malek kahlek

It’s funny, to me at least, thinking that the one thing, maybe the only thing that will determine my happiness here will be whether or not I can get a bicycle. And not just any bicycle, I want one I can be satisfied with, that will take me all the way around this rock without me cursing its name in agony. To my peers, my lamentations have turned into an exhausted subject, due to my frequent mention of it, without show of any real progress. In short, I’m being a whiny little bitch. Of course it doesn’t help that I’ll probably have to have one sent here from elsewhere, because being able to buy a decent one here would be just too easy. Oh well, it’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out.

Besides all this, the dust has settled from the hectic events of the last week or so of PST 1, what with the other trainees setting off to their respective islands, and the goodbyes that entailed. We’ve reached the end of week 3 of PST 2 and everything is moving rapidly and only picking up momentum. The focus of this half of training is language and I so far I feel like I’m doing all right, although if I were more studious and more motivated, my proficiency level might have reached something better than just “all right” – maybe somewhere along the lines of “fucking fantastic.” But given the learning environment, the lack of structure in the language sessions, and a “textbook” that leaves much to be desired, I think things could be far worse than they are. My only concern is the cognitive balancing act I’ve been having to do with the other languages already passing from the recesses of my brain, and the fact that when put on the spot to call forth a word, I’m always thinking of it in every other language I know or have encountered besides Pohnpeian. I guess like everything else, it’s just going to take some time.

As one of the eight staying here in Pohnpei, there hasn’t been much of a change of scenery from PST 1 to PST 2. We still stay with our training families, and for some of us our training families are the same as our permanent site families. We still attend training at the same site at Pohnalamwahu, a nearby church in my village of Kipar. And it needn’t be mentioned that we’re still on the same island, so obviously the setting of each of our own individual adventures remains the same. Even still, the past few weekends have brought new and interesting things for me to experience, keeping the adventure from going stale.

Last weekend we attended a “kamadipw en wowe” or feast for the king at a neighboring village called Enipein. It is a custom here that once a year, usually during the first harvest of the yam season, villages will pay tribute to the “nanmwarki” or king of the municipality, by throwing huge feasts, or “kamadipw.” Invariably, this ends up with a lot of pigs getting slaughtered. Sure, there’s also the sharing and distribution of local harvests, such as sugar cane and yam, but the pigs always make for an interesting show. Young men carve the pigs open and present them to the king in a frenzy of primal howls and screams. Only then are the pigs cut into pieces and distributed to the people of the village.

The weekend before this, I and two other Peace Corps Trainees went out on a hike to a local waterfall. Hiking in a tropical jungle presents its share of unique challenges – the path lay out before us was laden with mud, slippery rocks, tree branches, and other fauna. But we finally made it. And it was beautiful. And I jumped the 70 or so feet into the foaming water, my muscles moving in pure adrenalin. One of the most exhilarating yet fun things I’ve ever done in my life. I can cross that one off the list.

And on an even earlier weekend our group of eight took an outing to Nahlap, a nearby island resort and one of the few places in Pohnpei where there are actually beaches. I’d gone to Nahlap before, but there were far more people then, and it involved considerably more alcohol usage. This time, however, we decided it would be better not to bring any, so as not to make a bad first impression with our program assistant, Largo. Big mistake. Largo got wasted on sakau (kava) and after him and his wife, equally wasted, and their grandchildren, all retired to their quarters, it was just us and the rats, which kept getting braver and braver as time passed. Those rats ended up having sex on my roof that night. There is not a more soothing lullaby than the disconcerting sound of crashing waves gradually getting louder and louder in harmony with rats squeaking and banging against the roof overhead.

This weekend we’re heading up to Sokehs Rock, a big rock on top of a huge canyon out at the municipality of Sokehs, where Largo is from. Apparently it was a pretty strategic spot used by the Japanese during WWII and remnants of their machinery and guns still remain up there. Should be pretty interesting. I think, though, that I’m more excited about the view. It’s just too bad there’s no place that develops film on this island – not anymore, anyway. The one place that did, Phoenix, went belly up three years ago. I’d like to hope that the phoenix will rise again from its ashes, but I know that’s probably never going to happen.