The Melanesian Boundaries

 A High School teacher walks into the classroom to start off the day with the Personal Development Lesson. After greeting the class and flipping few pages he introduces the topic: ‘Causes and Effects of Sexual Reproduction and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI)’

He then asks the students how much they know about Sexual Reproduction and STI. There is complete silence.  The teacher sees that 80% of the students know something about the topic, at least to some extent. But not even one student can talk. Eventually the teacher feels ‘out of place’. He thinks it is embarrassing to pester the students to co-operate if they are not willing to. He then decides to change the topic. 

The teacher now tells himself: “Oh thank God. Luckily they don’t seem to co-operate. I can choose next week’s topic for this lesson. The students and I can easily talk about it.”

So the topic is changed. This time, there is mutual co-operation, participation and clear expression of views. This seems a good start for the day, or the week for that matter. Sadly, however the entire class and the teacher are yet to know that two girls in the class are already pregnant and few boys and girls are showing clear symptoms of Gonorrhoea.

Due to multicultural socialisation, improved communication technologies and trade, the contemporary Melanesian region is all covered by wide networks of cultures and sometimes people are caught in the webs of their own perceptions of the different cultures they are exposed to. 

The collated works of several historians, sociologists and anthropologists by Olga Temple in The Webs of Significance define culture as what people think (ideologies, religion, science and technology, values and beliefs), what they do (the languages they speak, food they eat, laws, rites and traditions, etc.), and what they produce (crop, products, art and architecture) at a particular period of time. Culture can be divided into two categories. They are high and low context cultures.

The illustration of high and low context cultures is such that culture is seen as a floating iceberg. Some features are clearly seen while others are out of sight, hidden beneath the water. Context refers to the amount of ideas, social, religious and cultural constructs and methodologies that need to be communicated and understood in order to produce feedback.

Those visible features above the water are the observable behaviours: what and how people eat, dress, talk, relate to each, other conduct themselves during ceremonies and so forth. Other aspects which are below the water surface are people’s thoughts and beliefs. These features are of no physical and substantial makeup and therefore are not perceivable through our physical senses. Low context cultures have more features hidden beneath the surface but these are understood by the parties involved. People learn it as they grow up in these cultures. 

For instance, it is common in Melanesia to find family members offering tea to wantoks and friends even if not asked for. And a plate of rice offered to the family next-door bears the responsibility of the receiving party to withhold the plate and return it later with fish or other sources of food. There is a high context, or the capacity of concepts and materials that need to be understood without any direct instruction or physical consultation is so great that verbal communication is of no conspicuous significance. People already know the kind of information from the context of the behaviour.

Most traditional Melanesian cultures which coexist with those of the influential Western practices in the contemporary world are still high context. 

With the knowledge of high context cultures in Melanesia, a glance on the above scenario shows that high-context Melanesian influence was in active play between the students and the teacher. The teacher somehow knew that the students felt quite “uneasy” discussing such topics. Worse still is that even the person who was trained to teach in varied and difficult circumstances was overwhelmed by his cultural influences. Paradoxically, one can now see that even before the teacher entered the room, he already had, in his intellectual realm, a great petition against the Personal Development teaching syllabus; especially for that particular topic.

At times, we find it difficult to talk about sex and sex-related issues because of the influence of high context cultures inherent in our societies.

Two important concepts must be understood here—words and actions. The whole institution of words and actions has the most contradicting dualities ever encountered in the history of Melanesia. Our perceptions of the ever-conflicting cultures we have today sometimes give inaccurate navigation of the boundaries of words and actions.

Some people may choose to have boundaries in words, but there is entirely no demarcation when it comes to action. Having said that, definitely the two girls who were pregnant were receptive to the boundaries of words and they must be credited for such attitudes, “especially with respect to the high context Melanesian cultures”. Sometime ago before the class meeting, however, they had failed to be conscious of the bounds of their own actions and went beyond the limits of their actions and age. 

Across the Melanesian region, parents, guardians, professional teachers, politicians and church leaders still do not have a clear idea about the boundaries of words and actions as well the capacity of context attached to the cultures they are exposed to. This is the most serious social ill we have today.

With respect to their national population, few countries in Melanesia such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji have significant number of people living with HIV/Aids and other sexually transmitted infections and/diseases.

Our indigenous Melanesian cultures as well as Western cultures make up the contemporary culture we find ourselves in today. Neither of them is to be blamed for the ill implanted in our society. We are not the victims of our different cultures or our perceptions of these cultures, but our own ignorance to fully understand them.