Today we went diving, Embry, me, a couple from Minnesota and a pair of guides in the same flat, open, seatless motorboat. We rode through a harbor with rusty Chinese fishing trawlers who come here for the tuna, on the way back the sea was getting rough, so we motored though an intricate maze of mangroves which grew so dense and low that we had to practically lie down in the boat. This part was very cool.

The dives were okay, though nothing can live up to the Blue Corner at Palau. The high point was a school of eighteen man-sized sharks. I also saw any number of enormous sea cucumbers, segmented like centipedes, leopard spotted in brown and white, with fan-shaped feeding tubules sticking from their fronts like legs.

Most of the dive sites in Pohnpei seem to be blown out by the trade winds, and I'm wishing I could have dived another couple of days in Palau. But Pohnpei is quite interesting above the water as well. Relax, Ru, and let the adventures keep happening. It's all good.

It was Sheryl, one of Embry's white acquaintances who moved to Pohnpei from Grand Turk, who talked him into coming here, she met us at our hotel for dinner. A chatty single lady nearly our age. Sheryl brought an interesting cast of characters with her, saying they were her local “family,” a white lawyer and the white editor of the island newspaper, and two Pohnpeian women, Elizabeth and Emmy.

I liked talking to Elizabeth and Emmy, getting local info from them. It was soothing. They were pleasant-looking, in their forties, with smooth brown faces and cute accents, with a languid island look, like brown Chers, not unlike a number of people I've known in multi-culti San Jose, come to think of it. But here it's their home turf, and in their power and situatedness, they also seem a bit like elegant sharks, finning along just outside the reef. After all this time with just my brother, I miss the leavening and civilizing influence of the fair sex.

It seems that only one of the twelve clans on Pohnpei thinks of eels as gods. Elizabeth's clan has a god which is an owl, other clans have the shark and the manta ray. They do eat dogs, sometimes casually, but more often for special occasions: if the chief of your clan asks for your dog for an important feast, say for a funeral, you gotta hand over the dog. I don't think they eat dogs on Yap, if they did, there wouldn't be so many of them.

The big local drug here is sakau, the same as the kava of the Tongans and Fijians, its made by squeezing the roots of a certain pepper plant in water. Betel nut isn't so big here as in Yap. Apparently they grow pot as well, and its best to have a guide if you go mountain hiking, lest you stumble on something you shouldn't see.

Saturday night we're invited to a party at Elizabeth's, which is pretty cool. They'll be serving sakau, though I don't expect to be drinking much of it. All these wonderful alien drugs out here in the islands. This young couple from Minnesota whom we dived with were getting loaded on sakau at the hotel bar, and effusively called Embry and me over to chat, and I say, “Is it like pot?” and the guy says, “No, it's more like a speedball; a combination of cocaine and heroin.”

We mentioned that we'd been into town for dinner, and the woman looked at Embry and me and said, “You two really get around. That's great.” And as he and I are walking back to our rooms Embry is, like, “What did she mean we get around? We hardly do anything.” “It's because we're so old, Embry. She thinks it's amazing that we can do anything at all. 'Aren't those two old brothers cute?'” The next morning this couple were quite subdued, by the way. Sakau hangover.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 11:47 am and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.