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.
Saturday, September 20, 2003 ~ Pohnpei
Things are pretty stable at work. It's been a couple of weeks now since Paul left, and the grieving process seems over. You just can't and don't dwell on things here. I'll probably be travelling among Chuuk and Yap next month a bit. In addition to needing to interview witnesses on Chuuk in a criminal case involving election violations, on Yap and Chuuk there are some immigration deportation proceedings I think I'm supposed to be handling. Filipinos, I think, not sure of details. We have some Vietnamese "refugees" on Yap, but I think they're going to be repatriated. I'm not involved in that. And I'm about to be handed some deportation proceedings involving a Chinese guy who's brought six Chinese "working girls" to the island. Prostitution is apparently not illegal here, per se, but these aren't desirable elements, eh? Their entry permits have expired, and they've been told to get off the island, so it's just a matter of getting them to do so, whatever that entails.
I enjoy working with the Immigration staff, and the national cops too. Well, just about everyone I've come in contact with professionally. Within the office, of the four secretaries, I really only like one. Another, in charge of procurement, does things when (and if) she wants to, and it's getting really old. She's the one who never got my stuff moving from my house; I've had a computer that blew up the second day I was here, she's done nothing about; she's done nothing about getting more phone lines in the office so I don't have to share an Internet connection with Anthony, the lawyer next door. She tells you she's doing what you've asked, and have had approved, and it never gets done. The other two secretaries are just dead wood, and can't even take messages properly. The halls are littered with old and spent computers and printers and the like, piled up with old filing cabinets and boxes. Our copier machine constantly produces darkened images. The phones and intercom system are awful.
I've shared earlier about the Filipino man and boy that washed up on the shores of Yap some years ago. Their bones and the man's skull are visibly exposed in a storage shed next to my office building. The Phillipines won't pay to have the bones repatriated. They were buried on a beach to have the elements clean them up, like we used to do cleaning up shells we'd find that still had the animal in them. They should be buried, but there's no such thing as a pauper's graveyard here, and the bones would decompose in the soil here.
It was actually cold last night. Very heavy rains yesterday, especially in the first hours of the morning, which made me late for work. It probably wasn't that cold, but my blood has probably thinned out enough by now that it felt that way. I certainly don't sweat like a "puik" (pweek / pig) like I used to. It was the first night in a long time that I kept a shirt on after I got home, and didn't have the floor fans running.
My learning to speak Pohnpein is coming along, slow but sure. As more locals realize I'm trying to learn, the more they throw at me, the more comfortable I become and recognize words and phrases, and how to respond in a natural way. There doesn't seem to be a grammar structure like we have in English, but it could be that I'm only learning a word and a phrase here and there, verbs, nouns, a few adjectives, and haven't put together full sentences yet. But it's very simple.
It's close to 5:30 a.m. I've been up since before 4 a.m. The sun will start to come up soon.
I heard we had a tsunami heading toward Yap, FSM's westernmost state and closest to the Philipines. I don't know how high the tsunami is or will be when it reaches Yap, but it was 7 foot high off the coast of Hokkaido's Pacific coast.
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