Street Sweepers

They’re sweeping the streets! They’re sweeping the streets!

The newly built roads on Weno might actually have a chance to survive. For the last couple of years, the state has been trying to rebuild the embarrassingly horrible road system on the main island of Weno. The majority of the roads are muddy pits of sludge and slime that streak through the island. Apparently, the roads were nice at one point way back when, but due to poor plan and lack of maintenance they have slipped into disarray.

I have been greatly disappointed with the construction of the new roads because within a period of only a few months they had become caked in dirt. I saw in my minds eye the progression of how this centimeter of mud would eventually build into a foot and the roads would slip back into their state of deformity. The drainage/sewage system is still incomplete and the brand new roads still flood when it rains.

My pessimism was turned upside down last week when I saw street sweepers. The street sweeping was exactly what I imagined it would look like. Men, women and children were walking down the center of the road and brushing away the dirt and grime with palm frond brooms. It might not have the same effect as a high powered street sweeper truck, but it still gets the job done.

With no roads, the economy of Chuuk will never advance. This essential step must be undertaken with care to ensure the future success of the state. I am happy beyond belief to see that they finally got the sense together to clean and maintain the roads. Good work!

Solar Lights

A few months ago, my dad sent me a few different type of solar lanterns to give to my host family. The smallest and cheapest of those lamps turned out to be an amazing feat of human achievement. The D. Light S100 solar light has brought brightness to the dark nights in Chuuk. Most people use expensive and dirty kerosene lamps to light their houses at nights and others use second-rate Chinese flashlights that zap a pair of batteries in a few days. Both options are insufficient, but solar provides a solution.

            My host family liked the light so much that they asked for a few more. My dad happily purchased a couple more and sent them in the mail. Pretty soon, the neighbors became jealous of the fabulous lighting system and asked if they get some. As a Peace Corps volunteer I am not allowed to sell things so I had to rely on the generosity of my dad to buy the lights for the community. He sent over a dozen more of the lights and I gave them away to some of my extended family and community members.

            During the last month, a wild craze has started in my village about the lights. Maybe not every single day, but at least every other day I get stopped on the road and asked for a light. People that I have never seen before will approach me and beg for a solar light. They are obsessed with the potential of these solar lights and the rumors are spreading like wildfire.

            I cant rely on my dad to buy 100 lights for every family in my village, but the need is obvious and the demand is large. I am trying to work with a local NGO to apply for a grant from the light corporation to get a big load of lights. We’ll see what happens. 

Mowing the Lawn

          Mowing the lawn and weeding the garden have never really appealed to me as enjoyable activities. For most of my life, hired gardeners have taken care of those jobs at my house in America. Manicuring the backyard for ascetic appeal was just not on the top of my priority list, and I always found a way to avoid them.

            Taking care of your backyard in Chuuk is a little bit different though. Mostly because your backyard is a tropical rain forest. Elephant grass ten feet tall, leaves bigger than a table, and an endless mat of twirling vines that envelop everything they touch. Having a jungle as a backyard and having to maintain its appearance and functionality present an interesting paradox. It takes a lot of work, but the work is a lot of fun.

            The water saturated green plants that cover every inch of my island grow at an amazing pace. The combination of abundant rain and constant sunshine provide the perfect team to help plants flourish. Grass grows faster than it can be cut, vines climb higher than we can reach and abandoned buildings get buried in a mound of foliage in a few years.

The jungle is also the source of our livelihood and we depend on it for food. If we allow the grasses, vines and weeds to overtake everything; then our food crops will be denied the nutrients that they need. So the locals are in a constant battle to keep the encroaching jungle at bay.

            Luckily, rain forest plants are easy to chop. They are filled with water and can be sliced like butter with a sharp machete. So when the time comes to “mow the lawn”, I usually jump at the opportunity and go nuts with my machete. I go on a samurai rampage and hack the unwanted plants into smithereens. It is a lot more fun that pushing a lawn mower.

Humid Hygiene

Living in a humid jungle surrounded by sandy oceans easily creates plenty of hygiene issues to deal with. Bacterial infections, skin diseases, parasites and infected wounds are commonplace. The stifling heat squeezes pounds of sweat out of your pores on a daily basis and leaves a stinky grime coating your body. The constant rains transform the dirt roads into muddy quagmires that are unavoidable and will eventually cake your ankles and feet with gunk.
       The way to avoid being disgusting all the time is to take a lot of showers. Almost everybody takes at least 2 showers a day. The most common insult that kids spout at their enemies is, “kese tutu nessosor! (you didn’t shower this morning)”. Everybody showers all the time.
          Showering means dumping a few buckets of cold water over your head from the tub of tank water. It’s a cold shocking experience that takes all the fun out of showering. Contrary to my experiences in America, showering is a laborious task not a relaxing rest. When I shower in Chuuk, I clean myself like a maniac. I scour my feet with a laundry brush, use my abrasive washcloth to scrub every inch of my body, and rid my skin of all the tropical germs that have accumulate during a long day.
            When I go to the main island of Weno, I often expect to relish in the luxuries of a clean and slightly more prosperous environment. Running water, flushing toilets, and air conditioning. But often these things are not readily at my disposable. The showers at hotels are usually cold and often clog. The air conditioning units at our office are broken. And last week the septic tank filled up in our office. So now when you flush the toilet, poop squirts up through the drain hole and covers the bathroom floor.

Hippie Hair

I have been living up to the stereotypical Peace Corps image and letting my hair and beard grow long and mangy. For the majority of my life I have stuck with the short jock-style haircuts. A short buzz that never sprouts longer than an inch. I liked the low maintenance/low worry style of short hair. About a year ago, I decided to take a new path for my hairdo and let it flow. My hair is now stretching down towards my shoulders and flopping in my face.

            While the hair is often problematic and takes some work to keep it under control, there are some fun advantages to having long hair. The best and worst part of my long hair is the constant experimentation with harnessing its wild strands and fashioning into a controllable style. Hats are an easy way to contain my mane of salty brown hair, but I have also learned some new ways to play with accessories on my head. Sometimes I rock the half-ponytail/samurai topknot look. Other times I loop a thin headband around the top and look like a Spanish soccer player. I’ve tried the double braided Pippy Long Stocking technique. I can also slick it back and do a good impression of a 50’s greaser. Just recently I have enough length to cinch it back into a customary ponytail and blend in with the girls. The options are endless, but none of them feel very natural.

            My favorite zany hairstyle has been tightly braiding my hair into cornrows. This gangster look is quite popular here in Chuuk and I get jealous praise from all the locals each time that I do it. The style is called cornrows in America because the lines of hair resemble cornrows. Well there is no corn in Chuuk, so they came up with their own unique names to characterize the different styles. There is the nipach (octopus), the bunkin (pumpkin), and my personal favorite the senco (mosquito coil).

            When I return to America I will most likely chop off my raggedy mop of hair and return to normalcy, but it has been an interesting hairdressing experience to play with my tropical locks.

Hitchhiking the Waterways

The trend of hitchhiking America’s highways has faded considerably since its heyday in the 1970’s. It is no longer common to see longhaired wanderers sticking their thumbs out to oncoming traffic on the side of the road. However, hitchhiking has made a comeback in Chuuk. But just like everything else that comes from America to Chuuk, the locals have put their own unique twist on it.

            We don’t hitchhike for cars. We hitchhike for boats. The strips of water between the scattered islands of the Chuuk Lagoon get much more traffic than the measly road on the main island of Weno. Fiberglass motor boats with 40 horsepower engines are the standard form of transportation in this watery world. Even if you are going from one place to another on the same island, it is much quicker to hop in a boat.

            When I want to make a trip to Weno in order to spend some internet browsing hours, down a few beers or handle some business I need to find a boat to take me there. Oftentimes I can get a ride with my family or close neighbors, but sometimes I must hitchhike for a ride.

            I will stand out on my dock and wave my arms frantically in the air when a boat comes passing along. Since I am an innocent looking white guy, somebody almost always stops for me. I will toss them a few dollars for gas and get a lift across the depths of blue to the main island.

            Some of my most interesting boating experiences have been while hitchhiking back from Weno. The return trip is much more sketchy and unreliable. The timing, placement and weather all throw monkey wrenches into the situation. I am usually able to find a willing boater, but sometimes it takes me on a wild ride.

            One week, I found a man that I knew from my village who offered to give me a ride. He bragged profusely about his new boat that he just got last week. He is a very poor man and obviously had not purchased this boat, so I don’t know the real truth behind the situation. I waited around the market place dock while he went to get gas. The market place dock is possibly the shadiest place on Weno. It is a hangout for drunks and troublemakers and has turned into a living and breathing junkyard of trash. I wormed my way out of a few drunken conversations with half naked men, before retiring to the boat to wait for my captain. One man held my hand for at least two minutes and kept squeezing harder and harder. He had a huge smile on his face and was asking me normal questions, but I finally recoiled away when he gave the standard “Chuukese tickle”. This move involves one person rubbing the inner palm of your hand while you are embraced in a handshake. It is known as a flirtatious move, but drunken men do it to me all the time.

            We finally got in the boat and drove a mile or so to the other side of the island, where we pulled into another garbage filled marina and tied up our boat on a slimy rock. We then waited for over two hours for my captain’s nephew to get off work. We weren’t waiting to give him a ride. His uncle just wanted to ask him for some money to buy some food for his family. He finally met his employed nephew and managed to get $4 from him. I lent him another $1 and he bought a huge bag of turkey tails. The ass fat of American consumerism.

            Another time I got on a boat with a young man from the other side of Fefan. He was extremely concerned about my safety and continually warned me about dangers of Weno. His boat had broken and his uncle was there to tow it back. We tried to tow the boat but the waves were too big and the storm was too fierce. So we detached the second boat and made our way back to the island. The captain was furious with all the problems that day and wouldn’t drop me at my home, so I disembarked more than an hour’s walk away and wandered through the jungle on my trek home. The young man refused to let me go alone and followed me the whole way. 

Reflection Time

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The commute from Fefan to Weno is a tiresome and annoying task for most people. They dread the splattering salt water, the tailbone crunching smacks, and the deadening heat. It costs too much money, takes too much time and is always a hassle.

            Although I struggle with these same issues when crossing the lagoon waters on my way to or from Weno, I actually enjoy the ride. The main reason that I like the commute is because it serves as a time of personal reflection for me. I often get restless in my jungle abode or get wrapped up in the frustrations of school and poverty, but when I get out onto the open ocean everything changes. My troubles slip away and float out towards the distant horizon. The salty air whisks away my worries and a calming sensation washes over my body and mind.

            When I am out on the ocean, it puts everything in perspective. Literally and figuratively. Being in the middle of the dotted islands on the shimmering blue canvas gives me a jolt of reality and reminds me that I am not stuck in a dusky classroom in a sweltering jungle. I am in the center of paradise and the sights around me are beautiful beyond imagination. Somehow, this realization of the physical freedom of my situation spurs a feeling of happiness and contentment with my life.

            I have some of my deepest philosophical thoughts and most affirming inspirations while I am floating over the open waters. I ponder my life decisions, plan the future, recollect the past, and appreciate my life. The quiet atmosphere and feelings of freedom never fail to boost me up. At the end of our journey, most of the other passengers have nasty grimaces strewn across their faces but I will usually have a cheerful smirk on my salty sunburned face.