Odd days and Odder nights

From last weekend –

Twenty hours ago the sound of a beeping alarm clock pierced my consciousness and I awoke in the pre-dawn morning to a room still dark. A half hour later as the sky began to lighten, Wenonoa and I headed downtown dressed in our running apparel for the first 10K race of the season.

It’s about a mile and a half drive to the grocery store that serves as the starting point. We rounded a bend in the road and saw a group of four adolescent Pohnpeian males ambling down the street and taking swigs from a plastic vodka bottle that I assume was opened the night before. It was the kind of vodka that can easily be confused with rubbing alcohol, the type of booze that can only be drank by people still capable of drinking at that hour. I had heard that this site was not uncommon on Pohnpei but I’m not typically up and out of the house that early on a weekend to see it.

Farther along the way we came across a friend out for an early morning stroll in trousers and a polo shirt. Still further, we crossed paths with Don, an icon on the island. He is an ex-pat biology teacher at the college who has been here for several years.

Don enjoys the research opportunities available in such a unique island location and it is said that he has discovered more than one species. He accepts that the island has slow internet access which is made slower by other users with whom the bandwidth must be shared. Rather than complain, Don, who by choice does not own a vehicle, cheerfully gets up at what most of us consider odd hours and walks the 5 miles to the college to do his internet research.

This Saturday morning at 6:30 AM Don was walking up main street, the white pillow case that serves as his book bag slung over his shoulder, on his way to the school. From what I’m told, Don was off to a late start. It’s said that he sometimes leaves his apartment at 2 or 3 in the morning.

It may have been typical Saturday morning in Pohnpei but it was an odd start to the day for me. My day ended just as oddly as it had begun. Twenty hours after my alarm clocked beeped, a group of us ex-pats clapped and chanted “Mommasan, mommasan, mommasan” in an attempt to persuade the proprietor of a karaoke bar/brothel to sing the final song of the night.

Mommason didn’t sing herself, but she loves to hear Mike belt out songs in his deep baritone voice. Even though all of us had quit ordering drinks and the police had come and gone, reminding her of closing time, mommason had kept pushing the mike towards Mike to do an encore performance of Kenny Roger’s The Gambler, John Denver's Country Roads, and Journey’s Small Town Girl.. If the market for lawyers dealing with economic and tax issues should dry up, Mike should be able to eek out a living as a lounge singer.

I should explain that by most accounts Club Kantaro is not really a brothel. Rather, it appears that it is just a meeting place for young ladies (of the night) to meet potential suitors fresh off the Asian fishing boats - a spot for true romantics. There are a few private rooms but it did seem that they were just for private group karaoke sessions.