Welcome to SI’s special SoroptiVoice blog series, bringing you stories from Papua New Guinea, where this year’s President’s December 10th Appeal is taking place. These stories paint a poignant picture of what life is like for women in PNG, with a focus on pregnancy and mothers. There are many SI activities and materials for International Human Rights Day & this year’s SI focus on women’s right to safe motherhood, in particular access to skilled birth attendants. Please explore our website and social media sites to learn more and to find out how you can take action too!
The Market Women
Early in the morning, the market
gardeners come in their droves. They
walk many kilometers from the mountain areas surrounding the Ramu Valley to
reach the highway below. On their way,
they may have had to climb down ropes, down rocky escarpments to reach the
valley floor below. They may have had
to walk across slippery log bridges to cross a stream. Tucked safely into a bilum, they may be
holding a baby under one arm. In their
remaining free hand, they may be carrying smaller bags. Whatever their circumstances, their walk to
the market will have been long and tiring.
And all of this is the more remarkable, because on their backs they will
be carrying huge bilums bulging with garden produce suspended from handles
across their head.
For these are the market gardeners of
the area. These women are the
semi-subsistence farmers who produce so much of the nation’s food. They bring the produce they have grown in
their mountain gardens to sell to the workers in the cash economy in the
valley.
Their destination is the huge Gusap
market place where they will lay out their vegetables and fruit in small piles
on the open ground, and where they will sit until time for the journey back
home. They sit quietly chatting, looking
after toddlers, breast feeding babies or making bilums, waiting to be
approached. Little is said as sales are made.
Money exchanges hands with a shy smile.
The variety of food is astonishing but
everywhere there are plenty of yams, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, taro and
corn for sale. These are the staples of
the local diet. There are salad items of every description and big piles of
leafy green vegetables. Coconuts and
many varieties of bananas abound. Everything
is neatly arranged with its cardboard label telling the price. Everything is
remarkably cheap by western standards and bears no relationship to its
production. However, with the average
income K350 a year (AUS$125) the prices are probably realistic.
The women come to the market two or three
days a week. In that time, they will
have made K50 (AUS$25) at most. With
this money they need to buy rice, salt, sugar, tea, cooking oil, soap and
kerosene. In a good week they may buy
noodles and a tin of fish. Meat is
completely out of their reach.
Another
family expense may be school fees, uniforms and books. Even where there isn’t a school in their
village, these women will send their children to live with a relative in
another village so the children can get the education they missed out on
themselves. There is a huge thirst for
education in PNG, but a great deal of infrastructure is needed to give children
this opportunity in many of these rural areas.