Dawning Truth

            Sunsets and sunrises here are ridiculous. At seven degrees north latitude, when the sun makes its move, there’s no fooling around.  Bang.  It’s up or it’s down.  But that brief period in between is, barring overcast weather, outrageous.  The reds, oranges, pinks, and purples are indescribable as they light up layer upon perfect layer of clouds stretching so far into infinity the earth’s curve is almost perceptible, creating a cineramadome panorama of such heart crushing beauty that I sometimes find myself transfixed, paralyzed until darkness falls. 

            I don’t thrill to the feel of power as I throw a German sedan through winding curves.   There isn’t a theatre showing the new Tarantino flick for a thousand miles.  No one is going to stop by my table to decant an effusively boisterous yet darkly mysterious petite syrah that will nicely compliment a foie gras stuffed rosemary encrusted quail with roasted fingerling potatoes and heirloom tomato roux. I don’t own a phone.  Or keys.  It’s been forever since I danced to live music.  The few minutes of free time I get a day are spent passing out as I read three paragraphs in the same book I’ve been trying to finish for two months.  Internet is a joke here.  I wouldn’t even know how to act on a date.  I’d kill for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.  But if each of us is allotted a given number of perfect sunsets, I am well into or even over my quota, and I may be cutting into yours.

Corrugation Congregation

Just goes to show you that if you look hard enough, you can find a piece of corrugated sheet metal just about anywhere in a third world country.

Betelnut

            A friend of mine reading a book about Micronesia recently asked me by email, “What is beetle nut?”  A reasonable question from someone who lives in the States, away from the areca palms that grow throughout the Pacific and SE Asia.  Betel nut is the seed of this tree.  Harvested, processed, and consumed in a wide variety of forms, it is a drug, traditional, cultural, recreational, and, historically, medicinal.  The seed is a shade larger than the last joint on your thumb, smooth, oval, and light green, with a cap on one end from which it was once suspended from the tree.  The pod is a fibrous husk containing a soft white seed half the size of an almond.  Different cultures use the seed different ways.  Some remove and dry the seed, then slice, powder, or roast it.  Place a pinch between the cheek and gum, sometimes mixed with spices like clove, cardamom, or tobacco.  Other cultures chew it in some preparation of its fresh form. 

            Here in Micronesia, we like our betelnut au natural, and its use is recreational and ubiquitous.  Au natural, what’s that entail?  Just that Micronesians don’t prefer to process the seed, but chew it fresh and still in the husk.  The preparation goes like this.  Take a betelnut.  Bite off and discard the cap.  Bite the pod in half and split it, exposing the nut.  Dust the inside with a pinch of powdered coral lime, which helps to lacerate the gums and speeds uptake of the chemicals in the seed, with the added bonus of being tasty, because, really, who doesn’t like the way coral tastes, right?  Huh?  Yeah, everyone here carries around a vial, medicine bottle, or sandwich baggie full of white powder, which, after having lived in L.A. for a while, was a real head twister at first.  Okay, we got betelnut, we got powdered lime.  What can we add to make this bundle extra delicious and boost the carcinogen level too?  Wait, betelnut is carcinogenic?  Oh yeah!  Proven to increase risk of carcinoma in the mouth, gums, and everything downstream, right through to the prostate and cervix.  But if you’re a Micronesian user, that isn’t quite exciting enough, so you take half a cigarette, still wrapped in the paper, stick it in the middle of the wad, and pinch the husk back together. I have seen folks in the Solomons wrap the whole assembly in a betel leaf, which keeps everything together and provides a peppery taste, but that’s not the fashion in Chuuk; just pop the whole seed preparation in your mouth, let your saliva start washing the mix and gently masticate occasionally to keep things moving.  You, my friend, are now chewing betelnut.  Don’t forget to spit.

            It’s the South Pacific version of chewing tobacco and is as popular as smoking in, say, Asian cultures.  Everyone from high school kids to grandmothers does it, and the sidewalks, few though they may be, reflect this, as, once you get a betelnut chew going, the saliva you produce mixes with the seed to form a bright red expectorant that people spit, well, everywhere.  I thought that the sidewalks in Honiara, capitol of the Solomons were painted red at first, before I realized I was walking on a multilayered patchwork of human expectorant.  Casual and even formal conversations occur with both parties mumbling like surly teens through a huge wad of betelnut, with frequent chat breaks to lean over a spit.  Drivers and passengers in Chuuk don’t bother with a spit cup and they can’t spit out the window without dribbling a stain of juice on the paint, so they open the car door and lean down to spit on the street, reminiscent of the freshman moving car drunken vomit hijinks we’re all trying to forget.             

            There’s nothing pretty about betelnut.  Habitual chewing over a period of time causes permanent tooth discoloration.  Though some cultures once considered the red stained lips of a chewer to enhance beauty, it is now just part of the fun.  There’s nothing like having a young, nubile Micronesian girl catch my eye only to ruin it for me by smiling back with betelnut stained lips and teeth just before she emits a bright red stream of juice onto the ground the volume of which would put Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider to shame.  I appreciate a woman who can spit in a dainty yet effective fashion, but betelnut spit…deal breaker.

            As with the satisfaction of most oral fixations, the formalized ritual of preparing and consuming betelnut is amusing, engaging, gives folks something to do, and becomes mentally linked with the satisfaction of the addiction, which means it is comforting.  Think of the lengths to which people go to get that perfect cup of coffee or build a decent joint.  It breaks up the monotony of the day.  Making up a chew is fun.  It is also a social affair: sharing betelnut is like sharing a smoke or having a cocktail, an excuse to hang out and chat, and in many betelnut cultures, it is considered social nicety to offer a chew to guests when they enter your home. 

            So what’s it like to chew betelnut?  No more repugnant for a first timer than a glass of scotch, a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, or a wad of Levi Garrett, I suppose.  Many drugs are described as acquired tastes.  Remember your first sip of beer?  Sure you love the stuff now, but when your dad gave you your first sip so you’d leave him alone?  Nasty.  Betelnut’s the same way, with the added bonus of making you look ridiculous because now you have a chipmunk cheek and speak like you have a mouthful of marbles.  The taste is bitter at first, followed by an astringent bitter taste, with a hint of tree bark and…bitter.  Maybe that’s the lime causing that.  I skipped the cigarette in my preparation, so there was no familiar nasty taste in there to work from, just an all new frontier of nasty taste, earthy, wood smoky, and bitter.  Did I mention it’s bitter? 

            The effect was, I thought at first, non-existent, like the first time people smoke pot and swear they don’t feel anything.  I was sitting and chatting with two other guys when I first tried betelnut, and we’d been having a lively if linguistically stilted conversation while preparing our chews.  We continued to chat as we began masticating, and then I began to concentrate on the taste and on not swallowing or drooling my expectorant,  We all drool on ourselves sometimes; don’t lie, you do it, but it usually dries clear and goes unnoticed.  Not so with the tell-tale rusty red of betelnut, so I was absorbed with not getting any of the stuff on me.  By the time I started feeling a warm, tingling sensation in my cheek and gum area, I realized that we’d all kicked back in our seats, and that conversation had ceased.  I looked around and everyone seemed a little glazed.  Not slack jawed or stupefied.  Mellow.  Betelnut is supposed to be a mild stimulant, but in the way of many stimulants, Ritalin, say, chewing this stuff seemed to round of the edges and make everyone relax, though it is often difficult to distinguish when a Micronesian man is relaxed or in high gear. 

            I left the wad in as long as I could stand, making a half hearted effort to chew every once in a while, but I never got one of those really rusty red spits going that a practiced user can stream like ol’ Clint zapping a mangy cur.  When I started feeling queasy, I got up to get rid of the wad and discovered a slightly woozy sensation to accompany my nausea, but then I’m a sissy when it comes to stimulants like caffeine, so no surprise there.  After picking all the husk out of my mouth and running my tongue over the patch of cheek and gum where the lime and the husk had made them raw and sore, I was able to place another drug on the pass list.  Looks like I’ll have to stick with nitrogen for the time being.  Anybody know anything about that stuff called khat they chew in Somalia?

Ride Share

            In the world of transportation for hire, you got your cabs and your buses.  Get on a bus, bus has a set destination and a bunch of people headed that direction.  Exit at the point closest to your destination.  Not always the neatest solution, but cheap.  Then you got your cabs, a step up from buses.  Cab comes to you, it’s private, the driver takes you wherever you want to go by the most efficient route.  Right?  Not necessarily so in Micronesia, friends. 

            So I’m on vacation in Pohnpei, one of the other states in the Federated States of Micronesia.  The country’s capitol, in fact.  Nice place, greatly different from Chuuk.  Infrastructure.  Hot and cold running water in public bathrooms.  With soap.  Roads.  With pavement.  Friendly people.  Sans machetes.  Even a movie theater.  Generally a step up.

            Part of that step up ambiance is the ready availability of cabs, accompanied by the existence of locations to which one would actually wish to reach by cab.  Around the main town, ask any store, restaurant, or hotel to call for one and a car with a cab company logo on it will be there in five minutes was the longest I’ve had to wait.  Painless.

            This is my first time off in about five months.  Coming into this vacation I made detailed plans to do a whole lot of nothing, and everything has progressed according to plan.  I’m ahead of schedule, in fact.  I made one appointment for the week.  Remember the theater I mentioned?  While riding in the hotel shuttle one day, the shuttle driver and hotel employee, same guy who picked me up at the airport on the way here, a cute, Pancho Villa mustachioed little guy named Lover (“Spell like lover but say like Looover,” [long ‘o’ instead of ‘u’ sound] classic, really hard to keep a straight face when he said it) stared wistfully at the movie theater as we went past.  I asked him if he liked to go to the movies.  He said yes, though he’d never been to the theater here and he wanted to see the new release for the week.  Inglorious Basterds, if you were wondering.  See it if you like revisionist WWII history (not to spoil it, but a certain diminutive dictator gets it in the end), Tarantino dialogue in four different languages, or graphic depictions of people getting scalped.  Last time I was in a movie theater was the Philippines, and I had to take an eight-day boat ride to get there, so I was all about seeing a flick, and I offered to treat Lover to a night at the movies.  You have no idea how odd it was to type that just now. 

            Movie date.  Make plans to meet Lover at the theater a few minutes before the movie.  What?  I’ll sport his ticket, but I’m not picking him up at his house, as that gets into the whole meet the parents, explain our plans for the evening thing, and I’m just not ready for that level of commitment.  Besides, I don’t know where his village is.  Anyways, leave plenty of time to get to the theater.  Don’t want to be late and make him think I’m standing him up.  Have my hotel call a cab.  One arrives promptly.  Slight catch.  There’s someone else already in the cab, a lady sitting in the back seat.  I’m going to the movie theater.  You going that direction?  Yeah, yeah, no problem, get in.  Off we go. 

            We make it about five hundred yards before he pulls into the gas station.  Gas detour, no problem.  About half my cab rides here have involved a gas stop, primarily because the drivers buy in half gallon increments, despite the fact that they always seem flush with filthy wads of tattered ones.  Guess they don’t want to part with too many of them at once, or maybe they are saving weight to increase gas mileage.  Who knows, but five dollar gas stop, no big deal.

            Nor a big deal when we pull over to pick up two more people, making the back seat nice and cozy and me glad that I sat up front.  What’s another couple passengers headed into town?  I’m all about saving gas and ride share and all that and pile in we’re in it together now.

            Then things take a turn not necessarily for the worse but definitely in the wrong direction.  We zig at a Y intersection when we should have zagged to get to town.  What’s up?  We go drop off dese guys first.  Okay, how long will that take?  I left early, but not that early, and I have visions of my Lover pacing around worried or, worse, thinking I ditched him.  Maybe ten minute.  Yeah, okay, cutting it close but out of my hands now.  Sit back and enjoy the ride. 

            The road starts to get rougher as we get further out of town.  Nothing too serious, but noticeable.  No more street lights, either, so just the lights from passing houses, and folks walking the roadside materializing into the headlights as we approach.  A few minutes of this and we get to our dropoff point.  Our first dropoff point.  One lady gets out.  Sweet, back to town now, right?  I’ll be right on time.

            Wrong.  Further down the road we go.  Umm, I’m trying to catch a movie here.  We say it all the time in America to squeeze a little extra speed out of wait staff and cabbies, but it sounds a little odd in the middle of a third world tropical isle.  What the hell, though, I’m on vacation, and I get to be the ugly American for once.  Yeah, yeah, very close.  Okay.  Another five minutes further, we drop off the other person in the cab, pulling up in front of a store made out of a metal cargo box with panels cut out to make a sort of shipping container chic boutique.  Sweet.  I’ll only be a couple minutes late.

            As a bonus, the cabbie knows a shortcut.  Must be a shortcut, as, after the dropoff he continues heading in the same direction we were going, away from town. Whoa, serious shortcut: the cabbie swings out wide right then cuts it left without ever touching the brakes, Indy style, shooting us onto an even narrower, darker road.  Must connect to the main road on the far side of town.  A little heavier on the gas now, jetting down what is, for all intents and purposes, a single lane of blacktop, which is a pity, as there’s two way traffic on the street.  Yikes.  A few minutes on this road and then we’re…pulling over?  A voice from the back seat of the car makes me jump as the sneaky unseen third passenger disembarks.  Didn’t even know there was still someone back there.  Blame it on the dark or the fact that the car is a compact and I’m jammed into the dash in the front seat, requiring an owl’s flexibility and a flashlight to see back there.

            Turns out this wasn’t a shortcut at all, and now, after our final drop, we’re backtracking our original route almost to my point of origin, a route I would have seen none of if he’d told me he wasn’t headed into town, get a different cab without a hidden agenda.  I could even have put a decent dent in the trip on foot. The cabbie knows this, and drops the hammer, apparently determined to save face and ensure I don’t miss the opening credits.  In Chuuk, when you drop the hammer, it means you break into double digits on the speedometer and pray you don’t scrape the transmission off the bottom of the car.  Here, though, you can build up a pretty good head of steam.  We do.  We’re hurtling down the road, dodging peds and fornicating dogs and cars coming head on and Jesus man slow down this isn’t a Kerouac novel and what the hell are those kids doing trying to play catch in the dark in the middle of the road none of which I say because at first it’s kind of fun and we are making good time.

            Slew onto the main road ignoring the potential for merging cars and now we really do have some traffic.  The cabbie bears down on it, tailgates until he sees the slimmest of openings in oncoming and a sliver of straight road visibility, and then passes, causing the little four banger to hunt gears, backfire, and rev like the two stroke lawnmower I ‘accidentally’ set on fire back in eighth grade.  I find myself white knuckling and try to shake out the half moon fingernail indentations in my palms.  I close my eyes for a minute, trying to get to my happy place, but when my body and the chassis lurch around a corner and then brake down hard to avoid plowing into a slow moving mini-flatbed, my eyes fly open and just for a moment I’m back in Philadelphia on the scariest cab ride of my life, weaving through four lanes of traffic plus the parking lane any time there’s half a block without cars parallel parked and this is just silly because we’re not in Philly we’re in freaking Micronesia so slow the hell down.

            I’m trying to convey this sentiment to the speed crazed Pohnpeian man next to me who feels bad for making me late and is now on a mission to Do not worry we come soon to movie, but I’m having trouble making him understand that I can’t give Tarrantino and Wallace Theaters my money if we are dead, through the windshield and heads instantly decelerated into a coconut palm. 

            Finally we get to the outskirts of town and the traffic forces us to slow, and though I am relieved and now capable of drawing a complete breath, there’s an odd, speed stupid teen part of me that wishes we were still hurtling down the dark streets (w)recklessly passing people.  But wait, our man still has a few tricks.  He darts down a side street, picking up speed as we make a downhill run, engine again revving to a whine.  Foiled after a curve by a slow sedan, the guy starts hovering, tailgating, putting pressure on the car in front of him, does that impatient move your dad pulls, trying to pass by getting even with the lead car at a stop sign and then get the jump off the line, but he’s foiled by oncoming, forced back into trailing position.  This obviously irritates him because he’s got that jittery NASCAR nervous energy, hounding the sedan in pole position so hard he freaks out the lead car’s driver to the point it actually stops in the middle of the road.  The driver, a white lady, gets out and starts laying into the cabbie but in a non-confrontational way by asking him Is everything okay which is just her way of saying what the hell is the matter with you.  Our hero throws the cab in reverse and fires off Pohnpeian for, I’m sure, Just trying to get this honky to the movies and we’re late, making me look like the jerk for the way he’s driving.  The lady stares at us, me, incredulously and starts with in with That’s why you’re driving like an ass but we’re barking tires in reverse by now and squeezing past her. 

            Sweet salvation there’s the parking lot.  We made it, fifteen minutes late, whacky considering the ride should have taken maybe ten minutes total and I started early. What, I hear you asking, is the fee for this white-knuckle detour dash down the darkened byways of tropical paradise? A dollar.  One U.S. dollar for the same amount of thrills and chills people stand in line and pay big bucks for on any midway in the States, minus the candied apple and a funnel cake.  I pay the guy, unfold myself out of the front seat, resist the urge to kiss the pavement, and go behind the cab instead of in front in case the driver’s still riding an adrenaline high and gets punchy on the gas before I’m clear.

            Lover’s waiting patiently by the ticket counter.  I hustle over and apologize for being late, hoping aloud that we haven’t missed too much of the movie.  As I get tickets he merrily assures me that we haven’t, but he was outside when I showed up, so how could he know?  Because I ask them to wait movie, he explains, a twinkle in his eye, and somehow this makes perfect sense, because we’re in Micronesia.