Leonard Fong Roka
It was mid-2013, my third year at Divine Word University
(DWU), and I had 3 Bougainvillean girlfriends; two of them were in Kieta
eagerly awaiting my holiday home comings, whilst one was based in Madang where
I was.
Then I met Delphine Piruke, a shy second and final year
student at Madang Teachers College (MTC), from Nakorei Village in Buin and
added her into my list of concubines; I revolved around them, exploiting their
finances.
This was my promiscuous culture I had mushroomed since 2004
after walking out of the University of PNG. I was known far and wide with women
and alcohol in Panguna and the Kupe area in the hinterland of Arawa Town.
I spent more weekends out with Delphine employing the other
3 women’s finances at times beside her funds. The news of her going outs with
me spilled over to Bougainville and her relatives began ordering her to cut it
off. To me this was the ticket out of her.
Then one October 2013 day Delphine sent me a text message
reading ‘my monthly periods have ceased for two weeks now’ from the North Coast
of Madang where she was doing her teaching practical.
This was no surprise for me. This was one of the many ‘I am
pregnant’ texts I had received from my former women since 2004. In 2013 the two
women from Bougainville sent me ‘I am pregnant’ and ‘my monthly period is over’
regularly and both would later joke about it. About a week or so before
Delphine’s text the Madang based girl also sent me that and later laughed over
it.
So I was not bothered much but at the back of my mind a bell
was always ringing ‘You are a father’. The mystery call always infiltrated me;
made me uncomfortable, so I slowly began asking Delphine ‘how is your period?’
and ‘how is the baby?’ text regularly.
From the start I saw confidence in Delphine that I was the
father of the child she was carrying. But my promiscuous heart was lost and
confused and slowly hunted for escape routes.
From Madang I cultivated a relationship with a primary
school student and was ready to get the ball rolling.
Emotionally burdened I left Madang in October 2013 for my
holidays. I reached home in Arawa with the news of my pregnant Buin girlfriend Delphine
already in the ears of the many. One of my two home based girlfriends also left
me after hearing that I was a father. But for the primary school student my
news was unknown so I kept communicating with her by phone.
Delphine arrived at my home in Arawa in December and I was
in full acceptance that the child was my child but her relatives ordered her
out from me back to Buin with a price of K20 000.00 that she should pay them
for all their care and support in her education in order to marry me so I was knocked
off guard.
Such a malicious threat to me with my heart so deeply happy
about my child pummelled me to the ground unconscious. I was sad and regularly in tears thinking
about my unborn baby and that K20 000.00 and the stream of negative words
thrown at my daughter by Delphine’s relatives in resistance of me.
To me Delphine was not my wife without the K20 000.00 fixed
as they had stated and a bride price of K10 000.00 revealed to me by Delphine.
When Delphine left Arawa I lost my phone and all the contact
details of potential new girls who knew not I was a father so I was darkened for the holiday and
returned back to school in Madang in February 2014.
‘I am a father and why can’t the Buin people respect me and
my child and leave us alone’ was a knock that even made me cry watching
Delphine leaving that day. I was infuriated but what can I do! I had not the
money to shut their mouths.
My fellow students knew I was a father and respected me. My
Madang and the last home based girlfriends also deserted me thus I lived my
life occupied with my writings spending days in the DWU library.
Seeing these changes I decided to halt my promiscuity and
cut down my boozing culture. I was a father and thus I need to change for my
child and young nieces and uncles from my brother and three sisters who need a
better home to nurture into positive citizens of Bougainville.
In June 2014 my daughter was born and my mother who was at
her birth told me ‘Hi mummy, she is your photocopy’. I was happy out there and
began begging Delphine to send me her pictures so I can display them in my
Facebook walls and so on.
Delphine did not have the means to send me the pictures thus
remained silent but for me, mentally unsettled by the K20 000.00 and the high
probability of losing her, kept bombarding her. I demanded the little girl’s
pictures in order to accept her calls or answer her texts.
In this period that our current nightmares mushroomed; my
ignorance of her calls or texts, when the K20 000.00 ticket to marry her
haunted me got her to give her own reasons for my ignorance. Her emphasize was
that I was seeing other girls and began to distant myself from her and our
baby.
And from recent gleaning, a wave of gossipers from DWU and
MTC, kept bombing Delphine that I was seeing this and that girl in Madang while
she was busy teaching her first year in Buin.
Thus my reactions to Delphine’s relatives demands on her and
me; followed by the inducements from a handful of gossipers, alongside
Delphine’s personality paved the way into the kind of life we are going
through; and that is of tears and sorrow for Delphine will never trust a man
like me so she has to bark at me always.
Delphine began telling me she will never trust me for I was
a sex maniac; a liar and a cheat whenever we brawled. Our unborn child was facing all our upheavals
as they sprout between Bougainville and Madang.
(to be continued)
