Two Deaths, One Funeral

Brokenness is a kind of JVI buzzword that my community tends to often joke about. I drop a ceramic mug on the floor- brokenness. Marcos sprains his ankle, falling in a treacherous pothole on the notorious Chuuk road- brokenness. Though we like to take this concept lightly here, my time in Chuuk has not been without real, deep brokenness. Over the past two weeks I have learned of the deaths of two people in my community at St. Cecilia. One, a student of mine named Jerome. The other, the wife of my co-teacher Jerry, named Cecilia.

Jerome was a 6th grade boy, who, as I learned in school the following day, committed suicide. One of the nuns informed me of the news, and I have rarely ever felt more shocked. Jerome was about 12 or 13 years old. He lived a few minutes walk away from my apartment. He has been left back from the 7th grade at the beginning of this school year and struggled greatly in my class. Jerome was, for the most part, illiterate.

The news of a suicide death at such a young age seems much more shocking to me than any of my Micronesian friends. In Chuuk, the rate of teenage suicide is one of the highest in the world. I don’t understand why. I can’t even begin to. Jerome’s death has been some of the darkest news I have ever received.

In addition to the confusion I feel with regard to the causes of Jerome’s death, I also feel troubled by the response. In Chuuk, the Catholic church here has created a rule that no suicide deaths will be recognized with a funeral. Catholic school students are not excused from school to visit the family. No announcement was made at the school assembly meeting to formally acknowledge Jerome. I have many, many concerns with Church policies in Chuuk, which I will not discuss further here. However, I feel that all life, at its end, should be recognized and honored.

The 7th and 6th grade students did discuss Jerome’s death, and recognized it in their own way. I also teach three of Jerome’s cousins who I have been attempting to reach out to. Chuuk State lacks any social service program and the schools are without counselors. The family structure is very strong but I still worry that my students do not have a healthy outlet to express their feelings on matters of death that are so much more eminent here than in America.

Less than one week following Jerome’s death, our acting-principal informed the school that Cecilia, the wife of an 8th grade teacher Jerry, had passed away. I never had the opportunity of meeting Cecilia, but faculty members have told me of her warm and light-hearted temperament. At the age of 40 she died of diabetes. Diabetes, especially type II, also leads to many deaths here usually related to the diet of canned meat and rice. Jerry and I teach the same students, the 8th graders, and he is always the one cracking jokes at our meetings.

Cecilia’s funeral, or what I would in my own culture call a wake, was this past Thursday at 1 pm. The school day was shortened and the 4th through 8th grade students all attended the funeral together. The nearly 200 students lined up in straight lines. We walked from St. Cecilia on the road for about 10 minutes until we arrived at the compound where the funeral took place. From the road you could hear women crying. Women were inside the meeting house where the body was laid out while the men remained outside. When we arrived, all of the students and teachers entered. I sat on the floor, cross-legged with the 8th grade students. The principal greeted the family, a student read from the Chuukese bible, and we sang. Following this we exited the meeting house where Jerry was waiting to shake all of our hands and thank us for coming. The viewing can go on for a few days until the funeral mass which will also be held in the meeting house. Burials here are on the family’s property.

The opportunity to participate in Cecilia’s funeral granted me a greater perspective on how Chuukese people deal with death. The reaction of the school and attendance of the funeral gave me hope. However, the juxtaposition of the response to these two deaths was stark. I wish that Jerome’s life could have been honored, his family could have been visited, and the students might have had some venue for bearing in mind the death of their classmate.

Pictures Dec-March

Hey! I just posted new pictures this week on my and Jessie's Flickr account. The link is to your right. The pictures are from December to March. Enjoy.

Siis

The past two weekends I have been able to travel to two other islands within the Chuuk lagoon. A trip off Weno is a welcome break from the bustle of “city” life here. I often consider Weno and all the other islands in the Chuuk analogous to urban and rural poverty respectively. Weno is crowded, dirty, and noisy. Garbage is strewn about without a proper removal system. There is a visible tension between the island lifestyle and looming westernization. In my experience on other islands outside of Weno- the scenery is more beautiful, unobstructed with trash, rusting cars, and noisy markets. The pace of life is slowed, though people have less access to resources like electricity, internet, and stores.

Jessie, Lincoln, Marcos and I were invited to Siis by Kiki. Kiki is a Chuukese woman who teaches at the high school where my community-mates work. She is one of the most welcoming and cheerful women I have met here. I was very grateful for the opportunity to see her home island and stay overnight with a Chuukese family. We left Weno Saturday afternoon and returned on Sunday. Siis holds about 900 people, but it seems like less. Kiki’s cinder- block home stands about 25 yards from where we park the boat. The family can look out on Fefan and Uman from their front door.

Part of our visit was to prepare music and sing with the Saramen students from Siis at their mass on Sunday morning. Saturday night, after dark, students and their younger siblings began to arrive at the house. Marcos pulled out his guitar and our singing practice went on late into the night. Chuukese are phenomenal singers with seemingly inherent abilities to create harmony. After practice, we took the guitar outside to sit under the bright equatorial moonlight and sing some Chuukese pop songs for Kiki’s neighbors. Finally we made it to bed, on the floor as the Chuukese sleep.

The next morning we were greeted with tons of kids who showed up at the house to escort us to mass. I was led by the hands of two small girls, maybe 6 and 8 years old, who wore mumus. The hand-holding and the sense of trust I had that these girls were leading me through a place they felt proud to call home reminded me vividly of Machakos, Kenya. The music at mass was wonderful; and after changing out of my hot sticky mumu, we all ran to the end of the island to go swimming at the beach.

Our visit to Siis was filled with hospitality and peace. For this, I am continually thankful.

Peace,

Caitlin

maybe one hour

Today I had an interaction with a few of my 8th grade students that i thought might be indicative of the landscape in Chuuk. After school I was sitting by the side of the road with a few of my female 8th grade students. After asking me if I was happy in Chuuk, the girls asked me to tell them a story about my life in America. So I thought for a minute and I told them that over the summer before I moved to Chuuk I spent one month driving across America with my best friend and 2 of our friends. I told them that we drove from New York to California and that since the U.S. is pretty big, it took about one month. "Wow!," was their response. "A whole month? Did you stop to eat?" Yes, Jenesha we stopped to eat but we spent a lot of time driving.

Jenesha thought for a moment and took a look at the single road that wraps around most of the island which was in front of us. "In Chuuk that would take...maybe one hour."

After 6 months

I’ve passed the 6^th month mark of my time spent in Chuuk, so I thought I would share some thoughts on my teaching job at St. Cecilia.

St. Cecilia exists in a time of great transition. Last quarter the board of the school announced that Mariano, the principal of 11 years, would be leaving at the end of the semester. To the general public, Mariano resigned, but from speaking with administration I know that Mariano was asked to leave after money from the school’s fundraising efforts went missing. This loss of funds has plagued the school for many, many years resulting in the school’s $30,000 of debt. With this change, the school is slowly crawling out of debt. Eventually the faculty hopes that their meager salaries will rise. In previous years teachers went months without being paid at all. This year, everyone gets paid, but in dramatically small amounts. If the school can continue moving toward financial health, faculty salary is next on the agenda.

Now that Mariano is gone, Kaspar, the Vice Principal works as acting principal while the school searches for a new principal. Finding a qualified school administrator is not an easy task on a small island that does not offer higher education beyond an associate’s degree. We are hoping that the new principal will be in place next year. For now, the school remains in a state of semi-organized chaos. Here are some examples:

Keys. The office of the school does not control or hold keys to any of the classrooms. Each teacher is responsible for holding the key to his or her own classroom. I keep the key to the library. This proves problematic in a school with serious faculty attendance issues. On any given day, you can expect at least one faculty member to be absent. Sometimes teachers don’t show up for weeks at a time. This leaves the students of that teacher locked out of the classroom, playing outside unsupervised for the entire day. There is no organized teacher substitution, so when a teacher is absent, kids have nothing to do but run around and climb the walls of the school...literally. I have on more that one occasion witnessed teachers manually breaking in to classrooms of teachers who are often late or absent. They just break the chain off the door with a hammer.

Curriculum. There is none! No teachers are given guidelines for what they should be teaching. The administration does not evaluate teachers’ lesson plans. As a brand new teacher I was never informed of the level where the students were, never told anything other than “reading and language arts” as to what was expected of me to teach. I could be teaching nothing but yoga to these kids and no one would know. This is hard on the teachers, yes, but worse for the students. Due to the lacking expectations in reading and writing in both Chuukese and English, some students pass through grade after grade without ever acquiring faculty of either language. No one knows the grade level at which students should be reading by. I have students who are illiterate in two languages.

Teaching at St. Cecilia is probably the craziest thing I have ever taken on. Most days I go home from work questioning whether or not I should be here. Whether or not it makes a difference and whether or not Chuukese people actually want American teachers in the school systems. Watching days pass as students are locked out of classrooms or sent outside for 3 consecutive periods of unsupervised PE (ie-volleyball or basketball) frustrates me beyond words.

However, beyond the chaos, there are small glimpses of relationships I am forming with students that I am hoping will make this all seem meaningful in the end. Today during 8^th period Monsa came to visit me in the library as I was grading. Monsa is a 7^th grader who transferred to St. Cecilia this year and is failing my class miserably. She can’t read, but no one ever noticed this because they admitted her into the school without taking the entrance exam. They placed her in the 7^th grade based on her age, when she should be in 5^th. While Monsa can’t read, she can speak small bits of English, this is true for many of my students and helps them get through grade to grade. She comes to visit carrying a cd player and headphones. I ask her, “What do you have?” She responds, “…(she is translating in her head)…music!” she says with a smile. So she sits next to me and we listen to the Chuukese keyboard music in her cd player.

My 8^th graders have discovered that I am slowly learning Chuukese. This proves to be incredibly amusing to them. Students constantly yell Chuukese phrases at me, now expecting to respond. I tell them, in the classroom, we speak English, but outside the classroom, Chuukese it is. Aita, a female 8^th grader, has made herself my Chuukese tutor. She and other students visit and frequently laugh at me as I stumble through vocabulary. I am an awful language student, but my lessons allow me to laugh with my students, and if nothing else, that makes it worth it.

Peace,

Caitlin

Island Christmas, Chuukese New Year

Happy Holidays all! Since the end of the school semester I have been enjoying a two week break from work. We have recently had many visitors including Lincoln’s family and the 3 JV’s who live and work in Pohnpei, another state in the FSM. I have very much enjoyed the Christmas season in Chuuk, though I do miss cold weather. Hot chocolate isn’t as satisfying in 100% humidity.

We celebrated Christmas in our village on Christmas Eve by attending mass with the Chuukese community. We had a delicious dinner and after mass sang Christmas carols in our apartment. On Christmas day we woke up early to open the small presents we got one another. My community had a $1 Christmas gift exchange; and we opened presents sent from our families. Thanks Mom! We then attended English-language mass with the Xavier community of JVs. I sang with the choir that Marcos directs, which provides music for all the English masses. Following mass we all headed up to Xavier for lunch, a very muddy/barefoot soccer game, and dinner with the community there. Christmas wasn’t the same as being with my family at home, but I very much enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate my first island Christmas.

Chuukese New Year was probably the most unique holiday I have observed in Chuuk in my 5 months here. Basically, the idea is that after midnight everyone makes as much noise as possible for the next 24 hours at least. The JVs spent New Years in the adjacent village dancing to the band Marcos plays in. When we drove home at 2am we passed loads of people out on the street drumming on any piece of available metal or banging on pots. We headed to the roof of our building to participate and later realized that our percussion skills are not as advanced as the majority of Chuukese people. I was awakened at dawn the next morning to parades of people outside my window banging on things and yelling, “happy new year everyone,” in Chuukese. The noise continued to accost me from my window all day long. On New Years Day evening I was out on the road and invited to join a group of maybe 20 people carrying a sheet of tin roofing and pots to ring in the New Year. Everyone was out on the road- old and young, whole families together. It was a very noisy New Year and a completely different way of celebrating than anything I have experienced.

Kinamwe,

Caitlin

Celebrating St. Cecilia

We recently had a wonderful celebration here in Chuuk at the school where I am teaching, St. Cecilia. November 22 marks the feast day of St. Cecilia in the Catholic church, which we celebrated with two days of festivities at school.

Beginning two weeks in advance I was notified by the teachers that 8^th period was going to be utilized by the students for “practice.” What practice and why I was not informed of. I am beginning to let go of the need to ask for details and am satisfied to just go with the flow. So practicing commenced and eventually took over the school day. That which was originally reserved for 8^th period spilled over to 7^th,6^th,5^th,4^th and all the way to 3^rd period. This only frustrated me as I watched the learning stop for what seemed to be dance practice going in the classrooms.

When Thursday Nov 22 finally arrived we began the day with mass. Following mass students, faculty and about 200 parents and friends gathered in the school building. The classrooms are lined in one row with walls which can be pushed back to create a meeting space. So we met in what are normally 3 classrooms. Each grade had organized and choreographed their own song, dance, or skit to celebrate the feast. St. Cecilia was the patron saint of music so all of the song was appropriate. Some of my favorite performances were the kindergarteners, dressed traditionally in bright colors, the girls with crowns of flowers on their heads (called maramar) and the boys in thus (wrapped skirts). They were adorable! Pictures will be up soon. The 4^th grade looked great in their high energy hula dance. The female hula dancers never cease to amaze me here. My students had a great time with their dances especially the 6^th graders who were letting me sit in on their rehearsals a few days before St. Cecilia day.

The entertainment led up to the following day in which the school organized a big fundraising carnival to raise money for the school. St. Cecilia is in a significant amount of debt and is often unable to pay the faculty their salaries, so fundraising is imperative for the survival of the school. Each class organized games, items for sale, and entertainment to help raise money. The 8^th graders organized a band which played in their classrooms and since I do not have my own homeroom I spent the day helping out Sr. Rose with the 5^th graders. This meant that I sat in a chair and held the box with the money while contently drinking a coconut most of the morning. Each class put in a lot of effort for this day and the class to make the most money is regarded as the hardest working.

At the end of the day when everyone had left, Sr. Rose, Sr. Sophie and I sat down together to count ALL of the money. Twice. We managed to raise around $3,600 for the school. I was shocked at the amount; this is a country where minimum wage is $1 max. The school has a lot of support from the families who are invested it and they all contributed a lot from the day. All of the work and all of the counting this past week has definitely given me a greater perspective on fundraising and what it takes to keep a school like St. Cecilia functioning financially.

These two days also gave me the opportunity to spend out-of-the-classroom time with my students. I am coming to see this type of interaction as very important, especially due to the language barrier. I was able to laugh and dance with my students, to connect in ways that surpass language. For that, I am very grateful.

Peace,

Caitlin