The oncologist flipped the pages, looked at both of them, and with confidence, and being cautious of words to use, he uttered.
“Son, your mother is severely ill. We can’t do much about it, except to send you home or get her treated with chemotherapy.”
She died of cancer months after she was sent home.
Around the oncology clinic were tradesmen, doing some renovation work on the nearly half a century old Hospital built by a former friend, Taiwan.
The environment is familiar. Amputees are everywhere, wheeling along the eroding footpath.
His mother did visit this clinic since 2019. After that, they keep visiting for reviews till she was repatriated, as there was nowhere else to have her treated but to await death.
But this tale did start many years ago when he was yet to come to being.
Back in his home village, as a kid, he had trodden this kind of rocky path (pictured).
His ancestors till the 1978 independence have also been walking this path too.
For seven solid years, he’s been walking up and down this mountain, on a daily basis just to have a glimpse of what is known as education.
Every morning, his recently diseased mother woke up early, cooked some food, burned a few Taro tubers, and put them in a sack, then sent him off to school.
Indeed the road is rocky, a mountain to climb, and a river to cross daily.
Some 10 kilometres away, Naharahau School situated along the sea coast, is one of the old schools of the post-colonial era.
He’s been walking this path and knew every step of the way by heart; where to put a foot or not to, even when the night fell, he knew every step.
The scars of wounds sustained from this road are a painful reminder for every kid, not only here but the entire nation. Especially those of us struggling to be brainwashed by the westernized ideologies.
It’s been more than twenty years now, and he walked again here.
The same old tree roots he used to trample upon are there, with severe changes caused by erosion on the mountain sides, on the river sides and on the shorelines, posed by the harsh climatic weather conditions.
Indeed! The road is rocky still!
The government came and government goes.
Served, 12 Prime ministers gone, the East got 5 Members of Parliament gone, including the sitting MP.
His brother’s sons are still walking the same path too.
A victimized youth has seen a criminal.
Two sets of laws; one for the helpless, and one for top elites.
A youth got jailed for a shop break-in, but an MP walked freely through the misappropriation of public funds under the same law.
Rife of systematic corruption!
The MPs and top elites own Mansions, but a village boy still sleeping in sago leaf huts.
More than ever before, we witnessed with our necked eyes the influx of Foreign Aids with anonymous strings attached year after year.
Today, he is walking again on the mountain sides on bush tracks. The forest scent ran through his nostrils. Cold and fresh! A painful reminder of his years on earth, and his people as still living in hermits.
Nothing much changed!
Hem walked the same old path again.
Not on tar-sealed roads! A bridge or even a cemented footpath.
The same old rocks are piercing the soles of his barefoot.
How far have we gone since independence?
The kids are still dying on the road in search of medical attention! The women are delivering on the road! The elderly are still coughing to death at home!
He grieved for his mother’s body. He revisited her for 63 years on earth. Unfortunately, more than half of her life’s struggles were not known to him.
One of her known struggles was she was once a victim who delivered a baby on the road.
He wished his mother could have survived her cancer if treated in a well-equipped state-of-the-art hospital from funds being misused over the past 44 years.
Just to get a pill of panadol or aspirin, is even harder to get access in the village, where people are only sharing prescribed medicine with sick family members.
His place is known to host a good number of well-trained and qualified nurses but the clinics have been without medical practitioners for months.
A relative’s infant just died of flu on the road months earlier, as the nearest Naharahau and Narame clinics have no medical practitioners since December the following year.
Where are we heading? To my ancestral grave sites?
Here we are, 2022, the twenty-first Century with our same old tale.
The struggle!
With a walking stick to brace him, he inched his way up behind his brothers who are carrying his severely ill mother to her final resting place, weeks before she was passed on.
We are trodding the same old bush tracks of our ancestors.
Ends///
Rising Tide 