After landing we drove to our hotel, the Truk Stop, over a road that is 95% potholes, and 5% pavement. The 1.5-mile drive took us 25 minutes, as some of the potholes were the size of a swimming pool, not quite as deep, but certainly filled with water. There are very few car accidents on Chuuk because one cannot drive much faster than 5 mph. Mind you some cars have been known to be lost in the most severe potholes. Where’s Honolulu’s mayor, dear Mufi, when you need someone to fix potholes? That is Chuuk’s main road in the picture below.
The lagoon, still referred to as the ‘Truk Lagoon’ is one of the largest enclosed lagoons in the world, circled by a 225 km long barrier reef, and covering an area of 2 129 km2. The Truk Lagoon is home to more than 100 World War II Japanese ships and planes, sunk during an unanticipated (by the Japanese military) attack on the fleet anchored in the lagoon. Divers from all over the world come to marvel at this underwater museum. The waters are relatively shallow, and the wrecks have become beautiful living reefs of brilliant soft coral.
The glasses donated to us by so many are truly appreciated whichever island we happen to be on. The picture below shows some Chuukese folks selecting glasses from the large collection of glasses we carried on this trip, some 400+ glasses in total. By the time we made the trip from the Chuuk airport to our hotel, the PREL office next door to the hotel and from where the glasses would be distributed was already receiving phones calls asking Sandra & Sandy had brought glasses with them, and if so could the person come to the PREL office immediately to pick out a pair? Our arrival on the islands seems to signal that glasses will be available and word passes quickly along the 'coconut express'.
Chuukese children are wonderfully open and joyful kids who have learnt to accommodate to whatever circumstances they find in their schools. Sandy has been associated with Iras School (shown in the picture below) for a number of years. The school has no AC, both sides of the building are open, and the school is downwind from a pig farm.
One day he observed a Chuukese teacher offering a lesson on fractions to 45 children who were sitting on the floor (there were no desks or chairs) arranged in 5 rows of 9, each child attentively and quietly sitting on her/his 18 inch square floor space, totally engaged in the lesson. The teacher had no chalkboard or chalk, or a whiteboard, nothing to write on, yet the lesson went smoothly and when the teacher did a short quiz at the end to see if the children could add simple fractions they all could do so. It was amazing to watch this teacher—he was animated, funny, and had the total attention of every child in the class, and the children learnt.
On another occasion, the principal of Iras School challenged Sandy to teach some math to a group of parents, this in response to Sandy encouraging the teachers to try some different ways to teach mathematics—a kind of ‘put up or shut up’ challenge to the ‘professor’. So the next morning the call went out over the only radio station on island that a parents’ meeting would be held at Iras school that afternoon at 1:30 pm, right after school was dismissed early for the day. The girls in the picture below taken a few years ago were on their way home from school because ‘Sandy was going to teach their parents’!
Sixty parents showed up, the vast majority were women, and most did not have any schooling beyond the eighth grade. Sandy’s good friend (the late Martin Wierlangt), a Pohnpeian who spoke fluent Chuukese, acted as translator. From out of somewhere, about two-dozen chairs appeared, and a couple of blackboards and 4 pieces of chalk materialized. The blackboards were propped against the wall and the ‘lesson’ began. For an hour and a half the women laughed and encouraged each other as they ‘did math’. Sandy gave a few directions, Martin translated, and the women went to work. And they learnt some math, they discovered some patterns, they solved some puzzles. The afternoon was a huge success and these parents went away knowing a little bit of the math their children were learning in Iras school. It was not due to Sandy’s teaching—it was due to being given activities and approaches in which they could use their native intelligence to solve the problems, all based on the conviction that these people too could do mathematics.
Teachers in Hawai‘i have difficulties getting the parents of Micronesian children to take part in parent-teacher interviews, or school activities, to even get the parents to set foot in the school. They need to realize that typical Micronesian parents revere schools and teachers, and feel it is not the parents right to ‘interfere’ with the teacher or the school. Moreover, in some cases the parents are embarrassed about their own lack of education, and there own struggles with the English language. It is not because the parents don’t care, or that they can’t learn as the above experience on Chuuk demonstrated. Perhaps teachers could have parents come to an event that is conducted in the parents’ own language, engage the parents in a meaningful activity, and see if such an activity opens a pathway for the teachers and parents to communicate.
Though there are several ‘larger’ stores on Weno, much of the everyday shopping on Chuuk takes place in small roadside storefronts—small ‘Mom & Pop’ stores as shown below.
The ice chests contain cold drinks, typically stale dated ones shipped in by the bottling companies who distribute their unsold stock to these isolated Micronesian islands. The fruits and vegetables would be home grown. Local woman who earn a small income from the sale of the clothes would have made the skirts and blouses shown below.
There are taxis that travel the main road on Chuuk as well as a couple of the roads that lead up the side hills that overlook the town. The taxis cost about $.50 for a one-way ride. However, the primary mode of transportation in and around the lagoon is by water taxis. A caravan of boats, each powered by a 50 horsepower engine, usually filled with adults and children, speed into Weno from the lagoon islands in the morning carrying people to their jobs and kids to school, and then out again in late afternoon after school is out and stores close up. One such boat is shown below. Imagine 30 or 40 such boats, following closely one another stretching out across the waters of the lagoon, and you have an idea of the water taxi experience on Chuuk. The shortest ride would be some 45 minutes, and some lagoon islands are as much as two hours away. Now that is a ‘commute’ to match anything on Hawai‘i or the mainland made all the more challenging when it is raining or the seas are rolling!
On Chuuk, as in many jurisdictions around the world, politics plays a critical role in determining who has jobs, who gets promoted, what gets done, and so on. The situation on Chuuk, however, seems particularly acute as public monies never seem be used for the projects and programs they were intended to serve. The school system is in disarray with the Governor ignoring the legally elected school board leading to an impasse that is destroying morale among teachers and administrators. Teachers who supported the unsuccessful candidate during the recent gubernatorial elections are being banished to outer islands in the lagoon, forcing them to leave their families behind on Weno. Still the school children are eager to learn and willing to work towards a better life on Chuuk. Some teachers and administrators work very hard to provide the best education they can under incredibly challenging circumstances.
But it is time to leave these loving and caring Chuukese and move west ward. So with a wave and hearty ‘Kinosou’ (thank you), we struggle along that main road one last time on the drive to the airport. This time a large tank truck led us through the pot holes showing us how to avoid the very worst water-filled caverns on the road.
From Chuuk we flew to Guam thus completing the final leg of the Island Hopper journey. We spent one day on Guam before flying to Palau. We will talk about Guam combining our description of it with that of Saipan, the two countries with a Chamorro language base. The next posting will be about Palau, a crown jewel of the diving world, and the country that is the western extreme of our trip across Micronesia.
This is sooo interesting you guys, Just like our CUSO days of long ago. As they say " Keep on Chuckin`"
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