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Of all the excellent language informants that got us off to a good start in the Pohnpeian language, Pendu Andreas was probably the hands down favorite. He was a born teacher and entertainer and was probably in his 30s when we knew him.
Pendu's name--well, my theory of Pendu's name, is that it--is a shortened form of Bonaventura, the Spanish spelling name of the Catholic Saint Bonaventure. I assume that a set of such names entered Pohnpei during the Spanish colonial era in the late 1800s. His family name, Andreas appears to be a first name to our way of naming, but Pohnpeians had no problem with flipping the order around. His wife Tekla was half Japanese, but I did not meet her or their two older children until I was assigned to their home village of Saladak.
I remember hearing Pendu regaling some of the Peace Corps trainees with a story about a prank he had played on one of his off-island classmates at the Ponape Middle School, which was the only advanced education available to Micronesia kids in the 50s. Fresh donuts were usually available at a shop down the road, where a Mortlockese man named Dailon did the baking. Although he was from neighboring Truk (Chuuk) District, Dailon spoke enough Pohnpeian to take orders and make change. The kid that Pendu sent for donuts, however, was from Kusaie (Kosrae) and had to memorize the order word by word:
Mie donas wasaht? "Do you have donuts here?"
Na kihdo ma riahu! "Then I'll take a couple."
The Kusaien student learned the utterances by rote and had no clue about the grammar or the vocabulary. Pendu rehearsed this a couple of times with the kid and sent him to the shop.
Kid: Mie donas wasaht?
Dailon: Sohte (nope)
Kid:Na kihdo ma riahu!
Pendu had not taught a response to "nope," and so the kid kept asking for two donuts until Dailon ran him out of the shop. It was a silly story, but Pendu told it with such zest that I remembered it for 40 years. I was sure that his son Robert would not have heard it, but as we were driving back to my hotel from the welcome/farewell feast in Saladak the last night I was on Pohnpei, I mentioned it to him.
"Yeah, that's a famous story," Robert replied immediately and then added several more of his own. Pendu and his friend Hilario Primo, both of whom taught at elementary schools in the area where I taught, loved to entertain at taverns in Kolonia in exchange for free beer. They would dance together to the music of the juke box and made moves that were so outrageous that the audience kept buying them beers and asking for more.
In our Peace Corps language huts Pendu helped us learn our daily dialog. Usually about six of us would sit in these and practice for about 45 minutes a sitting. The method was called backwards buildup, and it is a method that also works for me when learning a new piano piece:
Instructor: seli pwongo
Pupils: seli pwongo
Instructor: katakatakairongseli pwongo?
Pupils: katakatakairongseli pwongo?
Instructor: me katakatakairongseli pwongo?
Pupils:Ihs me katakatakairongseli pwongo?
Instructor: Ihs ohl me katakatakairongseli pwongo?
Pupils: Ihs ohl me katakatakairongseli pwongo? ("Who was the guying making all that noise last night?)
Pendu would put body English on every phrase, and it almost felt we were doing an opera when we practiced with him. Everybody wanted to be in his group.
Pendu's son Robert was only a little twerp when I shared my cabin with his family in 1968.
Language hut in use
Language hut out of use
On my last day on the island Robert drove me to gathering at his house in Saladak. The trip took about 20 minutes in his pickup. In 1968 we would have had to walk (2 hours+) or take a boat (45 minutes).
Here he is (or was in 2013) when I surprised him at his office at College of Micronesia. I wish I had a picture of his dad too. Robert said he could probably find some that he could scan and email to me.
As you can read elsewhere, Robert and I are part of an editorial team that is working on a second edition of the Pohnpeian-English dictionary.
His parents cooked for me and slept in the house for at least a month while I was getting started with my teaching at Saladak and Nan Uh Schools. When I returned to Pohnpei, I learned that Robert had obtained his M.A. in linguistics at the University of Hawaii and now was on the faculty of College of Micronesia. Its campus is just a few miles south of where we were staying, and so we drove out to meet him at his office.
At first, when I introduced myself as the Peace Corps teacher who lived in Saladak, Robert was dumbfounded. He had me confused with another John, John Hymes, who along with his wife Michele, were the first Volunteers in Saladak and who had built the cabin I moved into. After all, it had been a while, and Robert was very young at the time. But then Robert shook my hand vigorously, and we made plans to meet again later.
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