Check out where I've been living for the past two years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTYZMeSBiNs&feature=youtu.be
July 12, 2012
June 27, 2012
Dentists!
Sorry I didn't have a chance to update every day this week like I said. But honestly, I have a good excuse this time. I've been working with a dental project here for the past week. You can check out what we've been doing at the website:
http://mdsp.unitedcp.org/
It's been a really cool project to work on. I'll try to post some more details about it later.
http://mdsp.unitedcp.org/
It's been a really cool project to work on. I'll try to post some more details about it later.
June 23, 2012
Aramasei (my people)
The people that I interact with on a regular basis:
 |
| Arno hanging out at Turek |
Arno: Arno is my host dad. He’s about 35, short and a bit pudgy with an everpresent beaming smile on his face. He loves to joke around and mess with people in a fun way. He is a delight to be around and is one of the most genuinely kind people I have ever met.
 |
| Arno at Field Day |
Merlin: Merlin is Arno’s wife and my host mom. She is the woman of the house and has a hilarious wry and sarcastic sense of humor. Things around Turek (that’s the name of my compound) would come to a standstill without her.
 |
| Arno, me, and Merlin |
Morphy: Morphy is Merlin’s brother which technically makes him a host uncle to me, but I consider him my host brother. He is fairly reserved with a has a boyish face, but he does all of the hard work around Turek. He picks and pounds breadfruit, feeds the pigs, chops wood, fixes things, and pretty much does whatever needs to be done. Mortphy and I spend a lot of time together playing chess, playing guitar, and just hanging out.
 |
| Morphy |
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| Carlos and his friends |
Carlos: Carlos is a neighbor and probably my best friend on the island. We have made a fish trap together, go fishing periodically, and go for walks together. I go over to Carlos’ house pretty regularly and just sit and drink a coconut with him and chat for hours at a time.
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| Alcher (the village chief) and Carlos |
Bob: Bob is the principal of Satowan Elementary School and my boss. He has big glasses and the most incredible white mutton chops I have ever seen. He is a hard worker who truly wants to improve the school and has been very easy to work with.
 |
| Bob and his chops |
There are definitely other people who I spend a lot of time with, but these are probably the people who have had the biggest impact on my experience on Satowan.
June 22, 2012
Back at it!
A recent message I received on Facebook from my good friend Amy (GBS refers to my group of friends from college):
Dear Mr. Benjamin Perdue,
This is an official warning. Your blog, Ben's Micronesian Adventure, has been in a state of neglect some nine months. According to our records, the last post to this account occurred on the twenty seventh of December two thousand eleven at 18:44. This delinquent behavior is unacceptable. Please rectify this situation immediately. If the abhorrent condition of your blog has not been improved by the first of July two thousand and twelve, a fine shall be levied. This fine may include, but is not limited to, 100 hours of community service (specifically to the GBS community), 14 games of settlers (must endure constant harassment of fellow GBS members), performance in a back row two thousand ten reunion private concert (for official GBS members only), or the cost of 12 roundtrip flights from Denver, CO to Micronesia (for GBS members, because your blog has obviously become an unreliable source of information about your travels and therefore we must come directly to the source).
Your compliance is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Amy Howard
Unofficial Spokeswoman for the GBS Club.
Dear Mr. Benjamin Perdue,
This is an official warning. Your blog, Ben's Micronesian Adventure, has been in a state of neglect some nine months. According to our records, the last post to this account occurred on the twenty seventh of December two thousand eleven at 18:44. This delinquent behavior is unacceptable. Please rectify this situation immediately. If the abhorrent condition of your blog has not been improved by the first of July two thousand and twelve, a fine shall be levied. This fine may include, but is not limited to, 100 hours of community service (specifically to the GBS community), 14 games of settlers (must endure constant harassment of fellow GBS members), performance in a back row two thousand ten reunion private concert (for official GBS members only), or the cost of 12 roundtrip flights from Denver, CO to Micronesia (for GBS members, because your blog has obviously become an unreliable source of information about your travels and therefore we must come directly to the source).
Your compliance is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Amy Howard
Unofficial Spokeswoman for the GBS Club.
Well said, Amy. Although your dates are a little off—I haven’t posted anything since September, 2011. I must admit that I have been seriously ignoring this blog. The reasons for this are numerous and mostly stupid, but I will try to rectify that situation now.
My last post was about last summer’s adventures. Considering a full year has past since then, I won’t attempt to talk about everything that has happened since then. Instead I will (attempt) to write a post a day for the next week or so about various aspects of island life that have been conspicuously absent from this blog.
Today’s topic: basketball.
The two major sports that people play on the island are basketball and volleyball. Generally, guys play basketball and girls play volleyball, but there is some crossover. Satowan is fortunate to have two multipurpose courts for both basketball and volleyball—one at the elementary school and one at the high school.
I have gotten pretty involved in the basketball scene on Satowan. There is a standing pick-up game from about 3:30 to 5:30 every afternoon at the elementary school court and anywhere from 10 to 40 guys show up. If we have lot of people, we play 5-on-5 full court, but if we only have a few then we play 4-on-4 half court. Full court games are played to 5, half court games are played to 7. While there are probably no future NBA stars on Satowan, some of the guys are pretty good. There is some influence of “street ball” culture of black America
I haven’t played basketball since my Freshman year of high school, but after 2 years of playing on the island, I have actually gotten halfway decent. Every time I play, I am easily the tallest guy on the court. I am without question the all-time leader in blocked shots, and I always play center. Unfortunately, this means that I have to defend Rodney. Rodney is like Shaq. He’s probably 6’1” and at least 250 pounds and just posts up under the hoop and throws up layups that are impossible to stop. It’s immensely frustrating to play against him, and I usually just throw in the towel after a few games if he’s playing.
Although I was never that into basketball back in the states, it has become an incredibly important aspect of my life and an immense solace to me here. I have become part of the basketball community on Satowan—the guys expect me to come every day and notice when I don’t show up. More importantly, when I am on the court, I am just another guy on the island. Nobody treats me any different (better or worse) because of the fact that I am a white American. I can just play the game, hang out with the guys, and feel comfortable in my community.
For a few weeks a few months ago, I stopped playing basketball. I had gotten kind of sick and was distracted with school work and planning for the upcoming summer camp, so I just sort of stopped going. During this time, I also noticed that I was becoming irritable and in a bit of a funk that I couldn’t seem to snap out of. I was feeling less connected to my community and more isolated. While I didn’t see it at the time, it is abundantly clear to me now that this semi-depression was directly related to the fact that I wasn’t playing basketball any more. As soon as I started going back to the daily pick-up games, I started feeling better, physically and emotionally. My first day back, my friends asked where I had been, but in a matter of minutes we were back to our old ways of joking around, hanging out, and playing just like nothing had changed.
I never would have guessed that a simple daily game of basketball could have such a huge impact on my personal wellbeing.
September 27, 2011
Summer (part 3)
[continued from Summer (part 2)]
…oh wait no I couldn’t, because Chuuk State doesn’t have any Peace Corps approved medical providers. In fact if you read the Lonely Planet entry on medical care in Chuuk, you will get one simple sentence: “Don’t go to Chuuk State Hospital.”
This is the general wisdom that we follow as well, so Peace Corps bought me a plane ticket to Pohnpei where they at least have one clinic run by Filipino doctors. I was excited to go to Pohnpei because I would get to hang out with some Peace Corps friends who I hadn’t seen since last year and get to go out a bit in the big town (yay). But I was also a bit disappointed because I had to miss the Chuuk Department of Education Symposium and, more importantly, some quality time hanging out with my Chuuk friends (boo). But it wasn’t my decision—my ticket had already been bought so I was going there like it or not.
As soon as I landed I went to the clinic with the Peace Corps doctor, Koch. The doctor at the clinic looked at my toe for approximately 6 seconds before concluding that I had severed the middle tendon on my left foot and would need surgery to repair it. Wonderful. The doctor claimed that he could do the surgery there in Pohnpei, but Peace Corps generally doesn’t mess around with things like surgery and decided to send me somewhere where I could get pretty good medical care: the Philippines. Not Guam, not Hawaii, not Australia—the Philippines. But hey, free trip to Manila for me! So I packed up my bag and flew business class to Manila (because that was the only ticket left—thank you American tax payers for paying for my free wine and Jack and Coke!).
To give you some perspective, Manila is a city of 10 million people whereas the entire country of the FSM has slightly over 100 thousand. The only way I could have felt more like Dorothy landing in Oz even is if the world suddenly changed from black and white to color. [Insert any number of jokes concerning Munchkins and my relative height compared to that of most Filipinos] I changed my money at the airport and took a taxi from the airport to my hotel. Aside from having about 8 heart attacks during the drive because of the speed and craziness of the driving, I made it to the hotel fine. The hotel (which would be my home for the next three weeks) was simple but nice. It was really a hostel, but I had my own room with air conditioning and wireless internet access in the main lobby, so I was happy.
The next morning, a Peace Corps doctor picked me up and took me to the Philippine Orthopedic Group for my first appointment with the doctor. The office was very clean and it looked like any other American hospital or doctor’s clinic. My surgeon confirmed the diagnosis of a severed tendon and said he would do the surgery in about 10 days (to let the original wound heal) Heseemed knowledgeable so I was feeling pretty comfortable until I had this little exchange with him:
Doctor: So what kind of anesthesia are we going to use on you?
Me: Umm, what?
Doctor: Are we going to use local anesthesia or a spinal tap?
Me: Umm, I don’t really know. You’re the doctor, what do you normally use?
Doctor: Well, what’s your pain tolerance like?
Me: Umm, what?
Doctor: Your pain tolerance—is it high or low?
Yea, that made me feel a little less confortable, but whatever. Just another story…
So I had 10 days to kill in Manila. What did I do? Just about everything that I couldn’t do in Chuuk. I went out to bars, went to the movies, went bowling, went to a hookah bar, used the internet ceaselessly, skyped with a bunch of friends, ate Mexican food, ate Greek food, ate Italian food, ate Thai food, etc. The highlight was probably going to a transvestite karaoke bar and singing in front of a bunch of amused Filipinos (Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby and Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA—yea, I’m that cool).
Well the fun times finally came to an end and I had to check in to Makati Medical Center the afternoon before my scheduled morning surgery. The surgery went fine (they used a local nerve block as well as sedation, if you were wondering) but I stayed in the hospital for a couple more nights just so that they could check on me. Considering all that I had was toe surgery, I was given an excessively large plastic boot that went almost all the way up to my knee and would be the bane of my existence for the next four weeks.
The week after the surgery was one of the worst weeks I have had in a long time. I was sick, my foot was sore, and my back was killing me because I was not used to the weight of the boot. I slept terribly that whole week and essentially couldn’t leave the hotel because I was on crutches and just generally felt like crap. I was homesick for Chuuk, wanted to be able to communicate with the people around me, and more than anything I missed my friends.
I was finally cleared to go back to Chuuk about 10 days after the surgery. I had made it abundantly clear to everyone in Peace Corps that I wanted to be on the first plane I possibly could back to Chuuk, so I was scheduled to fly out the same day I was cleared. After another business class flight (this time because I had a boot and “needed the extra legroom”), more wine and Jack and Cokes, and a bad movie, I was finally back in Chuuk and I couldn’t have been happier.
My little sojourn to the Philippines was a nice little break and an interesting adventure, but it really made me realize how happy I am to be in Chuuk. While it was nice to go out to bars and go bowling and stuff like that, that’s not what I imagined when I signed up for the Peace Corps. I imagined living in a tiny rural community and being hundreds of miles from any sort of development—and that’s exactly what I got. To be fair to the Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines, none of them are in Manila, but they still live a vastly different life than I do. All it took was a freak injury, a droopy toe, and a couple of weeks of being Dorothy in Munchkinland (seriously, I was at least at 8 inches taller than everyone!) for me to realize that I really am happy in Chuuk!
Endnote: my foot is healind well. I have a giant L-shaped scar on the top of my foot, but other than that everything seems to be pretty much fine.
…oh wait no I couldn’t, because Chuuk State doesn’t have any Peace Corps approved medical providers. In fact if you read the Lonely Planet entry on medical care in Chuuk, you will get one simple sentence: “Don’t go to Chuuk State Hospital.”
This is the general wisdom that we follow as well, so Peace Corps bought me a plane ticket to Pohnpei where they at least have one clinic run by Filipino doctors. I was excited to go to Pohnpei because I would get to hang out with some Peace Corps friends who I hadn’t seen since last year and get to go out a bit in the big town (yay). But I was also a bit disappointed because I had to miss the Chuuk Department of Education Symposium and, more importantly, some quality time hanging out with my Chuuk friends (boo). But it wasn’t my decision—my ticket had already been bought so I was going there like it or not.
As soon as I landed I went to the clinic with the Peace Corps doctor, Koch. The doctor at the clinic looked at my toe for approximately 6 seconds before concluding that I had severed the middle tendon on my left foot and would need surgery to repair it. Wonderful. The doctor claimed that he could do the surgery there in Pohnpei, but Peace Corps generally doesn’t mess around with things like surgery and decided to send me somewhere where I could get pretty good medical care: the Philippines. Not Guam, not Hawaii, not Australia—the Philippines. But hey, free trip to Manila for me! So I packed up my bag and flew business class to Manila (because that was the only ticket left—thank you American tax payers for paying for my free wine and Jack and Coke!).
To give you some perspective, Manila is a city of 10 million people whereas the entire country of the FSM has slightly over 100 thousand. The only way I could have felt more like Dorothy landing in Oz even is if the world suddenly changed from black and white to color. [Insert any number of jokes concerning Munchkins and my relative height compared to that of most Filipinos] I changed my money at the airport and took a taxi from the airport to my hotel. Aside from having about 8 heart attacks during the drive because of the speed and craziness of the driving, I made it to the hotel fine. The hotel (which would be my home for the next three weeks) was simple but nice. It was really a hostel, but I had my own room with air conditioning and wireless internet access in the main lobby, so I was happy.
The next morning, a Peace Corps doctor picked me up and took me to the Philippine Orthopedic Group for my first appointment with the doctor. The office was very clean and it looked like any other American hospital or doctor’s clinic. My surgeon confirmed the diagnosis of a severed tendon and said he would do the surgery in about 10 days (to let the original wound heal) Heseemed knowledgeable so I was feeling pretty comfortable until I had this little exchange with him:
Doctor: So what kind of anesthesia are we going to use on you?
Me: Umm, what?
Doctor: Are we going to use local anesthesia or a spinal tap?
Me: Umm, I don’t really know. You’re the doctor, what do you normally use?
Doctor: Well, what’s your pain tolerance like?
Me: Umm, what?
Doctor: Your pain tolerance—is it high or low?
Yea, that made me feel a little less confortable, but whatever. Just another story…
So I had 10 days to kill in Manila. What did I do? Just about everything that I couldn’t do in Chuuk. I went out to bars, went to the movies, went bowling, went to a hookah bar, used the internet ceaselessly, skyped with a bunch of friends, ate Mexican food, ate Greek food, ate Italian food, ate Thai food, etc. The highlight was probably going to a transvestite karaoke bar and singing in front of a bunch of amused Filipinos (Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby and Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA—yea, I’m that cool).
Well the fun times finally came to an end and I had to check in to Makati Medical Center the afternoon before my scheduled morning surgery. The surgery went fine (they used a local nerve block as well as sedation, if you were wondering) but I stayed in the hospital for a couple more nights just so that they could check on me. Considering all that I had was toe surgery, I was given an excessively large plastic boot that went almost all the way up to my knee and would be the bane of my existence for the next four weeks.
The week after the surgery was one of the worst weeks I have had in a long time. I was sick, my foot was sore, and my back was killing me because I was not used to the weight of the boot. I slept terribly that whole week and essentially couldn’t leave the hotel because I was on crutches and just generally felt like crap. I was homesick for Chuuk, wanted to be able to communicate with the people around me, and more than anything I missed my friends.
I was finally cleared to go back to Chuuk about 10 days after the surgery. I had made it abundantly clear to everyone in Peace Corps that I wanted to be on the first plane I possibly could back to Chuuk, so I was scheduled to fly out the same day I was cleared. After another business class flight (this time because I had a boot and “needed the extra legroom”), more wine and Jack and Cokes, and a bad movie, I was finally back in Chuuk and I couldn’t have been happier.
My little sojourn to the Philippines was a nice little break and an interesting adventure, but it really made me realize how happy I am to be in Chuuk. While it was nice to go out to bars and go bowling and stuff like that, that’s not what I imagined when I signed up for the Peace Corps. I imagined living in a tiny rural community and being hundreds of miles from any sort of development—and that’s exactly what I got. To be fair to the Peace Corps Volunteers in the Philippines, none of them are in Manila, but they still live a vastly different life than I do. All it took was a freak injury, a droopy toe, and a couple of weeks of being Dorothy in Munchkinland (seriously, I was at least at 8 inches taller than everyone!) for me to realize that I really am happy in Chuuk!
Endnote: my foot is healind well. I have a giant L-shaped scar on the top of my foot, but other than that everything seems to be pretty much fine.
September 26, 2011
Summer (part 2)
PART 2
The highlight of my summer was when 3 of my Peace Corps friends came out to the Mortlocks to hang out for a few weeks. Johnny, Julie, and Becky are all Volunteers in Chuuk, but they are in the lagoon meaning they are a solid 25 hour boat ride from me. Needless to say, I don’t see them very often, so it was really awesome that they decided to come out to visit.
If you have read my previous blog posts, you know that ship rides to and from the Mortlocks can be, well…interesting. I have had my fair share of awful ship rides, but nothing compares with the horrific ship ride from Hell that my 3 friends had to endure to visit me. For a detailed version of the story you can check out Johnn's blog, but to make a long story short, it sucked. Big time. It rained the whole time and they had nowhere to take cover. (Side note: Johnny updates his blog way more often than I do and he’s a pretty awesome writer, so if you’re interested in reading more fun stories about Chuuk, I highly recommend checking it out.) You can imagine that when I picked them up from the ship, they were incredibly excited to see me—not because I’m they’re friend or anything like that, but because my presence meant that they could finally GET OFF THE FREAKIN' SHIP!
The people of Satowan had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of 3 new white people to the island for some time, so that had outdone themselves in making a giant welcoming party for my friends. Unfortunately, they scheduled this party for the moment that my soaking wet, sleep deprived, seasick friends stepped onto the island. So, instead of taking a shower and lying down for a few hours, the 3 amigos had to endure almost an hour of singing and speeches welcoming them to Satowan. I finally had to stand up and explain to my Satowan friends that my American friends were very cold and wet and were very sorry but that they would have to excuse themselves because they kind of felt like they were gonna die.
After this less than perfect start to the trip, we all had an awesome time hanging out on Satowan. We walked all around the island, met a bunch of my friends, and even played a white people versus brown people game of basketball (no need for jerseys…). After about 4 days on Satowan, we packed up our stuff and headed over to Lekinioch island to meet up with another one of our Peace Corps friends, Farrah.
Farrah is one of my very best Peace Corps friends and I always enjoy hanging out with her. I have been to her island a couple of times for various events, so I know her host family pretty well too. We have fun jibing each other about our respective islands which usually goes something like this:
Me: Your island is full of homies and gangsters.
Farah: Yea, well… ummm…
Me: Punks and knuckleheads and homies and gangsters.
Farrah: Shut up.
This is kind of an inside joke between me and Farrah, but this exact conversation happens verbatim approximately every time we talk. Farrah keeps telling me that she’s going to come up with a comeback one of these days, but I’m still waiting.
But there is one thing that Lekinioch has on me: it always seems to get the better of me. Although I really enjoy going to visit the homies and gangsters, my past trips to Lekinioch have not been very successful. Something always seems to go wrong when I go there (iPod disappears, cut my arm on rusty rebar), and this trip was no exception. One night when all of us were getting ready to go to bed, I walked outside to brush my teeth. Farrah only has one light in her house, so as I walked around the corner of the house to spit, I was completely in the dark. Now normally this isn’t a problem—I walk around my house in the dark all the time because I know where everything is. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that there was a stack of broken window panes stalked beside the house (side note: Really Farrah? Broken glass right beside the house? Which gangster came up with that brilliant death trap?).
Well, dear reader, you can imagine what happened next. I kicked the pile of glass and cut the top of my foot pretty bad. Although it didn’t hurt that bad, the side of the house resembled a murder scene. After cleaning up the wound and the pool of blood, I noticed that my middle toe was drooping below the others. I’m no doctor, but one look at something like that and you can pretty much tell that something is amiss. I called the Peace Corps doctor on my SatPhone the next day, and he told me that I should come in to Weno ASAP to get it checked out.
So I waited another six days until the next ship arrived.
In that time, we all had an awesome time hanging out. My droopy toe wasn’t hurting, so I didn’t really think too much of it. My friends started calling me “Droopy Toe” and all sorts of permutations on that name (“Droops,” “The Droopster,” “Droopy the Clown”). We spent a few more nights on Lekinioch and then headed over to Oneop to our friend Naavid's house. Unfortunately, we could only spend one day on Oneop because the ship showed up without warning. After a delightful 40 hour ship ride back to Weno, I could finally get my toe checked out…
The highlight of my summer was when 3 of my Peace Corps friends came out to the Mortlocks to hang out for a few weeks. Johnny, Julie, and Becky are all Volunteers in Chuuk, but they are in the lagoon meaning they are a solid 25 hour boat ride from me. Needless to say, I don’t see them very often, so it was really awesome that they decided to come out to visit.
If you have read my previous blog posts, you know that ship rides to and from the Mortlocks can be, well…interesting. I have had my fair share of awful ship rides, but nothing compares with the horrific ship ride from Hell that my 3 friends had to endure to visit me. For a detailed version of the story you can check out Johnn's blog, but to make a long story short, it sucked. Big time. It rained the whole time and they had nowhere to take cover. (Side note: Johnny updates his blog way more often than I do and he’s a pretty awesome writer, so if you’re interested in reading more fun stories about Chuuk, I highly recommend checking it out.) You can imagine that when I picked them up from the ship, they were incredibly excited to see me—not because I’m they’re friend or anything like that, but because my presence meant that they could finally GET OFF THE FREAKIN' SHIP!
The people of Satowan had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of 3 new white people to the island for some time, so that had outdone themselves in making a giant welcoming party for my friends. Unfortunately, they scheduled this party for the moment that my soaking wet, sleep deprived, seasick friends stepped onto the island. So, instead of taking a shower and lying down for a few hours, the 3 amigos had to endure almost an hour of singing and speeches welcoming them to Satowan. I finally had to stand up and explain to my Satowan friends that my American friends were very cold and wet and were very sorry but that they would have to excuse themselves because they kind of felt like they were gonna die.
After this less than perfect start to the trip, we all had an awesome time hanging out on Satowan. We walked all around the island, met a bunch of my friends, and even played a white people versus brown people game of basketball (no need for jerseys…). After about 4 days on Satowan, we packed up our stuff and headed over to Lekinioch island to meet up with another one of our Peace Corps friends, Farrah.
Farrah is one of my very best Peace Corps friends and I always enjoy hanging out with her. I have been to her island a couple of times for various events, so I know her host family pretty well too. We have fun jibing each other about our respective islands which usually goes something like this:
Me: Your island is full of homies and gangsters.
Farah: Yea, well… ummm…
Me: Punks and knuckleheads and homies and gangsters.
Farrah: Shut up.
This is kind of an inside joke between me and Farrah, but this exact conversation happens verbatim approximately every time we talk. Farrah keeps telling me that she’s going to come up with a comeback one of these days, but I’m still waiting.
But there is one thing that Lekinioch has on me: it always seems to get the better of me. Although I really enjoy going to visit the homies and gangsters, my past trips to Lekinioch have not been very successful. Something always seems to go wrong when I go there (iPod disappears, cut my arm on rusty rebar), and this trip was no exception. One night when all of us were getting ready to go to bed, I walked outside to brush my teeth. Farrah only has one light in her house, so as I walked around the corner of the house to spit, I was completely in the dark. Now normally this isn’t a problem—I walk around my house in the dark all the time because I know where everything is. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that there was a stack of broken window panes stalked beside the house (side note: Really Farrah? Broken glass right beside the house? Which gangster came up with that brilliant death trap?).
Well, dear reader, you can imagine what happened next. I kicked the pile of glass and cut the top of my foot pretty bad. Although it didn’t hurt that bad, the side of the house resembled a murder scene. After cleaning up the wound and the pool of blood, I noticed that my middle toe was drooping below the others. I’m no doctor, but one look at something like that and you can pretty much tell that something is amiss. I called the Peace Corps doctor on my SatPhone the next day, and he told me that I should come in to Weno ASAP to get it checked out.
So I waited another six days until the next ship arrived.
In that time, we all had an awesome time hanging out. My droopy toe wasn’t hurting, so I didn’t really think too much of it. My friends started calling me “Droopy Toe” and all sorts of permutations on that name (“Droops,” “The Droopster,” “Droopy the Clown”). We spent a few more nights on Lekinioch and then headed over to Oneop to our friend Naavid's house. Unfortunately, we could only spend one day on Oneop because the ship showed up without warning. After a delightful 40 hour ship ride back to Weno, I could finally get my toe checked out…
September 21, 2011
Summer (part 1)
First of all let me apologize for not updating this blog in waaaaay too long. I could write any number of lame excuses, but the truth is that I just been lazy and haven’t written anything in a while. I have had a very eventful summer, so I will break it up into a couple of separate posts
At the beginning of June, we held our second annual Camp Boys to Men. Run by the Peace Corps Volunteers in the Mortlocks along with a number of local men, the focus of the camp is to help 8th grade boys in the Mortlocks make a smooth transition from elementary school to high school and from being a boy to being a man. The theme of this year’s camp was “Manawach Lessor, Ach Filátá Ikenna,” which roughly translates to “our lives, our decisions.” We led sessions on diet and exercise, substance abuse and mental health, and sex education and HIV/AIDS education. Additionally, we had lots of games and activities for the boys to do together.
While the camp had its downfalls (e.g. the legitimate no holds barred fist fight between two boys about absolutely nothing which I had to break up… fortunately my watch band was the only serious casualty of the event ) but I think it was a success overall. The topics that we covered are not talked about in Chuukese culture, so it is definitely important for the boys to hear it. The ultimate goal of the camp is that it can be taken over and completely run by locals in the next year or so. While this may be an ambitious goal, I think that it is certainly possible. I am already thinking about ideas for next year’s camp and how we can begin to turn the camp over to the local partners.
In the middle of June was graduation season. I went to three graduations: Satowan Elementary School, Satowan High School, and Moch High School. Graduation ceremonies are definitely a chance for the school and the community to show off a little bit. The schools get decked out with decorations, coconut fronds, and lots and lots of food. While it’s great that the schools take so much pride in the graduation ceremony, it is a bit frustrating that they don’t put the same kind of effort into the day to day operations of the school. If the community was as involved in school as it was in the graduation ceremony, I have no doubt that the school would be a whole lot better. And, like every ceremony/meeting here, the graduation ceremonies were long. Really long. Unnecessarily long. At the Satowan High School graduation, the keynote speaker spent about 45 minutes talking about what “commencement exercises” meant. That’s right, he didn’t speak about the THEME of the graduation (yes, there was a theme), he thought that it was most worthwhile to spend his time elaborating on how “commencement exercises” literally meant that the students were “beginning work.” And who was the keynote speaker? The governor of Chuuk State.
While the actual graduation ceremonies were a bit tedious, it was fun to get some time to hang out with my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in the Mortlocks. There are currently 5 of us out there, and we don’t get to see each other too much, so we generally take advantage of the time we do spend together. And by this I obviously mean that we trade books that we have finished, steal movies and music off of one another’s computers, and otherwise prepare ourselves to spend a few more months on our respective islands.
At the beginning of June, we held our second annual Camp Boys to Men. Run by the Peace Corps Volunteers in the Mortlocks along with a number of local men, the focus of the camp is to help 8th grade boys in the Mortlocks make a smooth transition from elementary school to high school and from being a boy to being a man. The theme of this year’s camp was “Manawach Lessor, Ach Filátá Ikenna,” which roughly translates to “our lives, our decisions.” We led sessions on diet and exercise, substance abuse and mental health, and sex education and HIV/AIDS education. Additionally, we had lots of games and activities for the boys to do together.
While the camp had its downfalls (e.g. the legitimate no holds barred fist fight between two boys about absolutely nothing which I had to break up… fortunately my watch band was the only serious casualty of the event ) but I think it was a success overall. The topics that we covered are not talked about in Chuukese culture, so it is definitely important for the boys to hear it. The ultimate goal of the camp is that it can be taken over and completely run by locals in the next year or so. While this may be an ambitious goal, I think that it is certainly possible. I am already thinking about ideas for next year’s camp and how we can begin to turn the camp over to the local partners.
In the middle of June was graduation season. I went to three graduations: Satowan Elementary School, Satowan High School, and Moch High School. Graduation ceremonies are definitely a chance for the school and the community to show off a little bit. The schools get decked out with decorations, coconut fronds, and lots and lots of food. While it’s great that the schools take so much pride in the graduation ceremony, it is a bit frustrating that they don’t put the same kind of effort into the day to day operations of the school. If the community was as involved in school as it was in the graduation ceremony, I have no doubt that the school would be a whole lot better. And, like every ceremony/meeting here, the graduation ceremonies were long. Really long. Unnecessarily long. At the Satowan High School graduation, the keynote speaker spent about 45 minutes talking about what “commencement exercises” meant. That’s right, he didn’t speak about the THEME of the graduation (yes, there was a theme), he thought that it was most worthwhile to spend his time elaborating on how “commencement exercises” literally meant that the students were “beginning work.” And who was the keynote speaker? The governor of Chuuk State.
While the actual graduation ceremonies were a bit tedious, it was fun to get some time to hang out with my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in the Mortlocks. There are currently 5 of us out there, and we don’t get to see each other too much, so we generally take advantage of the time we do spend together. And by this I obviously mean that we trade books that we have finished, steal movies and music off of one another’s computers, and otherwise prepare ourselves to spend a few more months on our respective islands.
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