I mean, I’m not ungrateful. I’d just rather not be deceived into thinking I’m about to have the best scripted TV series of the 1990’s in my hot little hands and end up disappointed. It’s not up for debate.

Anyway, when finally my knight decided to show up I was introduced to Nollywood and Ghallywood; Nigeria and Ghana’s movie-making industries, respectively. Now watching foreign films is a favourite pastime of mine. I’ve been known to bust out a few moves of the ‘Om Shanti Om’ when waiting for a pot of kaukau to boil.

Or I wail inconsolably throughout a late-night screening of an Italian drama, my ugly crying  face becoming more hideous as I digest blurred English subtitles through big fat teardrops. Nothing - no words - could ever capture my initial reaction to silver-screen productions of the two African nations.

In amongst the indecipherable pidgin, exaggerated facial expressions and outlandish daytime couture, Mama T’s shrieking and dagger-stares sent me right over the edge. At the same time I started seeing kinks in his armour, my knight’s murmurs were that I was losing sight that he was just their countryman, my translator but not the director. Still, he got the girl and a fan-base.

Papua New Guineans, it seems, have acquired a palate for African movie makers.

I’ve lost count of how many times my knight has been accosted in the streets by strangers, demanding to know if he knows Noah from Beyonce or Kevin from Dangerous II. A visit to the local Asian-owned Enterprise Ltd outlet guarantees an unwelcome entourage.

Would-be movie buyers hovering, indiscreetly cross-checking economy-quality photocopied movie cover slips with my knight’s face.

The probability of personal space is about the same as an African movie star wandering around in a dingy, fluorescent lit, oxygen-deprived shop in provincial PNG.

Similar to my African-American Hollywood stash of rentals, these African storylines tell about a boy, poor and from the wrong side of the tracks, who meets a girl from a good, rich family. What ensues over the next 120 minutes is forbidden love, secret meetings, family outrage, elitist idiocy, yada, yada, yada.

We all know how it ends. Boy is finally accepted as being awesome enough to be united with the already awesome girl. Everyone lives an awesome life.

It ends just how it would if the world were a fair place. It ends just how the Papua New Guinean female viewers want it to end. But only in that crowded Kwila slatted lounge room. Stepping outside back into the sweltering heat of PNG, the bleeding heart is no more. Illusions have evaporated. Woe is the Papua New Guinean man.

I’m still unclear where I fall on the spectrum of feminism. I’m dead set adamant that every female ought to be empowered in every aspect of life. But for me, Motivation Monday doesn’t take off without semi-illiterate African-American men bleating ‘my name got bigger, so my chains got [pause] bigger’ and creatively synthesising derogatory terms for women with catchy musical beats.

It’s not right, but that that’s how I roll. That’s honesty.

And so, while we’re being honest, how is it that the African and African-American male film characters generate so much sympathy from PNG women? Yet, when reality calls, a PNG male in the same plight draws a phenomenally opposite reaction.

To our credit, we Papua New Guineans are an emotionally expressive bunch. If and when it’s appropriate. But, if I could pay K100 for every time I’ve had a Papua New Guinean female recount the tales of unrequited love in Ghallywood, residents of a handful of wards would be the delighted recipients of free money. Literally.

Bloodshot red eyes welling with tears, noses wiped on meri blouse as Noah’s on-screen life of injustices is unravelled. The sorrow and undefinable grief expressed for the fictional Nollywood character even has me avoiding eye contact with the movie-buff. Tear-jerkers are contagious.

A life plagued by abandonment, limited education opportunities, experimentation with narcotics and unemployment are deserving of boundless compassion I’m told.

Living with his uncle in an already over-crowded house (the consequence of the useless mother who left him at the age of 10). Poor anger management skills (symptom of his absent father).

The film has ended hours before, but Noah’s initial predicament lingers on in the heart of those on the other side of the world. Those living in reality.

So it causes me extreme irritation, when the same Papua New Guinean women curse Papua New Guinean men. Youthful, middle-aged and elderly. The very conditions that gain absolute empathy for Noah are apparently unforgivable in Papua New Guinean men.

Grief-stricken faces are swiftly replaced with snarls, condescending and dismissive hand gestures. Evidently, benchmarks of performance shift depending on your status of fiction or Papua New Guinean reality.

Toua not being able to find a job is not because there’s limited jobs available. Oh no. Toua is just plain lazy. Toua should’ve woken up an hour earlier to be the third in line to have a shower.  

Toua should’ve walked the 20 kilometres to the interview, not wait for the PMV that was already full by the time it got to his bus stop. Doesn’t he know only two buses operate between 6am and 8am?  Drug sense. Good for nothing!

I’m not sure what it comes down to for my womenfolk – great expectations or double standards?

It’s just that I can’t help feeling uneasy every time I hear that Papua New Guinea is again implementing another program to empower women. I’m pretty sure Papua New Guinean males and females  are all subjected to the same inefficient, ineffective service delivery and so on.

My guess is that there’d be a high prevalence of commonality of predisposing factors for both males and females.

There’s so much focus on our girls and women, and yet our boys and men are expected to bring themselves to the table. A bit more attention paid supporting and empowering our males would perhaps propel their inclination toward changing their mindsets and behaviours.

I categorically and absolutely make no promises here, but I could be tempted to fork out another K100 for every girls’ or women’s empowerment program that launches with it a concurrently running program targeting men and boys..

After all, Papua New Guinean males are the second and essential part of the equation that we are so desperately trying to balance, right?