Tribute to Okuk Highlands Highway
The Okuk Highlands Highway breathes warm beneath the bus, a red-dirt lullaby named for the firebrand who dreamed it into being. Sir Iambakey Okuk, born in Simbu’skunai cradle, orphaned young yet raised on stories of resilience, saw mountains not as barriers but as invitations. He built this road with the same bold heart that led workers to strike for fair wages in 1966, that reserved copra fields and fishing grounds for PNG hands, that toppled a government in 1980 and carried the nation’s first change of power on his shoulders. At forty-one, cancer stole him from a Port Moresby hospital bed, but the highlands refused to let him go; whispers still ride PMVs from Wewak to Maprik that he’s hidden in Vatican shadows, plotting a grand return. His daughter Niglmoro threads his footsteps into film, his sons carry his forthright fire into new elections, and every patched pothole, every bridge that refuses to fall, sings his name. Inside the bus, the air is thick with happy chants, stringband s...
