ROSITHA KABUI, BACKBONE OF FIRST PRESIDENT By Liza Kabui, Bougainville 24. Published 4th Dec 2014 My mother Rositha Kabui is someone who has always inspired me in life. She is filled with the courage to take up any challenges that comes her way and has always amazed me with her stories on how she managed to survive the Bougainville crisis. Rositha Kabui (née Koko) was born to Catherine Naruko and Iranai Ikus in Tadorima village of Bana district, south Bougainville. She was the fourth born child in her family and always showed extraordinary ambition. Her childhood was tough and her parents were poor, but she managed to complete her community school year six at Sovele Community School, now known as Sovele Primary School, and was selected to attend Buin High School. Rositha’s ambition was to become a nurse, however due to unforeseen personal circumstances she was not able to complete her grade nine. In 1978 Rositha married a man from Panguna, Joseph Kabui, who was a prominent leader in Bougainville. Rositha and Joseph had four young girls and they always loved us dearly. During the 90s, as the Bougainville Crisis began to escalate, my mother took my three elder sisters, Alfreda, Josepha and Vicky, to the village. They left Arawa town because the place was no longer safe for them especially when both the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and police were looking for her husband. Joseph was the Papua New Guinea Defence Force’s most wanted man and so Rositha’s life and the lives of their children were also under threat. In 1993 the PNGDF reached Bana District and rumours had spread that they PNGDF would base itself in Sovele Parish. My mother knew that life in her home was no longer safe for her and her children, so she followed her husband into the jungles of Panguna where they were safe from the PNGDF. It was in the jungle of Panguna, at a village known as Onove, that I was born. There was no doctor in the jungle, so my mother had to be my doctor. She used her traditional knowledge to nurse me. At the height of the Bougainville Crisis there was no supply of medicine, but my mother used the plant leaves and made traditional medicines, that prevented us from catching malaria and other illnesses. My father, Joseph Kabui, was a busy man and during the Crisis he travelled into the jungles of Bougainville and across international borders as far as Solomon Islands, Australia and New Zealand hoping to restore peace to Bougainville. Despite the critical situation, my mother never stopped giving moral support to her husband and brought us four girls up by herself. Dawn till dusk she worked in the garden and doing house chores to provide for her family. She says that her God was her guide during the crisis and because she believed in God luck always came to her, for which she is grateful. Sometimes she thought of her mother and believes that her mother’s spirit was with her everywhere she went. After signing of ceasefire in 1997 we moved back to her village. I was a little kid at that time, but can remember my grandmother with tears flooding down her cheeks, hugging her daughter after not seeing her for almost a decade. In those times she used to leave me and my two sisters with our aunty while my elder sister, Alfreda, was studying in Nissan High School and my mother travelled with her husband to work towards the peace process. My father was a leader and was well respected man in Bougainville, but at home he was an ordinary husband who followed my mother’s advice. My dad always believed in her guidance, she was his backbone and whenever he wrote a speech he gave it to my mother to read and give her point of view. “Don’t use the word hope when you are giving public speech; it’s like you are not sure of what you’re saying,” I can remember my mother telling him. To some people who know her well she is a great mentor and was someone who loves her family and the people of Bougainville. She never gives up on her family and it’s like having a greatest mother in the whole world.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 05:14:17 +0000
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