A New Home

Pohnpeian Word of the Day: ihmw = “home”

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in the last few days, but I’ve been pretty busy, as I’m sure you can imagine.

On Niare, our last night in the Doses house, our next-door neighbor and host brother-in-law Leto took everyone to his new bar for a sneak peak before it opened. The place is pretty nice, despite having a somewhat gaudy yellow-and-red paint job. More importantly, it has Karaoke. After my stunning but severely under-appreciated rendition of The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, Meghan and Erin took the mic for Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. Thankfully, Leto had installed egg-cartons on the ceiling and padding on the doors, so we should still be welcome in that neighborhood.

The next day, Niesil, was moving day – and, of course, I hadn’t packed a thing. Not that it mattered, since we weren’t even able to pick up our keys until eleven o’clock. Then again, I hadn’t packed by then either. Fortunately, when Michaela called around two to say she would be there in fifteen minutes to pick us up, I was able to jam everything I own in the world into four bags and a laundry hamper, just in time. I guess I’ll never learn.

The apartment itself (4-TY Apartments, Room 203) is not bad, at least by local standards. We have a large balcony where we can hang our clothes to dry, a brand new electric oven and range, more cabinets than I can count, a beat-up leather sofa, a water heater, and air conditioners in both our rooms. There is a laundry downstairs, and the dumpster is right across the street – a regular Ritz Carlton.

Judging by the papers still taped to the refrigerator, we have assumed that the previous tenants were Mormon missionaries. There is, for example, a list of emergency supplies in the event of a 72-hour power outage or other catastrophe, and the fourth item on this list is "scriptures" - it is listed before "clean water" and "candles". You can't say they don't take it seriously.






A word about my new roommate, Tanja Manners. Her mother is Slovenian and her father is American – she was born in the UK, and grew up in the former Yugoslavia and Austria. Although she has lived in London most recently, her English is flawlessly American – she also speaks Slovenian, French, German and Italian. We are thus far getting along much better than I had expected, mostly due to our recently discovered joint love of gossip and Digiorno frozen pizza.


After I lugged my 150 pounds of luggage up the flight of stairs, Michaela took us to the old WorldTeach house to pick up little necessities that previous volunteers had left behind. We found a living room floor scattered with pots and pans, dishes, utensils, books, appliances and various other knick-knacks … I scooped up whatever I could carry and brought it back home.

The next order of business was electricity. In a way, the system is a little simpler than the one I’m used to - I didn’t have to fill out any applications or set up online bill pay – but that didn’t make it easy. Here, you prepay for electricity, like a cell phone … the problem is, you have to actually walk down to the CashPower building to get it. You tell them your meter number and give them your money, and they give you a receipt with a sixteen-digit code on it. You then punch this into the keypad next to your meter (ours is downstairs) and the display shows how many kilowatt-hours you have left. When you hit zero, the lights go out – it’s just that simple. I bought $30 worth, and I hope it lasts at least a couple of days.

We spent the rest of the night watching The Office, and retired early. I had a good night’s sleep on the 400-count sheets I had earlier bought at Yoshie, the Japanese grocery store. In fact, due to my over-eagerness with the air conditioner, I actually became too cold at several points throughout the night, and this was quite a new and unusual feeling. I won’t run the damn thing so much anymore, but just for one night it felt really good.

The next day, Niepeng, Tanja and I trudged down to Ace Hardware (the only American chain I have managed to locate here) to buy more supplies for the place. We got everything from Pyrex baking pans to pillows and, most importantly, two electric fans for each of our rooms. After catching a cab home, we spent some time unpacking and putting away our purchases, and then began decorating.

We found some tourist magazines, and I proceeded to cut the pictures out of these and tape them up – I am quite proud of my “Pohnpei Bananas” fan-shaped collage. Tanja, meanwhile, wrote the Pohnpeian words for various household items on little pieces of paper and taped these up in the appropriate places. We also started a wall for postcards, but this is pretty bare… by the way, my address is still:

Brian Boucher, c/o WorldTeach
P.O. Box 2378
Kolonia, Pohnpei
Federated States of Micronesia
96941

We spent the rest of the day eating yet another frozen pizza and playing cards. For dinner, Tanja cooked us a rather simple spaghetti which was nonetheless delicious (despite her having mistaken shallots for garlic). She seems to enjoy cooking, and I imagine I’ll be doing quite a bit of dishwashing in exchange for my meals, which suits me just fine.

On Nialem, the three-week anniversary of our arrival, I had to wake up early to attend COM’s general assembly. Most of the faculty and students had gathered in the gym for a boring series of speeches during which the entire staff was introduced. When it came my turn, my department head mispronounced my last name – then again, I sincerely doubt I will ever correctly pronounce his, so I’m not sore about it.

Afterwards, I returned home to take over the watch from Tanja, who was waiting for the maintenance man to arrive and hook up our water heater. Soon afterwards, we were joined by the volunteers from Madolenihmw and Kitti, who had moved the same day we did and were now returning to Kolonia to shop for unforeseen needs. We spent some time catching up with them, and then it was time to hit the movies - The Dark Knight finally opened here, and we were there for the first showing. Of course, this being Micronesia, the projector was broken and we had to wait half an hour while the reels were moved to another screen. The movie was nonetheless worth the $3.50 and the wait.

Following the movie, we all ate out at Island Café, where I wisely ordered the sashimi this time. We then walked to Leto’s bar for its grand opening, where we served more sashimi and corn nuts, while drinking our Budweiser and belting out everything from Girls Just Wanna Have Fun to Bohemian Rhapsody. Despite our tone-deafness, a good time was had by all – we won’t get to see the volunteers in the outer municipalities much, although they are only a $3 hour-long cab ride away, so it was nice to have a last hoorah.


Today is Rahnkaulop, and I am sitting in the air-conditioned Telecom watching the Olympics and generally doing my best to avoid any heavy lifting before the busy week ahead. I didn't get a chance to watch the opening ceremonies, so if anyone has a tape I'd appreciate it if you mailed me a copy - that's generally the only part of the games I actually enjoy watching, except maybe all the freak sports like Synchronized Kayaking.

I begin teaching on the 14th, and Tanja starts on Monday… it seems that the vacation is over, and the hard work is about to start. Wish us luck. :)