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EXCERPTS
Foreword
Floundering In Truk Lagoon
Spaz Attack

Outline

About the Author

Music From Micronesia

CONTACT INFO:
MaryLFlannery@hotmail.com

EXCERPTS
from The Bad Volunteer

a book by Mary Flannery

THE DINNER PARTY

I tried to go to church this morning but I couldn't handle it. After the offering, from up near the front where I was lolling with the other gals fanning and keeping our thighs covered, I had to pop up off the floor and skedaddle out, trying to make it home without eliminating The Frau's grey marshmallow pula dumplings en route. Of course everyone I met along the way had to ask where I was going and if I wasn't going to church, when I was making a beeline in the opposite direction. I ended up having to veer off into the pula patch and squat amid the roots of a breadfruit tree.

The Frau assiduously devoted her previous nine years out here to figuring out how to cook the local food in a style that she and The Herr could palate. What she came up with defies description. Tasteless. Parsimonious. I can't think of a word. I just think of those two missionaries pecking away at grey pula rocks. Ten little rocks on a platter for us to fork onto our plates. I don't know what she does to the fish to turn it into a kind of tasteless paté. The fish here is great just about any way you prepare it: cooked in coconut milk, fried, grilled or raw with salt and lime juice (sashimi). I can't imagine why anyone would want to adulterate the most delicious component of island cuisine. "You eat just with the local people?" they asked me, horrified. "Yup, well that's about all there was until you two showed up."

I ate a lot because I felt guilty for the looks of nausea that I was sure were passing across my face. Now I'm paying the price. I've been to the toilet three times since the pula patch, and in a second I'll have to go again, all in about an hour's time. I'm off!

Oh what a low day on my totem pole. The adopted son of Marta and Adolif, Philip, and his buddies tried to open my benjo door on that last run, which really pissed me off, and I came back and cried in a heap on my mattress, and then three of my students came by to invite me to the Head Start feast. No thanks. I'm off again.

Everyone has gone to that Head Start party, so there's some peace and quiet around here. I just wish I'd be rid of these damn dumplings.

The Herr and The Frau were newlyweds when they first arrived on Oneop in 1961. She bore him three children here. Now back by popular demand, they are burnt out on each other, the missionary trail, and probably wondering how they wound up here again, of all godforsaken places, as they head into their autumn years.

Two years ago, The Herr had to come out here for some reason or other. He traveled down on the fishing boat Kangarap, with Kalwin at the helm. The Herr worked himself into a little lather telling this horror story. It took 36 hours when it should have taken 24. They ended up 50 miles off course. Kalwin tried to use the radio location finder or some such piece of equipment, to figure out where they were, but the battery was dead. Then, hours away from Oneop, Kalwin cut the engine so it wouldn't blow up. The Herr decided to go down to the engine room to have a looksee, and he said all the parts were held together with fish-lines and tape, there was oil all over the place, and the emergency pump was being used for something else. If the ship had hit anything or gotten a hole in it, it would have sunk like a rock.

When he finally arrived on Oneop, The Herr stayed three days alone in their rat-infested mission house that hadn't been inhabited for 13 years. "The rats ate all my soap and all my toilet paper!" he moaned. "Well why for heaven's sake didn't you stay with a family?" I asked. He preferred the company of rats, obviously. On the other hand, the people of Oneop absolutely adore The Herr and The Frau. They'd do anything for them. They are providing all their food now, food that the Frau busily converts into culinary nightmares until the next ship arrives with her spices and cookbooks.

They didn't ask me a thing about myself except which part of the United States I came from. They practically had seizures talking about New York and Chicago, of which they had no favorable opinion whatsoever. They'd never encountered Negroes before they got off the boat in New York Harbor in 1959. They loved Detroit and Philadelphia. Then they'd quibble over whether that was nineteen hundred and fifty-nine or nineteen hundred and sixty when they were in Detroit, and whether or not they actually did go into the city or not. As for Chicago, they had no recollection of a lake.

We touched on the topic of videos. They haven't had a chance to view the "local" fare, but they gathered it was a lot of Kung-fu and "X-rated" stuff. "Well not exactly X-rated," I said, "but there is some raciness sometimes." The Frau jumped on that one. She wanted to know exactly what happens in those racy scenes. How eagerly she nibbled on the grey matter as I regaled her with a detailed account! "Well, this one movie, well first it had horrible language all throughout, four-letter words galore. It started out in New York, and they were sniffing cocaine and dealing it I think. Then they went to Hong Kong, where they visited a massage parlor. So let's see, there was one man getting massaged, and a naked lady lying on a table...and then Kalwin pushed the STOP button, and the screen turned to static!"

As I left, she gave me a Billy Graham magazine in case I wanted to read something in English. Looks good: "The Christian Use of Leisure," or "Prove Me, Trust Me!" ("When she thought about tithing, her mind said, 'We can't afford to,' but her spirit said, 'You must.'") That's on page 23. I'll have to check it out.