Moresby life: the brutal struggle for survival

BY BRUCE COPELAND

FOR MANY YEARS, the organisation AIDS Holistics has promoted a message of Positive Living. We emphasise the importance of nutrition with daily fruit and vegetables. The staple diet in this country is scones made from white flour.

Positive Living is a sick joke for many people in PNG. They simply cannot afford to eat properly.

We read a recent newspaper advertisement for senior positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs. A director receives K32, 000 a year, a net K80 a day. Take out school fees and children’s lunches and that drops to K50. Take out rent and there is no money for food. And this is the salary of a senior officer. Rents in Port Moresby are out of the reach of middle to top ranking workers.

So the family may have to live in a squatter settlement. They have to dig a garden. There is no way a director in Foreign Affairs could live in a rental house and have his family eat adequately on one wage.

A schoolteacher may earn K240 a fortnight, well under the Australian poverty line. A junior teacher will earn much less. This provides K17 a day, enough for a meal of rice and tinned fish once a day and no money for school fees and lunches. It may buy a bag of flour twice a week.

A security officer may live on K150 a fortnight which is K11 a day, provided the family lives in a squatter settlement. No money for school fees and lunches. One meal a day. In off-pay week, the family may not eat for some days. The family will do worse if the man spends some money on beer.

Corruption in this country is about survival. Families steal to eat. Families become desperate when they find traditional land stolen by fake landowner groups. Any chance of a decent future life fades. The desperation intensifies if there are no jobs.

Yet it makes the mind boggle to stand at the side of the road and watch so many people driving the latest land cruiser vehicles worth upwards of K100, 000. How do they pay?

Social injustice is a way of life in this country. We find PNGDF retrenched officers getting no money. Retired correction officers have pensions stopped. They end their days with nothing after a lifetime of loyal service.

Then in the national HIV/AIDS response, we find AusAID and other advisors earning upwards of K500, 000 with house and car. And the Papua New Guinean AIDS workers are mainly volunteers. Social injustice sponsored by Australia.

What would I do if my family were starving and someone left money within reach? I may well steal to stop my children from crying. And I dig a garden where I can.

There is no value in being honest and having children starving. I have to risk ending up in gaol. The English lower classes ended up as convicts in Australia for the same crimes 300 years ago.

To hell with do-gooders crying about corruption. How can we blame mothers for selling their bodies? What of mothers having their roadside goods scattered and stolen by police?

I have seen police taking bags and stuffing money into their pockets as they return to their vehicle eating the betel nut they have confiscated. Their families may eat well tonight.

National Capital rangers think they have the right to hit people with iron bars. They roam the streets looking for people to bash while stealing their goods. Onlookers scurry in the dirt to pick up scattered betel nut.

I stood in the middle of a bashing, a simple old white man, and all violence stopped. The gang leader apologised that I had to witness such an event. Then he took his men around the corner to do the same again.

I stood beside a policeman while he bashed an old man at the market. He stopped. One day I will end up in the cells being bashed.

What would I do as an unemployed PNG father if my daughter was bringing K15 home each day and I knew she was selling her body? I may well do nothing. Thank you daughter. Wife, ask our daughter if she is using a condom.

And my son was giving the family K5 some days after buying homebrew and marijuana? He must be stealing the money. Thank you, son. Your sisters and brothers will not be hungry tonight.

My daughters never have to sell their bodies while I give them money every day for basic needs. What if I died tomorrow?

What is the great lie that PNG mothers tell their children? Do not worry about me, I am not hungry.

Fruit and vegetables from the market are still the cheapest and most nutritious food - kaukau K2, beans K1, carrots 40 toea, kumu 50 toea, with tinned fish K1.90.

Gentle reader, this is not the time to switch off and tell yourself that all is well. Many families do not have K5.50 to go to the market.