A village boy whom Mr Kiponge assisted in an hardware is now working in top Accounting firm in Cairns

By Rex Kiponge

Four years ago, I walked into a hardware store in Port Moresby and noticed a young boy standing quietly by the building materials, counting coins in his palm that clearly weren't enough. I didn't know him. I had never seen him before in my life. But something about the way he stood there determined, a little embarrassed, but not giving up made me stop and ask him what he was trying to buy. He told me he wanted to build a chicken house. He had left school because his family could not keep up with his school fees at the University, and rather than sit idle, he had decided to raise and sell chickens to pay his own way back into school. No one sent him to that hardware store. He came by himself out of his determination. I helped him with the little he was short fall. He bought his materials, and before we parted ways, we exchanged phone numbers, as normally the way strangers sometimes do when a moment feels like it shouldn't simply end.

Almost two months later, my phone rang. It was him. When I went to meet him, he proudly handed me five chickens from his very first batch he raised with his own hands, in a house built with materials I had helped him buy. Those chickens, he told me were the sweetest in the area. I believed him enough to buy his entire flock one day, just to see the joy on his face when he counted that money.

A year later, he was back in school. And then, as life often does, our paths drifted apart. Numbers changed, seasons passed, and I lost contact with the boy from the hardware store.

Fast forward to last month, July 2026. I was walking through Cairns Central, when I heard someone shout my name. I turned around, and there he was, no longer a boy, but a grown young man, running toward me. He wrapped me in a hug so tight and so full of emotion that he wept right there at the shopping mall.

We had lunch together; he told me his story. The chickens had paid his school fees. He successfully completed his studies with a degree in accounting. He is now advancing career with a major Australian accounting firm based in Cairns, Australia.

The next morning, he came to my hotel room. And in a gesture that left me speechless, he reimbursed every single expense of my trip, my airfare, my hotel room, and gave me extra money so I could enjoy the rest of my stay in Cairns. A boy I once helped buy timber and wire for a chicken coop was now taking care of me, a man he barely knew four years earlier, with the generosity of someone who never forgot where he started.

I did not do anything extraordinary that day at the hardware store. I simply saw a young man determine, and I gave him a small push. But that small helped him build a chicken house. He then paid his school fees and graduated with flying colours. 

This is a story I carry with pride not because of what I gave, but because of what he built with it. Somewhere out there, a young PNGean who once counted coins for a bag of nails is now sitting in the offices of a respected Australian firm, proof that a small act of kindness, planted in the right heart, can grow into something far bigger than either person could have foreseen.

God is good. And so, it turns out, are the people we choose to believe in.

I am sharing this story so we can be inspired to help when an opportunity arises.

By: Rex Kiponge