I guess I'm doing this whole thing back-asswards, because I keep pulling out older stuff, but I wanted to post something a bit older to remind myself of what I was doing here a year or two ago. This is a letter I wrote to my old buddies from my Peace Corps Panama training group, so it's filled with several innuendos and acronyms that might not be understood by your average layman.
14-March-2005
Koror, Palau
A Letter to my Compas,
Greetings and salutations from this land to yours, wherever it is you may be. I’ve been reading some of your updates with much interest and gladness, wondering all the while if my old friends of 46 might like to hear a whisper from the western pacific every once in a while. Then I came across the group 46 COS issue of La Vaina in a pile of neglected papers, and I was joyfully reminded of la vida panamenya and so many wonderful people. As I read through esa vaina I couldn’t stop smiling and I burst out laughing while sitting alone in my room listening to the hoots and whistles of the creatures living in the betel nut forest behind my house. While this cemented my resolve to write an update to y’all, I was also shocked! I was shocked to realize that I could forget, or at least so easily re-shelve such an intense period of my life. I haven’t really forgotten though. Every so often I’ll play a few tipico songs; my heart will swell and my eyes will well up and I’ll think to myself “hoo hah what a crazy time.” At those times sometimes I’ll think that maybe I left my heart behind in Panama, or at least a very large chunk of it, which might be why I don’t like to think of it unless I’m reminded by something, like roosters outside my window crowing at 3 o’ fucking clock in the morning.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello to you all and maybe give you an idea of what my Peace Corps experience has shaped up to be here. Normally I don’t write about this stuff, because, as you may have found since you’ve landed back in North America, most people don’t really care about it, or at least they quickly lose interest because they’d rather talk about W or Janet Jackson’s boobs. Since you all have been there and done that, and are familiar with the lingo and acronyms, I figure that you of all people can at least relate and maybe even enjoy hearing about the life of Spuns (this is my Palauan name).
I’m coming up on 7 months left to the official completion of my Peace Corps service in the Republic of Palau. You may have seen Palau mentioned in Farenheight 9/11 as one of the countries in Bush’s coalition of the willing in the Iraq conflict. It’s one of the world’s smallest and newest independent nations, with approximately 20,000 total residents (15,000 Palauans) and 8 years of independence. The Peace Corps has been here since the late 60’s, and has become fairly ingrained into the local landscape and culture. There’s even a word for us, “Biskor”, in the local language, and there are at least as many former biskor living here as there are current volunteers. I’ve met Micro 1’s and at least a dozen biskor married to and living with Palauans; Palau might just have the highest permanent retention rate of volunteers in relation to total local population, anywhere. The current program is small, with 14 volunteers, 8 of whom are from my training group, the Micro 70’s (Micro stands for Micronesia). Our two sectors are natural resource conservation and development and youth and community development. Training groups arrive one a year, and after spending 10 weeks in the FSM (Federated States of Micronesia) state of Pohnpei, they’re shuttled off to their respective islands (The FSM States – Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, and Yap, and the Republic of Palau). Apart from my homies here in Palau, I haven’t seen any of my training group since I left Pohnpei for Palau, but we may get together here in Palau for a group COS conference. Since the living conditions are harsher in all of the other island groups, all of the other volunteers always want to come to Palau, and the Palau volunteers are pretty much content to stay put, even though it would be nice to have the chance to see Chuuk Lagoon or some topless women in Yap. Needless to say, Micro 70 pales in comparison to our group, magical #46, but it’s composed of good people nonetheless.
Palau is an archipelago of islands, more than 400 in all, with less than a dozen being permanently inhabited. It’s a beautiful place; a tropical island getaway for the Japanese and Taiwanese, a scuba diver’s paradise, and more recently, the location for Japanese, American, European and Russian Survivor reality television series. The standard of living is the highest in Micronesia after Guam, but Guam is too much like the U.S.A., somewhere in between Honolulu and Las Vegas. It’s also quite possibly the most over-governed nation on Earth, with a national congress and senate, 16 states each with their own legislative and executive branches, and a traditional system of chiefs and clans. I gave up trying to figure out how it all fits together quite some time ago, probably around the time when I realized that being American AND biskor, I’ll be forgiven for just about anything.
Palau was a trust territory of the United States until 1997, at which time they signed a compact of free association, making them independent but freely associating with America. The United States has the right to establish a military base if they choose, and they can bring large military ships through Palauan waters, even if they’re carrying large amounts of nuclear material. In exchange, they give Palau something like 30 million dollars every year. After this huge sum (which funds most of the local government activity, or non-activity as it were), the local tourism industry is the largest income generator, and the capital city of Koror is built to accommodate the large numbers of visitors with plenty of good restaurants, nice hotels, and karaoke bars with Filipina hostesses. My assignment is to work in the branch office of The Nature Conservancy, which was just moved to Malakal, one of the three islands that make up Koror and the financial, population, and entertainment center of the country. The office is across the street from SLC (Single Ladies Club), next door to Watergate (a hostess bar) and in front of a hidden trail that goes back to a marine lake and old cave system from WWII on the small Rock Island we’re stuck to. There’s a nice view of the Peace Corps office, Arakebesang island, and Babeldaob island in the distance from my window.
I chose to live somewhat far away, on the biggest island of Babeldaob, in order to force myself to ride my bike into work everyday and thus strengthen my bum knee. So, I live in Airai state, in the southernmost village of Ngetkib. Since PC Micronesia policy is for volunteers to stay with host families for their entire service, I still live with my nice family, in an old clan house just setback from the road. My host father is single, is the principal of the local elementary school, weighs over three hundred pounds, and lived for twenty years in Wisconsin and Washington D.C. He lives with his mother, his brother and sister and his nephew, who at 19 years of age is the youngest member of the household. They all basically live in an old beaten-down tin house, but most of the time they sleep in an adjacent summer house (kind of like a choza with a tin roof). I sleep in the old clan house, which I share with my younger brother, but because the house is haunted or maybe because I’m weird he sleeps most of the time on the other side. We also share a bathroom with cold, running water and a flush toilet. There’s an ancient graveyard with old, coral tombstones on top of a stone platform between our houses, and there’s an old kitchen with a huge hole in the floor next to my house. I pretty much come and go as I please and cook for myself a lot of the time. When I don’t, we eat a lot of fish, yucca, rice and taro. For breakfast there’s eggs and rice and spam, and there’s peanut butter and jelly for all times of the day. It’s a pretty nice living arrangement, especially since, as I mentioned, there’s a nice betel nut forest bordering the mangroves behind our house. Spending quality time with the family here basically means, sitting around the summer house chewing betel nut, talking shit about Palauan politics, and watching American Idol and Extreme Makeover on t.v. I’ve picked up a minor betel nut habit because of this, as my host grandmother tells me “you chew” every day when I enter her proximity. With almost everyone being older than me, I basically have to do everything they say, so I do a lot of carrying trays of food from the kitchen to the summerhouse, because the rest of the family (except little bro) are so fat that it’s uncomfortable for them to walk 100 feet. They’re very good people though, and are always trying to get me to eat more...”You eat more!”
My neighborhood is small, and right along the road that leads to the airport, so there can be a lot of cars passing by. Nonetheless it’s very peaceful and cool, with a lot of huge, ancient trees in peoples’ yards. It’s very safe and everyone knows me, but it has the reputation for having the most trouble-making young men in all of Airai. These fellows are, of course, my friends, and they form a men’s group called Mli Way which helps the community out however they can. I enjoy taking part in these activities, because it’s almost the only community-related work that I do, and it feels good to get sweaty, dirty, and sunburnt like I used to do all of the time in my old village in Panama. It’s also one of the few ways I can keep my host father from disowning me, because he thinks I spend too much time at my work assignment, too much time with other Americans, too much time having fun, too much time chasing non-Palauan women...in general too much time not learning about Palauan language and culture. Even though I speak more Palauan than all of the other volunteers and have a good reputation for the work I’ve been doing, he’s right.
So why is it I seem to be too busy to concentrate on learning about Palau? Part of the reason is that I came here to learn the skills I would need to help out our NGO, Native Future, so that I could continue to help out the Wounaan, the people and culture that I fell in love with. Part of the reason is that I might be afraid of learning to love something so strongly again when I know that it could be torn away at any moment. And part of the reason is that I’ve become excellent at making excuses, any excuse will do, to have fun. I mean, you can’t work all of the time, and nobody came to the end of their life and said to themself, “Gee, I wish I had worked more.” But don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a busy beaver. Here’s a short list of the projects I’ve been involved with: 1) Kayangel State – Worked with the state conservation officers to improve the management of their marine protected area. 2) Koror State – Wrote a compliance plan for the Koror State Rangers who patrol and enforce the world famous Rock Islands, helped establish the tour-guide certification program. 3) Bureau of Marine Resources – Helped conduct a study to conduct blood samples from local crocodile population in order to look at DNA linkages and establish the number and identity of the species present, planned a field trip to Australia to train Palau’s crocodile manager, and am helping set up Palau’s management program to work with crocodiles and sea turtles. 4) Belau National Museum – Found funding and planned studies to look at the biodiversity and distribution of plants and insects in Palau’s islands. 5) Palau Conservation Society – Am helping conduct a national bird survey and study to determine Palau’s most important bird areas. I feel pretty lucky to have had the opportunity to get involved in such a diverse assemblage of activities which, at the same time, allow me to travel all over Palau and see amazingly beautiful places that most tourists and even most Palauans don’t ever get to see.
So, I’m usually not reluctant to head into work, but as you may know, work happens at its own particular pace, especially in the islands, and it’s usually not from 9 to 5. As I am determined not to ruin my eyes further by staring at a computer screen all day or ruin my lungs by breathing too much artificially cooled air, I’ve become quite good at noticing vacant spaces of time (spaces of time, why that’s ludicrous!) and jumping on them, or rather into them. My favorite thing to do with my time these days is to go sea kayaking, as Palau is an ideal place to do this and my office is within spitting distance (I’ve tried this) of the water. My old boss also left me his old kayak, so whenever I feel the urge, I lug the thing down the stairs, plunge it into the ocean and head off to go exploring some of the nice, nearby Rock Islands with their incomparably interesting mix of hidden marine lakes, old WWII relics, limestone caves, steep jungle groves and rich, coral reef lined fringes. In these explorations I’ve discovered a secret tunnel that leads into a marine lake filled with a breath taking salt-water garden of ancient, multi-hued corals of every shape and a two story cave with a cliff inside that you can jump from (inside the cave) into the underwater chamber below. Even though I have yet to come close to thoroughly exploring even the close-by islands, my friends now seek me out to show them my secret spots. On other days I’ll take off early and ride my bike out to some of the ancient stone paths that used to connect most of the old Palauan villages or to some of the old, mysterious earth terraces in southern Airai which overlook Airai Bay and northern Koror. There are some interesting, if not dangerous, mountain paths with beautiful ocean views that make for some good mountain biking, and when I’m ready to fork over my hard-earned cash sometimes I’ll go diving with my Peace Corps issue dive gear. These are the kinds of activities that lead me to say, “peace corps Palau, the plushest job on Earth.”
Even so, endless fun doesn’t translate into happy-happy joy-joy, and even happiness doesn’t translate into fulfillment or a sense of purpose. It can be very difficult, especially in a place where fun and entertainment are easily found, to find a meaningful balance in life, and this has been my greatest challenge here. Worrying about spending enough time with my host family, anxiously searching for meaningful connections with other human beings, agonizing over past loves and losses; these all kept me from settling down and truly enjoying life during my first year here. Maybe that’s why my best friend was a surfer from Costa Rica, who seemed as surprised as I was to find himself washed up on such a far away isle. Once we ran into each other and he discovered that I spoke Spanish with a Costa Rican accent, we learned to lean on each other and comfort each other with stories and memories of a shared passion, places we both knew and loved. Although it was comforting to have a secret language with a good friend, it was a distraction from what I came here to do, and I found other distractions. I’ve always been good at that. Now I have friends from Bangladesh, Bali, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Australia, Holland and the Philippines. Palau, especially Koror, is truly becoming a melting pot of different cultures, and I became somewhat obsessed with getting to know people from all of these places. Maybe I’m fulfilling the Peace Corps mission in a larger sense in this globalizing time as I get to know these people and introduce them to each other and my Palauan friends. I mean, I’m helping to spread peace, understanding, and knowledge of geography man! Or maybe I’m just kidding myself as I wander, confused, from one experience to another, trying to remember my reasons for coming here or if they’re even important.
So, that’s my life here in a nutshell. Of course there’s a lot more that I had to censor, because, well you know. I’ve enjoyed reading about yours and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about mine. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I COS (surprise, surprise), but I may take a job continuing to work with the management program dealing with crocodiles and sea turtles. Or, I may go live with a girl I fell in love with in the Philippines on the frontier island of Palawan. Or I might go fishing on a lake in Bangladesh, or go back to Panama or New Mexico. In any case, I will still miss you guys and wonder what you’re up to. Hopefully this summer I’ll get the chance to hang out with Karlyn and Jenny, si dios quiere. I do like the idea of a #46 mass reunion, which appeals to me a helluva lot more than my high school reunion, which I’ll be gladly missing this summer. Wherever, whenever, just let me know....
Much love and peace from Palau,
Julio
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