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EXCERPTS
Floundering In Truk Lagoon
The Dinner Party
Spaz Attack

Outline

About the Author

Music From Micronesia

CONTACT INFO:
Mary Flannery
309 Fourth Street, SE #2
Washington, DC 20003
202.546.0536 (home)
202.270.3696 (cell)
MaryLFlannery@hotmail.com

Yellowcat Productions Website

EXCERPTS
from The Bad Volunteer

a book by Mary Flannery

FOREWORD: A brief history of Micronesia and how I happened to go there.

Thrice happy are they who, inhabiting some yet undiscovered island in the midst of the ocean, have never been brought into contaminating contact with the white man. --Herman Melville, Typee

Imagine a land of water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean--hundreds of islands, mostly uninhabited, flung across a million square miles halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines. Mountainous volcanoes, once underwater, jut from the ocean. Further out, remote and flat sandy atolls embrace calm blue lagoons. White birds sail over towering breadfruit trees, coconut palms sway, and the gnarly finger-like roots of mangrove trees tug at miniature white beaches.

Barefoot women plod down the sandy path wearing loose low-waisted dresses with puff sleeves in shades of electric pink and chartreuse, a washcloth or a child's underpants perched atop their heads. Their silky brown skin glows more from coconut oil than from sweat. Men lounge in wheelbarrows, loose threads dangling from the bottoms of their polyester pants, maybe a zipper broken. Wielding rusty old machetes, happy children hack away at coconuts, and sing high pitched Jesus songs.

Welcome to the Federated States of Micronesia.

Its original inhabitants are said to have sailed here from Polynesia thousands of years ago. They had no contact with the outside world until Magellan's fleet anchored off Guam in the early 1500's. In the ensuing centuries, trading ships and whalers plied these waters, stopping off at the islands to trade guns and tobacco for breadfruit and fresh water. Missionaries from Europe and America fanned out across the atolls. On island after island, Micronesians abandoned ancient dances, songs, and an extensive lore of sea spirits, in exchange for Christian hymns and prayer.

Spain ruled Micronesia in the late 1800's. At the end of the Spanish-American War, the United States took control of Guam, and Germany, which had already established trading posts on many of the islands, purchased the rest. Meanwhile, Japan was looking towards Micronesia as an extension of its overcrowded empire. Fishermen went on long expeditions in Micronesia. Trading companies were set up to import copra and sea cucumber. Poor farmers from Okinawa uprooted their families and came to seek their fortunes in the sugar cane plantations of Guam and Saipan. When World War I broke out, the Japanese ousted the Germans. Soon the islands were teeming with Japanese, who outnumbered the Micronesians on many islands.

During World War II, Micronesia was targeted in massive American bombing missions. Truk Lagoon, home to the Japanese Imperial Navy, was bombed relentlessly. A fleet of Japanese ships still lies on the ocean floor.

Shortly after Japan's surrender, the United Nations set up a "strategic" Trust Territory of Pacific Islands, to be administered by the United States. Eventually, all the islands were given an opportunity to negotiate their own political sovereignty. None of them chose independence. Saipan and Guam opted for a commonwealth status. Four island groups--Ponape, Yap, Kosrae and Truk--banded together to form the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). They negotiated a Compact of Free Association with the United States, as did the Marshall Islands, to the east. Under the terms of the Compact, islanders are free to go to the US to work or to study; they use American currency and the US Postal system; they get boatloads of USDA food; and if they're lucky, they get US Peace Corps volunteers.

The first wave of volunteers landed on the beaches of Micronesia in 1966. The tiny islands were saturated with young men who preferred building latrines in a tropical paradise to dodging Napalm in Viet Nam.

In 1985, I was living in Manhattan. After spending the previous four years in Japan and India, I had come back to the United States to try to forge a life. My little sister, Amy, fresh out of college, was living with me while awaiting her Peace Corps assignment. I spent my days toiling in a secretarial position at CARE, while Amy sold ice cream bars in front of the PanAm Building. Life was a never-ending financial struggle. I felt trapped. Finally I decided to follow Amy's example: I signed up for the Peace Corps.

Thanks to many tedious hours organizing files in the Africa Division at CARE, I knew all about the projects that were never completed or never bore fruit. I'd heard the chatter of workers when they came in from the field for a meeting, or to escape civil unrest in their exotic Third World stomping grounds. I remember one contractor, back from Sudan, worrying about his camel. He didn't know if Mohammad could take proper care of it in his absence. How then, I wondered, were the natives to manage the clean water project or take over the weaving cooperative that CARE was overseeing? I was pretty dubious about development. For me, as for many volunteers, the Peace Corps was quite simply the only ticket out.

As it turns out, the Peace Corps' goals don't have much to do with development, anyway. The Peace Corps is more interested in understanding: to help the people of served nations better understand Americans, and to promote a better understanding of other cultures back home. Amy had already headed off to her training in Senegal when the Peace Corps offered me a teaching post at a junior high school in Truk state, Federated States of Micronesia.

For two years I observed the Micronesians and they observed me. In the end, I wonder how much we really understood.