Reminiscing on 5 Abbreviated, Yet Seemingly-Endless Weeks in the Central Pacific

The last I updated, I was getting ready to move from busy South Tarawa to a more serene environment and Traditional Kiribati way of life in North Tarawa. The boat is the MV Janeen, the Waa, or Kiribati canoe, that transported my fellow 14 K36 trainees, our training staff, their families, all of our luggage for 2 months, and myself across the lagoon to "North."





As a sidenote, the MV Janeen got its name fairly recently, when our training coordinator Janeen was negotiating with some locals with a new Waa, for the cost of our passage across the lagoon. After they had come to an agreement about the cost and were on friendly terms Janeen realized that the Waa was unnamed and she questioned the owners of the canoe. They asked her for a suggestion, and she jokingly replied that she's always thought Janeen to be a lovely name. The canoe's owners liked it too.




I was browsing through some pictures alone for the first time since I've returned and the one above of the MV Janeen docked off the coast of North Tarawa suddenly brought me back there, remembering vividly the day we arrived from across the lagoon. This was to be the same day we would all split up after a couple weeks of support from our training group to live alone with an I-Kiribati host family. This picture is shot after we had docked about an eighth of a mile from shore (where the water was about thigh deep). We carried our luggage on our shoulders and our heads to the shore in multiple trips. The sclading equitorial sun beat down on my defenseless pale body. One had to be conscious to avoid tripping over a chunk of coral, with the consequence being a suitcase saturated with lagoon (poopy) water. Being that far out from the shore, while standing at ankle to thigh level water is a surreal experience. Turning around in a full circle is complete flatness, no waves, the sky fully mended to the ocean. And the blueness.





Maybe that moment is so memorable to me because it felt like a special moment in time when you suddenly realize some obvious, yet elusive truth about yourself. I think I said to myself about then...I says, "Oh shit. I really did join the Peace Corps and I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, hours away from moving in with a family to whom I am just as foreign as they are to me. Not knowing their language at beyond an extreme-beginner level. Not knowing a damn thing to say to my host family when I arrived other than the formalities. Damn. It really is hot here, they weren't kidding."





As another sidenote, I still insist that if you're going to be fighting through knee-deep water it makes sense to roll your shorts up to your upper thighs, even if that means exposing your creepy, pale thighs to your fellow trainees.





When all the bags had been taken under-the-arms and over-the-shoulder and other which-ways as to avoid, of course, dropping them in the poopy water (which, as a quick side note, I was the only brave enough soul in our group to be willing to swim in, and was ultimately convinced by some K36 that there was just too much poo), we loaded our luggage into the back of a pick-up truck, jumped on in, and one-by-one, we were dropped at our new homes along the sole road of Tarawa. A surge of emotions hit us as we started up that pothole-filled drive into "North." Excitment. Anxiety. Pride. Sadness. Fear. Shock.





Surprisingly, the transition into the home of my host family was much easier than I anticipated. Normally I would be uncomfortable in a situation in which after introducing myself to my host family and they responded, we sat on the Buia (the hang-out platform) for twenty or thirty minutes in silence. I'm used to a short silence as signaling discomfort in a social situation (as portrayed by the fairly-new marketing campaign of the cellular phone company that runs the commercials of a situation in which a sudden loss of service and a subsequent silence can have an uncomfortable, yet unintended impact). I was warned that people just hang on the buia and it's not expected that you have to carry on a conversation at all times. I learned to value the simplicity of existence with other people without constant interaction or shared entertainment.





So, 2 full months after I'm back, nearly-readjusted to the States, I see a picture of a canoe in Kiribati and am finally motivated to write a bit. It's a great thing we have that we can re-live a past event through a still image of a split second of it.



Here's a shot of my host family and I on the buia, to put some faces and places with some names.
My father (27), mother (22), and brother (5) are pictured:









The amount of distinct memories I have taken with me from just 5 weeks in Kiribati is unfathomable to me. I think I was just able to take so much in sensorially, rather than the preoccupation of sensorial overload and constant stimulation I am usually experiencing in The States. The depth in my capacity to comprehend the land and the people have made those memories all the more vivid and real to me as I recall them. That must be why a simple picture of a canoe can relay such a full and profpund experience.