STUDENTS GOING BACK TO SCHOOL

Photo: The administration block of the University of PNG in Port Moresby. The campus will soon be filled up with students as it kicks off its first semester.

PEOPLE GOING BACK TO SCHOOL ...

This post comes from Kenneth Iga's pen. It was posted in PLS's Facebook page.

I was planning to write something in line with what you wrote regarding young people going to school.

I sat in the International Terminal yesterday (Sunday) to farewell an American friend who was to travel to France to resume work. (He teaches and performs music).

There was another going to Melbourne, and a family member flew in from Wewak to transit to the PNG University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae, Morobe.

A mother (probably a widow) from Rigo in Central Province, accompanied by two full truck-loads of her relatives, came to farewell her daughter off on the same international flight my friends were in. She probably was also going away for studies.

What made it interesting for other onlookers who stood beside the old lady were her cries.

She wailed about soon becoming lonely. She wailed loudly that even a security guard came to her aid, to assure and comfort her.

The other few women with kids, probably her older daughters also wept when the plane disappeared into the clouds above. 

Then the lady uttered something that made me feel weak, waves of guilt, and with my skull feeling blood pumping as I strolled back to the car: “My long days and years breaking my back in the market is now a thing of past.”

That tells a hundred thousand stories for me and others to learn from.