This past weekend I went back to Tonoas for the Sophomore Community Service Project. Every class is responsible for fulfilling these hours during the year, and sophomores and juniors usually go off-island to a more remote location. We left Friday around lunch and when we arrived around 3, the island was just as quiet as I remembered from last time – even with 40 high school students in tow. They hung out in the parish hall and played some games and read the letters that other students wrote to them. I took a walk with some other volunteers and found some cool WWII relics – all with some kind of story. We were all assigned host families, and I stayed at mine with two Xavier students who could thankfully both speak Chuukese since my family spoke no English at all. The house was a 15-20 minute walk from the parish, and modest to say the least. Unlike most of the other families, mine had no generator, so there was never power, no bathroom, and no furniture. The house itself was one concrete room with tile floors – dirty, dusty, and dark even in daylight. It was stuffy and morbidly hot. We had no beds of course, and no mats, so we slept on the tiles. The pillow I was given was insect-infested so I opted out of using that as well. We ate every meal on the floor as well – mostly rice, breadfruit, canned meat, and sometimes fish. The “bathroom,” a tin outhouse on the edge of the ocean, was a half mile or so down the road and the “shower,” a single well and bucket shielded from outside eyes by a shoddy wall of sheet metal, was another half mile in the other direction. If you had to use the bathroom late at night or at any other inconvenient time, you had to walk as far away from the other family members as possible and use the mangrove patches by the sea.
Despite the humble living arrangements of my family, my Xavier host sisters kept insisting that we were spoiled there. It was hard to imagine – to be “spoiled” in the States definitely would never mean sleeping on a dirt floor or never having a proper shower. As the weekend progressed however, I realized that being spoiled isn’t necessarily contingent on possessions; it can also point to how you are treated and cared for. My family didn’t have much, but they made sure to give me the best of everything they did have. We ate often, and with every meal they made sure I had an exorbitant amount of food – amounts not even the most excessive American could consume. They would never eat or sleep until I had already eaten or fallen asleep. With the exception of out last meal together, they sat and watched, fanning away the flies and arguing with me that I was not full, even when I insisted. While they did not eat, and my Xavier students only had a plate or so each, I had about 7 or 8 each meal. Everything that was brought out to us was to be “given to Sensei (teacher).” I was respected for being a guest, for being a teacher, and for being white. My tiny host sister followed me everywhere and sat with me, fanning me with palm leaves to keep me cool. On my last day, she would not leave my side and was visibly upset when I finally had to let go of her hand. Instead of having us do chores on Saturday morning, they took us around the island and fed us three times before lunch. After our work at the parish for the CSP, they took us swimming and gave us even more to eat. On my final night, they made me several mar’mars to wear, and on Sunday before I left they made a muu’muu to wear and gave me a huge handicraft made by someone in the family. After mass I noticed about 6 or 7 boxes at the parish hall with my name on it – coconuts, rice, breadfruit, limes, and fish. All my host father asked for in return was one of the pictures I took of all of us together. They asked me to go back and visit, and I want to, but every time I look at my calendar another month has gone by and completely slipped through my ability to fully appreciate it.
The CSP itself went well – the students cleared a hillside which will be used to grow tapioca for the community, and did some other cleaning around the parish. It was a little difficult to get them in the spirit at some points, but overall I think they realized the importance of what they were doing. The students at Xavier have so much more access to everything than people on islands like Tonoas. The need to give back is just as strong as the needs which they are fulfilling. On Saturday night, the students put on an entertainment show for their host families and the community, which I think was much appreciated. I love to see them working together to give spirit and life to others.
One really glaring thing I realized this weekend was that for me, poverty is such a Western creation, and one which we impose on others. I think a lot of people here might disagree with that, partly because poverty often seems so universal and a simple fact of living, and partly because no one who goes somewhere to do service likes to consider that they might be fueling a harmful system at the same time. This is something we can either deny, or choose to contend with and reflect upon. By Western standards, my host family on Tonoas was poor. They certainly didn’t possess the kind of standard of living as the vast majority of Americans, but they also didn’t even have as much as many of the other families on Tonoas. But things like generators, handbags, cell phones, canned food – these are all status symbols introduced by the West. The West introduced economy, it introduced industry, and now there is a notion of “having” and “not having.” Before, as students often tell me, everyone lived from the land using and possessing only what they needed. The community was the landowner, and everything was shared without much sense of material worth. Of course, there were always social ranks – clans and chiefs and things like that, but this was status based on name and blood, not on ipods and hot showers. Being “poor” was never the issue, but now people feel the sting of what it means to not have a good enough job, to not be able to buy the often useless things imported from “the mainland.” It’s a tough balance to strike because I think plenty of people would argue that Westernization only helps these people – better medicine, better food, better quality of life in general, but I tend to disagree with that. There are positive aspects, but for me, these are generally overshadowed by what we don’t do – or what we do wrongly. There is medicine, but hardly anyone but the ultra wealthy can afford decent care. The food we send is canned, processed, and carbonated causing more health problems like the raging diabetes people in the FSM war against. We address problems like the exportation of marijuana, but ignore issues like domestic violence and rape. We send pirated movies, designer sneakers, and knock-off ipods instead of textbooks. We extradite released criminals from Guam and Christian converters rather than sending doctors or educators. Maybe the intention to do good is there, and maybe it’s not – but ignoring the confused state of the FSM as it liminally wallows between tradition and modernization only pours salt in the wounds of issues like rising violent crime, mental illness, and suicide. These things were much less prevalent before the intervention of a “better way of life.” My host family insisted they were poor, and by the standards they are now forced to face they are, but I would never want them to think that way. They were happier and 100 times more generous than the almost obscenely wealthy people I’ve encountered in the past. Not every problem can be traced back to Westernization – it’s a mistake to think so – but thrusting an unsuspecting “undeveloped” region into your way of life cannot possibly only be for the best, especially when they never asked for that in the first place.
Sometimes I feel like my cynicism gets the best of me! Right now, I’m sitting on the porch in the shade watching the deep blue of the ocean move itself along silently, drinking cold coconut water. I have these critical ideas of my surroundings – that’s what true social academia will do to you I think – but I’m happy in the present, tangible moments I spend here. Tonoas was hard, but it was wonderful. I want to help things, but I don’t want to change them, and often it seems like the two cannot be separated.

This weekend at Xavier was Cultural Day. The students spent the day performing traditional dances from their native islands and we watched and ate local foods. The dances were amazing. Among my favorites were the Pohnpeian warrior dance, the Palauan warrior dance, and all the Yapese dances which were so colorful and exciting. The students have an amazing ability to transform themselves from the kids we teach everyday to these incredibly powerful and fierce dancers. We also watched the Pohnpeians prepare a traditional feast out of a pig they killed the night before, and then pound sakao which is made by mashing the root of the plant, mixing it with water, and twisting it into a liquid using the hibiscus plant. It’s a really long and exhausting process, but the students didn’t falter. I was so impressed by their skill and endurance. I don’t think that I could have ever done that in high school, and I don’t really know many people that could have either. The students explained to us the meanings behind a lot of what they did, and the experience of passing down and receiving sacred and traditional knowledge from their families or clans. The demonstrations were fantastic, but it was also kind of sad to realize that a lot of these dances and traditions don’t really occur anymore on most of these islands. I felt like I was back in Guam visiting the Chamorran museum villages – really incredible to see, but sad in that these cultures are disappearing. Such change is inevitable, but most of the students are so immensely proud of what they can do and of what their culture means that it’s somewhat upsetting to know how quickly it’s fading.

There were some people from the Chuukese community who came to watch and the students performed everything outside on a small platform stage set up on the basketball court. After mass and the Pohnpeians’ feast demonstration, we watched about 4 hours of dancing and listened to the stories behind what we saw. At night after the girls left to go home, the Pohnpeian students pounded more sakao for the faculty to have. It was a really peaceful experience to sit in their hut in the dark and relative silence, sharing sakao and I wish that I had more opportunities to take part in things like that. Cultural Day only happens once every two years, so I counted myself very lucky to be able to see it.

Otherwise, it’s been quiet here. The weeks keep viciously moving forward, and I’m getting more and more anxious about leaving. I know this is all going to seem like a wickedly unreal dream in just a few short months.

This past weekend was a busy one! Saturday was the date for the Xavier entrance exam, so schools across Micronesia and on Hawaii administered the test. On Friday, Rey and I went to Tonoas, accompanied by three students who could help us with translations. Tonoas, like Weno, is a lagoon island in Chuuk. Despite its relative closeness to Weno (only Etten might be slightly closer) I found that it seems much more remote. The boat ride over was not what I expected - we were guided by a very small boy with very long fingernails who had a darkened, old kind of expression permanently set on his face. The water was more rough than expected, and the boat so small and shaky we would leap over the water over the waves and land violently back down. It was a really wet ride, but pretty exciting. We landed around 5 just as the sun was starting its slow setting routine. I was stunned at how quiet the island was, and how thick the jungle seemed to be from the dock. The small boy showed us up to St. Anthony’s Parish; a sparkling, largely uninhabited group of buildings. I found out from the groundskeeper that I would be staying with a separate host family instead of the Parish with Rey and the students. This made me a little nervous at first since my own host family at the Korean Research Center back on Weno is vastly different than the majority of host families, and even so I don’t stay there frequently. I was reassured by the students who insisted I was actually the lucky one. We took a walk together through the more heavily condensed jungle areas, discovering some funky old Japanese WWII machinery and then made our way to the Memorial School where the test would be given the next day. We saw an old Japanese bunker, and hospital – both made of concrete and thus impressive in what stature remained, but nonetheless creaky, dilapidated, and crumbled like strange relics. The hospital especially was a unique sight. You could get a sense of its significance, but most of the walls had fallen and so it was left open to the air and encroaching foliage. We spoke to an old man there, somewhat of a relic himself, who spoke little English and little Chuukese, and mostly Japanese. He said he had seen the war happen on his island, and the silence we heard now is sometimes welcomed and sometimes only ghostly.

We returned to the parish around 7 and ate dinner – barbecue chicken, fried reef fish, rice, bananas, coconuts, cucumber, and kon (pounded breadfruit). We were also able to listen in on the musical practice for Diocesan Day, and had some good conversation with the resident pastor, Fr. Julio. One of my sponsor sisters came and picked me up, and I made my way over to their house realizing she did not speak any English. Her mother, Terusa, did speak a good deal of English which put me at ease and she invited me to take a shower and watch movies with them. The entire family – mother, father, sisters, brother, uncle and aunt sat crowded around a tiny laptop screen watching an American movie that none of them could understand except for Terusa and myself. They kept asking me to explain, and I tried in my very basic Chuukese. The room I slept in, and my bed, belonged to my sister and was much bigger and cleaner than my room at Xavier. I slept deeply, trying to forgo the warning of my host mother to keep one eye open for ghosts.

The test itself was given the next morning. It was supposed to start at 8, but instead we began at 9:30 because as expected, several students wandered in late, and it took them a while to understand and complete the registration. The time period for the test was longer than most of their school days, and I felt bad watching the struggle and squirm to complete as much as they could. All the while, small children stood outside peering in the windows trying to make sense of what was going on, and pointing at me, either laughing quietly or staring in disbelief at the unfamiliar white person. Once in a while, one of them would wander in and sit on the floor silently gazing up at their older counterparts. It was amazing to see – in the States, I could only imagine such children being loud, restless distractions instead of quiet, curious onlookers. During the half hour break, I chased some of them around all the while listening to them jokingly call me the Chuukese word for “ghost.” A few of the younger ones wanted me to hold their hand or let them sit on my lap, but a lot of the older ones seemed both excited by my presence, and wary of it. I would chase them, but they would never let me catch them, instead running further into the jungle where they correctly assumed I would not follow.

After the test ended, we took our time walking back and ate lunch at the parish. The entirety of the meal, one of our students conversed with the cook who did most of the talking. I couldn’t understand her, but I was content to just listen to rhythm of her speech and the language. We returned to Weno around 2:30 and spent the next four hours on a bus picking people up and dropping them off, which was a decidedly less fun excursion.

Today marked the beginning of Catholic Schools Week. I woke up at 5:30 am in order to catch the 6:15 bus downtown to Saramen Chuuk Academy where the mass was held. I’m not the biggest morning person, but in the coolness of the early day, I’m pretty certain there’s not much more beautiful than a Micronesian morning. I was rushing though, and barely had a chance to enjoy the sunrise. I was able to sleep a little at Saram before the mass, which was nice, and afterwards all three Catholic schools (Xavier, Saram, and St. Cecilia’s Elementary) ate lunch in the Saram gym and then had a few hours of field-day type games. It was really nice seeing all the schools working together, and to see the older kids helping out the younger ones who really enjoyed being included. We ended at about 2:30 and rode the flatbed truck home, which had to stop in Penia for a downed line (which means we won’t have power for at least a few days) so Meg and I walked home from there. The weekend ends without power, but maybe that means I’ll get a goodnight’s sleep after a long few days.