Wantok, obligation and the money that leaves your account before the fortnight ends

I went looking for those figures yesterday, while I worked out what a retirement number looks like here. I had the multiplication in front of me and I could see what it leaves out.

Every calculator I have used starts from what you earn and what you keep, then calls that gap discipline. I have watched that distance open in my own fortnights. Discipline covers a fraction of it.

Grant Walton and David Jackson describe Wantok as a reciprocal relationship of favours between kin, which is accurate and thin at once. The word also covers a nephew's boarding costs, a coffin, a bus fare and the request that coincides with your pay on a Thursday.

The claim arrives before the plan does.

Every budgeting app I have opened files the wantok request with a suggested ceiling under gifts and next to birthdays. A bank statement records the withdrawal and leaves the reason blank. The person at the ATM knows the money repays a facility they have drawn on all their life, and the terms live in other people's memories.

Banks count what they hold, which makes account numbers the easiest thing to know about money here. Researchers ask households what they do with their money far less often, and the nearest answer I found reached 400 women in Port Moresby. The authors say plainly that those women speak for themselves.

Inside that group, 26 per cent of borrowers go to family and 36 per cent to money lenders charging 50 to 250 per cent a fortnight. Up to 7 per cent borrow from a bank or formal financial institution. The same claim lands on men, and their half of it sits uncounted.

Say Wesley collects K900 a fortnight staffing a workshop in Lae, and K340 holds steady across rent and the daily PMV. In August a cousin rings from Wewak about a funeral. Wesley sends K200 that afternoon and runs the fortnight out on store credit. He had been putting K90 aside each pay towards a second-hand ute. That fortnight the ute money went, and in September he started again at zero.

Overseas the research has a name for this: a tax. Pamela Jakiela and Owen Ozier found women in rural Kenya taking lower earnings to keep income out of sight, as though kin would claim four per cent of anything visible. South African writers call the same flow black tax.

Here it runs both ways, and I think that is the part the vocabulary misses. Wesley's K200 also buys him a claim. The year the workshop folds, the relatives he sent it to are the ones who cover his rent while he secures a new job. Walton and Jackson put it on a continuum, lifesaving at one end and corruption at the other, and most people live in the middle holding both.

Papua New Guinea turns 51 today, and I keep thinking the private version of “Independence” does more work. So, tell me what a wantok obligation cost you this year, and what came back when you needed support. I will keep your name out of it, if you like. You will read the piece before it runs and decide what stays in.

Best

Amanda

P.S. What’s your view on today’s newsletter? Did I miss something out that you’d like to share? Write to me, [email protected]. I may not get back to you, but I will try to read what you send in.

Wild Money is general information only, drawn from my own experience and research. It isn't financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or manage money in any particular way. What worked for me won't necessarily suit you. Please seek advice from a licensed financial adviser before making decisions about your own money.