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.