Title: Amin ( also known as Payap)

Amin was my maternal grandmother. She was my guardian when I started school in my Munum village. 

Amin was only a child when she left her village called Zifasing.

According to Amin's mother Mpiagots, enemy tribesmen from across the Markham River attacked their settlement at dawn, killing her father who slept in another kunai thatched house. Amin had climbed quickly onto her mother's back, and they escaped out of their house into the gully that ran alongside their hamlet. They followed the gully down to the mighty Markham River.

Sitting on top of her mother's shoulders, they drifted down the Markham River, carefully avoiding enemy tribesmen and others along the way till they reached Narakapore.

From Narakapore, they walked all the way to Watong, situated at the foothills of the mountains of the vast eastern Markham valley on the northern side.

They met a man called Gago, and Mpiagots became his second wife to raise Amin in accordance with her husband's instruction. Given the ongoing tribal wars in the late 1800s, Mpiagots husband's instruction was, Mpiagots was to travel down the valley to Munun village and marry Gago, his friend and fellow warrior.

Amin grew up in Munum, and life became peaceful when the Lutheran missionaries arrived and brokered peace with their Chief Nowang in 1910.

When Amin reached marriageable age, she was married off in an exchange marriage ceremony as was customary in the Lei Wompa tribe. She was given in marriage to Goanius( aka Nimolen), and Tiporah, Goanius' sister was given as an exchange bride to Nehemiah (aka Wazob).

Amin my maternal grandmother was a very strong woman, she had 4 sons and 8 daughters, one of the daughters was my mother Ibuzin. Only one child, a son died during World War 2 whilst the family were living at Nadzab during wartime. The deceased son was called Mofos, and Mofos was most probably the name of her father from Zifasing.

Amin lived all her life in Munum village and never reconnected with her relatives in Zifasing. She passed away peacefully in her house at Murawi hamlet of Munum village in June 1981.