Into the Jungle

Well, it's Pete and I would just like to share with you a little story about what I did last Wednesday during our long weekend.

At about 10:30 in the morning just as Taylor and I were starting to mosey around the house and the sun was beginning to wear out it's welcome as it does for about 6 hours every day, my three Pohnpeian brothers, Anthony, Dan, and Rico (several European empires have had more than just their hand in this island's cultural evolution) burst into my house. Their faces were bright and I could tell spirits were high.

"Madau!" (That's my title, pronounced 'Matao') the word spilled out and before I could reply... "Madau we're going into the jungle, bring food. Let's go!" I was a bit dazed by the suddenness of all this but as I've started to realize, that's just the way things happen here. "Ok, ok" I said, "should I bring a knife?" He nodded and after indicating which of my machete's was the right size for this particular outing, we were off.

We were fortunate to get a ride for the fist couple of miles. Our grandma's van took us inland to thicker jungle. I couldn't get a straight answer as to what we'd be doing when we got there but once again, I am becoming more accustomed to ambiguity than I'd like to be. Finally, when we hopped out, we found ourselves in somebody's side yard. The boys led the way which seemed to be straight into this guys land. Going into the jungle, first the trees get closer together and there are more and more fruit plants and other bushes. Next the grass gets higher and higher and pretty soon the only way through is with a machete. We wound our way into the jungle, over slick logs, under fallen trees, through deep mud, past all kinds of fruit. The grass was chest high and all of us were hacking away. At one point we stopped and Rico ascended a tree effortlessly to retrieve a special leaf which they chew with their betel nut (I have read that betel nut is actually the most commonly used stimulant in the world. Think India). We came upon a stream with clean, delicious water and after stopping briefly for a drink we continued straight up a rocky, rooty mud hill. After maybe an hour of working our way into the jungle, Dan said in a low voice "ok, don't cut anymore or they will know where we are planting" so we continued straight through the thickness until we reached a satisfactorily remote spot. They explained to me that last year they had planted in their usual spot but when they came to harvest, someone had beaten them to it and they had lost a lot of bananas and Sakau (Kava). Apparently theft is making it harder and harder to find a safe place to plant.

Once we arrived at our spot we had to clear the land. This basically meant razing anything that wasn't bananas or Sakau. Each of us had to sharpen our machetes at some point in this process. Mine was to dry to sharpen so they simply stuck it through a banana tree and when it came out it was dripping wet. At one point we heard some whacking from not far off. Clearly we weren't the only ones taking advantage of the days off. It was a bit tense when I think all parties involved realized each others' presences but fortunately the other party moved on.
After a good amount of clearing and planting under the high sun we set back for the river. We followed it up a ways to a beautiful, hidden, red waterfall where we swam to cool off. On the way back Anthony stopped, looked up and asked "you like Karat[variety of banana], right?" before pointing to the top of a 30 foot banana tree and saying you can have those. "Really?" "Yes, just cut the tree." And after felling the tree, the vitamin A-filled bounty was mine.

On the way back home we had no ride so it was about 3 miles hauling the bananas in the sun. What a day it was. They told me we're going to be doing that a lot soon so I'm excited. I'm sure I'll have more to tell. Sorry the end was a bit rushed but I gotta run to class. That's the way it is, you know?

Hey, it's Pete.

So, lately I've been in a scuba open water certification course. It's AWESOME. The "confined dives" which are normally done in a swimming pool are done on the beautiful coral reef. I'm really enjoying it so far, although the parts of me that don't get covered up end up looking like they've been in the deep-fryer for a while because we're out under the tropical sun from 10 - 3 pm.

Let's see... first quarter's over, and I know you'll all hate me for saying it but I really do miss the cold. I have these flashes of physical memory of the cold and it's really nostalgic. No worries, because mango season is coming and soon everything will be just right.

Every day I learn more about why a western, imposed school system is impossible with this culture, even if the intentions are good. School has absolutely no place in this culture (except perhaps in that it tingles the self-preservation reflex which we all have). There's a lot of tragedy inherent to becoming a part of this island. It is and especially has been imbued with incomprehensible beauty, but the rate at which that beauty (both culturally and physically) is being laid waste is alarming. I guess it's the same story all over the globe.

All that said, I really like the students and have developed some bonds with them. Making friends has proven to be extremely difficult and frustrating because in this culture, we are viewed as children (everyone is until they're around 35), but if we are to receive even a fraction of the respect necessitated by our station as teachers, we can't really make friends with the students. Also, the students feel a barrier due to our status.

Anyway, I've been working with all of my spare time on chess and composing. I am working on a large scale, themed collection of piano suites based loosely around the Lorax. It is exciting and I've really been putting a lot of mental energy into both its creation and my improvement as a composer. I hope to gather a contingent of pianist friends when I get home who are willing to help bring it to life.

Ok, that's about it for now. Lot's of thoughts, lot's of jumble, and there's so much more that's been left unwritten. Until next time...

Pete

T.G.I.F.

So we're in between classes on a Friday, so I thought I'd write some word-vomit on this site since, I guess, that's what blogs are for. This past weekend was a lesson in living like vagrants, and it was awesome. Pete and I wanted to finally get back into Kolonia Friday night, so we could do a little shopping, but mostly just hang out with the other WT volunteers. When we got back from school, which wasn't really school, it was just a Welcome Party, we happened to mention to the family that we're living with that we wanted to go into town. Caropei informed us that they happened to be heading into town in approximately ten minutes. So Pete and I ran inside to hurriedly pack up a single backpack for the weekend. We jumped into the van without having told any of the vols in town that we were coming and without having planned for a ride home. It was awesome.

We got into town just as school should have been ending, and we decided to check out the movie theater (the only one on the island, I might add) and wait for our friends to get home. We saw Inglorious Basterds on a whim, and just the experience alone of sitting in an air conditioned movie theater, eating nachos (albeit stale nachos), and being deafened by the movie was amazing. The movie ended up being hilarious and amazing, I don't care if anyone else liked it, maybe it was our deprived condition, but we absolutely loved it.

Then we caught a cab over to our friends' apartment and one of the ladies in the cab happened to be our host mother's sister-in-law, so we chatted on the way over. I love all of these coincidental meetings here. We got to their apartment and, alas, no one was home. So we headed over to the hotel/restaurant near the expat bar, the Rusty Anchor, and happened to run into all of the other volunteers. We hit up the bar and crashed at the apartment. The next morning we got up early and walked all over town getting our shopping done. Even though cabs are only $1 per person in town, we felt much more comfortable walking around, although I did get a nasty burn from it (all between the hours of 9 and 11!).

We really wanted to get back to Madolenihmw for a variety show in the Pingelapese community in Mand nearby, so we went over to Ace Commercial to see if we could bribe someone to take us back, if they happened to be driving to Madolenihmw. We were in the planning stages of making a huge sign, "Kokohla Madolenihmw? Mie Krakah!" (Going to Madolenihmw? We have candy!) when I happened to run into one of my students. I asked him if he was going back home, and he said no, but then on second thought, he told us he would drive us the hour drive back for free, and he wouldn't take no for an answer. So Pete and Junior rode a wind-whipped ride in the back of the truck, while I got to know Junior's father and family a little bit in the cab. We even stopped by their house on the way home so they could show us the river behind their house, which they boasted was the deepest and widest in Madolenihmw, and it was. It was a really beautiful experience.

On the way out to the variety show later, we randomly decided to walk out instead of catching a ride with our neighbors, and on our walk we were invited by some of our other neighbors to come drink sakau with them. This family lives across the road from us, and we've really really been wanting to get to know them better, because every time we walk past the house they're always just so happy and the house seems so full of life. So we hung out a little and drank sakau on the rock with them, it was great. Then the variety show, starring a bunch of mine and Pete's students, was awesome, if somewhat deafening. It seems that Pacific Islanders don't have the same pain threshold as we measly Americans do for listening to loud music... or blaring orders to a crowd of children through a megaphone in a tiny room with crazy acoustics.

Then Sunday, we just laid around all day reading and/or composing. It was glorious. And it definitely was another one of those weekends that makes me feel all the more connected to this place we're living in for another 8 months. Pretty much as long as the experience has nothing to do with school, then it'll be a powerful and enriching one.

Schoolwise, it's been a weird week since I had to go to Kolonia with a few students on Monday for an essay contest and then I gave out a test on Tuesday/Wednesday. I'm really really glad it'll be over in a couple hours, I've just gotta get through two more classes, and then the Writing Workshop with all of the seniors at the end of the day. Also, I just heard from one of my 12A students that most of her classmates like my class, but know that I'll give a bunch of extra credit on the tests and quizzes, so they basically don't study and think they're a joke. So that sucks a lot, but it definitely gives me license to toughen up on them a little bit. For my other three classes, I feel like I'm pushing them at just the right pace, but this A class could definitely be moving faster and I'm just trying to feel it out. Ah, oh well. I'll figure it out eventually. At least I can still see that they're learning things, even if they think they don't have to study it.
Well, this is surely much too long so I'll stop here. But I hope wherever you are while you're reading this, you're enjoying some cool weather and watching the last of the leaves change!
Oh, what I would give for a change in seasons right about now!
Peace,
Taylor

More Pictures!

Lehlie maing ko, it's a beautiful Friday in Pohnpei and it's Taylor here, attempting to share some more pictures with you all.
Pete and I have had some really exciting adventures in the past few weeks, including another trip out to Nahlap, becoming a science teacher (briefly), and finally getting to the top of a coconut tree!

This picture is from our Nahlap trip. We went with a couple of the other WT volunteers and another mehnwai friend. It was a really beautiful and relaxing trip, except that when it got dark, Pete and I realized we couldn't sleep! The bugs, heat, rats, mice, geckos, coral injuries, sand fleas, and lack of bedding made for a rough night. So while I was wandering the small island in the morning wrought with insomnia, I found this lovely feast! The whole entire hermit crab community, it seemed, was munching on this mature coconut, it was all very cute.



Now what we have here was Pete's first coconut-tree-summit ever! Very exciting. He finally reached the top and got his first ever coconut. Let me tell you, it's definitely much harder than the locals make it look!
While I still haven't even attempted climbing, I did get to scrape my own coconut meat and make the milk from it myself the other night, which was an hour-long experience. I tore off the coconut husk with the help of a metal pole and scraped the meat out with a sort of bench/scraper thing. After I soaked the meat to get the milk, Pete cooked a delicious spinach and potatoes curry with it.




























Here's the proud guy now! With his delicious, delicious, uhp.

















This is one of the babies who lives in the family we basically live with, taking a bath in the middle of the forest. His name's Tristan and he's just over 1 1/2 years old.
The bathtub is right next to our manual washing machine behind our house, just next to a huge drop-off into a valley with a little river/creek thing. I just thought it was in interesting sight, having a bathtub right in the middle of the greenery.
And yes, everything here is this green.










Ok, so I'm just going to post a whole bunch of pictures because it looks like they upload on this site a whole lot faster than flickr or facebook. This is just a picture of me while we were at Nahlap. We built a fire and roasted some meat some other vols had brought and played tons of different card games, dominoes, yahtzee, chess, and backgammon.








This is a kitten in a food coma, cutest coma ever. The cat's unofficial name is "sweetie," but we call her/him Professor Cereal. S/he lives in the Nahs with other family, but escapes the torture the little children inflict upon him/her daily by running up to our house. I really wish we could just keep her/him, but s/he tries to pee all over our house and there's just no way to keep the kids from getting at her/him. But the cats are all kinda figuring out I'm a huge softie for kitties, so they frequent our porch, just looking for some extra food scraps or love.








This is back at Keproi Waterfall. Rolmy decided to take a daring leap from one of the super wet slippery rocks up next to the falls. Rico and Anthony are the two climbing up after her, and John is swimming in the pool below.















A too-dark-but-too-bad picture of Pete and me at the waterfall.

Pete and I finally made it out to Nan Madol, the ancient ruins, on Saturday, so I'll try to put up some pictures of that later. Hope you all are well!

Photos of the hike

So i'm a-gunna try to put up some pictures as I can in between classes and the likes, I think this link should work to take you to my flickr page. If not, let me know!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42248032@N04/

The Milky Way is Visible from the Greenest Place on Earth

Hello! It's Pete. I'm getting Sick!! somau enwai (American sickness aka flu). Let's see... I simply cannot explain how beautiful this place is. It cannot be put into words. The other day we went on the aptly named "six waterfalls hike" an 8 hour excursion. One hour straight into the thick heart of the jungle, then walking up a stream stopping at the six waterfalls and swimming at each one. The hike is part walking, part scrambling (it's very steep at points) part falling on your butt because the rocks are too slippery, part swimming, part wading. Everything is the most brilliant green. As green as the back of your eyelids are black. The falls are rediculous. Several points to jump off.

If I'm not writing perfectly it's because I'm really hungry. This hunger tends to be the state of things (food care packages?). The ATM on the island has been broken the past 3 chances we've had to get into Kolonia so we haven't really had money for like a month. Fortunately the island is made of food and we have quite a nourishing family-like thing over here so...

Let's see, we still haven't gotten our stuff from last years world teach stuff which leaves us without a bed, fan, table, silverware or pots (although we are borrowing some from our fam). The only reason we have a fridge is because once our host dad realized the state of things he aquired one for us the following day.  We're still getting by, though, especially thanks to some amazing care packages from home!  I never knew we needed Nutella here, but now that we actually have it... it's pretty awesome.

Anyway, this place is incredible and I'm feeling more and more that there could be nothing better than a year exploring this unique place.

When I say "unique" I really mean it. Of all of the countries to which I've had the fortune of traveling, this country is by far the most culturally isolated. I figured, due to my experience in tropical southeast asia, that my preconcieved notions of the life here would be at least slightly more grounded than those of others, but I've found myself being constantly thrown new curveballs from every direction. It's really an island.

People's ideas about African Americans have been really weird to confront. The whole teenage population is obsessed with rap pop culture and think that all black people are gangster rappers. They also reffer to African Americans as Africans almost always, and all of the teenagers dress all ghetto. Actually all of them.

We've got a hume mango tree in our front yard and apparently November and December is "little" Mango season. Now, even though it's not the beggest mango season, according to the everyone who's been here for at least a year says that there will be more Mangos than we know what to do with. Apparently they will just be lying all over the ground. AWESOME. Ok, I think that's all I've got in me now but I promise more. All in good Pohnpeian time:)

c/o World Teach
PO box 2378
Kolonia, Pohnpei 96941
Federated States of Micronesia

While the internet may be free for the next year, it's still horribly slow. So here are a few pictures Pete and I wanted to share of our Madolenihmw Paradise.

This is Kehproi (hmmm... spelling is pretty fluid here, so I guess I'll settle on that) Waterfall, just a five minute walk from our house. The kids took us on a special "shortcut" so we could bypass paying the Mehnwai Tax (i.e. pay a buck if you're not a local). It's so beautiful and so refreshing. The kids climbed right up the rocks in the middle and jumped off into the deep, eel-infested pools. The water is safe enough, but we have to be careful not to swim in it after it's rained a lot, since it will wash nasty little things from the village upriver down onto us.




Pete and I haven't yet made it out to Nan Madol, the revered ancient ruins, but those too are very close to our house. This next weekend our group is planning on doing a six waterfall hike up into the interior, which should be amazing and challenging.


This is Alien! Isn't he the cutest??? He loves us and we love him. Which means that I'm sure this story will end in heartbreak, one way or the other. But our family promised not to eat him, and that's all I could really ask for. Not only is this cute little pupster lovable and cute, but he makes
for a great garbage disposal!








Well he hasn't mastered it quite yet, but Pete's still practicing shimmying up the coconut trees to get us some nice uhp, the coconut water. I haven't exactly tried climbing yet, but I'm sure I'll be on some adventuresome kick someday and just run up a tree.














And here I am, all dressed up local style! I'm wearing one of the local skirts, made for me by my host mama back in Nanponmal. When woman are hanging out around the house, they frequently are sans shirt and just wearing their skirts up as I am. And in this heat, it definitely makes sense to be wearing as little as possible. We still don't have any of our things in the house (and yes they've been promising "tomorrow, for sure" since three weeks ago.........) so we're cooking everything in a borrowed iron pan over a small electric stove. If we need to heat anything up the next day, we either refry everything or put a plate of something on top of our coffee maker and let the residual heat warm it up.







Pete and I have started our second or third week teaching, respectively, and our classes have been relatively good so far! Only one of Pete's classes is just flat out not coming to class, and he's only sent a couple students to the principal's office. I've only had one gross fake love letter to deal with, a class of all girls and one boy that has some serious 'tude, and a fist fight last Friday. Other than that, I think we're getting along quite nicely. Oh, and the COM entrance test that is a huge deal here and that I'm basically supposed to be single-handedly preparing these seniors for has been moved up to November. So, now I have two and a half months to teach them how to use verb tenses correctly, reading comprehension, and how to write and essay more or less from the basics up. Intimidating? Nahhhh...