Into the Blue…

On early Wednesday morning I went to Guam international Airport to catch my plane to Pohnpei. The mixture of passengers was great: Asian business-men, Micronesian old women, some US soldiers and a white couple, obviously missionaries. The flight was great – right through an endless blue ocean.

Suddenly out of nothing appears Chuuk, our first stop. The route goes right along all the Micronesian Islands through to Hawaii- nice trip! In Chuuk some Micronesians came on board with flowers on their head and round their neck. How nice- should I finally come back into places with traces of traditional culture?!

Approaching Pohnpei you see the typical shape of Micronesian Islands – a reef-belt circumfences the island in a distance of 10km and smaller Atolls are scattered nearby. The vegetation is tropical jungle with surprisingly few gardens. Manuel, who does his PhD with Jürg in Heidelberg and arranged the details of my stay here, picked me up from the airport. We went to the Jesuit house, which will be my home for the next two months as things with my stay in a local family didn't work out as planned. And I thought PNG was the land of the unexpected…

So I will be living here together with 5 Jesuit brothers and fathers and a younger Jesuit volunteer. Next week the Bishop will come as well, so high visit is expected. Well, the place is lovely, a bit off the main road surrounded by green vegetation. There is a big kitchen and dining area, an upstairs veranda with a nice view and I even have Internet connection in my room.

The first evening I was invited for dinner with Manuel and his Korean-German wife Nihamm. They have three cute kids and it is nice to know them around.

Next morning I went to the Micronesian seminar, which is just 2 minutes down the road and started to make myself familiar with the environment. The MicSem is an NGO which focuses on cultural awareness and education. They are documenting information and artefacts of the local islands culture and foster re-vitalization initiatives of traditional customs. In parallel they address current social issues that arise from uncontrolled contact with western cultures, such as Diabetes as a consequence of changing food habits. I will be helping on these kind of projects as well as working in their well-equipped library. My task there is reviewing documents from the German colonial period and their great historical picture collection. The idea is for me to scan their archives and get familiar with their collection to be able to search for valuable material in the Museum's archives when I'm back in Germany. It's a nice place to work and my colleagues Aletha and Carol are super-friendly.

In the evening there was a dinner at the sister's place (no idea, why I'm not staying there) for a great evening meal. One of the sisters is Maria (what other name could it be else?!), a spanish lady with whom I enjoyed tryining out, if my spanish still works. I also met the four other young Jesuit volunteers (22), who work for 2 years in the school as teachers. They all went to Jesuit schools and colleges in different cities in the US, and I started to ask myself if this simply doesn't exist in Germany or I just don't know about it. It seemed to me like a layer of an own world. Well, I just hope I will never be asked to do the "Tischgebet"…

Kolonia's infrastructure is very good in my opinion. There are Taxis that get you around the village until 10pm for 1 USD (which is the official currency), the supermarkets have a good variety on offer, including fresh baker shops and there is even a cinema in town, the only one in Micronesia!!! The local market, however does not offer siginificantly more than Bananas and Coconut, sometimeas taro or yams. As gardening is not too popular here, pineapple, pawpaw and mango are growing wild and are therefore mostly consumed by the kids before they get ripe. The security situation is much more relaxed than in PNG, there are thefts, but violence against women is quite rare. I can go running on the streets without any problems and meet plenty of other people there. Climate is the same as in PNG, hot and humid, it a rains even more often, 2-3 times per day for about 15mins.

So far to my first days here. Slightly different environment and definitely a new experience. Here are some impressions of Kolonia, the capital of Pohnpei.