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!