Email
PrintA safe haven
Volunteer counsellor Eunice Malio provides advice to Glenis Walter and her husband at the Nana Kundi Counselling and Resource Centre, in Maprik, Papua New Guinea. Photo: Jerry Galea/OxfamAUS.
A crisis counselling centre in rural Papua New Guinea is providing a lifeline for women and girls facing abuse and isolation.
Glenis Walter and her husband sit across from volunteer counsellor Eunice Mailo. The couple have come to the Nana Kundi Counselling and Resource Centre, in Maprik, Papua New Guinea, for help to resolve issues in their marriage.
The couple has reunited after a three-year separation, during which Glenis struggled to feed herself and her young daughter.
“After [my husband] left us, I came to the crisis centre and asked the counsellors to help me make up a summons so that I can separate from my husband. I took the summons to court and the court asked him to pay 25 kina monthly as maintenance to our daughter,” Glenis explains.
“But he told the court he couldn’t meet the maintenance payments, so he decided to take us back to him and now we are living together as a family again. Now I would like the counsellors to have a counselling session with us, so that my husband will fully know his responsibilities in the family.”
Glenis is just one of up to 10 clients who pass through the Nana Kundi’s doors each day. The centre is the only one of its kind in the district, with clients travelling up to 80km to receive counselling on marital problems, family planning, child support, adultery, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, sexual health, child abuse, sexual abuse and HIV and AIDS. In cases of domestic violence or abuse, the centre also has a dormitory where women and children can stay in safety.
A program of the Maprik District Council of Women, Nana Kundi was created by Lusey Goro, a highly-respected and long-serving women’s leader, who died from cancer earlier this year. As well as free counselling services, the centre provides training on gender equality, sexual health, HIV and AIDS awareness and human rights, offers legal and referral services, and operates a resource centre which provides computer, photocopying and typing services to local schools and
businesses. Oxfam has supported Nana Kundi’s work since 2006 and is funding construction of a new building that will include private counselling rooms, a training room and resource centre facilities.
“When clients come in... some of them are nervous, some of them just break down in tears expecting us to solve their problems right away,” Nana Kundi counsellor Lawrence Igiam says.
“We do not make decisions for our clients... They make decisions for themselves about how they want to take up the case — whether they want to take it to court, or they want to take it back to their homes and go through mediation. We just listen and to help them find options or alternatives that they can go through to solve their problem.”
The volunteer counsellors at the centre work closely with the local police, courts
and welfare services, regularly referring cases to one another depending on the type and severity. Nana Kundi also runs training sessions on gender and human rights for local police officers working in remote and rural communities.
Levi Atumi, an auxiliary police officer from Maprik, said that learning about human rights had helped him resolve cases in his community in a better way.
“The training helped me to see other people — the suspects and the victims — as equally important as myself. I now understand how to deal with the problems in the rural villages and communities and am in a better position to assist the regular police.”
Oxfam Australia management, staff and board members extend deepest sympathies to Lusey Goro’s family, friends and work colleagues.
Story by Editor Maureen Bathgate