Time for a FEAST!! (or two or three)

It’s yam season in Pohnpei, which means FEAST season! Pretty much every village has a feast, so I went with my family to three of them this month.

The first feast was in our village, and it was a rather small, humble affair compared with the feasts in the larger villages that we went to. I met the chief of our village (I’m hoping my inability to speak the “high language” didn’t offend him… I just through in whatever formal words I know in Pohnpeian, ha ha). We all ate yams and a few pigs.

In the larger villages, though, the feasts were a really big deal. The best feast was a few weeks ago now. There were hundreds of people crowded into the “nahs” (feast house). First, there was a huge procession of men carrying in sakau, yams, and pigs. Everything was carried on huge logs, including the live pigs hanging upside down. Just when I thought we had wiped out the entire pig population on the island, even more would appear! Some of the pigs were so big that it took 10 men or so to carry them. The yams were ridiculously huge too. As they carried in the ridiculously heavy loads, all the guys were dancing and yelping. At the same time, the pigs were shrieking and squealing like crazy – I guess when you’re upside down tied to a log, you know you’re in trouble. It was insane.

A pig facing certain death

Elaborate construction



Pig head! (very Lord of the Flies...)



The yams are kind of giant...

Meanwhile, the women were dancing in the nahs. Lots of shaking and undulating. They were all just having a great time. I swear, Pohnpeians are immune to self-consciousness or something. During the dance “breaks,” we ate a ridiculous amount of food (I was given two trays for my portion) and listened to some speeches from the chiefs. After the pigs had been slaughtered and cooked, the men danced in with the pig carcasses on their backs.



Dancing!



Pig carcasses

The whole thing lasted for about eight hours or so – a rather exhausting amount of time to spend sitting on the concrete floor of the nahs with no room to stretch out. It was a constant battle as my various limbs took turns falling asleep.

And, in case you're wondering what I'm learning in the Peace Corps... I now know the lyrics to just about every Backstreet Boys song every recorded. My family is kind of obsessed. We listen to them everyday! I can also recite my 2 and 3 times tables in Pohnpeian (in a super sing-songy chant that my first grade nieces learned at school).

Update

Halloween isn’t celebrated here, but I was determined to make Halloween day an awesome cross-cultural learning experience for my students and host family. I was so pumped… and then came my second major Peace Corps sickness! So instead of making paper jack-o-lanterns, I ended up bedridden for most of Halloween week. I had already given my host nieces and nephews an overview of “trick-or-treating,” and they were aware that I had bought candy in Kolonia for the occasion. So on Halloween evening, I woke up from a rather delirious sleep to a knocking on my door and lots of giggles. I somehow managed to drag myself to the door, and was greeted with like a dozen extended family members screaming “Trick or treat!!” They got in trouble for waking me up, but I was so happy that I told them they had to do it again so I’d have time to get the candy ready (not sure how I managed to do all this in my physical state – Halloween mania took over!). As I opened the door the second time, I snapped this photo of them in action:

I gave them the candy, then collapsed back into bed. A few days later, when I was feeling up to it, we made masks out of construction paper. These were supposed to be cute, but they ended up kind of making the kids look like a gang of executioners or something… Oh well, all with the Halloween theme, right?

When I got back to school the following week, we had our belated Halloween-themed day. We read and wrote scary stories in 7^th and 8^th grade (the 8^th graders wrote some very scary stories, by the way) and in 6^th grade we did a reader’s theater version of “The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything,” complete with all the sound effects and motions. It was fun!

And of course, there was the big election. I was lucky enough to receive text message updates in real time from family and friends, so I wasn’t totally out of the loop (despite being in the middle of nowhere, literally). It didn’t quite feel like an election, though, without Wolf Blitzer surrounded by ridiculous computer graphics, lol. It was WONDERFUL to be outside of the states during all the campaigns (I never saw ONE political ad – yay!!!), but it was – surprisingly – kind of a bummer to miss out on the excitement of watching the election results.

Along with these American holidays/events, it’s been a month full of Pohnpeian holidays – Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veteran’s Day, etc. This means that we haven’t had a full 5-day week of school in the past four weeks. It’s crazy. Perhaps the most ironic school holiday is “Education Day.” I wonder who had the idea for that one… “Guys, I think we should have a holiday to celebrate education… and cancel school!” Instead, all the teachers went to a party and had a talent show/dance contest. Yay, education!

At home I’m slowly forcing my way into helping out with chores. After being told I was a “princess” and therefore didn’t need to work, I gave them a long speech (well, actually rather short considering my limited Pohnpeian language abilities) about how I want to help! So along with the chores I already knew how to do (washing dishes, raking), I’ve finally mastered doing laundry by hand (hit it with a paddle!), grating coconuts (koikoi mangas – this one I actually learned how to do during training, but I finally managed to convince my family to let me do it a few weeks ago), and planting banana trees!

But there’s still plenty of down time, as evidenced by the infinite number of times I play Uno daily. One day we got bored of playing real games, so I taught the kids how to make card houses (so if I accomplish nothing else during these two years, I have already imparted knowledge to Pohnpeian children!). After we succeeded at building a house with the whole deck, things got creative as they found other ways to build card houses. I was pretty darn impressed.

If you want a better idea of island life, check out the book “The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific” by J. Maarten Troost (don’t be misled by the title – there are no cannibals and very little sex in this book). It’s basically a humorous collection of Troost’s experiences in the Republic of Tarawa. Different country and culture, of course, but there are tons of similarities with my experience. Plus, it’s just a hilarious read.

Or, if you’re a fan of the “What They Should Call Me” tumblr, check out this link that one of the Kosrae volunteers stumbled upon:

http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/

In closing, a photo of Oly Girl, because everyone loves puppies!

Four Birthdays and a Funeral

I went to my first Pohnpeian funeral this month. It was quite the experience, to say the least. Funerals are huge events here. They traditionally last for more than a week, but now most funerals are only three days or less. This funeral was only two days.

An extended family member in the neighboring village died (I think a cousin or uncle of my nohno, but this was never really made clear), so I went along with my family to the funeral. All the volunteers had been informed about funeral customs during training, but I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect. We arrived at the house and I followed my nohno and host sisters inside. In the center of the room was the dead body covered in a white sheet up to the eyes. All the women collapsed around the body and wailed. It was so overwhelming I almost had a panic attack. I’d never been in the same room as a dead body before, plus I felt like I was disturbing this very personal time of grieving.

It was a very concentrated period of mourning, though. After each of the women had finished crying (which lasted anywhere between one minute and 20 minutes), they wiped their eyes and started chatting casually with the other women. New women kept coming in and wailing, but everyone else just continued talking, even joking around with each other, seemingly oblivious of the corpse and sobbing all around them. It felt so strange, since my instinct upon seeing someone crying is to either try to comfort them or to give them privacy. Then they started bringing in huge plates of food for all the mourners, and we ate there with the body. And every few hours they would bring around another meal for everyone.

The entire area around the house was packed with people – I saw pretty much all of my students and teachers from school. It was a pretty exhausting experience – luckily it’s not disrespectful to take a nap in the mourning room, because I definitely needed to sleep after a few hours! Lots of people spent the night at the house, but since there was school the next day, I went home early. (By the way, hardly anyone was at school the next day due to the funeral.)

On a happier note, I turned 23 last week! There’s no way to say “Happy Birthday” in Pohnpeian, so people either don’t say anything or use the English phrase. Various family members sang the Happy Birthday song throughout the day, and I got a local skirt with “Happy Birth Day Mia” embroidered on it! In the afternoon a few of the other Peace Corps volunteers dropped by my house for a quick visit, so I got to celebrate with them too!



Birthday coconuts with Ben, Nick, and Janelle



The birthday skirt!



Oly Girl

There were three other birthdays in the family the same week as my birthday (including my nohno's 64th birthday!), so we had a big feast to celebrate all four birthdays. Lots of dancing and lots of food. I took advantage of the occasion to take lots of photos!



Birthday girls!



Carleen, my Pohnpeian BFF



With Carleen and two of my host sisters



My host niece and 7th grade student, Gayleen!



The dance party gets wild



Food!



Also this month, Molly Peterson – the previous Peace Corps volunteer at my school – completed her two years of service and returned home. She was ridiculously helpful to me in our two months of overlap at the school. It’s strange officially being the only American around. The night before she left, I was invited to her big goodbye feast.



Molly



Pohnpeian  portions - too big for a plate!

So I guess the take-home from this meandering post is that I’m eating lots of food here in Pohnpei. It will be kind of embarrassing if I actually gain weight in the Peace Corps.

Snapshots

It’s been a tough couple of weeks at school, but thankfully I’ve been having a wonderful time with my host family to keep me positive about things.

They gave me a puppy! I named her Olympia, or Oly Girl for short. She’s not the smartest puppy, but she’s pretty darn cute! She likes to sleep in the pile of coconut husks under the cooking house.

Here are some snapshots from life at home!

So much silliness!



Hike to the top of "Chicken Shit Rock" (that's the literal translation)



View from the top



Oly Girl asleep in the coconut husks

Pohnpeian baseball with a balled-up pop can and stick



Pig carcass and breadfruit for our church feast



Little Daylen





Little Bobo Len!



Little Jamie Ann



Anyway, hopefully things at school get better soon. In the meantime, I’m enjoying time with my family!



  

A Day in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer

6:00 AM – I wake up, take a shower (in the “shower house” if we have running water that particular day, otherwise in the river), and eat breakfast (usually rice and fish).

7:30 AM – I get a ride to school with six of my host siblings (all six of them squeeze into the back seat – they’re little… and Pohnpei doesn’t really have any safety laws). My village is the farthest from the school, so it’s about an hour-long walk. I wouldn’t mind the walk except it’s hilly and like 100 degrees here. I’m very fortunate to have a ride everyday, because most of the kids from my village have to walk.

8-9:15 – 6^th grade Language Arts class! I have 39 adorable 6^th graders. Most of them really struggle with basic reading comprehension, so we’re working at a very low level. We do lots of goofy stuff like reading aloud in silly voices and playing Simon Says. It’s a very giggly class!

9:15-10:30 – 7^th grade Language Arts class. This is my most challenging class. The textbook is way too difficult for their level, and there aren’t many other resources to substitute readings. Behavior is also an issue – I just can’t control those kids! On bad days, I’m almost in tears after trying to maintain control of the class for over an hour.

10:45-12 – 8^th grade Language Arts class. This is always a fun class to teach because the kids always surprise me with their creativity and humorous approaches to assignments. They struggle with English like the rest of the students, but sometimes they just blow me away on their writing assignments. 

Afternoon – I grade papers, plan lessons, organize the makeshift library, and goof off with the first and second graders (they only have school until noon, but the teachers’ children don’t have anywhere to go except my classroom).

3:30-5ish – I go home whenever I can find a ride.

Evenings – Life is very chill. I try to convince my family to let me help with chores, but I’m still not doing as much to help out as I’d like. I read, do crossword puzzles, play with my host nieces and nephews, “chat” with the family (they say something to me and I don’t understand it, so I respond with broken Pohnpeian that they don’t understand, and repeat – you can imagine the depth of our conversations, ha ha). On Tuesdays and Thursdays I meet up with Tracy for Pohnpei language tutoring.

10 – Bedtime!

Weekends are really long. I go swimming, do my laundry, visit our family members throughout the village, etc. I meet up with the other Peace Corps volunteers the last weekend of every month, and two weeks ago I hung out with the World Teach volunteers. On Sundays we go to church (one weekend I unwittingly ended up at a 5-hour church service – not fun! But usually church is only one hour, thankfully) and usually go play bingo at a fundraiser in the afternoons. Pohnpeians love Bingo! It’s a good way to practice the numbers in Pohnpeian :)



Sporting our Sunday best



By the way, I did some investigating about my host family tree, and I officially have 64 members of my family. No wonder I can’t remember everybody! My place in the family also makes me a great-aunt!



My fabulous nohno



I Sohte Wehwehki

I Sohte Wehwehki means “I don’t understand” in Pohnpeian, and I say it constantly here! My host family is remarkably patient with me, but there’s pretty much just a constant state of confusion in all our interactions. Lots of confused smiling and nodding. This language is going to be an uphill battle for me.

So, where to start? My life has changed dramatically in the last two weeks. I’m living in a rural village that seems worlds away from Kolonia’s bustling “city” life. Since Peace Corps volunteers always need to brag about the lack of amenities, let’s get that out of the way. The actual house only consists of two bedrooms – everything else is outside. I was told before I got here that my family had a “local stove” instead of an oven, and it turns out that “local stove” means “campfire.” I have electricity (most of the time), but no running water. I shower outside with a bucket wearing a “shower skirt.” My toilet is a water seal toilet, which is basically a concrete hole in the ground. It’s all very epic.



My home for the next two years

My new host family is huge! My host mom (nohno) is an elderly woman who is basically the matriarch of this huge extended family. She has seven kids that live on our family compound or nearby (and too many grandkids to count!). I’m having a really difficult time remembering all the names.



Family swimming with Roseleen, Clayton,
and Tracy (Roseleen is also one of my students!)

Two of my host nieces - Dene (6) and Tol (3)

Several of my family members are fishers, so I get to eat lots of fresh fish everyday! We also have lots of coconut trees, so I get to drink coconut water whenever I want!

I’ve been trying to convince them to let me help out with chores, which is a challenge. I’ve been given small tasks like raking or washing dishes, but a few days ago I finally got to help cook dinner. It was an experience, to say the least, since cooking involves so many more tasks here than in the states. I think my family discovered that the only thing funnier than watching me try to speak Pohnpeian is watching me try to chop firewood. It all started with two people showing me how, and 20 minutes later I had the entire extended family gathered around and absolutely dying of laughter. The experience reminded me of the most important advice I was told about the Peace Corps – always laugh at yourself.

I had a really fun experience with my first Peace Corps illness! (Part of the experience, right?) I won’t go into all the disgusting details, but let’s just say I learned the Pohnpeian words for lots of unpleasant bodily functions.

I’ve been at my school for two weeks now. I’ve just been observing so far, but next week I start co-teaching 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade language arts. The classes are huge – almost 40 students! The kids are hilarious – they love Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez (like, obsession level). Also, during lunch kids will voluntarily sweep the classroom floor – can you imagine that happening in the United States? Also, we’re all BAREFOOT in the classroom!

Several people asked me about donations they could make to the school and/or my classroom. If you wanted to help out, here’s a list of things that would be much appreciated.

1.      Magazines! The kids love reading/looking at the pictures in National Geographic, People, and Entertainment, but any magazines with lots of pictures would be very appreciated. (They don’t need to be recent!)

2.      Books! Low elementary reading level, for example, Goosebumps, The Babysitters Club, any Newberry Award book. Or any other books that you think the students would enjoy. Picture books for the lower grades would also be great!

3.      Madlibs, word searches, etc.

4.      Markers, colored pencils, construction paper, etc.

Oh, and I’m now officially a PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER!!! No more of that “trainee” nonsense.

The M78 Pohnpei team shortly after becoming volunteers!

After ten weeks of training, the M78s are on the verge of becoming Peace Corps volunteers. On Wednesday August 15^th, we’ll have our big swear-in ceremony and then our new host families will whisk us off to our permanent sites. Work starts on Thursday! Yikes!

Although the journey so far has been intense, the real adventure has yet to begin. We’ve been living in the capital “city” of Kolonia (population 7,000), where everyone speaks English, grocery stores carry all the comforts of home, and Western influence is everywhere. Now most of us are heading off to rural villages with fewer amenities and stricter gender roles. Plus, we won’t have daily interaction with our fellow PCVs anymore.

By the way, here is a picture of my training host family:

(These are only the people that live in my house. We have a huge extended family that lives on our street.)

I’m very nervous to start teaching – I hope I’m up to the task! I’ll just be observing my co-teachers for the first few weeks, thankfully, and I’ll also have help from Molly. She’s a current volunteer at my school and we’ll have two months of overlap before she heads back to the states.

I’m also incredibly nervous about my Pohnpeian abilities. The language is grammatically simple (aside from those crazy pronouns) – past tense is usually the same as present tense and there’s no verb for “to be” (we just say “I hungry” or “she pretty”). But I have a very limited vocabulary, I struggle to put sentences together, and I can’t understand anything that people say! So it’s going to be an uphill battle. If only I had been placed in a Spanish-speaking country, sigh…

I’ll be coming into Kolonia for monthly meetings the last Friday of each month, so that’s when I’ll definitely have internet access. I’ll have to see if there are other opportunities, but regardless I’ll try to update this blog monthly!

Here goes!

A Brief History of Pohnpei

Here’s a short compilation of everything (ie – very little) that I’ve learned about Pohnpeian history in the past few weeks. Sorry if this post is a bit dry – but there are photos!

Archeologists estimate that people came to Pohnpei between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Until recently, the Pohnpeian lifestyle was made up subsistence farming, fishing, and gathering.

The era between 1000 and 1500 AD is the Nan Madol Phase, when one central leader reigned over the island. The ruins of Nan Madol – the ancient city that was the center of power – are still standing. We went on a little “field trip” last weekend to check out the site. The government is working on getting it listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site, which would be great for preservation of the ruins (and spreading awareness of the history)!

For a sense of scale...

Anyway, Nan Madol was mysteriously abandoned around 1500 AD (why are all ancient cities “mysteriously abandoned?”) and the central leadership gave way to various chiefdoms with control over different regions of the island. There are lots of legends as to how these chiefdoms came to be – incest, banishment of younger sons, etc (very juicy stuff). Pohnpei is still divided into five municipalities that correspond with the chiefdoms. The chiefs and “nahnmwarkis” still have ceremonial and social power today.

The recent history of Pohnpei, as with the rest of Micronesia, is a history of colonization. The language are culture are hugely influenced by the various colonizers – most notably the influence of Christianity. (Probably 99.9% of the population is either Catholic or Protestant – now the Mormon missionaries are flocking here to have their try, but I don’t anticipate them having much success.)

Boston missionaries first came to Pohnpei in the 1850s, which was the first time Westerners settled in the region. They were followed by the Spaniards in the 1880s. The Spanish government claimed Pohnpei as their territory. Their major influence: Catholicism. Following Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain sold the territory to Germany. Germany used the Pohnpeians for forced labor and, following the assassination of a German governor, exiled many Pohnpeians to Palau.

Germany abandoned the island during World War II, which allowed Japan to swoop in to build military bases. Japan held the island until it surrendered at the end of WWII. There are still lots of Japanese WWII artifacts and artillery on the island.

Along with the other islands of Micronesia, Pohnpei was made a trust territory of the United States in 1947.

Pohnpei elected to become separate from the United States and formed the Federated States of Micronesia along with four other states (Yap, Chuuk, and Kosrae) in 1986. Although FSM is technically an independent country, the compact agreement with the United States maintains the tie between the two countries. FSM’s economy is entirely reliant on US foreign aid and the United States has military control over the region (FSM has no military, but many Micronesians serve in the US military).

Peace Corps? More Like BEACH Corps

The Pacific Islands Peace Corps program is sometimes dismissed as the “Beach Corps” by other Peace Corps regions. So, despite the contents of this post, I want to assure everyone that I will NOT be living the next two years as a beach bum on the US taxpayer’s dollar. 

Since Pohnpei doesn’t have any beaches (the shoreline is covered with mangrove swamps), people sometimes travel out to the nearby “picnic islands” within the reef. Last weekend my host family went to Nalup for the weekend to celebrate a cousin’s birthday. 

We traveled out on a tiny speedboat loaded with coolers and picnic supplies (I was kind of shocked that the boat didn’t sink under all the weight) to the island “resort.” I use the term resort loosely because this is where we spent the night:

We pretty much spent the entire weekend swimming – it was fantastic! Some photos of the gorgeous island:

The most exciting part of the trip was the discovery of a beached shark. Craziness! After the kids played with the corpse another family apparently took the shark to cook it.

On an unrelated note, there are two songs that I’ve heard nonstop on the radio here. The first is “Payphone,” by Maroon 5. This makes sense, since it’s a new song and is probably topping the charts back in the states too. But the other song has me baffled – it’s “As Long As You Love Me,” by either the Backstreet Boys or N’SYNC (can’t remember for the life of me which group sang which songs). So I get a little 90s flashback daily now!

Ia edemw? Edei Mia!

One week into language training, and I can now properly greet people, talk about my family, talk about food, and count to ten. Well, to be truthful, I can only count to ten using one of the counting systems. There are different numbers that you use for counting round objects, long objects, days of the week, and anything that’s alive. And don’t even get me started on the pronouns! There are three different forms of we, depending on how many people you’re talking about and whether or not you’re including the person you’re talking to as part of the “we.” And possessive pronouns are impossible – there are different categories for clothing, food, drinks, transportation, buildings, and objects. For example, if you want to say “my,” “ahi rausis” means “my pants,” “kenei uht” means “my banana,” “nei pil” means “my water,” “werei pwoht” means “my boat,” etc, etc. We haven’t even begun to understand the pronouns!

It’s really frustrating being at the beginning of learning a language, particularly since I have a hard time just pronouncing some of the sounds that we don’t really use in English. I just want to be able to communicate! It’s hard to be patient and accept that the language will all make since in time.

In case you’re interested in the language, Pohnpeian has about 38,000 native speakers and it is the major language of the Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia. Since Pohnpei has a history of colonization with Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the influences of Spanish, German, Japanese, and English are evident in Pohnpeian. Table is “tehpel,” October is “Ocktohpe,” and lots more. Since Pohnpeian existed only as a spoken language before colonization, the written form was developed by the Spaniards and Germans. So the spellings are representative of the Spanish and German alphabets. Very few people actually write or read in Pohnpeian, however. There’s no “correct” way to spell any given word, so our two manuals have differing spellings for various vocabulary words.

Peace Corps doesn’t care about teaching us the written form, but since all the Pohnpei volunteers are such visual learners, we’ve been begging for anything in writing. I think the most common thing we ask in language class is “how do you spell that?” and poor Truleen (our WONDERFUL language teacher) has to come up with the most logical way to spell the word. But when someone says something in Pohnpeian, I can’t repeat it. I need to see the individual letters written out to make sure I’m hearing all the individual sounds.

It was exciting to see a little progress this weekend. My host grandma speaks very little English, so I was actually able to converse with her a little bit this weekend! I was able to tell her where I’ll be living, that I’ll come back to visit, that I was going swimming that day, that I liked the food, etc. Of course, she then went on to ask me more questions that I didn’t understand (I have a very strict script I can follow and it doesn’t work when people deviate from it, lol!), so then someone needed to translate for me again.

Anyway, here are some pictures from model school and snorkeling :)