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Is Hardship Really a Problem in the FSM?During the participatory assessment, all communities acknowledged that hardship is being experienced by many families throughout the country. In the rural areas and the outer islands, people find it difficult to earn the cash needed to meet the living expenses of their families. In the urban areas, families with low incomes and limited access to subsistence agriculture find it extremely hard to maintain a satisfactory standard of living. People said they are facing an increasing need to pay cash for store goods, food, utility bills, transport, education, and to make contributions to community/social events and their church. Often traditional gifts are no longer enough, cash donations or purchased gifts are also expected. Frequently, even traditional gifts must be purchased by households that no longer have the time or skills to make them. The migration of people to state capitals and overseas is depopulating some of the outer island and rural parts of the country. Those who remain tend to be the more dependent members of society. At the same time, the increasing urban population is generating social tensions and increasing the numbers of those without land. Widow with Eight Children, 50 Years Old
“I am the second daughter of a big family of 10. My parents raised us in a small thatched roofed house. We used to sleep together with our mother and father under a big mosquito net. We always ate taro with grated copra. Most of the time we only ate two meals a day because the preparation of the taro took several hours to cook. During breadfruit season, we ate three meals a day. “My oldest sister, my oldest brother, and I finished 6th grade. The rest of my sisters and our second brother didn't even finish elementary school due to our mother’s death. She was in labor with our youngest brother when she bled to death and didn’t survive. “Ever since she died, our lives became more miserable. Our father couldn’t take care of us. We older kids had to quit school to take care of the younger ones. Our oldest sister got married immediately after she turned 15 and moved away with her husband. That left me with my oldest brother to work harder with our dad. Our dad used to make copra to earn a little money for our food, kerosene, soap, and clothes. We never had enough of anything. “Then I met a young man who was in high school and we got married. He didn’t finish his education, but we wanted to get married. Because my family’s home was very small for us, we decided to build a small lean-to for ourselves. “We could not find jobs so we also ended up doing a little gardening, just enough to feed our family. We have 8 children who also grew up to live a hard life. We never had enough of anything, so most of our children also dropped out of school. My sons learned how to spear fish and helped their father fish for our food. Sometimes they sold them at the market on Weno, if they were lucky we got about $50 from their catch. Then my husband died and my sons started going somewhere by themselves. I lost control of them. None of them are able to help me keep our family united. “I decided to start a small farm. The hardest part is finding transportation to bring the produce to sell in the capital. Sometimes I walk from my village to another village just to look for a boat. Sometimes I can’t find one and then my produce gets wasted and rotten. Nowadays, my children go to our relatives to eat whenever we don’t have food. After some time, my relatives began to get tired of us. I wish very much to have a bigger home and a boat for my children, to live in a good home and take my produce to the capital every time we have crops to sell.” The personal stories in this booklet show that there are a growing number of people, particularly the jobless, youth and the elderly, who are becoming worse off. Many youth find it difficult to get the sort of jobs to which they now aspire; a traditional village and subsistence agriculture lifestyle is no longer desirable. Conditions of financial hardship, while not widespread, are nevertheless leading to increased social and domestic tensions, rising crime, increasing drug abuse and a deteriorating quality of life for those most affected.
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