PNG - LAND OF THE UNCHECKABLE

Do stupid white men need gender equity? Or are they just suckers?

There is a new world out there for young women with mobile phones. They can play all kinds of tricks, particularly on men.

They can say they are in one place when they are somewhere else. This is not good for parents trying to keep check on their sons and daughters. They can be nowhere that they say they are.

Young girls can play tricks on men. Take the young girl who has met a white man and told him the story that she is homeless.

Her husband is violent to her but her family wants her to stay with him. She needs a place to stay for a few days. Sure, you can stay with me.

She is wonderful. She cooks food, washes clothes and irons shirts. She sleeps with the man. Then she leaves with K500 given to her.

She phones a week later crying to say her auntie had died in Wewak. Can you help me? He gives her K900 for an airline ticket and spending money. She promises to come back the following week.

Next week, she phones to say she is in the village and so grateful for his help. She is telling lies. She is in an expatriate’s apartment on Paga Hill.

She has just finished telling the next expatriate sucker of her violent husband and baby. She has run away from him and very grateful to be able to hide in his apartment.

They cannot be seen together as the husband will kill both of them. But she really does need to go to Lae to take her baby to her mother.

Could you help me with a little money for an airline ticket? He gives her six hundred kina.

So in one week, this young woman has tricked two expatriates out of nearly K1000. But it is time to go back to the first sucker. Hullo darling, this is Sue. I am back.

It is time to find another man. She cannot keep asking for money from the same men.

The mobile phone is the ultimate trick machine. We all knew where a landline phone is. It is where the telephone book says it is.

But mobile phones are different. Young girls can use the mobile phone in totally creative ways to get money from silly men.

Wait till she tells the men she is pregnant. Of course you are the father darling. Who do you think I am? You are the only one. That is not counting the two men in the month before.