![]() By Robert Iki Leso's Positive Influence Solutions Though our country got Independence almost four decades ago, we are still under numerous bondages. Amongst many, the major one is our own culture – something that we have embraced with all our hands and never wish to let go of. In that way, our own pet (culture) has grown in size and aggression to capitalize upon our subservience, complacence, loyalty, and vulnerability. There is a story that goes that a young boy went into the bush and saw a beautiful wild baby anaconda and brought home. Due to its attraction, the boy fed the snake as his beloved pet his share of breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily. The snake grew in size and also the thirst for blood which the boy did not know. One time the snake killed the boy shocking his entire family members that a pet couldn’t do such. They forgot that what form or shape the snake could be in, how it was tamed, it was still a snake. Indeed it has the thirst for blood and has the potential to kill human beings regardless of how long a person can feed it. Likewise, before it is too late, we needed to kill the snake before the snake killed us. Instead of complaining about cobwebs, we need to kill the spider – the source of all the cobwebs that never stop bothering us!
In other words, we need to kill the monster in our culture before it kills us and leaves us with nothing! Since time immemorial, we have passionately, aggressively, and brutally indulged ourselves in feeding our culture. And in turn, it has turned around and attacked us mercilessly. It has drained our dear lives, strengths, wealth, happiness, and robbed our future. We have felt the pain, dragged under its bondage, being tortured day and night, robbed our sleep and peace. Yet we love it, feed it and keep it as a treasure, a pet, and a valued possession more than our loved ones and even our own dear lives. Though some parts of our culture could be good, there are others that are irrelevant, unnecessary, and obsolete in this changing world. As the change lingers on, we continue to drag on with our heritages such as compensation, tribal fights, funeral ceremonies, bride prices, acts of revenge, witchcraft, and sorceries, and so on and so forth. I am not saying all the cultural values are bad. We do know which are dragging and killing us and which are adding values to us. In my personal view, all the cultural inheritances that are aforementioned have fed pride, poverty, laziness, free handout mentality, and dependency syndrome. Such have been destroying the economic, social, emotional, physical, and intellectual fabrics of our wellbeing and livelihood. But to make a change, I do not have to wait for the Prime Minister, my MP, my tribe, or anyone else to take the first step. I believe I can do it by taking the bull by the horn with the first initial step for the timid and my generation to follow in my directions! And this is the successful account of actually fulfilling my dream of walk the talk in changing the mindsets of our people to bring my family and tribe forward in setting a new trend and benchmark. On my father’s side, he has four siblings. My dad is the firstborn along with two brothers and an only sister. The sister got married to a chief in the Lyumbi tribe of Poketamanda, Kandep District in the Enga Province. His name is Ete Wiyap. He is a great dad but along the way, the marriage between him and my aunt failed miserably and my aunt died with a broken heart and bitterness. In 2007, she passed away at the Goroka General Hospital while I was doing my Honors degree at the University of Goroka. My aunty’s firstborn daughter, her dad, my elder sister, and I brought the body home for burial. To my surprise, my tribe and the deceased husband’s tribe had a tug of war for my tribe to lay compensation claims on the deceased husband’s tribe. I was of the view that it was really unfair and unnecessary putting pressure on the family of my aunt who had other cousins feeling the loss of their mum as well. Since I was the elder and my dad was the firstborn in his family, I utilized that opportunity to convince both sides of the issue and ruled that no compensations would be exchanged. I actually knew the fact that my cousins would be under pressure to go through a lot of headaches. Since then, no compensation has been paid to date as per my stand. On the 19th November 2020, my cousin, late Stanley Ete Wiyap, the second-born son of my deceased aunt, passed away again. This time the pressure on the mother’s side was mounting with high expectation for the father’s side to pay compensation to them. We were honored to have Kandep Elites including Mike Tatakali, Fred Wiyap, Alphonse Tufi, Peter Pombote, Max Angan, Presly Gean, Kenny Jeff Leso, Emmanuel Yakop, Martin Millian Lemalu, Wata Apingi, Margreth Apel, Lima Alphonse and other wingless angels who helped in cash and kind. Following was my speech that mesmerized and shocked the whole valley of Kandep at the funeral as it was against their expectation and our norm. I made the speech in the presence of thousands of curious and silent Kandepans who attended late Stanley Ete Wiyap’s funeral ceremony before burial at Poketamanda Village on Thursday 26th November 2020, Kandep District; ; Fellow Kandepans! Greetings to you all and thank you for sharing your sorrow with us the immediate family members and the relatives of my late cousin. I wish to make it clear regarding the demise of my cousin here, that we would all go the same way the way my cousin has left. As such, we need to create love, happiness, and joy while we are alive. We need to spend more time and money while someone is in a sickbed. Someone who is alive is more valuable than the one who is dead. Therefore we must believe in life more than the deads. I am here not to talk a lot about my late aunty and now the late cousin regarding their demise and whom to blame. They are in the world of the dead and we should not talk too much about them as they are not here with us. We will join them too anytime. I do not create life and I do not control life and death. I am helpless. Therefore, I owe no one anything nor does anyone owes me anything. We all are innocent and no one has to be blamed for the life that has been taken away by the Creator through whatever means it could be. I now feel sorry for my cousins who are still alive. We are now ready to say sorry to each other and reconcile amongst ourselves as we are aware that the late mum or the aunty was not happy when she died years ago. It is the forgiveness and reconciliation that brings healing and blessing back into the family relationships and not with the conditions compensations only involving pigs and money. In saying that we allowed the uncles and the cousins to shake hands and embraced each other in the spirit of family unity and harmony. In other words, the compensation payment was canceled. We understood that the other side of the family would borrow so much to meet the compensation demands. In a way, we were going to put so much pressure on them which would rob their health and happiness on top of the pain, mourning, and loss of their son. In doing so, we maintained family unity, restored love and happiness and most importantly saved the family wealth and save everyone from poverty through excessive compensation demands and payments. Let us allow the dead to bury the dead, and the living continue to serve, forgive each other, and enjoy the short life that we live briefly on earth! As the pigs are now gradually being wiped away by African Swine Flu, we need to save every family from unnecessary compensation claims and chronic poverty. I think I did my path to start something somewhere for the likeminded to do away with culture that are becoming obsolete and unnecessary. END.... THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE AGGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN TO KILL THE MONSTER OF COMPENSATION, TRIBAL FIGHTS, ETC THAT KEEP OUR PEOPLE POVERTY-STRICKEN AND PROMOTE EDUCATION, INVESTMENT, AND PEACE IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE.such Next : Unitech Kagua Erave Students To Stage An Awareness During The Semester Break Share your Inspirational Stories, Education Issues, Education Talk. Let your voice be heard: Send us your stories to us: email : [email protected] Share this
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