Why na em i kamap olsem? (Why is it happening like this?) 2441 word count Why na em i kamap olsem? (Why is it happening like this?) The broken pieces of my old TV screen glittered in the dawn light. An empty rice packet was all that remained from the night before. Outside the Igam settlement block in Lae, the darkness slowly dissolved into a grim twilight. My mind kept rewinding the terror. They came with women and children? The thought echoed, a relentless drumbeat. Why were they part of this? I couldn't stop the reel of their faces, hardened by a desperation that mirrored our own, yet their hands took everything.The rental was barely a home—three standard PNG rooms, a settlement hut pretending at modernity. Only three of us tenants: me, and my two neighbours with their small families. We were few. Easy prey. They swarmed out of the shadows, a tide of thirty-plus men, women, and children—the criminals. In the tenebrous dark, counting them was a fool's errand."Security? We ain't got none. The landlord doesn't even live here with us; he just shows up every two weeks to grab his rent money." I had fought my way out of poverty, clawed towards an honest life. Now, in a single night, it felt like nothing. The harshness I had tried to escape had found me anyway, and it stung worse than the wound on my elbow. I stared at the ragged scratch on my right elbow, a fresh flesh wound from the timber one of the criminals had thrown at me last night. If I hadn’t blocked his blow, I would have been hit hard in the head. My painful elbow was my shield in that moment. Anxiety held me captive in my own skin. Ah! The pain was all I could feel. I tried to push the trauma down, to find a scrap of hope. I tried. But it was no use. I couldn't blame only the criminals for this shit mess, even though I'm a victim of their actions. I'm not saying they aren't guilty—they are, absolutely—but their actions are just a ripple effect. A consequence of something much bigger, started by who knows who? Maybe the politicians, but I won't say for sure. My neighbors had different opinions. My instincts blamed the government officials who sat in parliament golden seats with empty sweet talks every parliament sitting. As one elderly man put it during one of the parliament sessions we watched a few days ago, “Treasurer wok long toktok long wanem samting ya! em i kusai na tok giaman tasol! Kantri i bagarap tru na prais blo olgeta samting igo antap na liklik manmeri long ples na taun i painim taim nogut.” (“The treasure is bluffing lies! The country is facing hardship and prices of goods and services are growing higher and small people in villages and urban towns are facing hardships.”) Hearing empty words from politicians is like listening to a witch's eerie spell.It's a kick in the gut that echoes as a piercing pain in the ears of an average Papua New Guinean. The criminals came, faces hardened by a desperation that mirrored our own, yet their hands took all. Women and children, part of the raiding party that ransacked our home, snatching the very bag of rice and tinfish that sustained my weekly meals. My neighbors alike—everything in their possession gone! The criminal's raw, undeniable truthful action screams defiance at the politicians' polished GDP pronouncements. A chilling counterpoint to the hollow boasts of national prosperity. I tried to process this all in my brain. Still, I can't get a reasoning. “We have promising gold mines and oil and gas exports. Why aren't our citizens free of this pain of poverty!” "Papa, hau tru?! Why na em i kamap olsem?!" ("Papa, how is this really!? Why is it happening like this?") I heard my neighbor's four-year-old speaking in audible Tok Pisin. I turned to look at the boy. My eyes followed his gaze to the broken toy truck. He had always loved semi-trailer trucks, dreaming of the day he'd drive one himself. Now, only the trailer remained, its head ripped clean off. He was a smart kid, too smart to understand why it was broken. The boy’s broken truck stirred something inside me. Maybe this was the generation that would refuse to live in fear. Maybe the answers we seek won’t come from Parliament but from the small acts of people who still care. My eyes then went to the boy's dad, his face still marked with exhaustion from last night's ordeal. The criminals had bound the entire family—him, his wife, and their son—then plundered the house. They took everything they could find, and we watched as they carried it all away. We were so outnumbered, completely helpless against them. “Wanem samtin kamap aste?” (“What happened yesterday?”) a woman asked softly, her voice trembling with both fear and curiosity. She stood in the doorway, her hair still uncombed, her eyes darting from one face to another as if searching for comfort in our shared silence. I didn’t want to answer that. My throat tightened, and the words that tried to escape died somewhere deep inside me. I could feel her gaze waiting, but I just stared back — cold, empty, drained. My eyes spoke what my mouth refused to say. The air between us grew heavy, filled with the weight of everything we had lost. I looked away, pretending to focus on the shattered pieces of glass on the ground. My heart pounded in slow, angry beats. Every image from last night flashed again — the shouting, the footsteps, the children crying. The question burned in my chest, but my emotions dared me not to speak. If I opened my mouth, I feared everything would spill out — the fear, the anger, the helplessness. So I stayed quiet, letting silence speak louder than any words ever could. “Ol steal man kam steal lo mipla long early hours morning” ("Thieves came and robbed us early hours of the morning”) Jullie, my third neighbour spoke slowly as she looked at her husband. “Ol kam long group taim ples tutak yet ya!” (“They came in a group when the place was still dark”) Jullie's husband added. I felt I wouldn't want to add anything. I listened as I tried to gather what's left. I hated the neighbors too because they were there but couldn't help us. “Are they involved?”, “who knows maybe yes, maybe no, mother nature watches everything.” “Give it all to God. He will be the judge." My father's advice echoed, a lifetime's guiding principle. I was a strong Christian, but this was a different storm. The weight of it threatened to snap the very thread of my faith. My prayers felt thin, insubstantial, but they were all I had left to hold onto like a lifeline, refusing to let go. My prayers were thin, insubstantial, but they were all I had.I gathered what was left, fixed my broken door, cradling my painful elbow. I lingered on what was yet to come. Then came the greater chaos. Later, they would call it 'Black Wednesday' on the news. I didn't know that yet. For me, time bled away before I clawed my way back to a flicker of consciousness. My other two tenant neighbors had fled to the quiet of their extended families, seeking refuge from the turmoil, but I remained, marooned in the silence of my own home at the rental place. I didn't go to work. I had no relatives in Lae to visit. Our neighbor, who heard the story, reported the incident to the police. Then I knew she must not have been one of them, but the officers never showed up.The response was a shocking one: their absence was a nationwide strike—police and defense officers were off duty gathered in front of parliament haus (house) in Port Moresby to protest drastic government pay cuts. They laid down their duties and waited for the government's response. We were just pawns in a much larger game, and our safety had been made secondary to a political dispute over paychecks. The moment I understood, a profound dread took hold. The robbery wasn't just a crime; it was a symptom. The first crack in the foundation, and now the whole nation was crumbling. My only clear thought was the paralyzing fear that the criminals would return, but what good would that do? They had already taken everything. I had nothing left. Somehow, the news of the robbery found its way to our landlord with chilling speed. He arrived not long after, a small procession of his relatives trailing behind him, his face a mask of undisguised terror. The moment his eyes fell on me, his apologies spilled out in a frantic, broken rush. He placed a hand on my shoulder, a clumsy, hesitant gesture that was his awkward attempt to comfort me, a silent, helpless recognition of my own devastation. "Sori tru, mi harim long dispela nius long morning na mi kam." (“Im deeply sorry, I heard about the news and I came, I heard about your news in the morning.”)The landlord spoke slowly with sadness in his eye. "Ol raskol i kisim olgeta samting. I nogat wanpela samting i stap. Ol narapela tupla neba blo mi i go painim famili blo ol, na mi tasol i stap." (“The rascals took everything. There's nothing left. My other two neighbors went to find their families, and I'm the only one left.”) I spoke softly. "Brata, sori tru long dispela hevi i kamap. Bai yumi traim long painim ol dispela birua manmeri."(“Brother, I'm truly sorry about this trouble that has happened. We will try to find these criminal people.”). The landlord spoke with sympathy looking at my arm. This time, the swelling in my elbow grew severe. I had to hang my arm from a string tied around my neck. As the landlord spoke, his daughter's eyes were fixed on my injury as well. With a soft apology, she offered to tend to the wound. She then went to boil water and, upon her return, carefully applied the warmth to my swollen arm. As I sat with my pain, the warm water eased a little, the landlord seethed, his thoughts already turning to vengeance. He wasn't just planning; he was plotting how to track down the men who had done this and make them pay for their injustice. He pulled his relatives into a tight, conspiratorial huddle. Their voices, a low murmur of a language I couldn't understand, were laced with a cold fury I understood perfectly. The whispers turned to shouts as news broke. In Port Moresby, a wave of destruction was unleashed. Stores and shops were not just looted—they were being ransacked and set ablaze. As people ran into the shops, fires were lit, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. One of the landlord's relatives held up a phone, playing viral TikTok videos that showed the continuous looting and rising smoke, bringing the distant chaos directly to us. “Displa asua em kamap taim police na army i strike ya, ol toksave lo news aste ya nau em kamap” ("This problem started during the police and army strike. It was in the news yesterday, and now it's happening.”) The landlord's daughter said boldly. “Em stret ya, olsem na aste mipla pasim wok early” (“That’s right, no wonder, we closed work early yesterday.”) another one added. Hearing their conversation, a chilling thought struck me: the criminals terrorizing us must have planned this with the news. The idea made twisted sense, yet it raised a more unsettling question. If they were so clever, why were they robbing ordinary people like us? The rich were the obvious target. The more I tried to make sense of it, the more my mind reeled, a jumble of frustrating, unanswered questions. Soon, that same rage erupted in Lae. The news of a boy shot dead in 7th Street in Lae went viral on TikTok and Facebook, turning digital grief into a shared, explosive anger in the streets. We saw in the TikTok video a woman crying over the boy's dead body with crowds surrounding them. This is an action of something deep, too emotional to watch. Rage seethed through the streets and towns of Papua New Guinea, and my heart plummeted into the pit of my stomach. The sight of my nation in chaos ignited a fury that had been simmering within me since my own violent ordeal. The anger I felt toward the government, a low burn from my own injustice, now erupted into a roaring inferno. My blood boiled, and all I wanted was to unleash a torrent of curses upon the leaders who had failed us, their negligence fueling the fires of a nation's despair. An innocent life is lost, and innocent businesses are engulfed in flames. Who will bear the blame? The pot-bellied politicians. Two years ago, my own cousin was killed in an election campaign, and looking back, I feel as if we were crushed. Relating this rekindled pain of what was lost! The smoke on TikTok wasn’t just in Port Moresby—it was our whole country burning. I watched the videos until their phone died. Then the silence came, thick and heavy. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but one thing was clear. The criminals had taken my things, but the politicians had stolen my peace, my security, my country's soul. We were all victims of a broken nation. “Chief Somare ino save mekim kain pasin lo kantri, man meri stap gut. Nau em die na mipla painim bikpla hevi tru.” (“Chief Somare, never did anything bad to our country, we the people have a good life. Now that he died, we face a huge hardship.”) A woman spoke slowly looking at the TikTok video held up by one person. “Sapos ol police na army kisim pay me no ting bai kain samtin kamap!” (“If the police and army officers get paid, I don’t think we will have this situation!”) A man spoke. Those words hit me like a spark, igniting a fire under a raw nerve in our country. I can still hear my late grandfather's voice, a low rumble from another time, telling stories of the old days. He spoke of a world under the white men's rule where life was simple, where everything was easy and cheap. Then came independence—a fresh, intoxicating wave of freedom. Our forefathers reveled in it, a generation that danced through life with easy steps, even with few books and fewer degrees.