Friday morning around 5am I was woken up by screaming and the beating of drums. It was Big Mama – the legendary ghost of a large woman who, despite her size, can leap and fly from great heights in a matter of seconds. Big Mama is a prank the upperclassmen play on the freshmen boys. Because Chuukese, and Micronesians more generally, are extremely suspicious, the prospect of ghosts is both tangible and horrifying. It’s one of the reasons power is allowed to stay on in the boys’ dorm past midnight while the rest of the campus retreats into pitch black. I’m not sure exactly what the Big Mama prank entails, but it sounded like the freshmen really fell for it. Big Mama is a tradition that ushers in newcomer orientation, which took up most of the Friday school day. I had one class before lunch, and afterwards, we gathered into the gym which had been transformed into a dining hall with a stage. The seniors decorated it with flowers and palm leaves, and it looked pretty spectacular despite the fact that it was brutally hot in there. We had lunch and the new faculty members were welcomed with mar’mars made out of individually wrapped candies. The performances were the highlight, and they lasted for four hours. In the first part of the show, sophomore, junior, and senior boys dressed up like women and impersonated the freshman girls. I can’t imagine high school boys in the states going to the extremes these boys did to make themselves look and sound convincing. I was really impressed and amused by their willingness, and eagerness, to cross-dress and perform “female.” It was such an interesting display of gender bending, but I’m really observing how different gender is conceived here in the first place. While there are relatively strict gender roles, and restrictions on what women can do, women are also seen as the strong hand in the family. Not only do they traditionally control the land, but they are considered conflict resolvers (for instance, one day a student’s bag was stolen by Ki – our resident thief – and instead of sending a security guard after him, one of the Chuukese female faculty went and just said to him ‘Give me that. It belongs to a student. He wants it back” and it was handed over with no problem. I know from just speaking and listening to some female students that there is a degree of repression felt by women here, but they are also in some ways authority figures. Even more interesting is how male affection is dealt with. Homosexuality is completely unacceptable, but it’s not uncommon for teenage males to hold hands or walk arm in arm. Yesterday while sitting in the rec house with some of the male students, I noticed one freshman boy laying his head in the lap of a sophomore boy, and two junior boys laying on the grass with their legs entwined. This would be unusual in the states, to say the least, but here male affection is not equivalent to homosexual behavior. They use “gay” as an insult frequently, but don’t always necessarily grasp what it means. Just the thought of two men or two women “being in love” is often too far outside the realm of their realities.

Aside from the cross-dressing, the show was pretty impressive even if it was a little long to sit through in its entirety. The students are phenomenal dancers, and performed traditional district dances (a Pohnepeian dance or a Palauan dance for example), hula, break dancing, and hip hop. Some of the junior and senior boys did fire throwing, and they wrote and performed their own little skits and songs, mostly dealing with freshmen and some of the new faculty (including myself). What I love most is seeing the students really work together to pull off something that means a lot to them. I don’t recall observing or experiencing that while I was in high school. There was a general lack of school spirit and an undercurrent of indifference for this kind of thing. The seniors weren’t terribly concerned with “welcoming” the freshmen and treating them as family and not just other students. It’s a whole different dynamic of closeness. There is definitely some tension among districts, and individual students as well, but in general I think the Xavier community is pretty impressive.

Saturday morning I woke up and played tennis and badminton with some of the other faculty and students. Afterwards, some of the teachers and one junior boy went swimming in the lagoon off the Japanese dock. I love going there – on the walk there which is sometimes tiring, you first smell this specific island flower (I forget the name) which I personally don’t like at all because it was used to make the mar’mars given to me on the day of my arrival in Chuuk and I smelled them all day long while wearing them. There’s also always the smell of gasoline from the boats and cars, and ALWAYS the smell of food cooking and a farmy kind of scent from the pigs and dogs, but at one particular point in the walk, there’s a overwhelming smell of the ocean – that salty, beachy smell even stronger than I’m used to. It makes me feel really relaxed and at home. I told the student that came with us that I love that smell and he just scrunched his nose and said he prefers the smell of gasoline because it reminds him of his home on an outer Yapese island. I thought it was interesting that I prefer the smell of the ocean while he prefers the smell of industry. We’re all looking for different things.

After we went swimming, we took the truck into town and ate at Truk Stop which I always look forward to. It’s a beautiful place, even if a little touristy (if anything can really be touristy on Chuuk). Because I’m still in a New York frame of mind, paying $12 or $13 for dinner is a cheap night out, but the other volunteers disagree. I think it’s partly because our stipends are only $60 a month and partly because after being here a while where everything is cheap relative to the states, you start perceiving value and cost differently. After dinner we went to the Pilipino community house across from Truk Stop and sang karaoke with Lily and her friends. We didn’t get home until around midnight. I was edgy the whole drive to and from town since on Thursday, the bus that takes the girls home was pachinkoed. We were stopped and I was sitting at the window seat asking myself why some students were getting under their seats. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an angry-looking man and then just heard a loud noise and felt glass on the back of my neck. The dart, a barbaric, primitive looking thing, landed in the hood of one of the female student’s sweatshirts just barely missing her head. It was a terrifying experience, and unfortunately one that is very common in Chuuk. The man was drunk, as is pretty customary for pay day Thursdays, and apparently pachinkoing cars as they passed by. We went to the police station and learned that several reports had already been made. He was eventually apprehended, but of course that didn’t make me feel any safer. This kind of violence happens often in Chuuk and while usually random is sometimes directed specifically at white people – especially if they’re being loud or disrespectful of Chuukese culture. I want to warn some of the western tourists that come to Xavier that they’re dressed inappropriately, but this is something I feel they already know and are largely indifferent about. Pachinkos have killed several people on Weno already – I think all Chuukese people, but this is the second time in less than a year Xavier vehicles have been hit. Our director wrote a letter to the governor of Chuuk demanding that some action be taken or else Xavier will move to the old PATS campus on Pohnpei, which part of me hopes happens. I like the life and status that Xavier infuses into Chuuk, but honestly it’s a very dangerous place, especially for western volunteers. Obviously it wouldn’t happen this year, but the possibility is promising, even if it is kind of tragic at the same time.