DRUNKS FOR ROLE MODELS

A major problem in Papua New Guinea is that so many men do

not see themselves as fathers who care for their sons. Real men

ignore their sons and never talk to them. A real man just boozes

and fights. Kids keep away.

Educated fathers teach sons. Uneducated PNG yobbos never

teach sons anything. If a real man is fixing a car, his son will sit
and watch but not say anything. Sons never have the feeling of
being accepted by their fathers.

The only way is to grow to be a man and become like their father.

Then they may be accepted. We see 12 year old boys who never

talk only shout. They shout at their sisters and bully them as their

father does.

We will see young men drunk in the street and absolutely proud of
the fact that they stumble and fall. They are proud of the friend who
runs and stops them from being knocked over by a truck.

It will be something to boast about back with the rest of the boys.

I was drunk out of my mind and was about to be killed by a truck.

Bruno saved me. He pulled me back and the truck driver shouted

at me.

We have a real man here. He is growing to be just like his father.

All this kid wants is to be acceptable to his father and uncles.

Both wander off down the road with the drunk proud of being

prevented from falling into a ditch. His friend kept saving him as

he went back to fall into the ditch three times. That is friendship.

Being drunk gives a teenage boy the right to fight anyone who

gives him trouble. And his friend will try to stop him.

So how does church help young boys not to be proud of being

drunks? Only the girlie-girlies go to church. No wonder urban

fathers never take their sons back to the highlands village.

A father says nothing when he sees son smoking marijuana

and drinking homebrew. That means a boy is a man. A man
does what a man does.

It will be a matter of pride when the boy takes part in killing a

village sorcerer. That is the sign of a real man. He cut the old

man’s arm off with a bush knife. Now he is a man.

Men in the highlands have started to kill children in tribal fights.

That is the beginning of the end.

When the boy becomes a father, he will never talk to a son. He
never talks to his mother. His father does not. Real men talk to
real men.

Girls, never marry a village yobbo. But you really have no choice.
Your father was a real man who never sent daughters to school.

But then he never sent his sons to school either. His son wants to
become a raskol and hold up trucks on the highway. And perhaps
the occasional gang rape with his real men mates.