A week in review

Sunday May 17

On a slow Sunday back in Oregon, I would often tune the radio dial to NPR and listen to the news from Lake Wobegon on a Prairie Home Companion. Today, instead, I’ll write the news from island Pohnpei….

Another week has passed on the island of Pohnpei. Though things remain much as they are, there is a sense of change in the air… and of stillness. The trade winds have gone to do their trading elsewhere, having begun to die down towards the end of April. As a result, the air is more still and humidity hangs about. The clouds gather and with no wind to push them past the island, more rain begins to fall.

The change in weather marks the beginning of the end of the school year. For the 8 volunteer teachers here through the WorldTeach program, their time on Pohnpei draws to end. They will be gone in June. In August, fresh new faces will appear.

For many of the ex-pat instructors at the College of Micronesia (COM), summer is a time to return home for a few months. Like migratory birds, they fly off to the land beyond the waters. The yoga instructor is one of those teachers.

As the saying goes, ‘When one door closes, another one opens.’ With no Monday night yoga class I have joined the soccer crowd that gathers almost nightly to play pickup soccer. Saturday afternoon, after a full and active week that included pickup soccer games on Monday and Tuesday nights, exercise class on Wednesday, a good track workout Friday, and a trip to the gym Saturday morning, my aging body said, “enough, its time for a break.”

Late Saturday afternoon, while engaging in the simple act of throwing around a football with the neighborhood kids, I pulled a muscle in my leg. Perhaps there really is a valid reason why mothers tell us not to play in the rain?

With hopes of a quick recovery in time for next Saturday’s 5K, the last of the season, I passed on today’s hike. Instead, today will be a day of rest, recovery, and reflection.

The week had its fill of excitement for your’s truly. Heavy rains on Thursday caused the cancellation of the weekly ultimate Frisbee game so instead I decided to go grocery shopping. As a child, I remember trips to the ‘grocery store’ but somewhere in the passage of time grocery stores were replaced by supermarkets as the aisles got longer, the sides of the stores expanded, the choices multiplied.

Supermarkets, as you know them, don’t exist in Pohnpei. The term grocery store more aptly describes the venues located along main street Kolonia. Both they types and choices of goods are limited. Each store here carries nearly the same basic supplies as the others, but there are just enough variations in selection that a trip from the west end of the main street to the east end is usually needed. For example, the Blue Nile, the westernmost store, is the only store that carries a generic bran flake cereal modestly priced at $1.85 as compared to all other brands which are in the $5 - $7 range.
If you want bread to go along with your morning cereal, you would need to continue east to Palm Terrace, the only store with its own bakery. Palm Terrace also has some dried beans but you need to go to Yoshi’s for lentils.

One day, I felt like baking bread and so I set off on a shopping trip that felt more like a scavenger hunt. My quest for yeast took me to the Blue Nile, Palm Terrace, Wall Mart (named for its proximately to the Spanish Wall), before I found some at Yoshi’s the next to last stop along the road.

My Thursday night shopping trip brought with it a thrill that reminds me of how we can cherish the simple pleasures of life. As I rounded the aisle at Palm Terrace, my eyes swept past the usual selection of potatoes, onions, and garlic and came to rest upon vaguely familiar small reddish circular shaped objects. Tomatoes.

I hadn’t heard that the ship had come in. I’m still not quite dialed in to the coconut wireless communication network so pieces of important information can bypass me - like hearing that the ship came in. Every two weeks are so, a cargo ship arrives and the grocery stores are re-stocked. Usually a limited supply of produce has survived the long voyage, ripening (somewhat) along the way.

Life is often a lesson in learning to be appreciative, of learning to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. I often struggle with this but looking at the small reddish (but still somewhat greenish) tomatoes I felt appreciation. Appreciation and saliva as my mouth began to water at the thought of tomatoes.

These tomatoes lack the heady aroma of vine grown tomatoes fresh from the backyard garden. Having not fully ripened, they are not fully flavorful. Yet, the glass is half full and these tomatoes can add a little something to the typical dinner.

I went to bed Thursday night looking forward to Friday night, the excitement of which would involve cutting these tomatoes into small pieces and adding them to a jar of Pregu spaghetti source. There is no Little Italy section of downtown Kolonia, no Italian Bistros on main street, no mediteranean influence on the local cuisine. Pregu spaghetti sauce spruced up with semi-ripe tomatoes, and maybe some pepper and garlic, spread over macaroni satisfies the occasional craving for an Italian dinner.

I didn’t expect anything more exciting than the appearance of tomatoes in the grocery store to happen for the rest of the week. However, early Friday afternoon, as I looked forward to my tomatoes and the rest of the weekend, I was notified that we (my boss, the chief of our investigative unit, and I) were being beckoned to the President’s Office. Having shaved that very morning, I felt well prepared to make my first trip across the street to the Presidential Office.

Our office was seeking an amendment to an existing law and so had requested that the President submit the proposal to Congress. The paperwork must travel from our office to the Attorney General to the President and we had been forewarned that the A.G. would recommend that the President speak to us if we wanted more information. Hence, I had dutifully shaved each day that week even though it didn’t seem that the paperwork was traveling any faster than the many local drivers who dutifully obey the island’s 25 mph speed limit.

Protocal being protocol even in the small country of the FSM, Haser (my boss) informed Sophia and me that we should let him do the talking. For those of you who know me, I am quite generous when it comes to sharing my opinion. For me to sit quietly through a meeting would be quite unnatural. I mentioned as much to Haser so that he would at least be prepared when I interrupted, as surely I would.

During the course of the meeting I added my two-cents to the discussion and then maybe another dime’s worth. In a world where lobbying is both sport and mercenary activity, I must say it was very satisfying to look a President straight in the eye and speak earnestly from heart, with voice full of conviction and belief that the proposal is in the country’s best interest.

The meeting went well and our bill has been forwarded to Congress.

That’s the news from Pohnpei.