Beginning with my June 2008 post "It's Been Five Years," the following is the continuing story of my travels from the United States into Micronesia ~ Pohnpei, Guam and Saipan ~ and my life since June 2003.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 ~ Pohnpei
I am slowly building a quiet presence here, in different communities. I haven't tried to build a life for myself in years. For now, there's no place I'd rather be, despite the tumult I've been describing. I haven't felt this way in a long time.
It's good to be learning again, to be interacting with people. Whites and locals. Doesn't matter.
Looks like I'll be learning Fisheries law, and international conventions and compacts. I've just been told I may be going to be sent to Fiji in a few days if it's approved ~ via Honolulu, returning via Honolulu and Guam ~ to learn and participate in an important compact convention among pacific nations to govern tuna fishing in the international waters. The last great conservation effort on the planet. Guess I must be doing something right, if they want to send me, eh?
My sister does not understand my relationship with Lynn, especially how Lynn can leave her daughters with relatives to spend as much time with me as she does. My sister does not understand how Lynn can be with me and not put her children first. Yes, we've both been selfish, Lynn and I. She, because she's rebellious by nature; me, because it's been so long since I've allowed myself to care about anyone.
As selfish as Lynn may appear for leaving her daughters with relatives to be with me, it is still so very different here with respect to the way children are raised. Not that the Micronesian way is necessarily better, but we westerners could learn a lot. The expression, "It takes a village" is not an abstract concept here. There are mothers, and grandmothers, and aunties, and cousins, and brothers, and uncles, and friends, and the love they all share with the children of their village or clan is phenomenal. Phenomenal. These children know what love is, and they know who their parents are. Children are everything to these people, and Lynn is very serious about hers, despite our western perception of what I've described, which to our eyes would look like abandonment, but in theirs is entrusting the lives and upbringing of their children to the community as a whole.
I grew up in a nuclear family and how my sister and I were raised seems artificial compared to this (no offense, Mom and Dad). Perhaps I am rationalizing. But to leave the child with someone else in the village, or to send them to a faraway relative on another part of the island, or to Guam, is a way of both teaching them independence from the parental-unit, and extending the concept of family to which they belong. I am very proud of the way my sister loves and cares for her daughters. Yet, there is something here that works in such a different dynamic. At least until the teenage years. Some make it, some don't. Suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, petty crimes, murder by knife or machete'. And I've noticed a prolonged adolescence among people in their twenties. But some make it, and pass it on. And I can't say the way they do it is wrong. At least, not judging by our own statistics.
Both of Lynn's daughters are here now, and it is not intended that they will go back to Guam. I brought Lynn's mother here from Guam, to bring Lynn's oldest, Brined (pronounced Brin-ett) and return her to Lynn from the paternal grandmother. Brined seems to like me. Her younger sister Renay is a cryer, and clingy. Paying to bring them here could've been a mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. They're here now. And will be as long as Lynn and I are together. It's a day-by-day thing, I don't regret a day of it. No point to it.
It may seem like Lynn doesn't care about her kids, but that's through western eyes. Here, it's just different. Different strength-teaching mechanisms, different power sources, different resources to draw upon that I would never think of, and didn't have, moving about as we did, as small a family as we had. There is a society here that provides all the wonderful things that moms in America who stay home to raise their kids do, but in ways adapted to life out here. It's just spread out over more people. Lynn's girls are loved and they know it. I'm sure of it.
I'm still soaking it all in. And I just can't say it's wrong. Different doesn't mean wrong. Although I understand how my family may take its own dim view of Lynn. It has occurred to me, too. And her family even gives her a hard time about such things ~ not just leaving the kids to be with me, but, more importantly, leaving the family as a whole. Her family fears it may lose her to me altogether, and is constantly putting pressure on the bonds between us. I suppose mine does too. Both for the same reason: They're worried about what we'll become.
The fact is: I have never been more comfortable with the idea of having a child (not that I want one) than I have been since coming here, seeing how they're raised and cared for and loved here. Even, make no mistake, in the third-world conditions they live in. It's something I had to come to terms with myself some weeks ago. The children here, they laugh, they smile, they're shown they're loved, they're fed, they sleep, they play, they interact, they're cared for when they're sick, they go to school. Not in conditions we'd expect to provide for in our culture, or expect of ourselves, but they do know love, even if they sleep on a mat on a concrete floor. And they wake up, and smile, and know they're loved, and are fed, and know where love is. I must be missing something.
There is a strength here and a differential in the gears, so to speak, that operates a different way when it comes to making sure kids are cared for. Closing down bars is a separate problem between Lynn and me, from whether her kids are healthy, cared for, and raised right. The latter has never been an issue. The first will either make or break us, and I hope she understands that now. I've put my foot down about it, as much as one can. And it'll make other complications easier if we're able to come to terms about my boundaries and limits. She says she wants to make it so. So, we'll see.
It's one of those things: You just have to be here to understand. And I suspect many Mehn Why who aren't here can't understand and never will.
I've been awake since 4 a.m, the sun coming over the mountain behind me, lighting the sea to the northwest. Soft, soft pinks, blue and white sky.
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