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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.