There is no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no traffic light here. For an adventurous traveler looking for a destination that feels completely off the map, this is it. [Published in The Boston Globe]
The next afternoon we slowly walked the canoe back through the shallow ebb-tide, taking turns pushing, pulling and riding the big, sleek wahr. As we slowly waded along the kids hung from our shoulders and the hull of the boat, gazing dreamily up at the clouds, turning pink in the sunset, or down at their own reflections in the water, clear over waving seagrass and white sand.
We were asked to work the field competitions on the last day and one of my students, while I was measuring the length of a javelin throw, yelled from the stands, "Go teacher" which brought a big laugh from the crowd and a smile to my face.
We’ve also had a lot of fun going to Nan Madol ruins and swimming in the ocean along with taking a short taxi ride to Nett Point and jumping off an old pier into the water.
Life on the island was slow and peaceful, sometimes euphorically serene. But thousands of dogs roam the island, and dog encounters were a part of daily life while I was there. Some of the dogs were wild, and wandered about, homeless. Others belonged to specific families, lived in their yards, and possibly had names. But they were not pets in the same sense that dogs are pets in the United States. [Published in World Hum]
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Volunteer Stories
Micronesian Napoleon Dynamite, by Kate Wheeler
One of the great things about living on a high volcanic island like Kosrae is that the interior of the island is uninhabited, mountainous rain forest. So if we somehow get tired of playing around in the warm, crystal clear ocean, there are all sorts of wonderful hikes to be done, tramping through the jungle to hidden waterfalls and breathtaking vistas. One of the infuriating things about living on Kosrae is that these hikes are nigh on impossible to organize. Because this is WorldTeach's first year on the island and we don't live with host families, it can be hard to track down guides, and part of the laid-back island life means that it is extremely difficult to get people to commit to plans, even one day in advance. And let's not forget that this is one of the wettest places on earth-- the best-laid plans can be canceled by a sudden deluge of water pouring from the sky, keeping all the locals inside and turning the mountains into un-hikeable mud slides. I was lucky enough to climb Mt. Mutunte, the second highest peak on the island, during my first month here, but subsequent hiking opportunities proved elusive. So when I heard that the College of Micronesia was organizing a trip to Mt. Finkol (at 2,000+ ft, the highest on the island), I jumped at the chance, as did several of my fellow volunteers. Of course, as with any activity on the island, rumors immediately began to swirl. “It takes 10 hours and you have to wade through waist-deep mud for an hour”. “It takes 12 hours, and you're climbing straight up the whole way”. “One tourist tried to hike Finkol alone, and it took him 36 hours”. As the stories continued, our group began to dwindle in size..
We set off early on the day of the hike. By this point, “we” meant me, a pair of Peace Corps volunteers, and about 20 male COM students. The whole gang piled into the back of a pickup, and we drove until the road ran out, and our hike began. The first part of the hike was an easy walk along (and frequently through) the Finkol river. We traipsed along through the rainforest this way in a large laughing group for about an hour and half until we reached a waterfall-- our agreed upon break spot. One of the guides explained that at this point, we would leave the river and just “go up”. We decided that everyone should go at their own pace, and we would regroup at the top. With that, we were off once more. “Go up” turned out to be an accurate direction. The mountainside was steep enough that I frequently found myself climbing with both hands and feet. We quickly separated into several groups. The front pack: me and 8 COM students. At first this was a little awkward. They were all staring at me like “who IS this chick?”. My Kosraean is inadequate for all but the most inane conversations, and we didn't have much breath left for chatting anyway. But then we found common ground. Kosraeans LOVE having their pictures taken, and I had a digital camera with me. Soon, at every rest break someone would call out “picture, picture” and then we would all take turns striking various “gangsta” poses surrounded by dangling vines and lush vegetation. After an hour and a half of uphill charging (and requisite picture breaks) we popped out of the trees at the summit and were rewarded with an impressive view. The entire island lay below us. A thick green blanket rolled down the slopes, punctuated by a smattering of tin rooftops. The ocean sparkled a pale turquoise over the reef, turning to a deeper blue as it stretched out to meet the sky.
We stretched out in the warm breeze to wait for the rest of the group, and people began to open and share the food they brought with them. It wasn't long before someone called out “Let's take a picture with all our food so people can see how we eat”. As the guys gathered up amid calls of “picture picture”, I began to notice the variety of food we had carried with us to the top of this mountain. Some had brought traditional island foods-- local oranges, boiled bananas, and taro, wrapped in leaves or foil. Others had brought staples of a less traditional but more typical contemporary Pacific diet-- dry ramen with Kool-Aid powder, packages of cookies, and cans of spam opened with the tip of a machete. I was about to snap the picture when one of the boys called out “kollac, kollac” (wait up) and as I paused, he delivered a few punches to the sheepish looking friend next to him. The friend then sighed, reached deep into the pocket of his shorts, and pulled out a whole fried fish-- looking for all the world like a Micronesian version of Napoleon Dynamite.
Still a Beauty, Remotely Modern Micronesia, by Robert Verger
Staring at the ocean from a ridge high above the harbor, it's easy to feel the remoteness of this place.
Below lies the island's airport -- a single runway for the one flight a day -- connected to Pohnpei by a manmade causeway. Beyond the airport, several fishing boats sit in the lagoon, and beyond them, waves crash on the outer reef that surrounds the island. Then, the wide Pacific .
This is an island of rich color, tropical greens and blues, and a landscape exaggerated in scale. Pohnpei's large interior is filled with mountains that climb to more than 2,000 feet and trees that grow to prehistoric sizes. On the hike down from the ridge, I pass leaves larger than elephant ears. This is the second-rainiest place on earth, and everywhere I look the vegetation riots wildly.
I also pass giant rusted Japanese guns, relics from World War II. Some of their double barrels, more than 10 feet long, still point menacingly toward the water. Among them, purple orchids thrive in giant clusters.
Later, I relax with friends at the Rusty Anchor , an open-air bar that overlooks the sea. Suddenly it gets dark, the skies open up, and we watch the rain move in thick , twisting ribbons across the harbor. As I think about the images from the hike, I decide this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.
I came to the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia as a volunteer with WorldTeach to teach English at a public high school. There is no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no traffic light here. For an adventurous traveler looking for a destination that feels completely off the map, this is it.
Beyond landscape, the best reason to come here is the people. I found most Pohnpeians reserved at first, but get to know them and you find they have almost bottomless grace and generosity. Many seem to have a relaxed yet passionate attitude toward life, and with time, you become more appreciative of the place and the lifestyle.
Not long ago, I paddled an outrigger canoe with some friends across the lagoon to Joy Island, a speck of sand and coconut palms just off the coast of Pohnpei. When we ran out of water, we smashed open coconuts and drank the sweet juice inside. Later, when I told my class about the trip -- the intense heat during the paddling, the taste of the coconut milk -- the happiness must have been written across my face. One student, a white flower tucked behind her ear, smiled and said, "You're feeling this place now, aren't you?"
Indeed, this is a place that needs to be felt . And the pervasiveness of music adds to that feeling. Hip-hop, reggae, and country music blast from open windows and passing cars, but one can also hear the strumming of guitars and ukuleles, and singing in Pohnpeian or English. Many students play and sing while they walk to class or sit in the shade with friends, and few seem shy about performing.
While this may sound like the Pacific paradise depicted in literature and movies, it is not. There are no beaches here. Pohnpei's shores are surrounded by thick mangrove swamps, which shelter it from rough seas and provide a habitat for the most delicious food on the island: mangrove crab.
The Federated States of Micronesia, spread over 1,550 miles in the western central Pacific just north of the equator, includes the four states of Pohnpei, Chuuk, Kosrae, and Yap and their 607 islands, only 65 of which are inhabited. The population is about 108,000. This is a developing country and many families struggle to make ends meet because goods are expensive. Gasoline comes by sea -- as do vegetables, eggs, and rice -- and fuel costs nearly $4 a gallon. There is a rhythm to life here set by the schedule of the container ships. A ship's arrival means that a period of shortages is over, and the island's shelves are full once again.
Like the comings and goings of the container ships, Pohnpei's history (it is thought to have been settled first thousands of years ago) is one of change wrought by outsiders. Long ago settlers from Southeast Asia came , then 16th-century explorers from Portugal and Spain, then Spanish rule , followed by the Germans, the Japanese, and finally, after World War II, the United States. Kolonia, Pohnpei's only town, has been completely destroyed twice -- once by a massive typhoon in 1905, and again when the United States bombed it in 1944. Today, the Federated States of Micronesia is an independent country, but it has close ties with the United States under a Compact of Free Association.
This is a place where chickens parade down the street, roosters crow throughout the night, and pigs squeal loudly at feeding time. Dogs sleep away the hottest hours of the day, are ferociously territorial at night, and are occasionally part of the local diet. Men and boys openly carry long, curved machetes . At night, when I walk past a neighboring house without electricity, and the orange light of the kerosene lanterns spills out onto the street, I think, living here is like time traveling.
Indeed, Pohnpei is a place that seems to straddle time, for there are two distinct worlds here: the modern day one of American influence, and the world of traditional culture and lifestyle.
One man who has felt the tension between them is Benster Santos, 58, who owns a small shop across from the school. Students and teachers alike gather beneath the tin roof of his store to escape the sun or the torrential rain. A drinking coconut is 50 cents, which you open yourself with the store's machete.
Santos told me of growing up on Pohnpei and seeing it change, a process of "changing from our life to a new life." He spoke wistfully of the simpler and slower life of the 1960s . This was a time before outboard engines, when fishermen paddled their canoes into the lagoon in search of reef fish for dinner. People did not drive but walked from village to village. And because few people had phones, you learned where people were and the latest news by word of mouth, a system with a wonderful name: the coconut wireless.
Despite these changes, Pohnpei, the largest and tallest of the islands, remains captivating. Not long ago, a Pohnpeian friend invited me to his home for dinner. Before we ate, we walked through the jungle undergrowth to a river where dozens of children were swimming and splashing and laughing. I treaded water and watched while they jumped and dove from a small cliff into the deep, cool water. Near me, a wild hibiscus tree that had fallen across the river trailed its leaves lazily in the water. Upstream, two teenage girls squatted on the rocks beneath a concrete bridge, doing laundry in the bubbling rapids and talking.
Later, as we sat down to dinner, we heard the sounds of the family next door singing Christian hymns in Pohnpeian. Their soft voices drifted through the darkening jungle to our patio. And though I don't know exactly what they were singing about, I imagine that it touched on the beauty of this island, and their home in the jungle.
Written special to The Boston Globe. Copyright 2006, The Boston Globe.
Under a canopy of mangrove and coconut palms lay a big, new, red canoe, a wahr, carved out of the trunk of a single tree with an elaborate outrigger running along one side. Its maker stood humbly by, smiling and dismissing our compliments. My canoe. Our canoe, actually. My housemate and I would share it. The canoe certainly seemed too big for any one person to call their own. Could the two of us even get this giant in and out of the water?
The coast of Madolenihmw just sort of breaks up, from jungle and hills to mazes of mangrove channels, then out into the tiny islands - Joy, Nah, Deketik - of the turquoise lagoon. While it is possible to wade out to these islands through waste deep water, around coral heads and stingrays (lingkandingkap kan), the canoe would be our ticket to really exploring the lagoon. An after-school diversion. This was as far as we had thought.
Just two months of teaching at Madolenihmw High School, in the rural and most traditional of Pohnpei’s municipalities, had already been an experience in closeness and integration. We knew virtually all the 400 students and 20-some teachers in the Micronesian way, through teaching, sharing food, joking around, and through a web of family connections that tied the whole place together.
My housemate and I felt, and were frequently told, that we were contributing plenty to the community through everything we were involved in at school. However, we felt completely outdone in the community. It was hard to keep up with the nightly invitations to drink kava, or sakau, with neighbors, and we felt guilty at all the food that was constantly piled upon us. So, come to think of it, we were more than happy to share our canoe. I couldn’t have imagined not sharing something like that there.
Our first big outing was an over night trip to little Joy Island with a young couple from up the road and their three kids. We stayed up all night spearfishing, our friends teaching us how to eat our way through a Micronesian lagoon. The next afternoon we slowly walked the canoe back through the shallow ebb-tide, taking turns pushing, pulling and riding the big, sleek wahr. As we slowly waded along the kids hung from our shoulders and the hull of the boat, gazing dreamily up at the clouds, turning pink in the sunset, or down at their own reflections in the water, clear over waving seagrass and white sand.
Ever since, this image and the feeling of us all pushing and pulling and being carried along by that canoe, so far from anything previously familiar, has helped me to understand Pohnpei and what I was doing there as a teacher. I think I’m pretty good at sharing, but Micronesia can be extreme, especially as a volunteer. We thought we might use the canoe on our own, to get away in the afternoons, but we would never have been able to get it out there and enjoy it on our own, and we never did. Everyone put a little something in.
As the year progressed our canoe became the canoe in our village. However, every time the canoe carried someone else back through the mangrove maze from the lagoon we would receive more fresh fish, as well as the feeling that we were contributing something to the community on its own terms, in its own traditional way, and being further enveloped by the Micronesian world around us in exchange. So, I can say that I had very few things of my own last year, from canoes to time. I think, though, that I came out of it having gained at least as much as I put in. I hope that my students and the community feel the same.
Since Pohnpei only has three high schools an athletic season is not possible. Instead the island holds a Championship Week where the high schools take a week away from the classroom to compete against each other in athletic events. The events include girls slow pitch softball, boys fast pitch softball, boys and girls volleyball, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls table tennis, and on the final day an all day track and field competition. Both Kitti and MHS have teams as well as PICS who has two teams -- one is simply PICS and the other is called PICS international for those students who come from outer islands to the school.
Originally I thought taking a week away from the classroom was not a very good idea, but as the week progressed it became apparent that the week was actually useful because it allows students to show their talents outside the classroom. Also, until recently all high school students attended PICS so it also allows students to interact at one venue once again. Furthermore, since there is such a communal feeling to the events if someone makes a mistake on the basketball court or doing a discus throw it doesn't cross a Pohnpeian's mind to think, yes I am going to win now, but instead a laugh is shared between the athletes and the crowd about the mistake but the person is not looked down upon. The downfalls of the week are the fact that most students still do not participate and it ends up being a group of students who compete in a few sports. Also, there is no practice mentality here for the most part either in the classroom through studying or for sports until practice begins at most the week before the event will be held. This of course shows at the competitions through many simple mistakes such as routinely missing lay-ups, which if practice had occurred would occur a lot less. Also winning is always everything especially in volleyball where if you get a killer spike the crowd will cheer more than a winning point even if the spike happens to fly out.
Overall the week is a lot of fun for the students and for those teachers who come. I became a lot closer to those students who competed and also those who were spectators. Many of my students even invited me to sit with them and on a couple occasions we had some good conversations about school or their life outside of school. By being at the competitions it shows students you care about them beyond the classroom which will help in these last three months until the end of the school year. Also, we were asked to work the field competitions on the last day and one of my students, while I was measuring the length of a javelin throw, yelled from the stands, "Go teacher" which brought a big laugh from the crowd and a smile to my face. Every day of competition something like the above example would happen, where I would being hanging out with 3-4 of my students and their friends and a good laugh would be shared by all of us. It broke the ice with those students who were not mine, showing them that I am not a scary foreigner but someone just like them.
I love my students and find them pretty easy to work with at this point, but it took a long time to get to know them… They respond VERY WELL to teachers who are interested in them (whether in the classroom or hanging out on campus or on the volleyball court) and will open up slowly as they get to know you. They are still kids at heart …but at the same time they can be very mature and have a large degree of responsibility to their families (parents or sometimes younger siblings).
Just hanging out (i.e. sitting, not saying anything after school or during your free periods) can help break the ice. Participating in anything, even if it seems ridiculous or like your help is definitely not needed, is also a good idea. I did find that teachers were very friendly when they knew you were receptive to their offerings. Inviting yourself to join them or do something with them may be a little awkward, but it’s entirely possible that they would like you to come (to a party, to their house for dinner, to their church, to lunch, etc.) but just aren’t saying it. Keep being friendly, and remember that if plans fall through it’s because it’s Pohnpei, not because you’re uninvited!
A few hours after we arrived in Pohnpei we sat at a beautiful outdoor restaurant enjoying the view of the mountains covered by the tropical jungle and the Pacific Ocean stretching as far as the eye can see. Afterwards we were dropped off at our host families for three weeks of true cultural immersion. They welcomed me warmly and did everything possible to make me feel as comfortable as possible.
Soon I felt like a part of the family and part of a larger community through the many feasts our group has been invited to. We eat local cuisine such as reef fish, tuna, bananas, yams and tons of white rice. The orientation training creates a strong group between fellow volunteers while also giving reassurance that you will be able to handle teaching. We’ve also had a lot of fun going to Nan Madol ruins and swimming in the ocean along with taking a short taxi ride to Nett Point and jumping off an old pier into the water. We had the opportunity to hike up Sokehs ridge for a great view of the island and swim in a waterfall a short distance from Kolonia town. The town itself has everything you need and there are opportunities to play tennis and soccer when you just need to have some physical activity.
The people in the village are very nice and welcoming. Pretty much all social life in the village revolves around hanging out with friends, working together, and drinking sakau. It is really important to Pohnpeians that you show interest in their culture, and in becoming a part of the community. So, for example, when it is kamadip (party) season in the fall, you should go when invited. The same is true for drinking sakau - you need to go when invited (for the first few times), even if you do not drink. In terms of the sakau, it is ok if you don’t drink very much (or at all), as long as you are there, hanging out.
The town of Kolonia, on the island of Pohnpei, is the only place I’ve lived that has been destroyed twice. A typhoon flattened it in 1905, and in 1944, American bombers leveled the town in a battle against the Japanese. But when I lived there for just over five months in 2006, volunteering as an English teacher at a public high school, the memory of violence was as far as it could be. The place was intact and functioning, albeit at a sleepy, island pace. The only potential danger (or nuisance, really) were the island’s dogs.
Pohnpei looks the way you might picture a South Seas island, although it is actually in the Northern Hemisphere: It’s a wide, sprawling splash of deep green—the remnants of an ancient volcano—in the middle of thousands of miles of ocean. The capital of the Federated States of Micronesia, Pohnpei is in the western Pacific, seven degrees above the Equator and about halfway between Honolulu and Manila.
It is said to be the second-rainiest place on earth. Kolonia, the only large town on the island, is perched on the northern coast and receives about 12 feet of rain a year. The deep, uninhabited mountainous interior gets twice that amount. With the heat of the tropics and all the rain, jungle grows thickly across the island. Palm trees and breadfruit trees grow in abundance, as do banana trees, whose wide, shiny leaves are sometimes cut and used as biodegradable umbrellas during one of the many sudden rainstorms.
Life on the island was slow and peaceful, sometimes euphorically serene. But thousands of dogs roam the island, and dog encounters were a part of daily life while I was there. Some of the dogs were wild, and wandered about, homeless. Others belonged to specific families, lived in their yards, and possibly had names. But they were not pets in the same sense that dogs are pets in the United States.
Many of them were mangy, filthy, flea-ridden, skinny. Some survived on what they could find on their own to eat. At night, they prowled together in packs, fighting and yelping. I could hear their howls and snarls outside my bedroom window all through the night, and the next day, I might see a dog in my neighborhood with a bloody, shredded ear, or another with a bite on its leg.
I lived in a house with two other American teachers, Margaret and Shannon. It was halfway down a narrow, dead-end road in a small, crowded, noisy neighborhood in Kolonia. Public throughways—small dirt paths—snaked between the homes, a few feet from people’s living spaces. Clotheslines stretched between trees outside each home, and in the moments of sun between rains, laundry flashed its colors in the green of the jungle.
But when we ventured from our home, the neighborhood dogs frequently presented a nasty obstacle. They usually slept away the hottest hours of the day, sometimes in the middle of the quiet roads, their brown or grey coats merging with the dirt of the street. But they were more active at dawn and dusk, and at night, they were ferociously territorial. Many lived in nearby yards, and if I stepped even one inch onto their property, the dogs would gallop viciously towards me, ready to attack.
It was not a bluff. Dog bites were common. Twice, during the semester I was there, students mauled by dogs came in with seeping bandages on their legs. And a colleague of mine at school was bitten in the behind as she was leaving her classroom for the day.
So I began to see dogs not as lovable creatures with personality but instead as animals with teeth. Frequently, while I was walking down the street near our house after dark, three or four dogs would block my path, barking madly. One strategy to avoid being bitten was to walk steadily and slowly in the very center of the road, far from any dog’s territory, trying to move with confidence and avoiding eye contact. Usually, this technique worked. We became a group of animals that had worked out an understanding: I wouldn’t bother their territory, and they would allow me to pass. The middle of the road was for humans.
Another interesting fact about dogs on Pohnpei is that they are sometimes killed, cooked, and eaten. Dog meat is a delicacy on the island. Many people whom I spoke to about this told me that they loved it, finding it tasty. Pohnpei is a place of abundant food, and as far as I could tell, people ate dog not out of a sense of need but instead, pleasure. The Pohnpeian word for dog is kidi and the word for delicious is iou (pronounced yo), and it was common to hear the two words used together.
As my stay lengthened, I became more and more interested, abstractly, in eating a dog. I joked about it with my friends. Sometimes, while I was walking at night, a dog would lunge from the shadows, barking hysterically. My heartbeat would surge, the small hairs on my neck would rise, and I’d try to work my way around it. With each of these encounters the idea of eating a dog began to seem more reasonable, and my jokes became fueled by a fear of the creatures and a vague desire for vengeance. I had no intention of actually killing and cooking a dog on my own. But I decided that if I was offered dog meat, I would consider eating it.
Several students from Kolonia’s high school lived in our neighborhood, and I was close with one of them, Jo-Jo, who lived with his family in a house just through our backyard and under a breadfruit tree. The tree had huge, hand-shaped leaves, and every few weeks the breadfruits grew larger and larger until—unless they were harvested—they fell with a messy, sticky splat. Tall, thin coconut trees separated our houses as well, and sometimes the nuts fell, tumbling like rocks, and landed on the street or on a metal roof with a concussion loud enough to wake me at night. (It is said that more people die in the Pacific every year from falling coconuts than from shark attacks.)
Jo-Jo was a junior at the school, about 16 years old. His family owned many pigs, as most families on the island who could afford them did. The more pigs you had, and the fatter they were, the more assets your family owned. Because pigs need to consume a lot of food before they are large enough to slaughter or sell, I offered to bring our food scraps over to his house. Jo-Jo was enthusiastic.
So almost every evening, at dusk, before the nighttime rains began and before the dogs became more active, I’d walk over to Jo-Jo’s with the bag of leftovers. It was a way of recycling what we could not eat. I looked forward each day to this short trip. It was a good excuse to leave our house, which sometimes felt like a tiny America set on a tropical island. The local culture, if we wanted it to be, could be left outside. But it was lonely to do so, and as the months progressed I spent more time at my neighbors’ houses, playing Ping-Pong, or drinking a coconut, or letting children teach me phrases in Pohnpeian, then smiling while they giggled at my pronunciation. The foundation of the culture there is the extended family (which almost always lived together in a single home), clan, and sharing; the more I was able to join it, the happier I was and the richer my life was.
One rainy evening I walked over to Jo-Jo’s house with the bag of food. A large group had gathered outside near a smoking fire pit, and in the heavy, wet air I could smell a strange meat cooking. It was already dark out.
Jo-Jo walked towards me, and I gave him the food. He said, “Rob, we are cooking a dog! Come back in one hour, and you can have some.” I went back to our house, and returned in a moment with Shannon. We were both curious.
On Pohnpei, dogs and pigs are cooked in a traditional oven called an uhmw. First a large fire is lit and then allowed to burn down to coals, over which round, smooth rocks are heated. The meat is then placed among the rocks and coals, and covered with a pile of thick, wet banana leaves, to roast and steam slowly.
I looked over at the smoking uhmw and saw them pulling the half-cooked carcass of a dog from the coals and rocks. Its skin was still on but its hair was completely burnt off. Its legs were curled, as if in mid-pounce, and its snout was blackened. They set it down beside the uhmw.
One of Jo-Jo’s cousins began removing the dog’s guts from an incision in its stomach. He pulled out the white and ropy intestines and placed them, coiled, on another banana leaf, where they sat in the light rain. Then, he used sticks to pick up hot rocks and placed a few inside the dog’s abdomen, so it would cook from the inside out.
It made me feel strangely ashamed to see this dead animal, and I regretted my jokes.
“How did it die?” I asked.
“It was hit by a car,” Jo-Jo said.
We walked home through the darkness and under the dripping leaves of the banana trees, and I sat on the couch and felt my stomach clench. A strange feeling washed over me. It would be polite to join Jo-Jo in the dog eating, but I also knew that if I didn’t return that night Jo-Jo probably wouldn’t be offended. The feeling was not one of obligation but it was instead a sudden heavy self-awareness: am I really going to do this thing that I’ve told myself I’m going to do? Is it a mistake to do it? Is it a mistake not to do it? I sat in the dark, listening to the rain.
In an hour I returned, with a worried stomach. The dog was not yet done. Jo-Jo told me to come back in another hour. I went back to the couch.
The next time I returned, the uhmw was empty, the leaves and hot rocks scattered in the rain to cool. The pit was still steaming. Two or three dogs sniffed carefully around the coals, curious, looking for pieces of food.
Jo-Jo emerged from his house and told me that the dog was still not fully cooked. “I have cut it up am boiling it so it will cook faster,” he said. “I will bring you some when it is done.”
I went back to my house, and in an hour, late at night, Jo-Jo knocked on the door. It was raining harder now. Dogs howled and barked in the background. He handed me a plate, covered in tinfoil.
“Enjoy!” he said, and went back home.
Both my roommates had gone to sleep. I put the plate down on the table and looked at it. I took off the tinfoil. There were two small pieces, each about five inches long and four inches wide: ribs. The meat was gray and black, steaming.
I stood there, staring.
I took a tiny bite.
It was gamey, chewy, revolting. It tasted the way the thick gristle you might cut off a steak would taste if it was charred in a fire. It did not taste like chicken. It tasted like dog—and this scrawny street dog had been struck by a car, roasted and gutted in a fire, and then cut up and boiled.
I put the meat in the refrigerator, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.
The next morning, Margaret and Shannon were displeased that there was dog meat in our refrigerator. Margaret took a picture of it, and then, after letting the meat sit in the fridge another few days, I threw it out. I washed the plate and returned it to Jo-Jo. He asked me how it was.
I told him it was iou, and I thanked him.
Written special to World Hum: Travel Dispatches from a Shrinking Planet. Copyright 2008, World Hum.
