As you guys know I grew up in Papua New Guinea, I loved growing up there, but I also loved leaving there in my early teens. PNG is no place for a woman, or a girl for that matter, and although I tend to idealize traditions and indigenous cultures quite a bit on this site, I know it isn’t all admirable. The men in Papua New Guinea treat women very badly. I remember every day as we drove to school, little old women loaded down with huge bilum’s full of sweet potato would be walking for miles, on their way to the market. If we stopped to pick them up, young men, who were walking empty handed in their own group, would run to our van, push the old ladies out of the way and jump in. My father would always kick them out and let in the old ladies.

The sexual treatment of women also is very rude. The men generally live in their own men’s houses, while their wives live with the pigs in another house and have to do all the gardening, cleaning, cooking etc. (The more wives and pigs the more important a man you are.) This type of culture promotes the treatment of women as objects for men to do whatever they please with. Growing up in a village in the highlands I was sexually molested when I was around 6, and sexually harassed from that time onward– and I was the lucky one, compared to the things that happened to the local girls. Some of my friends in school were also molested. Reading the following story is no surprise therefore in regards to the action of the Papua New Guinean man. The bigger surprise is that this geeky-looking kiwi took the man on and protected his lady. Good on you! I am very glad to hear you both got out of there alive.