2013 Trip - In Pohnpei

Saturday

At the Pohnpei airport Janet Gillmar and I passed through customs and immigration easily and were greeted by Janet's husband Jack, who had brought mwaramwars (flower wreaths) for us to put on. We loaded our bags into the Japanese SUV that had been sent out by our hotel, the Seven Stars, and we headed into town. The airport landing strip stretches across an islet called Deketik (“little island”) that is connected to town by an artificial causeway. The runway is now paved with cement, but when I left Pohnpei in 1971, it was still compacted coral gravel.

Loren Peterson, who was the director of Peace Corps Volunteers in Pohnpei during my tenure on the island, was waiting for us in the lobby of the Seven Stars Hotel. His wife Enerika is the owner of the hotel, as she is a Pohnpeian citizen and Loren is still a citizen of Wisconsin as far as I know.

After we got settled at the hotel on Saturday late afternoon we walked to the site of Jack and Janet’s Peace Corps house, where I often stayed when I hiked in from Saladak. It is now a hotel, larger and fancier than Loren’s. The area is unrecognizable except for familiar the view of Sokehs Rock (like Diamond Head in Honolulu) across the bay. We sat out on the covered dining area and waited for Jack’s friend Ray, who was about 15 when I last went hiking with the two of them. Ray was born in Nukuoro, one of the two Polynesian atolls in Micronesia. Today he’s 60 (this was one of my first "time travel" shocks on the island; I eventually calmed down and got used to them) and is vice principal of a Baptist private school that caters to children of temporary or immigrant families, such as Filipinos.

Sunday

It's getting light outside and the radio is playing lilting gospel music in English. I’ll meet Jack and Janet for breakfast at 7:00. Sitting now in the dining room, I'll write a little more while I wait for Jack and Janet. A Pohnpeian women named Perenis ("Bernice") was rolling silverware into napkins for place settings, so I tried out my Pohnpeian on her. She was also fluent in English, so I knew I could bail out any time.

“How,” I asked, “do you stay still in Pohnpeian?” She had to think a second because there is no single matching word. We used the example of a man who remained unwell despite his medicine. “E so-somahute.” Literally, “he not-not well continues.” So I could have to say something like “I can-can continue to speak a little Pohnpeian,” that is, ih kakahte lokaien pohnpei ikis. That is a very rough approximation. I hope Ken Rehg is not reading this.

Now there are more waitresses talking among themselves, but I can’t overhear them because the air conditioner fan is blowing, the silverware is clattering, and the hard cement walls make the room echo. Loren and Enerika’s family bought this place—formerly the Penny Hotel—two years ago after it went onto the auction block. The previous owner had defaulted on his loan from the Bank of Guam and the place had gone to the dogs. The Penny Hotel owner had never developed the large basement space, but it is now in great shape. It is partitioned into separate areas for the restaurant, a bar, and a conference room. Another customer about my age just came in and turned on the TV. They have cable from Australia and maybe the Philipines, via satellite. The soap opera, one that I don't recognize, is in English with Chinese subtitles. Oh, somebody changed the channel, and so now we are watching NCAA women’s gymnastics. The Final 4 are Oklahoma, UCLA, Florida, and Alabama. Three men are watching the svelte little gymnasts flipping around on the bars and gym mats. Reminds me of cats staring at fish in an aquarium.

Mmmm, I can smell the breakfast cooking in the kitchen. Jack and Janet must have overslept. There is no traditional Pohnpeian food on the menu, and so I will have to go shopping at streetside markets where you can buy traditional dishes.

At 8:30 Jack, Janet, and I drove all the way around Pohnpei. We stopped several times to meet people and take photos. I met three people in Uh Municipality who remembered me. They were Ewalt Josef, a fellow teacher and Peace Corps language instructor; Anako John, the widow of Welter John, who was the principal of Saladak School, and Naimi, whose last name I don’t recall. She had been one of my first grade students. All of these persons were attending church at Nan Uh, a half hour’s walk from Saladak, and it was our good luck to find them there.

I learned that my friend Welter John (the school principal) had been promoted to the traditional title of nanmwarki (paramount chief) of Uh, a position he held until his death. Although I'm sure he was a good nanmwarki , it had to be frustrating for him to divide his time between that traditional role and his commitment to his administrative work in public education. In one sense, the conflict was the same as any other Pohnpeian faced, working for a paycheck part of the time and, at the same time, fulfilling the duties of the feast seasons, which are many and varied. But beyond this, being nanmwarki meant that Welter could not just drop in on a teacher or colleague for social professional visits. Tradition requires that you drop everything when the nanmwar shows up: you have to prepare a feast or at least half kill yourself in the attempt. It reminds of the scene in A Man for All Seasons, when Henry VIII paid an unannounced visit to Thomas More. His servants were petrified with fear. The awe for the nanmwarki probably used to be like this in Pohnpei even into the early colonial period. But even with the terror factor gone, Welter John did not want to create this kind of chaos simply by his presence on a neighbor's land, and so his title held him hostage to a certain extent.

Saladak School itself is about four times its original size. Seemed almost like a science fiction scenario to me. We were back at the hotel a little after three on Sunday.

We will go back to Uh tomorrow, and I will give away some flexagons. In another part of the island we drove up into the foothills and encountered some “uneven” spots, but we makde it to Salapwuhk School, where Jack had once hiked on foot, which took him half of a day. Our food, after the big breakfast at the hotel, was soda pop, chocolate cookies and deep friend doughnuts—enough to keep our stomachs from growling. I felt a confused mixture of joy and bewilderment because of 42 years of changes in Pohnpei and in myself. Tomorrow the post office will be open and I can mail two letters.

Monday

Pohnpeians seem happy and much the same, even though they speak a lot more English, drive a lot more pickups, and watch a lot more DVDs or TV shows. They have phone and electric transmission lines all the way around the island, made possible by the completion of the road, which is wide enough for two lanes of (slow) traffic. You can drive 25-35 mph, but you have to slow down when passing pedestrians or other cars. We found the village where the Peace Corps held training progreams in 1968 and 1969. Despite the success of these training programs the Peace Corps did not bring training back to ths island until this year, a fact that I learned from Loren Peterson. He thought it might have been caused by Nixon budget cuts. It makes me feel even more lucky that I was able to do my training on the same island where I would be teaching.

The training site, called Wene, is almost unrecognizable after all these years. The Catholic mission church was rebuilt around 1975, and the parochial school, which used a building connected to the back of the church, was discontinued. I found the feast house that was built for use with the church. It was where are the trainees were brought just after arriving on the island—for the traditional annointing with coconut oil. I did not attempt to follow the path I once tread several times a day during training. It connected the dining all with the house where I and my fellow trainee, Terry Kepler, lived with our host family. I learned that there are now only two Catholic priests on Pohnpei, both of whom are based in Kolonia. They visit the village parishes once a month to perform mass. As a result, the other denomations—United Church of Christ, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—have expanded their activities in the hinterland. There were a lot of people attending the Protestant service at Nan Uh when we stopped there. I peekd through the windows of a Sunday School room to watch and hear the kids singing a song praising Jesus. There are no Unitarain-Universalist congregations on Pohnpei to my knowledge. There were many healthy-looking dogs, a few cats, but, amazing, zero pigs. They must have passed an ordinance prohibiting free-range pigs. Or perhaps the pigs were getting hit by cars, who knows? There was no more pig shit on the road, no flies to carry parasite eggs. This was surely a dramatic improvement in public health. On the other hand, betel nut chewing is now widespread. The legislators passed a law disallowing betel nut on the campus grounds of the College of Micronesia, but the very same legislators who were passing the bill were exchanging the leaves, powdered ilme, and betel nut on the legislative chamber—or so Loren told me—so it is probably a losing battle. Betel nut is not a dangerous drug, but it is addictive and results in disgusting messes because people are always spitting out the juice. United Airlines forbids its passengers to bring it on the plane.

Starting to recover from the shock, that is, seeing the future of the world of the Pohnpei that I left in 1971. How could I re-establish a connection with some part of this new world that still relates to my old world emotions? The answer might be Saladak School.

I’ll ask Jack to drive me back down there today and see if I can visit with the principal for a few minutes. I might entrust the flexagons with their math teacher. I’d love to learn how and when the school grew to its present size and glory. Maybe some articles were published along the way. Maybe I could become a pen pal so we could trade help with English for help with my Pohnpeian. Or maybe I’m delusionary. It would have to be a small exchange through the internet or snail mail. But it seems more plausible that I focus on that one school than on any individual simply because that’s where I spent most of my teaching time.

I have free cable TV in my room. I wanted to force myself to stay awake until at least ten p.m. so I surfed around and found “Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail” and watched as much as I could stand. Then I watched some episode of the witch show that starred one of the actresses in "Charlie’s Angles" (the brunette) whatever her name was. Maybe it was "Sabrina, the Teen Witch."

Another surprise was that we had no rain whatsoever on today’s drive around the island, nor did we have any significant rainfall after the first night. Maybe the trade wind season was running late that year.

It’s still Monday, the 6^th, but I’ve had a full day and need to write while the memories are fresh. Up at 5:30 after a decent sleep. Jack and Janet and I ate breakfast at seven, but before that I visited with a hotel clerk named Jun, who had lived in Texas around eleven years before returning to Pohnpei. We spoke in both Pohnpeian and English. He had worse culture shock than I had and may return to the States. Everyone I talk to here is friendly and happy to share their stories.

Jack and I took our rented car to the post office, where I bought stamps and mailed three letters to you.

Monday morning. 5:35 a.m.

We drove on south to Saladak School, which was in session with its 365 kids and 18 teachers. I got out of the car and asked the others to pick me up in an hour, so I would have time to visit with the principal and some of the villagers. While I waited for the principal, Daker Apram, to arrive, I talked to a teacher who had not been born when I was in the Peace Corps. I walked down the hill and visited with some village people. One elderly man, who was wearing thick glasses, remembered me and we talked in Pohnpeian about the family whose land I had lived on; it was a heart warming experience.

On my way back up to school, the principal caught up with me in his car and gave me a lift the rest of the way. I explained my desire to give flexagons to the math teachers and to learn about the expansion of the facility. The extra building happened sometime in the 80s but I could not get more details than that because this principal had not been at the school during the expansion years.

I then explained how to work the flexagons to the three math teachers and got them and the principal to practice. I mentioned being unable to find a store where I could purchase a Bible in Kolonia. After conferring with a teacher, the principal had a leather case brought to him form his car. From the case he lifted his personal Bible and gave it to me. I accepted reluctantly because it was a beautiful volume and was surely expensive. I ensured him that I would read through it along with an English Bible, as a means of improving my command of the language. [I later learned that the Pohnpeian Bibles sell for around $10.00, which was a relief.]

It was another tender moment for me, and I nearly wept as I told them how much my years of teaching Saladak’s beautiful children had meant to me. It was 12:30, so I had to return to the road to meet my ride. My friends met me a few minutes later, and we returned to Kolonia, stopping only in Nan Uh at the grave of Resio Moses, a brilliant and handsome Pohnpeian leader who had once been governer or Pohnpei. Here is Resio and my teacher colleague Ewalt Josef seated in my doorway around 1970.

The news of Resio's death came as a shock. Loren told me that he had become a chain smoker and contracted lung cancer. His grave was erected above the road and across from his home, where his American wife Sue still lives. She teaches at the College of Micronesia and, now that the road is complete, can commute to Kolonia by car in about 10 minutes.

Loren drove us out on the rather rough road to Net Point, where he used to swim during his rehabilitation from PTSD. Back in Kolonia we stopped for me to buy ready-to-eat chicken, taro, and papaya slices. Then we drove out to Paliker to observe the architecture of the FSM Capitol buildings. Loren had helped to choose the architect for these buildings.

It was raining pretty hard so we didn’t get out. School kids were walking along the road side in the pouring rain. We had just enough time to stop at the College of Micronesia, where I met Robert Andreas, the son of my friend Pendu, whose family lived with me the first several weeks I was settling into Saladak. Robert is teaching Micronesian college students. He was quite surprised when he realized who I was, and he later invited me to dinner at his home on the following evening. I could not imagine a more gracious farewell to my visit.

Another former language instructor for the Peace Corps came to visit Jack Gillmar at the hotel restaurant. He was Cyril Helgenberger, and his family name is traceable back to the German colonial period when several German merchants married Micronesian women and started large families that are thriving to this day. Cyril had recently brought his Pohnpeian teenage grand-daughter. who was born and raised in Florida p to the 4^th grade, when her grandfather brought her back to Pohnpei. She is 15 now and sat at the table, never fidgeting or looking bored. Thus, she had to learn the language beyond what. I gave her a flexagon and showed her how to work it.

Tuesday

Jack Gillmar's return flight was a day before ours, so on Tuesday we said good-bye to him at the airport. While we were out there, Loren drove Janet and me around the island of Deketik, on which the airport was built. We saw a fishing company with huge mountains of nets and floats. We saw the remains of a Japanese tourist village that had completely gone broke and stood empty: lots of investment money down the drain. We also saw the hulk of the Tungaru, a small steamer that had once hauled merchandise for the Etscheit business. This vessel was approaching derelict status when I last viewed it in 1971, so it was hard to believe there was anything left of it.

Amazingly, I found a web page that mentioned it. (Just Google "Pacific Digital Library.")

THE TUNGARU U. S. SURVEY MISSION BECAUSE OF the vast distances which separate the islands of the Trust Territory, transportation is one of the greatest problems of the people who live in them, and particularly of the merchants. Mrs. Yvette Adams of the Carlos Etscheit Company in Ponape District has helped solve the problem with the purchase of the TUNGARU, a former Gilbert Islands Colony vessel. The TUNGARU has been placed in inter-island service, with Rudy Muller of the Marshalls as captain, and Jack Adams, chief engineer. The steel-hulled trader is 120 feet in length, carries a cargo load of slightly over 100 tons, and is about the size of the MIECO QUEEN which is operated by the Marshall Islands Import-Export Company.

Later we visited other sentimental sites: Loren’s first and second homes in Kolonia. We tried to visit his son Marcelino (Marko), who has a twin sister working in Guam, but he was out of the office. So, to mark time, we went to the office the Nature Conservancy, where Loren's friend Mae worked. Her dad is American, and her Mom is Trukese. Mae was born in Waco, and her husband is Pohnpeian. The conservancy is trying to protect both land and marine areas. After the Trust Territory was reorganized, Mae kept getting bounced by the immigration people at the airport because her passport was issued before the FSM was formed. She is a smart and articulate advocate for protecting natural resources, and Loren enjoys arguing with her. I was thinking to myself, "Half Trukese? You don't want to get into any serious arguments with this gal."

We talked about one of the problems that had been exacerbated by the completion of the circumferential road. The road made it easier and cheaper to transport produce to Kolonia, Pohnpeian farmers were eager to grow more sakau (more widely known by its Polynesian name, kava), which is normally consumed only at feasts and at local neighborhood gatherings and not for money. However, in recent years it has been bottled, refrigerated, and sold over the counter at sakau bars in Kolonia and in Guam, which makes it a cash crop for the growers. Sakau was selling for $5.00 a bottle in Kolonia. It was going much higher at bars in Guam.

Predictably, the farmers expanded sakau cultivation by moving higher up into their land and cutting down the trees there to get sun on the plants to speed their growth. This, as you might guess, created two problems, Mae explained. Clear cutting results in soil erosion, which is already significant given the annual precipitation. Secondly, the fast-grown sakau is less potent. Good sakau starts with shade and grows more slowly.

We went back to the district office and Marko was there. Loren expects that Marko will eventually be elected governer or Pohnpei.

Then I bought some older stamps at the philatelic shop. They couldn’t change my $50 bill, but the clerk trusted me to take the stamps anyway and come back with smaller denominations.

Then to the barber shop for a haircut: five dollars and a two dollar tip. Then off to a general store called Nicko for a book. I walked through the gate of the now dilapidated Japanese agricultural station and searched in vain for the eel pond where I had fallen in while romancing in the moonlight with Jane Goodhue. But I did find some beautiful postcards at the gift shop at the visitor’s bureau. It turned out the "eel pool" I was seeking was fed by a stream on the other side of the road, which had since been built over by a Baptist primary school.

At the hotel I bought a T-shirt with the hotel logo (“7 Stars”), named after the seven children that Loren and Enerika have. There I also got change for the postcards and stamps. At ten we all got in the car with Loren driving, stopped at the post office for me to pay for the stamps, then headed down the east coast to Uh (again).

We stopped at the recently closed Village Hotel, which was opened just months after I left Pohnpei in 1971. The saga of Bob and Patti Arthur, the builders and owners of the Village, is too long and convoluted to tell here, but I will include a few photos from our stop there. The ruins of the hotel are situated on a hill on a peninsula that extends out of northern Awak, and you have a views both looking back over the basin in which the village and the Catholic church are located and out into the lagoon at the islets of Mwand of Parem.

You can read more about him here.

I asked Mike whether the special high form of the Pohnpeian language, meing, which is required at traditional feasts, was likely to die out. "Doubtful," he replied, "because politicians campaigning for office half to speak it when they go out to their constituents on the land." This form of Pohnpeian is not spoken by many younger Pohnpeians, especially those living in Kolonia. But apparently some of them to pick it up later.

We also talked about the irony of the fact that Pohnpei is the headquarters of an international tuna association, but there is no local fishing industry other than what people catch inside the barrier reef.

Loren planned to visit Matt Mix, a local legend whom I had never met, so we we drove by his house, but his daughter met us in the yard and said he had gone to the hospital. He had pneumonia and heart murmurs, but the underlying diease was pancreatic cancer. He died the next day. His son Simon runs a produce store.

Matt's story goes beyond the scope of this website, but I really wish I had met him. One of Loren Peterson's first duties as Peace Corps Director in Pohnpei District was to cantact Matt in Kosrae, where he was assigned as an agriculture volunteer, to tell him that he was being terminated from the Peace Corps.