A Stress Free Anniversary

My 5th wedding anniversary approaches. Under other circumstances there might be stress and expectations. What to get? How to celebrate? There is none of that here. The options that can cause that type of stress simply don’t exist here.

For a fancy dinner, there is only one clear option: the Village Restaurant. It has white linen tablecloths and dinner rolls. Ooh ahh. Those two features might not seem special to you but they separate the Village from the other 6 or 7 restaurants in town. The menu isn’t much different from any of the other restaurants but ambiance is everything and the Village does have that.

With its thatch roof and open veranda overlooking the lagoon, it feels jungle-like in a completely touristy type of way. The first time I was there, I half expected Tarzan to swing in on a vine, land at the bar, and order a beer for himself and a banana daiquiri for Cheetah. Tarzan never showed but I still go back when an occasion deserves a little something special. After all, you don’t get tablecloths and dinner rolls just anywhere.

For the last 4 years, every anniversary I have purchased a bouquet of Aziatic Lillies, which served as Wenonoa’s wedding flowers. That won’t happen this year. There is no florist on the island. Oddly, there really aren’t many flowers at all. There is a lot of green but very few tropical flowers.

With dinner location an easy choice and flowers no choice, the last traditional celebratory marker would be the exchange of gifts. That won’t happen. There won’t be any trips to the mall because there is no mall. Shopping here is pretty much limited to the basic necessities. It is really one of the nice things about island life.

There are no newspaper circulars, no telemarketers, no TV infomercials trying to convince you to buy the newest, bestest, shiniest thing that will ensure a life of happiness. I’m not reminded of all the things that are missing from my life and as a result, I don’t really feel anything is missing.

Since this is the age of the internet I could have purchased a gift over the internet, I suppose many of you are thinking. True, I could have but I didn’t. I’m pretty sure Wenonoa didn’t either. If she did, I don’t have to worry. I’m the one assigned to pick up the mail from the post office and I have the only key. On the off-chance she purchased me a gift, well maybe it just won’t arrive…

Mail delivery, which most of you probably take for granted, is a mystery here even though the FSM is part of the U.S Postal Service. On October 15th, I picked up two letters, both mailed from the U.S. One was postmarked Sept 22nd and the other October 7th. You just don’t know when things will arrive here. I’m still waiting for a box of books that I mailed here when I was in New Jersey in June.

I’m told that since it’s a box, it went by boat not airplane. The time estimate I was given was 2 – 4 months. A couple of times a week I play out my own personal adaptation of Waiting for Godot and walk from my office to the post office thinking maybe it will be here today. A boat arrived yesterday, based on the produce that was in the grocery store today, so who knows, maybe my box will be there tomorrow. Now that would make for a nice anniversary gift!

Top 10 Reasons You Know You Are Living on Pohnpei:

#10 - Your dinner guest comments on the qualty of your water pressure

#9 - You keep your kitchen garbage in the freezer to discourage ants and other bugs

#8 - You know all the geckoes in your house by their size and favorite locations

#7 - Your rental property comes complete with miscellaneous stray cats and dogs

#6 - You classify your flip flops as evening wear, appropriate for work, and casual

#5 - Grocery shopping resembles a scavenger hunt

#4 - You can distinguish between an attractive looking mumu and an unattractive one

#3 - Driving 30 MPH feels really fast

#2 - You don't see dogs with their heads sticking out of car windows - you see little kids with their heads sticking out of car windows

The number one reason you know your living on Pohnpei - When you see a dog on a leash it strikes you as strange.

Credit goes to Wenonoa for coming up with this list. David Letterman, are you hiring?

Weekend on Ant

September 11th , a solemn day in the U.S., happens to also be Pohnpei Liberation Day. The holiday celebrates the end of the ‘War in the Pacific,’ which is the nice way of saying the end of Japanese control of the island. Regardless of how you say it, the result is that we had a three-day weekend.

Back in the states when a three day holiday weekend rolled around, we’d throw the camping gear in the truck and head for the woods. So what do you do when you live on an island where you can drive the circumference in less than three hours and all land is privately owned? Boat trip!

With food having been purchased, camping gear packed, and sunscreen applied, ten of us ex-pats drove down to the Kitti boat ramp to rendevouz with a hired boat. With the theme song of Gilligan’s Island playing in the back of my head, we small boat took off for Ant Atoll.

Ant is a one to four hour boat ride away. The time it takes to get to Ant doesn’t vary based on traffic. Weather conditions, specifically waves, determine whether one spends a quick easy hour getting from point A to point B or whether one spends four seasick hours praying to G-d and vowing never leave dry land again. We made it there in a just over an hour.

Without getting too technical, it’s hard to describe what distinguishes an island from an atoll. In layman’s terms an atoll is a really small island. An atoll is what makes a 12 mile by 15 mile island like Pohnpei seem big. Very big.
The best description I’ve read on the Pacific atolls is that each atoll is like a string of beads. Ant had a few beads, each separated by a space of water. Some of the beads were more or less connected and at low tide a person can walk from one bead to the next. Our bead had broken off and there was no low tide corral bridge to lead us to the other beads.

With gear unloaded from the point, we stood on the beach and waved goodbye to the boat taxi. There we were, on an unoccupied atoll in the middle of the Pacific – cut off from the rest of the world. It felt pretty exhilarating. The wind picked up and the sky darkened but we managed to set up a tarp in time to save ourselves and our gear from getting soaked by an afternoon rain shower.

It had been a while since I’ve sat on a beach and enjoyed the feel of sand between my toes. I did say beach. As I think I’ve mentioned in earlier entries, Pohnpei doesn’t really have beaches and sand. Little know fact: not all islands have sand. Instead of sand, islands formed by volcanoes have corral - hard, sharp, pointy corral. They also have mangrove swamps but I digress….

So there we were on the sandy beach of an uninhabited atoll a few hours by boat from a small island in the Pacific. It was pretty cool! For 48 hours we snorkeled, played cards, ate, had bonfires, and drank. I’ve done my share of camping in the past. I’ve also done my share of eating, drinking, playing cards, and also some snorkeling. Somehow, it all seems just a little better when done on an isolated piece of land in a place few people ever get to.

Normally, I’d prefer bourbon or scotch to rum, but neither one would taste as good when drunk from a coconut shell. One of the highlights of the weekend – one of the things that made the experience unique – is that we climbed and knocked coconuts out of trees, hacked off the top with our machetes and added rum to the coconut juice inside. Mmm, mmm good!!!

Waterboys

Thursday Oct 8

Last night was opening night of a 4-night film festival being hosted by the Japanese Embassy. It seems out of place to be blogging about a film festival in Pohnpei but its true. For the next 3 nights a Japanese film will be showing at the local theater.

Last night we saw Waterboys. It was a feel-good film about a group of nerdy high school boys who start a synchronized swim team. For those not familiar with it, synchronized swimming is a sport that somehow blends ballerinesque moves with a swimming pool being performed by a team. Physically demanding though it must be, its an all-girl sport.

What struck me most was that the formula plot and the scripted characters seemed to have been taken straight from America. I had to wonder if the script writer had been influenced by (or was imitating) by American pop film and culture. Given that the Richard Gere movie Shall We Dance was a re-make of a Japanese film by the same name, I had to consider that maybe its American film thats copying Japanese.

Alternatively, maybe people really are the same the world over and the similar themes/characters developed independently but similarly?