In 1964, my father had taken me to Kandep Primary ‘T’ School along bush tracks. I learned those tracks. And he showed me places to spend the night when it rained heavily.

He showed me his cousin Yako’s house at Lungutenges village; my uncle Alitip Nepap’s house at Patuli village; my maternal cousin Kipam’s house at Imali village; and my aunty Alumail’s house at Pindak.

The present main road from Kandep to Mendi runs through my village at Kondo.

Construction on that road started with sticks and shovels while I was at school. My father and all the men from villages along the route were ordered to work on it every day.

The road crept towards my village from Kandep Patrol Post. Later a log bridge was built across the Lai River at Kondo.

Finally, the tracks were let behind and I was able to walk to school on a proper road. We used its smooth surface to play marbles, which sometimes made us late for class.

The road (now sealed thanks to the O’Neill-Dion government) went through Lagalap village, down to Winja and on to Mendi in the Southern Highlands.

I wrote about this stage of my life, and the road, in one of my first books, a short volume titled Climbing Mountains and published by Oxford University Press.

In it I mentioned a boy, Steven Pala, who, when some of our classmates reported him, tried to explain to our teacher that he wasn’t playing marbles.

“Plis teacher, he is giaman [lying], he is giaman,” he kept saying as he tried to protect his backside with his hands as the teacher beat him. The class burst out laughing when he tried to avoid every whack with the palm of his hands.

On another occasion, the teacher had enough of our late ways so beat us all. One smack on the buttocks for every minute we were late.

The roads were still being built to other parts of Kandep when I went to St Paul’s Lutheran High School at Pausa, Wapenamanda, in 1972.

And, when PNG gained independence on 16 September 1975, I had been exposed to the outside world for just 12 years.

That wasn’t much when I compared my country with Senegal, on the west coast of Africa, which had been under French rule for 300 years before it gained independence in 1960.

In 1991 at Cleveland, Ohio, in the USA, I met Mossamba Sonko, a student from Senegal, who told me about his country’s history.

I was shocked to hear about slavery and how a slave’s house stood on an island called Goree. Slaves were held there for months before being shipped to the Americas in appalling conditions.

I wrote about our meeting and slavery – the cruelty of men against men - in my book, I Can See My Country Clearly Now, published in 2016.

I was lucky to be in Port Moresby when our country gained independence. It was without bloodshed.

On Independence Day, I walked with the entire student body from Port Moresby Technical College to Sir Hubert Murray Stadium where the ceremony was held. Keith Jackson told me he was sitting in the grandstand that day.

I must confess I didn’t pay attention to the speeches made by important people like Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam, Prince (now King) Charles, PNG’s first prime minister Michael Somare and others.

I was far more interested in the other activities taking place on the main arena. Keith also remembers the football match.

It never occurred to me then that most of the residential buildings at Konedobu, Paga, Tuagaba, Koki, Boroko and other parts of the city would be vacated by expatriates and occupied by Papua New Guineans within the next couple of years.

And that the public service would also be taken over by us Papua New Guineans.

Looking back, our country did not perform badly in the first 10 years after independence. In my Enga Province, though, tribal warfare was a hindrance to development. But PNG as a whole managed to survive exceptionally well.

People were happy to celebrate the 10th anniversary on 16 September 1985.

As part of those celebrations, UPNG vice-chancellor Elton Brash asked me to travel with a Japanese photographer, Eisuke Shimauchi, to Enga Province to interview people who had achieved something worthwhile in those first 10 years.

Brash, Shimauchi and fellow photographer Jose Reis put together a special commemorative book, Faces and Voices of Papua New Guinea, from the interviews and photographs that myself, Patrick Matbob, Ebea Babe and other field assistants provided.

I interviewed a pyrethrum farmer from Laiagam and the proprietor of the world famous Kaiap Orchid Lodge, Peter Piaon. The mountaintop lodge, managed by an expatriate, was frequented by visitors from many countries.

Here’s an extract from the interview I conducted with Peter Piaon:

“A lady called Andree Millar sent a letter saying she wanted some flowers so I sent youths out to look for them. They gathered around four hundred orchids from the nearby forests and I sent a message to Mrs Millar to come and get them. She bought a hundred of the best and we wanted to throw the rest away.

“But she got cross and made us take them back into the forest and helped us replace them in the trees from where they’d come from. We told her you are crazy! Nature plants them, not people!

“But as she was replacing them, she was amazed to see the great variety of orchids including a new one which she named Dendrobium Engae. So she told us to build a shelter for her and other botanists to use when they came to study.

“She kept coming back with more experts and they paid us quite well to look after them, K20 per head. Mind you it was very hard bringing up water from the creek six hundred feet below. Eventually, we were able to get a loan and build this lodge which is used by tourists as well as botanists.”

Some years later, the successful business was forced to close due to the threat of war with a neighbouring tribe. The fight didn’t destroy Kaiap village or the lodge. It was stopped by Chief Sir Paul Kurai as soon as it started.

But Peter Piaon had already relocated to Milne Bay, his wife’s province. The Kaiap Orchid Lodge remained unused. Some years later Peter returned to Kaiap and said he would reopen it. However, tribal warfare continued out of control.

Patrick Matbob, now a lecturer at Divine Word University, must have done the other interview with businesswoman Mary Jua from Manus, whose words I reproduce here:

“I am now forty-two years old. I have four children and a husband who once worked for the navy. He used to be paid something like thirty kina a month, very hard to live on. But we managed to save some of his wages over many years and we sold some copra until we had six hundred kina.

“I first started a trade store and then sold secondhand clothes. Now I also have a twenty-five seater bus which my elder son drives – it’s the only one of its kind in the province.

“My second son usually drives my private car. My two elder sons also have motor bikes which I bought for them at their insistence. I also sponsor the rugby team in which they play and they and their team mates wear my name on their jerseys.

“When I first started to earn a lot of money, I became tense and anxious. But now, I know what it means to be a child of God. I am happy and on many occasions, I have seen Him answer my prayers.”

Manus is a peaceful province. I have travelled there twice and noticed PMV buses, at least one owned by Western Highlands people, waiting for passengers at Momote airport.

I regret that I was not in the right frame of mind to find out how Mary Jua had fared over the last 40 years. In 1985, she owned the first 25-seater PMV bus in Manus Province.

Mary Jua must be 82 now. If she has passed on, may she rest in eternal peace. I will try to find out what became of her businesses if I have another chance to fly to Manus.

Photo: Mary Jua in 1985