GENDER ABUSE IN BOARDING SCHOOLS

I arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1993 and posted to Dregerhafen High School as Deputy Headmaster.

I stayed 6 months before demanding to be posted out. It was the worst school I have ever had the misfortune of being posted to. I decided to leave after being threatened by a security guard with a bow and arrow. He was not at his post regularly at night.

The school was in the control of elderly trouble making senior teachers who all wanted my job as Deputy. They were retired trouble makers from other schools, retired and gone back to their villages but trying their luck again at Dregerhafen High School.

They worked to sabotage all that I did. My job was to clean up the mess and make life a little more bearable for boarding students. Many teachers were lazy and would not supervise boarding students after school hours.

The senior rogue teachers had control of the school vehicle to use for their family needs and banana boat that was used for fishing. They lost the outboard motor off the coast of Finschhafen on one of their fishing trips.

When I arrived, the school had been under the dictatorship of a principal and his deputy wife. There had been a crisis in the school that no one would tell me about.

I guess that a girl had been raped in the mess one night while students watched a video movie on the school TV.

All girls were banned by the foolish principal from being out of their dormitory compound after night study and prayers.

Only boys could watch TV not the girls. As deputy, I found this grossly unfair. Girls were being punished for the sins of the boys. I threatened to put the TV in the girls’ dormitory.

There was a word out around the school that any girl found outside the dormitory after evening study would be raped by boys. Gender abuse was unchallenged before I arrived.

Boys used to come and go from the nearby villages until early morning after drinking home brew and smoking marijuana. Not the girls.

The school captain was a boy while a girl was vice-captain and slave to the captain. She had no say except to obey orders of the captain.

It was inconceivable that a girl could be captain while a boy was vice. There would be violence between boys and girls if a girl were nominated and elected as captain.

I recall an incident one afternoon in the mess while the boarding students were having their evening meal.

The captain went up to the vice-captain and told her the boys were to have a meeting. He snarled at her to tell the girls to “get out”.

All girls scurried out like frightened rabbits and ran to their dormitories. Many did not finish their meal.

As deputy I spent time on assembly scolding students for their lack of gender equality.

Many of the male and female students were well behaved but dominated by a group of student thugs.

The following year, I was posted to Bumayong Lutheran High school where the situation was better. 

As senior subject master I organized the elections of captain and vice. The same fear was held by the girls in nominating and electing a girl as captain.

The school was run better than Dregerhafen High as there was a strong corps of professional teachers at Bumayong. Girls were not under the threat of rape as at the first school.

My only misgiving at Bumayong was that the school grounds bordered on the jungle. 

I am sure that when all the teachers were asleep at night, there would be students going off bush tracks to their cult grounds to smoke and drink home brew. 
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School violence has flourished at Bumayong over the last decade. Girls suffer at the hands of cult boys. Remember the girl who died at a Gerehu High cult home brew session. No arrests ever made.

Like Dregerhafen there was strict apartheid between boys and girls but not as vicious.

Some boys would grow up to be violent husbands with no idea of how to talk to their wives and daughters. They would remember the ways they terrorized boarding girls at school.

The best school was Busu High School that had removed many problems by having only girls as boarders. The school was run in a most professional way by the principal Mr Betong Bega.

The grade 9 students sat in class with boys seated next to girls. Over the year, they became friends and helped one another.

They would carry a gentle kindness from school to their future marriage and the ability to talk, laugh and discuss with the opposite sex.

There was no male-female apartheid except the boys and girls were separated in the chapel by the aisle.

But times may have changed from the bad old days with the introduction of Personal Development studies in all schools.

I support Immanuel Lutheran School in Lae and find only friendship between boys and girls and professionalism among the teachers.

This is a gender equality school with no problems between boys and girls.