TELLING LIES IS PAPUA NEW GUINEA CULTURE

We read so much about the stresses and problems in PNG families leading to domestic violence.

Expatriate advisors are ready to blame men in the family but the level of expatriate naivety is quite enormous.

There is so much that foreigners can never understand about the stresses within the PNG family.

Telling lies is part of culture. It is all about covering tracks and starts in early childhood. A boy wants to find the house of a young girl in the village.

So he asks about the home of the pastor. Then he walks around looking for his old school friend Peter. He has not found the house of the young girl.

Ah there she is. It is a surprise to see you here. I am looking for Pastor Rava. Liar. He was looking for her.

In many families all members tell lies. A man or wife says they are going to church when they are going to play cards and drink homebrew.

The daughter is going to study with her class girlfriend when they are both going to a nightclub.

She left her best dress at the friend’s house the day before. She tells lies to her father when he phones on her cell phone. 

He thinks she is at a house at Gerehu but she is at a disco at a local hotel. She is with a man and plans to go home with him.

Many girls and boys never tell their parents where they are going. They just disappear and come back the next day. Why tell their parents that they are boozing at the river?

Many parents are very afraid to give freedom to their daughters even after the age of consent. They are afraid that they will make mistakes and suffer injury or death.

A young girl may go to a nightclub, be given a drug in her drink and be taken home for sex by some expatriate or national man.

Another may be taken to the river, gang raped and killed by a gang of men. Parents may think the worst when their daughter is not yet at home at 3.00am.

Young boys are part of the male boy culture. I have a 4 year old grandson who prefers to be down the street with all the other little boys.

That is the start of his life as a street boy. Let us hope that his mother will make him focus on the home at least for food, washing, sleep, school and family quiet time.

Some villages have a haus man, haus meri and haus boi. Even small boys are expected to make their way among their male peers from an early age. I saw my 4 year old grandson punching another boy last week.

My daughters’ cousin has a 13 year old boy who has just been removed from my house to stay with his uncle up the road.

He would never obey any instruction, receive school money but not go to school, come in for dinner at 7.00pm and then silently go back on to the street.

He would never bring a report card home and never go to school on test days. He would wear his school uniform all week without changing.

So what do parents do? There was a statement in the media from Hohola police station that parents have to discipline their children against smoking marijuana and drinking home brew.

He would have to be joking. The police had just arrested 10 men aged 25 years old at Hohola, the urban home of marijuana.

Parents have no control over most boys and girls from early teenage years. They do what they like away from the home.

My children in Australia never gave trouble. They came home and stayed home just like all the other boys and girls in Australian nuclear families.

My PNG daughters may come in at 9.00pm to check on their small children being looked after by grandfather and two pre-teenage girls.

The daughters are home and now their dad can lock the door and go to sleep.

But he wakes up at 11.00pm to find the door open and two daughters nowhere to be seen. They are playing cards up the road and may come back at mid-night.

I still love them. They look after the house, go to market, cook food, wash clothes, spend my money and look after the kids. But they like to be out now that they are over the age of consent.

Parents can just hope that their grown up children do not die before they mature as adults. Some married boys and girls still want to go out at night to do their thing.

It is the cause of ongoing domestic violence. A man would never admit to male friends that his wife wants him to stay home. What kind of girlie girlie is he? He should have bashed her.

Parents hope that girls will not spoil their studies, become pregnant, enter a violent hateful relationship with a boy who will come looking for them with a gun or bush knife.

They hope they will not be HIV positive after earning card money to gamble by selling their bodies.

The foreign lesbians think they have the game sewn up. They seek to make all boys and girls free to roam the streets by denouncing all parental discipline

Mothers and fathers are not allowed parental discipline as it is child abuse. Foreign lesbians want family chaos.

How do parents discipline? Make criticism (child abuse), smack the child (child abuse), deny money (child abuse), ground them for a week (child abuse) send a child to bed without dinner (child abuse), remove them from the house (child abuse).

It all fails when the child ignores all words and discipline and just walks out of the house. The child has just become a stranger.

I know one family whose father is afraid to discipline his 18 year old son as he knows the son will kill him. The son is what is known as a marijuana drug body. He has never been disciplined in his life. 

We have not touched on the lies that young girls tell to expatriate men to get money. I have a violent husband who bashes me and has forced me to leave my baby with my cousin. Could I stay in your apartment for a few days? I have no money for baby food. Please help me.

This is why the schools Personal Development curriculum stresses rights and responsibilities of all family members. It will fail for about 40% of families.