Sollie Women:

Apparently today is some sort of International Woman’s day. I know this because there’s been a sort of celebration/demonstration in Munda today. The form that this took was a ‘parade’ consisting of 15 or so women with placards on the back of a lorry travelling the 500m or so to the next village, singing songs and shouting slogans such as “Say no to domestic violence!” at the people along the road.  After that, they had a microphone in the town square/dock area where they played pop music before having a series of vehemently delivered plays, skits and speeches. I can’t say what the content of the speeches was because I couldn’t understand any of the Pidjin, but I can say that the speakers clearly felt very strongly about it. All in all, I think that more stuff like that needs to happen here because the attitudes towards women is generally downright archaic.

A few months ago, a British woman who lives and works here was subjected to a lot of verbal abuse and threats of violence from a particular individual while her boyfriend was in Australia for a week. She reported him to the police and the local elders called a ‘trial’ of sorts. In the end, the reason he was punished was because the man had insulted her (absent) boyfriend who is ‘a good man’ by not asking for his permission to insult her and threaten her, because she is his property. They don’t call her by her surname, her surname is his first name.

Domestic violence is a very common occurrence, and was actually only made a crime in the last few years.

Apparently when Drs Jenny and Graham arrived from the UK, they started taking photos and keeping records of cases of domestic violence. Whilst women often did not want to tell the police, saying their husbands had promised not to do it again (as is the case worldwide), they told them they would keep the photos and records so that if they did it again, they would have enough evidence to take it forward. It seems they have now noticed less women coming in having been hit by their husbands. While this may be because some are too scared to come forward, we’ve heard anecdotally that women have threatened their husbands with the photos and then word has spread that men are going to go to jail if they hit their wives.

Times, they are a changing...........let’s hope!