My Wewak My Home

 I travelled home to Wewak just before the nominations for the National General Elections began. 

 

I went home to be with my father who was very old, frail, and sick. 

 

I had no choice but to visit my father because he was admitted to the Boram General Hospital for medical attention. 

 

To me relief he recovered before I arrived in town. 

 

I took one of those early flights out on Sunday morning. I arrived in Wewak on a calm Sunday morning. A tranquil and easy feeling welcomed me after many years away.

 

But all these were shattered as I passed through Nuigo settlement to get to my home. 

 

Nuigo road was the very road that I walked on to get to school in Mongniol Primary School, to Wewak town, to Dagua Market, to Meni Beach or to church at Wirui in my childhood years.

 

 In those days we literarily walked in the night to the movies at Garamut Theatre or at the Wirui Sound Shell. Our mothers waited for us to return home after 11pm in the night or sometimes past midnight. 

 

My generation enjoyed the freedom, respect, and peaceful easy feeling of our  home town. Wewak was our town, especially if you go to a town school, you knew all the short cuts, and routes to take every day or escape after scavenging in town. 

 

We lived and breathed Wewak every day without fear of what might happen to us if we venture beyond our own home. We surfed the Meni beach or walked along Wewak Bay via Mangara to Wom Beach without fear of being ambushed. 

 

After few hours passed I began to sense a foreboding feeling sink in to my soul.. 

 

It was too dangerous for me to leave the house. I decided to move to higher ground at Safla Rama to take a panaromic view of Wewak. 

 

I could not walk through the Nuigo road anymore. It was hard for me to enjoy the freedom I once had. 

 

As expected I was made aware of the situation that prevented me from enjoying my freedom. The criminals and illegal settlers in Nuigo settlement have been holding the locals and landowners at ransom. Family members are constantly harassed and intimidated every day. School children go to school every day against the intimidation and harassment from the youths of the settlement. The same thugs are hell bent on intimidating everyone who refuse to acknowledge them.

 

I decided to stay with my father in the house for next few days without venturing into Wewak. The situation was perilous I had to ask family and friends to help me with transport in and out of the my home. My freedom is no longer a guaranteed right. I was denied my freedom of movement by thugs and common criminals taking refuge in Nuigo settlement.

 

Wewak landowners' freedom is held to ransom by the illegal settlers living in these settlements. The issues of settlements are swept under the carpet by the leadership of the province. Leadership in Wewak and the province must be measured by the appropriate actions taken to address the law and order issues among other underlying issues.  Failure in leadership to address the settlement problem, its twin imperative of law and order problems, consumption and abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol, and the lack of consultative urban planning together with local landowners has given rise to the explosive situation witnessed in Wewak at this time. 

 

A small start such as having a community police station build at Tangugo can help minimize the risk I am talking about here.

 

I want to return home to help my family but with the volatile situation and ugly law and order problems arresting the very core of my existence there is no point in returning home.