HIV a 'development issue' for PNG citizens

Joyce Bunny

JOYCE BUNNY

The day the Herald meets Joyce Bunny, 20, she is at the Family Health Association rooms in Lae, one of dozens of women crammed into a room learning how the female reproductive system works. She is a second wife, she whispers, but as she is not falling pregnant, her husband is talking about ending the marriage and thus not paying the agreed bride price. "In our community, the bride price is paid on the first pregnancy."

Bunny is torn: what she really wants to do is train as a teacher so she can support her mother, a betel nut seller, and her jobless father, who is divorced from her mum


PAULINE PAKEHA

Pauline Pakeha, 54, is a nurse for Lae's Family Health Association, which is funded by private donors to provide contraceptive and sexual health advice. It gets no Government support. She lives in a settlement (shantytown). To reach the country's most remote residents - 82 to 87 per cent of PNG's population is estimated to be rural - she is dropped at the ends of roads and walks to the villages, toting a mosquito net and with a male staffer for security. "The longest trip I do is one and a half weeks up the mountains. In that time, we can cover 10 or 11 villages. Many have no sanitation ... I get lots of malaria."


COLISH JAMEKA

Colish Jameka , 34, has been a police officer for 14 years and investigates sex crimes in Lae, PNG's second-largest city with a population of 150,000. "Women here can be raped, they can be assaulted, and there are ladies who have been raped and then murdered.

"Some men and boys, they take alcohol and drugs, and that's their defence: 'I took a lot of beer' or 'I was with my friends and they did this'.

"My dream for the women and children of PNG is that they can walk on the street or go for a picnic or anywhere and move freely without being in fear or being harassed."


PUKA TEMU

Doctor and parliamentarian Puka Temu, who is responsible for HIV/AIDS programmes with PNG's Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, says HIV "is a development issue, no longer a health issue". He vows that plans to combat the epidemic will be more effective now that PNG is "enjoying political stability for the first time". New laws mean motions of no confidence can't be brought against a government in the 12 months preceding an election: the national elections are next June. "That's a story to tell for PNG," says Temu. "Political stability is a critical part of a nation's ability to respond to development issues."


DAME CAROL KIDU

Dame Carol Kidu, Australian born and raised, is PNG's sole female parliamentarian, one of only five since the country achieved independence in September 1975. Currently the Community Development Minister, she says improving people's concept of human rights - which are abused daily in PNG, with awareness low and enforcement rare - is a crucial part of her country's development.

"Very few people here truly have a concept of human rights. It's me and my tribe. For the majority of the country, ethnic rights are paramount over the concept of human rights, and the group is more important than individual rights." Wauga Konia has one great wish: to be literate enough in Tok Pisin [Pidgin] to read the Bible. She's been going to literacy classes run by the Lae Young Women's Christian Association for 12 years - two hours a day, two days a week - and can struggle through the Bible, "but there are lots of difficult words", she complains through a translator. But literacy confers great status in PNG village life, and Konia has already been made leader of a church group.

She worries: "When I think about my country, I see that many children are tending to crime ... There are lots of hold-ups in my settlement."


ANDREW ESENGET

Andrew Esenget is leading a spirited welcome for visitors to a YWCA Tok Pisin literacy project in Lae on the day the Herald first sees him. Esenget is principal performer in the drama and cultural group Rompog, which means "tradition". Although talkative in Tok Pisin, he is illiterate, so says through a translator, apologetically, that he doesn't know how many Christmases he has had. (He appears to be in his mid-20s.) Rompog is hired to present traditional singsings (welcomes) and is also engaged by non-government organisations to create and deliver educative dramas on health-related topics.