Encounter at mamboo market

I stepped through the rows of women selling betelnut, coconut and watermelon.
This was Mambu (bamboo) market about 10 kilometres from Madang town in Papua New Guinea along the Madang/Lae highway. The market, I realised, received its name from a clump of bamboo growing nearby and is one of the many to spring up after the closure of the main Madang Town market following trouble between the Sepik settlers and the local Amele people.
The betel nuts were mostly sold in bunches with prices ranging from K1.50 to the biggest bunches costing around K10. I smiled to myself thinking how much more these bunches would fetch in PNG’s capital city, Port Moresby.
My thoughts were interrupted when my eyes came to rest on one of the woman whose face I instantly recognised. The recognition was simultaneously as her face lit up immediately as she saw me.
When was it that I last saw her? My mind raced back some 24 years ago to the primary school nearby.
Yes, it was there that I last saw her. We were classmates for six years at Gum Primary School.
As I muttered a short greeting, she smiled back and greeted me as if she had seen me only yesterday.
Then without a second thought her hands swept together almost half of the small piles of betelnut she was selling and offered them to me.
I was touched. I did not know what to say as I accepted her generosity.
While generosity such as this was common in Madang, I had been away too long in the tough environment of Port Moresby city where almost everything had a monetary price tag on them.
I fumbled around in my pocket and found a K5 note ($2) and handed it to her. It was more than she could have earned for the betelnut which she sold for 10 toea (4 cents) a heap. But I wanted to thank her for showing kindness to a classmate she last saw in 1973.
“Are you Lea?” I asked finally recalling her name. “Yes,” she replied, the tone of her voice registering a faint surprise as if to suggest ‘and who did you think I was?’
And for my trouble, she reached into her bilum and handed me a huge juicy water melon. I made a half hearted attempt to refuse her kindness, but she insisted. Accepting her gifts with countless muttering of thanks, I left. I was rather annoyed with myself for my awkwardness in responding to her generosity and kindness.
As the truck pulled away from Mambu Market, my thoughts returned to Lea. I remembered that she had a sister named Laufin and we were all in the same class from Standard One to Standard Six.
Wrapped in nostalgia, I regretted that we were never particularly kind to the girls. Most often they were the butts of our jokes, while some of the meaner boys would bully or hit them.
I particularly remembered Lea because she was an exceptionally bright student in our class, especially in maths. While thoughts of careers and University education was totally removed from our world in those years, we did have a healthy competition for the top place in our class throughout our education.
I recalled a particular incident in the early years during class quiz between the girls and boys. We, as usual, were trying to put the girls in their place finally drawing the ire of our teacher who happened to be a woman. She challenged us to a maths question: What’s 9x9?
Silence. None of us knew the answer. She then asked the girls and Lea’s hand was up in a flash. She gave the correct answer. I never forgot the answer to 9x9 since.
I had expected her to continue to high school but was rather surprised when she and a number of other top students did not make it.
To this day, I often wondered about that. I remember asking my late father who was a primary school teacher about that. His answer was that the selection for high school that year was not done by the education department but on the recommendation of the school’s board of governors. He said there was unfair selection and so these students missed out.
For Lea, missing out on high school has not affected her generosity and kindness.
She is blessed with a kind heart that has helped make life for others such as an old school mate, a more beautiful experience.