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!
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| Birthday coconuts with Ben, Nick, and Janelle |
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| The birthday skirt! |
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| 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!
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| Birthday girls! |
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| Carleen, my Pohnpeian BFF |
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| With Carleen and two of my host sisters |
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| My host niece and 7th grade student, Gayleen! |
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| The dance party gets wild |
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| 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.
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| Molly |
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| 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.
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