorial they had always fought and worshipped ancestral spirits. They believing sickness was caused by dead relatives and offered pig sacrifices to appease malevolent spirits.

My uncle had been killed when our tribe went to help their allies, the Laumbans, fight the Lyarops before the kiaps and missionaries arrived.

In the hausman, the elders instructed youth to be on guard for enemy attacks at all times and conform to traditional teachings. Relatives must never be abandoned or ignored when they needed help. It was an obligation to respect the elderly, be kind to others and help the poor. Pork meat had to be shared equally and the best bed and food offered to travellers.

“Conduct your daily lives in an acceptable manner so you can live long and grow white hair on your arse before you die,” elders stressed. “If not you will die at midday and eat shit when the sun still shines.”

They told us never to sit among a group of people who made plans to harm another man. “His blood will be rubbed onto you and inherited by your children,” they warned.

The elders said the sun always secretly witnessed what we did. They believed there was another super being called Gote in the heavens and offered pig and opossum sacrifices in a special offering called a gotemau.

On the back of such initial teachings, people easily accepted Christianity and abandoned tribal warfare. They humbly followed instructions from the kiaps and worked hard to build roads, airstrip, schools, churches and the Kandep government station, often with their bare hands.

Like everywhere else in Enga, Kandep experienced total peace during the colonial period. The people went to church every Sunday and looked forward to Christmas. It was a time when many new converts were baptised and revivals and crusades organised. Sweet carols were sung, especially by the Seventh Day Adventists at Pindak village.

Even now, everybody who is a committed Christian makes an attempt to attend these activities. For others it is an occasion when they take a break from their regular life and completely cut themselves off from work.

However, when the New Year comes around, people painted with black charcoal block highways, burn tyres and beat empty drums - their minds skewed by liquor, homebrew or drugs.

Killings during festive periods have all been alcohol-related. Urban centres like Port Moresby and Lae see a surge in drink-driving accidents resulting in needless death.

This is all compounded by resurgence in tribal warfare, armed robbery, bad governance, huge debts, corrupt contracts, broken families, cult activities in schools, cold-blooded murder, HIV/AIDS, deteriorating health and education services and crumbling infrastructure.

Imagine for a while what PNG would be like if we grasped traditional teachings with both hands, respected authority, obeyed our laws and lived the decent lives our ancestors, kiaps and the early missionaries intended us to live.