EXCERPTS
Foreword
Floundering In Truk Lagoon
The Dinner Party
Spaz Attack

Outline

About the Author

Music From Micronesia

CONTACT INFO:
MaryLFlannery@hotmail.com

MaryFlannery.com

THE BAD VOLUNTEER
Notes from Micronesia
64,000 words

a book by Mary Flannery

THE UNTOLD PEACE CORPS STORY

Mary Flannery did two years' time on a tiny island (one mile by one-fifth of a mile) called Oneop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Careening between extreme boredom and frustration with a culture already ruined by Christian missionaries and third-rate videos, Flannery wrote THE BAD VOLUNTEER not as nostalgic memoir, but rather, in the heat and fury of the moment.

The story begins with the author's thoughts before the journey, pondering what lies ahead. All she knows is that she'll be dumped on a spit of sand somewhere "out there," connected to the rest of the world by nothing but an occasional field trip ship and a radio. And that she will be living among people who have a socialistic attitude towards material goods, a reluctance to share knowledge or intellectual data, and a dating practice called nightcrawling.

It ends more than two trying years later, with the islanders' final performance of the author's Jesus Musicale at a pan-island jubilee. Mary was the first Peace Corps volunteer ever to endure the full two-year term on Oneop.

"The Bad Volunteer" refers not only to the author, but to the United States government, which has kept the Federated States of Micronesia in a state of welfare-like dependency since World War II. This relationship is also examined in the book.

An array of colorful characters is woven throughout: Eruo, the maddening Principal; Kalwin, the author's big-bellied benevolent host father; William, his neurotic son; Sweeper, the local loon; The Herr and The Frau, German missionaries, and more. We get to know them, and the ways of the island, through the author's eyes.