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, string band songs rising in sweet, simple harmony, mothers swaying with babies on hips, men laughing over shared smokes and stories. No one is a stranger; we are one heartbeat rolling on worn tires, windows wide to the perfume of kunai and frangipani. Outside, Mount Sarawaget lifts its head in quiet greeting, mist curling like steam from a morning bilas. The Finisterre cradles us, its slopes stitched with waterfalls and wild orchids, its silence louder than any city. I press my forehead to the window, letting the warm wind write ‘thank you’ across my skin.

This is Okuk’s road, a connector of worlds, where coastal traders swap tales with highland farmers, where isolation becomes intimacy. Every bend is a memory wearing new leaves: the river bend where water runs clear over black stones, singing the same lullaby it sang twenty years ago; the spot where a hornbill once glided between breadfruit trees and we whispered “mi lukim paradise”. The jungle leans in close, frangipani and wild ginger brushing the roof like old friends tapping hello.

Papua New Guinea hums its beauty in the gentle sway of a PMV packed with singing mothers, in steam rising from a mumu pit where strangers become family over plates of tulip and kumu. It is the warm hand on my shoulder, the chant that lifts me when the climb feels steep, the roadside kaukau shared without question. The Morobe bilum folded in my lap whispers, ‘you were here, you are loved’. I think of the two friends left in Lae under their much-loved candle trees, the elder with sixty years of tides and triumphs, the younger with dreams rising like mumu steam, and know these are forever roots, deep as the Markham River.

Okuk Highway, you old dreamer, keep singing.

Keep carrying us home; one chant, one bilum, one shared laugh at a time.

The bus crests the ridge.

The mountains open their arms.

And my heart, full and humming, answers:

Mi laikim. Mi kam bak

 

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