Four former Yap State Peace Corps Volunteer met in Washington DC this last weekend for a small reunion. The RPCVS, two who served in Yap Proper and two from the Outer Islands, enjoyed the opportunity to recount stories from their time in Micronesia, and discussed how to sustain their support through Habele. The former volunteers also had the chance to meet informally with the Micronesian Ambassador to the United States, the Honorable Jesse B. Marehalau, himself a native of the Ulithi Atoll.

In other Habele News, the fund has received its employer identification number from the US Department of the Treasury, and has established a bank account with contributions from the founding board members. Supporters are encouraged to make checks out to “Habele Outer Island Education Fund” and mail them to “Habele, 701 Gervais Street, Suite 150-244, Columbia SC 29201.”

‘Sa Chig!

This is an extract from an insightful essay, dealing with the one of the most tragic challenges facing Micronesian culture today.

Youth Suicide and Social Change in Micronesia by Donald H. Rubinstein

Suicide rates since 1960 in Micronesia (the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands) have undergone an epidemic-like increase. This phenomenon is focused narrowly within the 15--24-year male age-group. Extremely high rates and culturally patterned motives and methods are now characteristic of this group. Survey research throughout Micronesia suggests that the epidemic increase in adolescent male suicide is a cohort effect among the first post-war generation. Traditional adolescent socialization in pre-war Micronesia largely involved village-level subsistence activities organized around communal lineage-houses. This extra-familial level of socialization served as a cultural solution to the residential and psychological distance post-pubertal males maintained from their domestic families.

With the post-war social change in Micronesia, the communal village-level of organization has largely disintegrated, causing adolescent socialization functions to be absorbed by the nuclear family. The resulting situations of intergenerational domestic discord appear the primary social triggers for adolescent suicide. At the same time, suicides have acquired subcultural significance among male youth, giving rise to fad-like and imitative acts. A 3-year research project is now being undertaken to conduct an ethnographic study of factors contributing to adolescent stress and suicide in one Micronesian community.

Other Resources:

Suicide In Micronesia And Samoa: A Critique Of Explanations also by Donald H. Rubinstein

Suicide in the Micronesian Family by Francis X. Hezel, SJ

Micronesia's Male Suicide Rate Defies Solution New York Times, March 6, 1983

Here is an article from Pacific Magazine which provides a great overview of life in the Outer Islands.

As one of the last traditional societies on earth, the Carolinian people hold strongly to their past as they continue to survive, at one with the sea of the western Pacific.

During the early years of post-war US-rule a public high school was established on the Ulithi Atoll. This Outer Island High School (OIHS) was later joined by a Neighboring Island High School (NIHS) on Woleai in the late 1990s. These two schools are unique in the FSM in that they are located outside the main district centers. They were designed to serve Outer Island children, who for cultural and economic reasons, would not attend school in Yap Proper.

When OIHS was first established it was hailed as “the Best in the Western Pacific.” Staffed by dozens of Trust Territory employees and Peace Corps volunteers it was considering a shining (and exceptional) success story in the late 1960s.

Now there is a sense among the local communities that things have fallen apart. The Americans have left, and many locals feel that the money and (more importantly) the sense of focus left with them. The efforts of the Americans were well intended but not sustainable.

Father Francis Hezel has published extensively about development issues in Micronesia, and about education in particular. He has identified the Outer Island Schools of Yap State as some of the lowest performing in the FSM. He observes that completion rates are low, test scores poor, and that females are particularly underserved.

The latest data reiterate this assessment.

Here are the 2005 rankings according to an FSM wide comparison, based on College of Micronesia Entrance Exam Scores:

Grammar and Vocabulary
Yap High School 5th of 20
Outer Islands High School 13th of 20
Neighboring Islands High School 15th of 20

Reading
Yap High School 9th of 20
Outer Islands High School 17th of 20
Neighboring Islands High School 13th of 20

Writing
Yap High School 7th of 20
Outer Islands High School 12th of 20
Neighboring Islands High School 13th of 20

There are two major issues. The first is low performance of Outer Island Schools in a national context (nearly all the schools with lower scores than OIHS and NIHS are based in Chuuk, which has a Pacific-wide reputation for poor government services, but also a large independent school market serving parents dissatisfied with government schools).

The second concern is the great intra-state disparity between the public high school on Yap Proper and the two public schools serving the outer islands.

At Habele we recognize that this unfortunate educational situation is, as David Nevin explained, "both a metaphor for, and central actor in, the Micronesian delimma."

BETELNUT
These nuts, sprinkled with powdered coral, and wrapped in pepper leaves are chewed throughout Yap State.

On Yap Proper, chewing buu, or beetlenut, is more about the process than the buzz. It is not “addictive” but rather habit-forming. Before any sort of business or political discussion, people sit down, and make a chew. This gives them a chance to pause and think, to share, and go through the motions of putting together the leaf, the nut, the lime (and more often than not, the tobacco). Newly arrived and over zealous Peace Corps Volunteers are often to told “rest and have a chew” as they eagerly spit out their grandiose plans to the un-amused seen-it-all locals. There are very beetlenut few trees on Ulithi or the other Outer Islands that are mature enough to produce nuts, and these are rather jealously guarded, often wrapped with razor wire. Beetlenut usually comes in on the plane (Ulithi, Fais, and Wooleai) or the ship, and the skin of young coconuts serves as a surrogate for the orally fixated when buu cannot be found on the Atoll.

The trade in Buu is an excellent example of the resource-rooted Outer Island / Yap Proper relationship. The poor soil of the atolls does not lend it self to the cultivation of the forests of beetlenut trees one finds in Yapese villages, but the Yapese further exacerbate this problem through traditional restrictions on the exportation of seedlings . The same Yapese are of course most happy to send nuts on each PMA flight for sale, but only if there is plenty to be had in Yap. In it’s odd way Buu also speaks volumes about Yap State politics and its informal economics. Buu is grown in forests owned by each village or (less often) individual landowners. This buu supplies the villagers, and is also bagged for sale at stores throughout Yap. On one hand it is a near perfect market of pure capitalism with prices adjusted daily based on supply. A savvy shopper can walk from small store to small store to chose the lowest price. On the other hand, if you “know someone” you can circumvent this whole process, and get buu either for free, or pay cash for a huge box’s worth.

The way buu is treated provides some indicators about Ulithian thinking towards food and property. When it arrives most people keep it hidden, because there is a practically an obligation to share it. People will put some in their basket, and keep the rest stashed at home. Another Ulithian will come, and ask to “fang halai buu” (give me beetlenut to eat) or even more telling “fang haluch buu” which means give us (listener inclusive) beetlenut. The person with beetlenut will then either lie and claim there is none, or share. Anyone who is seen to have buu but not share it is a “moegloech” or stingy person, while those who give away buu too readily, are labeled “hachperang” for their efforts to win favor or approval by showing off. These are equally degrading judgments. There is a spectrum ranging from minimal obligation to excessive vanity.Finally, buu can be a gauge of acceptance and esteem for the outsider. An outsider will long remember the first time a Ulithian (not a coworker, host family member, nor close friend) offered him a chew out of the blue, or the first time a pretty girl gave a small child some chew to pass onto them anonymously.

Interestingly, some contemporary Ulithians claim that widespread beetlenut consumption is a relatively recent phenomenon. The explanation is that since beetlenut was not traditionally available, there was neither supply nor demand. With the introduction of formal civilian government structures during the TTPI period, more and more Yapese came out to the Outer Islands in order to organize and attend community meetings. In line with Yapese customs, beetlenut was brought and distributed at these assemblies, and this led some Ulithians to acquire a taste for chew. Also an increased number of Outer Islanders living on Yap Proper were exposed to Yapese, and their habitual chewing habits. Finally Yapese students attending OIHS had beetlenut sent to them by friends and relatives on both the field ship trip and the plane. In time there developed a regular supply being sent from Yap for sale at “market.”

The lack of continuity supposed by this oral tradition is likely untrue. A Micronesian Seminar listing of Foreign Ships calling on the islands in Yap tells of a Captain Knox from the USS Flying Fish. He noted in December of 1841 how the natives of Ulithi came to him with “iron tools and their teeth were discolored from beetlenut.”

Is betelnut bad for you? Maybe. Here is the medical perspective. Will that change things for the people in Yap State and those who visit? Not likely.

habele.org

THE NEW MICRONESIA: PITFALLS AND PROBLEMS OF DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT
by John Connell, is a great overview of the core issues facing the Pacific.

You can download the 34 page PDF file here.

He deals with the specific delimmas of the outer islands starting on page 27:

In every state there is now an enormous difference between the center and the outer islands; in Palau these differences occur no more than a few miles from Koror. The term “outer islands” has become a Marshallese phrase; in historic times there was no need for such a distinction. In contemporary times the distinctions are enormous and a United Nations mission to the TTPI area commented that “throughout Micronesia the outer islands have been almost totally neglected in the development process, causing serious problems for the people living there” (United Nations 1980:63).

In his conclusion he alludes to the core problem of incongruity; namely western systems (bureaucracy, liberal representative government, free market economics) which are not functionally underpinned by the value systems and perspectives that evolved to support or perpetuate them in the west (Micronesians tend to value consensus, proprietary, and communalism).

Micronesian societies are characterized by rank and there are intense local and regional rivalries, including tensions between high islands and atolls; and, thirdly, by the overlay of an American colonial system(within the UN trusteeship).

This system has resulted in an orientation of values... which limits the possibility for regulating such issues as population movement, access to employment, and the structure of education. These conditions have contributed to an exceptionally poor growth record concurrent with rapidly and continuously rising expectations, contributing to problems of urban unemployment and reinforcing the orientation eastwards, to what is still widely referred to as the “mainland.”

Habele is a nonprofit corporation, dedicated to the advancement of educational opportunities in the remote islands and atolls of Micronesia.

Our primary goal is to provide scholarships and tuition-assistance grants to children living in the “low” or “outer” islands, so they can attend independent schools located in the larger district centers. We also provide support to public schools through book donations, material assistance, and performance-based teacher awards.

Three young Americans, all of whom have lived and taught in Micronesia, established the fund in 2006. Habele maintains no paid employees and solicits donation requests for all administrative functions

For more information please visit our website: www.habele.org