Women's Weekend by the house
local bananas
earth oven "uhm" baked pig
The other weekend there was a large gathering on the campus where we live.
...tangent...
We live on the campus of what was once the "Pohnpei Agricultural and Trade School" aka PATS (sounds like some guys property whenever I say it... "I live at Pat's") The school was a sort-of private high school set up by a Jesuit priest many decades ago. Unfortunately, the school closed down about 10 years ago, money issues I hear, so many of the buildings sit empty and unused. Many of the houses are rented out to families (the church parish on Pats runs and up-keeps the property) and one or two of the class buildings are still used as well (that's where the PeaceCorps does it's training for new volunteers). I'll take a few pictures to put up of the place. The house we live in is nothing to write home about, even though that's sort of what I'm doing... it's tiny, an old dorm room (2 of em, attached with a bathroom with two doors, weird) and one of the bedrooms is now our "kitchen", but that might be a bit of an overstatement. I'm adjusting to it though, it still sucks to not have a proper kitchen sink though.
Back to the gathering. About 200 or so women (catholic I think, from all over the island) came this weekend to spend three days and two nights doing something. This meant that usually what is a quiet place was turned into a thriving center of activity. On Saturday night, the women performed some dancing and singing routines for about three hours which was pretty entertaining. I drank sakau with the neighbor's family and then went up to check out the festivities. Was pretty interesting and I walked up to find one of the new PeaceCorps dancing it up in the midst of all these Pohnpeians, which was pretty highly amusing. I perused the crowd, chatting here and there with some friendly locals and some of the Peace Corps volunteers.
The next morning I went to the church almost next to our house to find the place packed with a ton of women all dressed in white. Instead of going in and sitting down, I hung out outside the front door with a few locals for the service, it was way to hot and I didn't want to crowd in next to a bunch of people. It is interesting to sit through a church service in another language, but it makes it go faster I think. It always strike me as somewhat ironic that people who have been missionized to hell (no pun intended) by Christianity from whatever native spiritual beliefs tend to be the quite "religious". In any case, going to church here is really common and sort of expected. Then the question comes of course "are you catholic or protestant?". I usually read the situation and answer what I think the person is most interested in hearing, but if I feel like a bit more honest, I say something to the affect of not really believing in divisions, and "it's all the same god" kind of thing.
After church, there was a day of eating, more dancing, singing, and drinking sakau in the community nahs here (i'll just have to get a picture of this thing, because describing it wouldn't do it justice really), but basically an roofed open-air room for gathering. I spent the day listening to some speeches, drinking sakau, and being pulled up to dance once (which everyone got a kick out of, maybe residual humor from the welcome party dancing, news of which made it half-way across the island in about a week).
By the end, large amounts of cooked pig, skirts, ramen, coconuts, and other such items were distributed by an old woman to various groups of people, the logic and nature of this distribution I have yet to figure out, but my guess is that it had something to do with personal titles (which I won't try to explain) and previous years gatherings as well. Part of the culture here seems to be giving things away in mass quantity to other people, which I would guess makes sense on an island in the middle of the pacific, sort of like a kind of social-economic equalizer of sorts.
...tangent...
We live on the campus of what was once the "Pohnpei Agricultural and Trade School" aka PATS (sounds like some guys property whenever I say it... "I live at Pat's") The school was a sort-of private high school set up by a Jesuit priest many decades ago. Unfortunately, the school closed down about 10 years ago, money issues I hear, so many of the buildings sit empty and unused. Many of the houses are rented out to families (the church parish on Pats runs and up-keeps the property) and one or two of the class buildings are still used as well (that's where the PeaceCorps does it's training for new volunteers). I'll take a few pictures to put up of the place. The house we live in is nothing to write home about, even though that's sort of what I'm doing... it's tiny, an old dorm room (2 of em, attached with a bathroom with two doors, weird) and one of the bedrooms is now our "kitchen", but that might be a bit of an overstatement. I'm adjusting to it though, it still sucks to not have a proper kitchen sink though.
Back to the gathering. About 200 or so women (catholic I think, from all over the island) came this weekend to spend three days and two nights doing something. This meant that usually what is a quiet place was turned into a thriving center of activity. On Saturday night, the women performed some dancing and singing routines for about three hours which was pretty entertaining. I drank sakau with the neighbor's family and then went up to check out the festivities. Was pretty interesting and I walked up to find one of the new PeaceCorps dancing it up in the midst of all these Pohnpeians, which was pretty highly amusing. I perused the crowd, chatting here and there with some friendly locals and some of the Peace Corps volunteers.
The next morning I went to the church almost next to our house to find the place packed with a ton of women all dressed in white. Instead of going in and sitting down, I hung out outside the front door with a few locals for the service, it was way to hot and I didn't want to crowd in next to a bunch of people. It is interesting to sit through a church service in another language, but it makes it go faster I think. It always strike me as somewhat ironic that people who have been missionized to hell (no pun intended) by Christianity from whatever native spiritual beliefs tend to be the quite "religious". In any case, going to church here is really common and sort of expected. Then the question comes of course "are you catholic or protestant?". I usually read the situation and answer what I think the person is most interested in hearing, but if I feel like a bit more honest, I say something to the affect of not really believing in divisions, and "it's all the same god" kind of thing.
After church, there was a day of eating, more dancing, singing, and drinking sakau in the community nahs here (i'll just have to get a picture of this thing, because describing it wouldn't do it justice really), but basically an roofed open-air room for gathering. I spent the day listening to some speeches, drinking sakau, and being pulled up to dance once (which everyone got a kick out of, maybe residual humor from the welcome party dancing, news of which made it half-way across the island in about a week).
By the end, large amounts of cooked pig, skirts, ramen, coconuts, and other such items were distributed by an old woman to various groups of people, the logic and nature of this distribution I have yet to figure out, but my guess is that it had something to do with personal titles (which I won't try to explain) and previous years gatherings as well. Part of the culture here seems to be giving things away in mass quantity to other people, which I would guess makes sense on an island in the middle of the pacific, sort of like a kind of social-economic equalizer of sorts.
sakau roots being sorted
sakau roots and plant
sakau being pounded by some neighbors
sakau being kneaded to drink
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