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

Stolen flip-flops, turtle shell, and nuns

“Don’t hit the chicken!!” Sr. Toni screeches as we drive down the road on our way home from work. Sr. Rose swerves and avoids the chicken on the road. No cars protest, we usually only go 15 mph anyway.

I experience the road in Chuuk daily with the three Mercidarian nuns who I work with at St. Cecilia and who graciously drive me to work everyday. The road is always an adventure; the 4 miles usually takes about half an hour, sometimes more. There is only one main road wrapping around the coast of the island, and some smaller offshoots into the internal villages. Obstacles include chickens, pigs, pot holes, children, and volleyball nets. The sisters drive a silver Honda, low enough to the ground that we usually bottom out when trying to mitigate the pot-hole laden sections. Their front windshield is shattered in one spot- with that spider web cracked pattern, taped from the inside. It was broken by a large pipe that fell on the car from the construction on at the cathedral outside St. Cecilia. There are no laws for traffic in Chuuk, no state inspections, no traffic lights, no car insurance- so something like a shattered windshield isn’t too worrisome.

Sr. Toni, Sr. Rose, and Sr. Perpetua are some of the best friends I have made in Chuuk in my 3 short months here. They are getting me through the challenges at St. Cecilia, whether by removing the dead rat from the library where I keep my desk, or explaining why women have to wear slips or shorts under their skirts, or offering help on grading. Sr. Toni is a Palauan woman who teaches 7^th and 8^th grade religion; Sr. Rose is Yapese and teaches 5^th, and Sr. Perpe is also Yapese and teaches the 2^nd graders. The sisters are really committed to the school and are a big reason why St. Cecilia still functions. They are totally down to earth and are always willing to answer my questions. They often give me small gifts like papaya from their garden.

Last week, Sr. Perpe gave me a turtle shell ring. Sea turtles are an animal often consumed by Micronesians, they use the meat for food and the shells for jewelry and hair combs. However, they are an endangered species. Most outsiders would judge the use of turtle in Micronesia negatively. Guide books tell you not to eat it, you cannot import turtle shell jewelry into the US- it is confiscated at customs. But Micronesians really value it in their culture. I am still not sure I would eat turtle if it was offered to me. It is one of those differences where you ask yourself if it is more important to respect the culture or advocate for greater awareness and environmental justice. It’s a great question we are faced with here.

Last story for today- Mondays are laundry days for Jessie and I. After I get home from school we take the 5 minute walk over to the laundry mat down the road with all our laundry in our arms. Some days we are there for hours waiting, sometimes it takes 45 minutes, depending on if there is electricity on island. Culturally, only Chuukese women do laundry. I have never seen a man in a laundry mat here other than Lincoln. So while we wait Jessie and I usually make conversation with the women or write letters. When you step indoors here, it is polite to leave your shoes outside the door. There is a lot of mud, especially in Nepukos, the village where we live, so wearing shoes would require a lot of mopping. When my students come into the library, they take off their shoes, we never wear shoes in our apartment, and so we leave our zorries (flip flops) at the door of the laundry mat. But after our laundry is done and we are ready to walk home, we realize that our flip-flops had been stolen while we were inside. There is less of a mine/yours understanding in Chuuk, people often trade things like zorries, if they like yours they take them and leave the ones on their feet. But these were definitely stolen and we were definitely walking home in the mud barefoot. The road in Nepukos is not the ideal place to walk barefoot, there is barely pavement, mostly mud. But Jessie and I did it, laughing to ourselves, scheming when to purchase our new $1 pair of zorries. I scrubbed my feet for a good amount of time after arriving home, and even though I miss my bright orange zorries, I feel as if I have been initiated.

Kinamwe.

I think I am allergic to chalk...

Hello all, sorry for the lapse in blogging, since the last post my community was without a computer for 2 weeks and then Chuuk spent one straight week without electricity. I really enjoy spending much less time on the computer, but don’t try and talk to me about current events when I get back.

Things here have been picking up momentum. Today at St. Cecilia we finished the 1^st Quarter of the school year, so I have been giving exams the last two days. It’s hard to believe that 1/8^th of my time teaching is already up. In some ways I am thankful. Life in the Chuukese education system is still challenging, I am continuing to deal with language barrier issues daily. I AM allergic to chalk dust and by 5^th period everyday I am sniffling and sneezing and my 8^th graders ask what’s wrong with me.

The students are getting more comfortable with me. Carter, one of my favorite 6^th graders, visits me in the mornings in the library. But there are also hard moments- this week my 6^th graders were finishing up a writing project, just a one paragraph story but we worked on it for a week. When it came time to hand it in, all that my student Jerome had written on his paper was, “I am sorry.” It was heartbreaking. He is one of the students who struggles the most in English and since there are no resources like special Ed or after school tutoring, it’s difficult to help students so far behind, especially for me because I don’t have as firm a grasp on Chuukese as would be necessary. But I am constantly looking for creative ways to get to those students.

The two JV communities on Weno are doing well. This Wednesday Saramen Chuuk Academy (the high school where I live and where my 3 community-mates teach) played Xavier High School (where the other 4 JVs live and teach). They are the only two Catholic high schools in Chuuk. Marcos coaches SCA, Josh coaches Xavier, both JVs, so needless to say there is a huge rivalry. We all went up for the game on Wednesday after school. St. Cecilia lies on the road (there’s only one road) about halfway between the two schools, so I hopped on the back of the flatbed to join SCA and the JVs as they were going up to Xavier. It was great to see Marcos and Josh in action- they’re both really passionate about what they are doing, the rest of us found it amusing to watch. Xavier won by 5 and it was a great game. This weekend were are throwing a small Halloween party for the JVs and some faculty- Jessie is far more excited about it than I’ve ever seen anyone be for a party. It’s funny to try and decorate with the resources we have here. We love the simplicity.

I hope everyone is well at home and elsewhere. I am missing fall! It’s still 85 and humid here every day.

Peace,

Caitlin

Chuukese

I have been thinking a lot about the language barrier that exists here in Chuuk between English and Chuukese speakers. The subject comes up in conversation daily among my community-mates.

Each state in the FSM speaks its own language. In Chuuk, the 70,000 people who live here speak Chuukese. Chuukese is that strangest language I have ever heard; it makes Kiswahili look easy. There are no books published in Chuukese other than a translation of the Bible- the language was historically only oral. The way the school system here works (or at least in theory) is that students speak Chuukese in school through the 3rd grade. After that classes are supposed to begin to switch over to English. The only language spoken in the high schools here is English; the only opportunities for Chuukese to go to college are in English speaking schools. The only college here in Chuuk is COM- college of Micronesia, a 2 year associates program in education. And that’s the only option. Most students seeking a college education who do not attend COM go off island, to Pohnpei, Guam, Hawaii or elsewhere in the States.

The lack of options frustrates me daily; it is a type of poverty I hadn’t considered before. Try to wrap your head around not even having the opportunity to attend college in your native language. Part of the reason for the English system is the small number of Chuukese speakers, and part is the America education system enforced here on this small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As with many challenges Chuuk faces, the Chuukese are not often assisted by the foreign system at work here in this non-Western location.

For me at St. Cecilia, the language barrier is more apparent than for the other JVs. As the only elementary school teacher, most of my students are only beginning to learn English. At St. Cecilia, the students do not start classes in English in the 4^th grade. In fact most teachers teach in Chuukese through the 8^th grade, knowing that when they arrive in high school, the students will be forced to speak only English. Most of the teachers aren’t fluent in English either. It is difficult for my students and I to understand each other. Often directions must be repeated 5, 10 times in the classroom. I worry that I will never be able to connect with my students in any sort of depth due to the language barrier that divides us.

Every day I grapple with the implications of my presence here, as I participate in a system that forces a foreign language on Chuukese people. Am I facilitating an effort to strip the Chuukese language away from its speakers? Should we just let Chuuk be, take our language and head home? I don’t know. I do know that the only option for a college education is in English, and with that education a Chuukese person has the potential to make these decisions for herself or himself. I try to explain to my 7^th graders that bilingualism is an important tool they will need to claim their own voice in the world- I’m not sure they get it.

In asking these questions to my community-mates the other night, Marcos turned to me saying- whenever you question why you’re here, remember that you were invited. Marcos’ reminder, along with Tuesday night Chuukese lessons has been enough solace for my restless wondering for now.