The Storekeeper

In God’s world a young man walked from his village to the mission station and asked the missionary, “Papa, would you lend me five hundred kina so I can set up a small trade store in my village?  The missionary said, “Okay, I'll trust you.” And he did.  

Next, the new storekeeper ordered some things to sell in his trade store, then he went back to his village and built a small shack of bush materials: bamboo, pitpit and kunai grass.  Then he waited for two weeks.  

Then the storekeeper gathered some village youth and they all walked to the mission station.  And they waited some more.  

Finally the airplane came, and the storekeeper and the young men unloaded the trade store goods from the airplane and put it all on their backs and the storekeeper paid the pilot for the goods.  Then the men walked the goods to the village and the storekeeper put them in his new trade store.  His first customer was one of his smolpapas (small-papa: uncle). 

The smolpapa need an axe-head.  “How much?” he asked.  “You can have it,” said the storekeeper.  

You see, the storekeeper owed his uncle for a loan he had floated him.  It was to pay part of the brideprice for the storekeeper's new wife. Now, every adult male in the village, except for one, was the storekeeper’s smolpapa.  Soon the store was empty and so was the cash box.  

When the missionary heard of this he confronted the storekeeper about the five hundred kina loan.  The storekeeper said that everything was gone, and the missionary said, “You people are all idiots.  You don’t know how to conduct business.”  

So the storekeeper went back to his village and sat on the front step of his house.  And he was happy.