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EXCERPTS
Foreword
The Dinner Party
Spaz Attack

Outline

About the Author

Music From Micronesia

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MaryLFlannery@hotmail.com

EXCERPTS
from The Bad Volunteer

a book by Mary Flannery

FLOUNDERING IN TRUK LAGOON

I sit alone, without compass, calendar or mirror, on a foam rubber mattress on the cement floor. Pieces of my Micro wardrobe--hippie skirts and moomoos--hang on a line strung from the wall behind me to the louvered windows looking onto the Pacific Ocean. This is my home for the next eight weeks of training.

It seems like more than just five days ago the flimsy plane bearing six other trainees and myself descended onto the miniature runway in Truk Lagoon. Jerking and ducking in and out of fluffy clouds, we could see the lush green isles, some jagged, others gracefully curved, poking out of a calm turquoise sea.

Up close, Moen, the capital of Truk, is no more than a string of shanty villages squeezed between mangrove-covered beaches and the jungly hills that dominate the center of the island. Pickup trucks filled with passengers and rice sacks bump and rattle down the road that circles the island. Along its narrow shoulder, pedestrians stroll nonchalantly, hips forward, shoulders back, ignoring the splatters of mud kicked up by their flip-flops and passing vehicles.

Our first few days were spent on Moen, riding around in the back of a truck driven by Domingko, the director of Peace Corps-Truk. We made the obligatory round of government agencies--Department of Finance, Department of Education, Department of R&D--filing past rows of metal desks piled high with documents fluttering noisily in the hot wind of electric fans. We drank Mountain Dew with some bigwigs while waiting for the Governor, who never showed up.

Wherever we go, we are accompanied by our Trukese trainers: Silander, Damien and Motto. They give us cultural tips and teach us key words and phrases. Kirisou chapur means thank you. Fuck is fork. Doodoo is shower. Come here is dog.

We had lunch one day with the current volunteers. Veronica, the only woman in the group, says it's rare for a female volunteer to endure the full two years of service in Truk. Mainly because of the ultra-macho attitude of Micronesian men. They have no respect for single females who wander around the world on their own. And they don't appreciate a woman's advice in matters of economic development or health. I think the only way Veronica has managed to hang on is because she has a boyfriend, Rick, another volunteer. I wonder how long I will last.

After our whirlwind tour of Moen, we came out to Fefan, less than an hour's ferry ride away. Cheering children were at the dock to greet us, crowding all around us, clamoring to shake our hands. We managed to wend our way through the throng to a waiting truck, which whisked us off to the training site for our welcome feast. Everyone sat on palm fronds, laid out on the ground under a large thatched canopy roof. In front of each trainee was a cafeteria tray heaped with bananas, parrot fish, fried chicken, pineapple, watermelon, coconut juice, and breadfruit. We ate with our hands, spilling all over ourselves, while flower shirted men droned on in Trukese. Domingko gave the first speech, followed by the Magistrate of Fefan, the Assistant Magistrate, and so on.

I was busy trying to figure out what to do with my sticky fingers, and looking around for the coconut that I kept knocking over, when my father was presented. Next thing I knew I had a mwaramwar, a lei, draped around my neck and standing over me was my new father, Rafael Gatlin. He's clean shaven, with curly black hair, and a trim physique. He was smiling as he stepped back from bestowing my mwaramwar. "Kirisou chapur," I muttered. After the feast, I bid good-bye to my fellow trainees for the first time since we got on the plane in L.A., and climbed into the passenger seat of Rafael's truck.

The Gatlin house has a kitchen; a bathroom that consists of a hole and a hose that's hooked up to the water catchment outside; and a bedroom, which is all mine. They have a little store off the kitchen. Beyond the store is a pool hall--one beat up table perched precariously in the sand.

No sooner had I hauled in my duffel bags and dumped them in my private bedroom, than a noisy group of buxom girls, clad in short shorts and midriff tops, came over to play pool. I stood there in my dowdy calf-length skirt, my white blouse drenched in sweat and coconut juice, watching them cavort brazenly with the handsome young males in the pool hall.

This scene did not remotely jive with the basic culture points as presented by our trainers. According to them, the taboos and rules on the subject of heterosexual relations are copious and strict. While breasts are not necessarily a big deal--in the western islands, women go around topless--the thighs, considered the most sensual part of the body, must ALWAYS be covered. A woman shouldn't even walk in front of a man if he is sitting on the ground. That would be like parading your crotch right in front of his eyes. The trainers instructed Donna, the only other woman in our training group, and me, to drop to our knees and crawl past any adult male who might be seated in our path.

The rules of courting are very circumscribed. They don't date per se, they nightcrawl. In the olden days, a suitor would poke his signature love-stick through the hut thatching where the object of his desires slept. To accept, she drew the love-stick into her room, and then met him for a "nightcrawl," a hurried romp in the undergrowth. If she rejected him, by pushing the stick back out, the only honorable recourse for the young man was to commit suicide by disemboweling himself with the rejected love-stick. Love-sticks were discontinued long ago. The act itself, though, remains top secret, still in the bushes.

The risqué young women in the pool hall were very friendly, and spoke English pretty well. They invited me to come down the road at three o'clock to the home of another trainee, where they were going to give a dance performance. Anchi and Sawako, two of the little Gatlin children, took me over at the appointed hour.

We arrived to find my colleague, Bill, beaming contentedly as he lolled on a torn-up old couch, chowing down another trayful of food, surrounded by the nubile dark-haired dancing girls. Grease and rice dripped down his double chin, onto his wilted lei. The dancers' boombox was broken, so I offered to go get my Toshiba. Bill went with me. I couldn't wait to ask him what was going on. "What are these women doing, exposing their thighs so shamelessly? Are they prostitutes or what?" I wailed. He took immediate offense and told me not to speak rudely of his family. He said they're half Palauan or something, and live on Moen. Like that's supposed to explain anything. I haven't seen any other women in such abbreviated attire.

When we got back to Bill's, the audience was waiting patiently on pandanus mats spread out on the dirt in front of the house. It looked like the whole village had gathered for the big event. Tape One was inserted and the show began. We were treated to a medley of dances: Hawaiian, Palauan, Tahitian, and one tune that rang a bell, "Little Red Corvette," by Prince. There was an impressive array of costumes, each one designed to reveal as much midriff and thigh as possible. Everyone applauded enthusiastically, exhibiting no concern regarding what seemed to me a most unusual display.

Back home after the show, I made Jiffy Pop on the kerosene stove. It turns out that most of the specialty items I brought as gifts--popcorn, granola bars, and tea--are all available in Truk, at least in the main lagoon. Still, they had never seen Jiffy Pop, and they got a minor charge out of watching me do my kitchen magic with the smashed up old foil pan that I had dragged all the way across the Pacific for their benefit.

The Gatlin house, which sits next to the Japanese dock, looks like it's made of plywood. The cement floor in the kitchen and my bedroom is covered with cheap blue patterned linoleum. The furniture consists of one low table for eating, and a slice of foam rubber, which is my bed. The side yard leading out to the ferry dock is strewn with coconut husks and rusty old refrigerators. Pigs snarf and snuffle through the refuse. My bedroom is in the back of the house facing the ocean. Mangroves brush against the windows. I think I've displaced the whole family. They all sleep on the floor of the store.

My father, Rafael, is a math teacher at the elementary school across the street from our house. His wife, Anna, has a full-time job in the Government Finance Office. She saw me the day we toured the premises with our Mountain Dews. They have six children. The oldest, age nine, lives with relatives on Moen. Next in line is seven-year-old Sawako, who is cute except half her head is bald and I don't know why. Dennis, the baby, is ten months old. There's always a gaggle of relatives and neighbors hanging around. As a female, I should lower my eyes and generally retreat from the presence of men. So how am I supposed to connect those faces, which I can't really study, to names, which I can't remember, and then figure out how everyone is related?

Last night I hung out with Muria across the street. She is a seamstress, who speaks a little English. I'm hoping maybe she and I will become friends. We sat in her living room with her mother, Rafael's sister, leafing through about ten huge books of faded family photographs by the light of a dirty kerosene lamp. They served me canned pears.

This morning the old man who lives next door stopped by to have a look at me. He found out I used to live in Kyoto, so we conversed in Japanese. He mostly tried to explain who was related to whom and how. Even if I understood his Japanese, which I didn't half the time, I had no idea who in the heck he was talking about. Antler and Answer are the brothers of Anna; Bersina is the mother of Berson; Fancy is the sister of Dancy. I just nodded and smiled. I've really got to learn how to banter in Trukese. Until then I am a lost soul.

After he left, I went to church with Anna and the kids. We walked about half a mile, along the dirt road, with thirty children following and hollering at me all along the way. Piskor Piskor ! That's me. Grownups waved and smiled, or simply stared. Climbing up the hill to the church in my flip-flops, I fell and bashed my knee on a rock. Everyone howled. The church is a simple one-room stone building overlooking the sea. The congregation sits on the cement floor, men on one side of the room, women on the other. There is little sermonizing and much singing. I sat there studying my knee, being careful to keep my thighs covered, while listening to their voices rise up to the corrugated tin roof in piercing and perfect harmony.

The sea by the sea by the beautiful sea. The water invites me, but I hesitate to enter, not being savvy to the habits of jellyfish, which I saw floating around the dock. Also, I don't much feel like donning my ridiculous swimming gear--knee-length yellow culottes and Elton John style prescription mask.

I feel pretty useless as far as helping out around the house. I make Dennis cry. I take an hour in the doodoo, trying to bathe with one bucket while keeping my lavalava tied around me in case nightcrawlers are peeping in, which is customary I guess. I don't think anyone uses the bathroom but me. I have no idea where they bathe or what they use for a toilet.

Comforts are few and far between. The heat never lets up, nor do the bugs. Patient as I try to be, I feel faith in myself eking out. Listlessness and lack of any kind of drive to join the human race seem to take over. I wonder when all this will cease to feel like I've come, at the end of my solitary youth, to rot on the outer edges of the planet. Tomorrow is my first official day of training. It will be good to get back together with my fellow trainees again. In a couple of months I won't even have them.