Life Story with Unforgetable Experiences for God's Glory

By Lina Liria

Life is so full of misery and struggling along to reach the destination. Many thoughts of regrets and questions why been born into this world and wish i could have been destroyed while i was growing silently in my mothers womb. Every move i make /steps i take hurts me. I look to all directions to find who my helper would be but seem to be
none. Life is useless! My thought of homelessness was a bitter poison. I thought about it day and night and my spirit was
depressed. But there is one thing i know is the Love of God that nothing of this world will separate. Gods unconditional love for every man-kind. He protects and provides for his people. Now I have peace, the wonderful peace in my soul since that day when my burdens crashed me down I took it
to the Lord in prayer with faith. He answered me cast all your burdens unto me for He cares. In return he gave me the Love,
peace, joy, longsuffering, patience and endurance. He made the way for me when there seems to be no way-out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493134281

Lina Liria

Author Biography coming up soon

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is about the life story of a girl who comes from the remote part of Pangia in Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. She has a character of being humble, open and easy going and treats anyone fairly regardless of rank, age, status and race. A part of her story has been published by Aluambo Liria in a book titled: On the Cross Roads. The girl nick named as Leneme Lorea comes from a family of 6 children from her mother whereas including her half brothers and sisters is thirteen. From Leneme’s mother all six siblings are surviving whereas from the step mothers, a total of six children are living as well whereas one female passed away in her mid twenties.

Leneme grow up in a small hamlet called Kalayapu which is situated one kilometer away from the main settlement known as Tunda village in Wiru local level government within Pangia District, Southern Highlands Province. She spent most of her early childhood in this hamlet. It was comprised of less than seven households. She grew up in that hamlet where her early childhood period was greatly influenced by those around her but her mother was a greatest influencer to her life.

In her early childhood, she was a regular fan of her mother. Though she was small capable to join the children and play out in the field while her mother leave the home for gardening, she felt in secured. Out of other brothers and sisters she was always an unlucky person who drop tears before having what she wanted in her life all the time. Most times she experienced an unfriendly atmosphere within the family during her childhood. She did not understand the reason for mistreatment until lately she became aware when told that she was an orphan but no further explanation provided. Even today she still undergoes very stressful phenomenon within the family circle and she has no-one to turn to but only to the Lord God Almighty for his care and protection. Though she was born into a family, she broke out of it and has joined the big family, the family of God.

CHAPTER 2

Mother’s Influence in Childhood

Leneme grew up in the single parented home where she was greatly influenced in terms of the character development. It affected childhood’ development in the following ways: physically, socially, mentally and spiritually. She grew up as a most miserable kid among all but she never question why things were like that time.

However, one thing that affects her life during the childhood was sickness. Most often Leneme suffered from Malaria, diarrhea, Pneumonia and conjunctivitis. One day, Leneme felt very sick and her mother carried her in the string bag and went to William health centre run by catholic mission which was about 5 kilometers away from their village. She recovered well from the illness but she got sick regularly that her mother got fade up and refused to care for her because she had to spend more time in gardening to provide food for other siblings.

She felt ill quiet often that she visited the health centre regularly. This was made possible by her uncle Kanda and aunty Betty who visited the clinic seeking medical assistance for their sick children. Anyway, one day, she was very sick and followed her uncle and aunty to the health centre as usual. The nurse attended to her and put a thermometer under her armpit. A few minutes later she removed it and brought a glass of medicine but Leneme got scared and refused to drink the medicine. Then the nurse grabbed the jaws of her mouth very tightly and pushed her against the wall as hard as she could with her knees pressing hard on her and poured the medicine down the throat giving no chance for vomiting the medicine.

Then the nurse who served her refused to supply rest of the medications because there was no guardian caring for her instead she was advised to return for daily review and treatment. Anyway, for Leneme to walk back and forth on 5kilometres road daily for treatment was very challenging but she managed it for a week. Even to this day, that nurse’s treatment is remembered and greatly appreciated that she did so Leneme could one day serve others. Despite feeling pain in her jaws, she was inspired by the way the nurse treated her. Every day after visiting the health centre for daily treatment; Leneme went and saw her mother in the garden. Her mother harvested the sugar cane and gave her to chew while waiting for her to do her normal daily activities.

The caring mother was always there working as hard as she could to provide much needed basic things for her children at the end of the day. Leneme’s mother was a very strong woman who ignored her partner’s weakness, she denied her rights, refused to grumble and, stood firm, despite the hardship of taking on the task of both father and mother. She was a role model to her children.

When Leneme got better she followed her mother around everywhere. She was greatly influenced by her mother’s characters. Most important of all, she saw that her mother was a woman of pray. She prayed almost three times a day; pray in the morning before the sunrise, pray in the garden before she started her daily activities and prays in the evening/night. She learned that her mother truly kept the faith. As she could recall some things that her mother mentioned in her prayers were praying for God’s protection and blessing upon her children. She also prayed for God to enlighten the heavy load in terms of her physical, social, spiritual and psychological depressions and burden.

Leneme learned that her mother was carrying three types of tools such as: a bush knife, a spade and an axe. She played a double role as a father and a mother. When Leneme grew up; she helped her mother to carry bush knife or a spade and took part in doing some little things just to reduce the work load which her mother was overloaded with.

Learning to become independent

As Leneme grew up, she marked out a small portion of land and planted food crops for herself. Every day she would walk many kilometers to do gardening with her mother. Leneme’s mother was persistent that her daughter has to go gardening with her frequently. Sometimes she disobeyed her mother and stayed home with other children, and then she was terribly punished. Mostly no food was served for her and she would lock her out of the house or sometimes her mother would beat her up. As part of punishment, Leneme got locked out of the house and sets out in the dark quiet often, her mother would call all the dead people’s names and say to come and get her.

When this happened, being a child it was very frightening and sometimes she wished she would have died as soon as she was born into this world. To make things worse, they were living in a small hamlet so Leneme could not be welcomed by anyone of those households in the hamlet. They all refused to accept any child that disobeys their parents. She felt rejected many a times but she remain under their care and cope with the treatment given. The mother disciplined her regularly for consuming sweet potato (Kaukau) which was preserved for all family’s use at the end of the day. When this happen, Leneme thought hard and learned to come out of the childish behavior and do things for herself meaningfully.

picture%201.jpg

Mother and daughter returning from garden.

Artistic work by Levongo, 2013.

As time went by, Leneme learned to be self-reliant. She learned how to knit string bags, weave mats using palm leaves, went out with small boys and set traps to catch birds and other mammals. She also helped her mother to build fence to keep pigs from having entry to their food gardens and destroy them.

A good number of times Leneme’s mother would ask her daughter to slash down bushes and shrubs. Not only that but sometimes she would tie the rope around her narrow waist and tucked the bush knife or an axe into it before she climbed up the tree. She acted as a boy and chopped down the branches of the trees but some tall and large trees with giant trunks that were too difficult for her to climb; she would chop and remove their barks at the base. She chopped the branches into pieces before her mother would burn them up and plant crops. Later during the day she followed her mother to the other garden to collect food for the house. At the end of the day, her mother had to carry enormous load of food and firewood back to the house but she never grumble. She was a very pleasant woman who hides her heartaches behind the smile and worked hard to raise her children. Even though her mother was quiet humble, she noticed her going through some suffering such as neck stiffness after carrying the load, back pain and headache.

Sometimes when mother noticed that her children were craving for protein but she had very limited amount of cash on hand, she would go with an axe into the forest and chop down dead logs and split them and collect tree beetle larvae and cook them for her siblings as part of the protein for the meal. Leneme’s mother did all she could to provide for the children.

CHAPTER 3

Tunda Primary School

Leneme was unaware of the importance of education and kept running around with her mother doing daily activities until when she was approached by a man named Kelipo Lorea. Leneme and her half sister named Alice were asked to report to his gate before 8am on Monday, to begin primary education in the 1980s. Alice and Leneme were so happy that they were going to start their primary education but they did not know what it was about because their minds were tied down with gardening and helping their mothers to raise their livestock (domesticated pigs), fetch water and collect firewood for the house.

On Monday morning, they had their breakfast and started walking to Kelipo’s place of residence which was 3kilometres away from their hamlet. While they were on the way to school, their big sisters saw them going to school as well and they started to chase them back saying that you supposed to be with your mothers collecting food for us to have after school. Despite that discouragement, the girls went passed the school gate to Kelipo’s place of residence at Koipini which was five minute walk from Tunda primary school gate.

Later they learned that he was their elder brother that took them to school. He took the girls to one big classroom that already had huge number of school children. Leneme now believed that he may have made prior arrangement for them to begin the primary education. Kelipo stood at the door and instructed the girls to go into the big classroom. Leneme was confused but some school kids were very friendly that they introduced themselves and made the girls feel comfortable. For the first couple of weeks, their brother made commitment to take the girls to school because they were not confident enough to walk into school gate themselves until they were certain.

Leneme was still not sure of the importance of education so she stayed away from school for more than a month and returned to school. When she returned to school, she was reprimanded for poor school attendance. The teacher called her to the front while everyone in the class were watching, he interviewed her and instructed her to stand there for a long time. This was quiet embarrassing and she wished she could fall dead in shame but that was incredible. Then she realized where she had made an error and promised to herself that she must not skip classes or stay away from school for any reason. She developed an interest to learn new things but she was very poor in counting numbers. She could not count number beyond ten. She poorly understood all the simple mathematic concepts as how to do addition and subtraction etc. Not only that but she also struggled to learn literacy. The teacher would hit her on the head with a ruler for making mistakes quiet often.

Despite that she never thought of running away from school instead, she tried her best to learn from where she had gone wrong. The weird thing was, the class teacher expected them to speak English in grade one. She called it weird because all the school children in the class purely came from different villages that all their parents were typical subsistence farmers who were illiterate. As indicated by the high illiteracy rate in this nation, Papua New Guinea. The second national language which is Pidgin was only spoken by very few men and rarely by women in Wiru Local Level Government area that time.

Therefore, in grade one, they only learned all the alphabets starting A-Z and they could only say few sentences which the teacher had wrote them out for the class. For example; she is cooking the food. Apart from that they were illiterate as their parents at home too. Anyway, Leneme perceived their teacher was very rude and did a lot of bad things to the learners. He expected them to speak English after being in school for less than a year and whoever was found speaking Wiru language (vernacular language) would get mighty knocks on the head with a triangle shaped ruler or a meter ruler. As a result, many kids withdrew from school because of the capital punishments that they couldn’t cope with.

One day the teacher asked them to say a poem that reads: one, two, three, smile, smile, smile, let me see your teeth, are they very clean? Let me see inside the while smile, smile, smile. They say this but took a pause for a while and the teacher was very angry. He instructed everyone in the class to get out and make a big circle around the basket ball court. They were instructed to