A Waterfall Day

Sunday March 22

It was a slow weekend and I was feeling pretty lonely so I headed down the street to the Seventh Day Adventist School. I had met John (an American whose wife works there) and he said often on the weekend he and teachers (who are American college kids taking a year off to volunteer) go for a hike in the afternoon.

John wasn’t around but a young student and the school’s principal invited me to wait. They were sitting outside in the shade, boiling some taro root. Taro is one of the 4 local food sources grown here (the others being tapioca, breadfruit, and of course yams).

Taro and yams share the common trait of both being roots but the comparison ends there. Taro, as my guidebook describes it, is an ‘elephant-eared plant cultivated in freshwater bogs.” How could one even compare it to yams – a food so special that most Americans only eat it on the Day of Thanks.

Taro isn’t bad if it is prepared with some coconut milk. Served by itself, taro provides no culinary delight but I have been told it is incredibly nutritious.

It felt nice just to sit and chat while the taro slowly boiled its way into tenderness. Eventually John returned and plans were made to take short trip to one of the nearby waterfalls. Pohnpei boasts waterfalls like Paris boasts restaurants.

The interior of Pohnpei averages 400 inches of rain a year and the exterior, though less, still gets an impressive 200 inches.

John, Mikey, and I took a drive a waterfall not for from town. It felt good to be in a pickup truck on a dirt road. It had been too long. It felt good to be surrounded by nothing but trees.

All land is privately owned here but access it made available for a price – but a very reasonable price. We each paid the $1 per person fee, hiked down a short path, and found ourselves just a short leap away from an inviting pool of water.

If I had to list the differences between Oregon and Pohnpei, somewhere on my list would be the words ‘the streams aren’t fed by snow melt.’ It had been a while since I’d been in water that didn’t take your breathe away and make your feet go numb. As I wrote earlier, ‘a warm gentle rain falls...” and it makes for a comfortably warm swimming hole.