33: Merman On A Dive for 9 Days

I will be going to the beautiful coral island of Pakin this Monday for a week, which means that:

A) I will go swimming at least once, hopefully like 3 times every day in crystal clear water full of corals, barracudas and sharks. Praying every night that I'll grow a mertail.

B) I will be without internet access for 9 days (also without electricity, running water, and even cell phone reception, but that's another story)

Wish me luck that my cameras and monofin don't break,

I'll be spamming you with posts when I get back.

Fun Fact: the world record for holding your breath is 23min

(the 23min is if you allow breathing of pure oxygen. If not, the record is 12min)

32: Ten Smells of Pohnpei

Ok, as most of you know, I am a person who pays a lot of attention to smell. So since you can’t experience that through the pictures, here is a post about everything olfactory:

Disclaimer: This is not to argue that Pohnpei is any more or less smelly than other places. It’s just to give you an idea of my experience here, like any other post. Stanford smells like eucalyptus, a little bit of pine, warm earth, sometimes jasmine. Hamburg smells like earth and rain and soil, and sometimes algae near the canals. I haven’t pinpointed Pohnpei yet (also not New Haven actually), but here are some impressions:

1) Kerosene: My family’s stove runs on kerosene. So that’s the first smell I notice in the morning (my host mom usually makes scrambled eggs and an island-style French toast, which is just bread dipped in egg and fried). The actual breakfast smell comes after.

2) BO: I have not come across anyone who smells of what Americans call “body odor” (Germans are more blunt, we just say someone stinks of sweat). Which is quite amazing, considering the climate.

3) Bettle Nut: I still haven’t tried it, cause the thought of the limestone powder cutting up my gum in order to get the chemicals in my bloodstream freaks me out. However, when people chew it, their breath actually smells pretty good. Interesting.

4) Mangrove: On the other side of the street from my house, there are mangroves. So every now and then at low tide it smells ocean-esque. Not the fresh North Sea smell, but more of a “you left a starfish out in the sun until it smells” kind of smell.

5) Sakau: it smells very much like earth. Especially when they are in the process of pounding or squeezing, the whole area smells like sakau.

6) Pigs: They’re somewhat next to the porch, and if the wind is right (or I guess, if one of them farts O.O) it smells like I’m on a farm.

7) Trash: I finally figured out the residential trash system. You just throw everything off the porch, organic or not. When it starts to smell, my Pahpa collects it in trash bags and drives it to the dumpster. Just yesterday when we came from work, he laid down on the porch and gave a “hoo! Something smells. Maybe the junk.” I was like “huh, maybe.” But on the inside I was roaring with laughter.

8) My room: smells like the insect repellent I spray on the windows (they call them “louvers” basically they are louvers made out of class, so they have lots of spaces between them).

9) Fish: Super fresh, but also not refrigerated in any way. So the fish smell in the market (and in the car on our way home) is different from the fish-store-smell I’m used to.

10) Fabric: My host parents take my laundry to the Laundromat (I’m pretty sure they wash their own clothes by hand), and whatever detergent she uses, it smells amazing. However, towel, sheets, pillows, everything kind of smells a little old/damp very quickly cause the humidity is so high.

31: Hiking with the Expats

Yesterday I went up to Sokehs Ridge again, this time not with locals, but with some other expatriates that I met the second week – two Germans (I’m currently German #6 on the island), an Oregonian, and a Kiwi. Lots of hydration required, cause their pace was less sightseeing and more exercise.

Oh, and I went to the local sakau spot again with my Pahpa. He got super sakau (the word they use for #drunkbysakau), so it took him a solid half hour from making the decision to go home, until he actually had his wits about to stand up. I spent most of the evening talking to a village elder about climate change and other changes (in diet, infrastructure etc.) that have been happening over the years. And I met the major (of what exactly I don’t know) and was apparently was able to impress him with my Mortlockese introduction phrases. Woot woot!

30: (Gay) Marriage

My desk buddy Selino is perhaps the chattiest person I have met on Pohnpei. Yesterday he went off on a tangent starting out of the blue with the comment “you know, my uncle died of a heat stroke in Louisianna.”

Todays topic: the recent Ireland referendum to create same sex marriage equality. This was my chance to innocently and covertly inquire about homophobia.

The result of this 1 person survey:

Gay people used to get beaten up a lot, now it’s only verbal harassment, and less of a taboo. Selino says that’s because Pohnpeians are lazy, especially because of drinking sakau (the most creative answer I’ve ever heard about the causes of improvement in discrimination). He also said there’s more gay foreigners than local people, his guestimation is 10 local gays on the island (in my experience guestimations here are extremely rough though, both for time, space, and numbers). He pleasantly surprised me by considering that some gays may be in the closet (he used the word “hiding”) and also that there are lesbians (he unsurprisingly approves of lesbian sex. He also likes the idea of becoming Amish cause you can have more than one wife, I think he got that idea from some Harrison Ford movie). He supposes that homophobia comes from the catholic influence of missionaries, but doesn’t know what it was like in traditional Pohnpeian culture before colonization. Note the subtleness I needed to exercise to inquire about these details without revealing my own thoughts / identity on the matter.

As for straight marriage in general:

Local marriage is the important one, religious marriage is done years after and doesn’t carry much actual significance (a peace corps blog source also confirms this, lol).

Surprise surprise, local marriage is sealed by the groom’s family offering the bride’s family sakau. If they accept, the marriage is official (sakau has the weight of a signed marriage certificate) and all the government paperwork follows. The ceremony is apparently not very fancy, just like a normal feast. Divorce is also possible through a sakau ceremony.

29: Local Food Dinner Table

Last night we had a bunch of different things on the table, so I thought I’d take a picture. We have, roughly from left to right:

1) Fried reef fish: I don’t know the one on the left (was good though), the one on the right is parrot fish – I’ve come to like that one the best, cause it’s quite meaty, and easy to eat in terms of finding fish bones. It’s also usually bright blue/turquoise! Most of the reef fish is caught by spearfishing, so when you see them in the market, you can see a spear wound in each fish O.O

2) Above the fish: cooked breadfruit.

3) next to the breadfruit: pilolo. It looks like gooey brownies the color of raw steak, but that’s because they added red food coloring. It’s basically mashed bananas and sometimes a bit of taro. Very tasty. It’s cooked or baked in banana or taro leaves, which you can see on the plastic bag above it. In the plastic bag are akadan bananas, but they were not ripe yet.

4) next to the pilolo we have soup. Ramen based with I think canned mackerel, it’s what Nohno cooks when she doesn’t have much time.

5) above the soup: cooked bananas (probably utin lihli bananas) and cooked taro wedges

6) the coconut! Nohno bought them in the market the day before and put them in the fridge, so refreshing!

7) Also, note that next to the peanut butter on the top left, there is an almost empty hot sauce – that was one of my host gifts (tip from Jessica and Sameera from GLISPA), I’m so happy they like it!

8) I’ve resorted to using both my hands and a fork – it’s easier for me to break apart breadfruit and taro with the fork, or serve myself fish with a fork instead of my hands, but maybe by the end of the summer I’ll be 100% hands on^^

28: Killing it at Baseball (ok, Softball)

Yesterday after work I played the first baseball/softball game of my life with the CSP team. We played the Judiciary – it’s kind of a thing for different companies, NGOs, government ministries, and embassies to have teams and challenge each other to fun games. Baseball is huge on Pohnpei, I think it’s the Japanese + US influence combined (they call it both “baseball” or “iakiu” from the Japanese yakyu).

For my German peeps who don’t have a clue about baseball (like me), softball is like baseball except the field is smaller, the ball is bigger, and they through the ball to the batter in a nice curved way instead of a deadly fast and straight way.

Here’s what happened in a nutshell:

1) we lost 3 to 33, so that made it much more fun and chill for me to figure things out, cause there was no pressure (lots of giggling and laughing from the whole team throughout)

2) Out of the I think 7 innings we did, I batted 3 times, hit the ball 2 times out of 3 (the first time was a SHITSHOW) and even made it to third base once.

3) when we were in the field, I was catcher, and I did not make a total fool of myself (the only responsibility I was assigned was to throw the ball back to the pitcher if the batter misses, though as I found out later, there are other responsibilities I should have done that they covered for me)

4) I played in flip flops, as did a bunch of other people. It rained for a while, which was a nice. The game was like 4:30pm to 6pm, so I did not get sunburned, even without sunscreen (I now have a back up sunscreen stash at my desk, just in case).