Long Time Gone

Time flies, fast.  Apparently my last blog post was in December.  If you do some really bad math, that's 2 months.  Also, it's been 8 months since I've been in the good ol' U.S.A.  Long time gone.

Let's start with New Years.
New Years here on Pohnpei is like U.S. New Years, but more hard core.  In Salapwuk, the party starts at the church down the hill in Nan Mand and ends 3 miles up an extremely steep hill at my house.  Throw a little bit of drinking cheap rum, some downer sakau, and some cars with some extremely loud horns and you've got a Salapwukian New Years.  It sounds like a great time, but let's throw one more thing into the mix: a hardcore bacterial infection.  Instead of drinking, walking, and disturbing the peace, I found myself covering my head with my pillow at 2am trying to drown out the sound of hundreds of children and cars.  Let's just say the start to 2013 can suck it.

School started on January 7th, well... 8th.  In the face of the Department of Education saying clearly on the radio, "We have school on Monday the 7th, but one school in Kolonia will start on Tuesday because of a meeting", the coconut wireless said differently.  I didn't know who to believe, so just to be sure I went to school on Monday.  Of course, only 1/4 of the students we're there, and none of the teachers were there.  The coconut grapevine won over the CLEAR words of a state-wide communication system.  Note to politicians: if you ever get in a bad situation where the national news is killing your personal image, just come to Micronesia.  Just tell one older Pohnpeian lady differently.  Just one.  The next day, you will have cured AIDS, brought peace to the Congo, and saved a comatose baby from being adopted by a celebrity.  Yea, that's how strong the Pohnpeian word of mouth is here.

On January 4th, I became a host-brother-uncle.  My brother and his wife just had a 6 lb. baby boy named Nahnsapwe, Thunder in Pohnpeian.  He's a good kid: minimal crying and soft hair.  I've gotten to hold him a lot in the past 3 days, and it makes me realize that one day, one day, I'd love to have a kid; but, now is not that time. 

Next order of business.  When you live up on a secluded mountain in an extremely restrictive society against women, let's just say there's slim pickins.  Actually, let's say there's 0 pickins because all the girls are either under 18, married or fat.  My family is putting some pressure on me to start nightcrawling.  If you don't know what nightcrawling is, let me cliffnotes it for you here.  Since dating/courtship is not allowed publicly in Micronesia, during the wee hours of the night boys walk to girls houses (announced or unannounced), creep to the girl's window, and see if they can "talk".  In other words, it's secret lovers with some slight form of breaking and entering.  I still don't think I can do it.  Reasons why: #1. I'm white.  White glows in the dark.  People will see me.  My reputation will get ruined.  #2. Nahnmand is 3 miles away.  Walking around in pitch black without a flashlight down a steep incline doesn't sound fun.  #3. I don't know anyone in Nahnmand personally.  I would kind of be extremely awkward to walk to a girl's window at 3am to say, "Uh... You're pretty.  Can we talk?  Oh ya, what's your name?" 

I've been missing America recently.  I've been starting to analyze more in depth the cultural differences between here and there and how the Micronesian culture has changed me.  For example, I can tell when I've stayed in Salapwuk for too long when I come to Kolonia and get freaked out by cars and people everywhere.  I almost had a heart attack when last night I heard the gas station, a 1.5 hour walk away from my house, had cookies and cream ice-cream.  I've become more introverted to the point of where I notice myself not talking much when I'm hanging out with Americans.  My vocabulary has diminished to an extreme.  I'm not able to say words like "intrinsic", "stature", "ominous", "convey", "punctual", and a "multitude" of others because Pohnpeians will look at me and just stare blankly.  There's been a couple of times that I've spoken with some kids from the States here and I've found myself being really freaked out by a child not speaking Pohnpeian to me.  Who would have thought that at 8 months that I, I, would get homesick.  Not a lot, but just enough to make me appreciate where I come from.

I just concluded a brief experiment of long hair here in Micronesia.  See picture below for results as now I have cut my hair.  Test results: inconclusive.

I miss you all back home, and I've been retarded in not having responded to your emails and facebook messages.  I haven't had the time in town to sufficiently respond.  That's why I'm going to try to get on the internet at least once per week now (Imagine trying that yourself). 

Now for the pictures.  Just a few to keep my image-people reading.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Merry late Christmas to everyone, and to all the Pohnpeians reading my blog, Merry continued Christmas!  You see, Christmas isn't just one day in Pohnpeian; it's a whole month.  To be honest, I'm kind of sick of it, but let me tell you how the past month has been.

On the first day of Christmas my Peace Corps Experience gave to me... being sick.  Yep, more sickness.  A little bacterial infection here, a little sinus infection there.  You know, the usual.

It's been a little weird not being with my family in either Salt Lake City or Colorado for Christmas, but my new family has been extremely great in helping me through this first Christmas.  We've been swimming in the river, fishing for river shrimp, doing the 6 Waterfall hike, having plenty of Christmas parties, secret Santas, sakau, sakau ni wai (alcohol), making fire, reading Paulo Coelho in Spanish, and more practice with a machete.  I've been able to do a lot of these things because I've made the effort to not go to Kolonia on the weekends.  It's been a little tough, but it really has been helping me become more involved with my community.

This month also I've been to two funerals.  I've had to help prepare and carry the yam to take to the funerals, but my responsibilities have been pretty limited to that.  It's truly an experience to see HUGE pigs being killed in front of many people, sakau being pounded in the background, and two-hundred people just sitting down on the ground and on the tops of cars.  Not much is said about the deceased, but everyone gathers and chats kind of like it's just another sad gathering.  Funerals are an extremely common thing here in Pohnpei.  My family usually attends funerals about 3 times a month if not more because we have connections to many families, and it's almost like a full time job preparing for a lot of funerals.  It's an interesting cultural experience, extremely interesting.

We had a big community feast on the 8th of this month.  About 150 people attended.  It. Was. Crazy.  So many yams.  So many sakau plants.  So many people.  Women dancing around dieing pigs.  People screaming like monkeys.  Men carrying huge pigs on hibiscus tree poles.  Kids running around.  It was a little overwhelming.  It was so much that I had to tap out at about 3 pm to take a nap, and then hit it again.  Out of control in a sense, but at the same time completely in control.  Hard to describe.  Sentence fragments. Done.

I've introduced my family to the one thing that makes the world seem right: Dunkin Donuts Coffee.  My stepmom (Thanks Catherine!) sent me original Dunkin Donuts and Gingerbread coffee, and my family's taste buds were shocked.  We usually drink add-to-water coffee which tastes like 'meh' even when you add sugar to it, so when my family tasted this delicious caffeinated drink from the DD Gods, it was kind of like that picture where God is almost touching Adam's (Wikipedia The Creation of Adam) finger.  They were amazed, and I was and still am glad for delicious coffee.

Side note: I'm growing my beard out.  Apparently it looks good even though before I've looked like Scraggy from Scoobie Doo.  Meh, we'll see how long it can go or how long I can last before I get sick of it.

We're selling ice cream now at our family store.  I've got one motto in life: never say no to ice cream.  I've been living up to that motto, a lot.

Blah Blah Blah.  Here are some pictures that might give you a good visual of my life nowadays.  Any questions, you know how to get a hold of me.

Nick's Picture Montage.

Not much time to post today, so here are some pictures to let you know what I've been up to.

I hope everyone is doing well back home.

Merry Christmas!

 My 7th and 8th Grade Class.

 Kind of funny how I learned this in Spanish first to then teach it in English...

 My running club on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

 An old construction truck abandoned on the side of the road.  A lot can be said from this picture.

The dead water buffalo head I found in the dish washing area when I got back home.

A collection of red, blue, and green dots organized for your viewing pleasure. In other words, Enjoy The Pictures!

 The Disney Channel is stepping it up this year with its new hit soap opera "When the Breast Feeding Ends".  It's said to be filled with drama, knives, and of course, babies on the edge!

 The Thinker has nothing on me.

 A big gun that the Japanese didn't have time to take home after WWII.  I wonder why?

 Projectiles the size of my hand.

And of course 6 barrels.

Hear Ye' Hear Ye' o Secondary Projects

In reference to the style of this blog title, thought I'd spice it up a little with some horrible rendition of an Old English Phrase.  In other words, I'm bored right now.

It's funny how one action can start a chain reaction and how many chain reactions can lead to one event.  I've been teaching my students songs that I have on my computer's Itunes thinking that maybe they will remember 2 or 3 vocabs words from the song, maybe the beat, and nothing else.  Boy was I wrong.  A couple of nights ago I was hanging out with a couple ( by couple I mean 4-6) of Salapwukians including my some of my students, and the most amazing thing happened.  They started to sing each song I taught them with perfect timing and all of the lyrics.  On top of that, they had taught the songs to their family and they started to sing along too.  Now the tunes of the Beatles and Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" are common place here.  Who'd of thought...

I've started a running club at my school that consists of any student who wants to run in the evenings 3 days a week.  My goal is to show the kids that there are free ways to exercise and stay healthy.  Diabetes and obesity are a huge problem here in Pohnpei due to overuse of salt, a lot of sugar, and minimum physical activity.  The extremely sad part is that most of these problems (I would guess about 80%) are bared by women.  It's an extremely interesting dichotomy of how the men here all have six packs and the women are mostly not in good shape.  I believe this is starting to change with the younger generation as they learn more about staying healthy, and I'm hoping to have some impact on that change.

I've become extremely frustrated with some things that I take for granted in America that absolutely do not exist here.  The biggest one is Special Education for students with disabilities.  In the U.S., it's assumed that if you have a condition like slight retardation or a speech impairment, there is a trained personnel at most elementary schools or someone in town from whom you can receive extra attention.  Throw that out the window here.  Some of the students at my school are in 3rd grade and are not even able to write their own name, and there's no one who bats an eye at it.  With a particular student, I'm spending time with them after school to help that student learn how to write basic letters.  It's been 3 days now, and I now can say that I have been completely humbled by this experience.  That is my most challenging secondary project: teaching an 8 year old student how to write their own 4-letter name.  I now respect every person who has worked in Special Education because of their amount of patience.  Patience, now that's a word.

We Peace Corps Volunteers had Thanksgiving dinner a little early on Sunday November, 18th.  The U.S. Ambassador invited us and some Army soldiers stationed in Pohnpei to eat at her beautiful villa outlooking the Pacific Ocean.  All I can say is that your tax dollars went to work that day.  I ate.  I ate some more.  I ate until people started giving me that look of, "Dude... The toilet is that way."  No, I didn't puke.  I actually never felt full even though I ate 2 plates of food and a whole pie.  It was a great way to celebrate Thanksgiving by eating turkey and stuffing while gazing out at the Pacific Ocean.

I've picked up the task of trying to keep myself intellectually stimulated, which is tough.  My conversations here with my community consist of sex jokes, trying to find me a wife, more sex jokes, food, and lesson planning for English classes.  So instead of turning my brain into complete mush, I've decided to start briefly studying for the GRE with a GRE test book that is conveniently in my school library.  I've also started to read the book The Lazy Intellectual which I thought fit me perfectly.  It's tough having come from a college town with interesting topics and ideas in a language I can perfectly understand to listening to me being talked to like a child in a language I barely understand.  The range of topics on an island are pretty limited, and definitely more limited in a isolated town with no Internet nor television.  Reading/studying will save me; I hope.

I feel like I've covered just about every topic I need to in this blog post.  To all of my friends and family back home, I love and miss you all.  Thanks for all of the support in the form of care packages, FB wall posts, emails, and prayers.  This is a tough job, but I believe it's what I need to be doing with my life right now.  It's almost Christmas season.  Maybe Good Ol' Saint Nick will send you a present.  Leave me your address on Facebook, and I might send you a post card or a coconut.  Either way, you win.

Salud,
Nicolás Antonio Canfield

Salmonella, Worms, and Progress

Thought I'd do a picture/video update along with a short blurb of the past 2 weeks.

Last week, I had a salmonella infection.  This caused me to not want to eat for a week, have diarrhea, and feel overall feel like shit.  Two days ago, the worst whole day migraine of my life accompanied with vomiting and the discovery of intestinal worms was such a treat.

I also have been learning the intricacies of the word mwemweit (to go hang out at someone elses place).  Living in an isolated community in the mountains means that it's a good walk to go hang out with others, but it's worth it to see some new people

My family is probably the coolest in the world.  During the past two weeks of a constant feeling of being punched in the balls by a headache and diarrhea, they've been really helpful. 

Boulder is finally looking like a dog instead of a puppy now.  He's still bitting people occasionally and jumping on tables for food, but he's learning.

I showed my family how to make smores and banana pancakes last week since they've never heard of neither.  They had fun making the poking sticks and setting the mallows ablaze.  My brother had so much fun with it that he took the left over marshmallows to school to show his friends.  Peace Corps Goal #2 = smashed.
Care packages have been awesome, and I thank my stepmom, aunt, and grandma for supplying the goods.

Trying to make friends with people of the same age here is pretty difficult.  They're all really shy and don't want to be seen with the only white guy for miles (yes, I stick out like a sore thumb plastered with white paint).  I only go to church on Sundays to hang out with others, but it seems like the other side isn't willing to make the effort.  Fuck.

Okay, video and pictures:

The Jungle Boys

I'm trying to stay more connected with people back home, and this blog post is an attempt at that.

I'm now oficially the only white person (okay... let's say American since the people there have light skin) in Salapwuk.  The other volunteer just finished her service last Sunday and took off to the world outside of Pohnpei.  It's been fun having another person to take notes on and talk to, and I'll try to continue the good work she's done.

The weeks have gone by really fast.  I find that Monday through Thursday fly by; by the time it's Friday, it's time for Kolonia or some adventure out in the jungle.  Around Kitti, one of the names I've heard my family and the Salapwuk guys being called in the Jungle Boys.  I makes me feel a little bit like Mowgli from The Jungle Book, just without Baloo.  Here's some imagery for you: machetes, deep hikes into the jungle, 50 foot cliff dives, blisters without a reason, green leaves for miles, and no cell phone coverage for days.  When you think of Nick in the Jungle, think of that.

My students hate me because we just had our 9 weeks test.  One of my bonus! questions was the following: explain the idiom "When pigs fly!".  I feel that if anything, my students will forget that idiom when pigs fly.

I'm becoming more comfortable with my host family.  We're starting to eat together more at the same time, and we're starting to think of each other as peneinei (family) and less of each other as brown people vs. white people.  Cue the song "Ebony and Ivory". 

I just voted online in the presidential/local elections for Colorado.  I can only imagine the noise that's going on in the States right now about it.  Part of me misses it, and part of me is relieved; kind of like a bladder with no piss.  It's not really participating, but it feels relieved.  Do you get my metaphor?  I don't...

If you'd like to know more about what I'm doing, send me an email or leave a comment.  I need to know what my audience wants to know.  Let's call it 'market research'.  Thanks CU marketing professor.

Dejando mi amor con vosotros,
Lepen