When I get back to the states, I want to walk down my street shirtless and shoeless, carrying a machette. I’d imagine it would turn a few heads and cause people to make sure their doors are locked and car windows rolled up. Here, the sight is nothing to blink at. It is something I see almost daily on my drive to work.
Machettes are an all-purpose general utility here, sort of the Micronesian version of a pocket knife. Only they don’t fit in a pocket so people, old and young, walk around carrying them to open coconuts, cut down some bananas, and for various other purposes.
The commonness of machettes makes for a few amusing anecdotes worth sharing….
An Australian woman told Wenonoa that when her son was turning seven she asked him what he would like for his birthday. The answer of course – a machette. Some of his classmates had them so he wanted one too. As they were to be relocating soon after his birthday she had to explain to him that it wouldn’t be an appropriate gift for him.
The Aussies live on their own compound, complete with a gardener. One day some other Aussie children, ages 4 and 6, were playing in the yard and for some reason or another required the use of a machette. They asked the gardener if they could use his and being an accomodating individual, he kindly let them borrow it. The mother happened to look out her window and saw her kids using it. She had to explain to him that menwei children aren’t smart about things like using machettes and that the boys would hurt themselves.
It is true. The local kids are adept at using machettes as American kids are at using Gameboys. I often have to ask my 12-year old neigbor friend to open my coconuts for me. I have to hack and hack at it, but he can get one open in seconds.
The most recent 5K fun run was sponsored by Island Food Community. Better known as Go Local, Island Food is a local non-profit that promotes the use of indigenous foods. Rather than giving away prizes of rice and ramen, instead the prizes were intended to promote use of local resources for the production of food. When the Girls 12 and Under category winner was announced she walked to the podium and received a garden shovel. The 12 and Under winning boy was presented with a machette.
A female American friend immediately got upset about the gender difference in prizes; girls get shovels and boys get machettes. I had to laugh because, having all been here a while, none of us gave a second thought to the idea of a machette as being a suitable prize for a 12 and under category, regardless of gender.
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When I was teaching in Ghana, the most common form of punishment when a whole class had broken school rules was to give them machetes and set them to work cutting the grass. As an instructor your task was to supervise the punishment. Thirty students armed with two foot long, razor sharp machetes and an instructor with nothing. Seemed to me like the students were in control of the situation. I should note that the grass was not the suburban lawn type of grass - the long, tall, razor grass that seems to permeate tropical open spaces.
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