Church

 When I first arrived, one of the first questions my family asked me was “What religion are you? Protestant or Catholic?” It’s not considered a personal question, like it would be in the states, partially because there are only the two possible answers. Probably 99.99999% of the population here is Christian – those missionaries did their job very well, to say the least. Other religions don’t really come up, and I doubt the concepts of atheism or agnosticism even exist here. (One of the Peace Corps volunteers in our group is Jewish, and she’s had a very interesting time trying to explain that to people.)

Needless to say, religious diversity doesn’t really exist here. One of the other volunteers asked her students if they know anyone who isn’t Christian, and one of them said, “Yes, I know Catholics.”

Just to give you a sense of how important Christianity is here, I’ll share the story of our mini English-Pohnpeian dictionaries. Peace Corps gave us dictionaries that are only about ten pages long – very concise, so clearly only the most important and commonly-used words could be included. Right along side words like “bathroom,” “to follow,” and “what” are the translations for “Only Begotten Son,” “crucify,” “baptismal covenant,” and “Eternal Father.”

My host family during training was Catholic, so I went to Catholic mass with them on Sundays. Now I live with a Protestant family, so we go to our small village church.

I love going to church because I love the songs – it’s a great way to learn Pohnpeian! Oh, and a fun fact: “dihp” means “sin,” but “dihpw” (with a stronger p sound at the end) means “grass.” Since I had learned the word for grass but not sin in training, I understood one hymn to be saying “I hate grass.” I was a little puzzled – what does this sect of Christianity have against grass? Turns out they were singing “dihp”/sin, which makes a lot more sense…

Last week baby Maia Jane Tom was baptized and I got to hold her for the baptism! Unfortunately, I was so preoccupied making sure she didn’t cry that I missed my cue to “accept” the baptism. The grandma quickly covered for me.

Here’s a picture of me and Maia Jane!