Kosrae 2024

    Kosraean tangerines and oranges.         I must be half Kosraean by now.  At least Stella is helping me along the way.  She knows how to find food growing on trees and harvest it without antagonizing the neighbors. [Last week, the kids from Sansrik Elementary School across the way sent their risk-taker up the tree in my neighbor's yard to shake the branches and make the tangerines rain down.  Needless to say the neighbor was not happy.  How universal was that?] At Sterling Skilling's funeral we were given food to see us through the wait.  Here you see the banana leaf wrapper of 'om' cooked hard taro (on the plate).  The taste is smokey.  The consistency is hard (like cooked ??? maybe overcooked brownies) and totally mesmerizing.  I put slices in my bowl of papaya, tangerines and banana; the smokey flavor carried the fruit into another place altogether.   An 'om' is a pit in the ground with a fire at...

Kosrae in March -- a lot of wind, a lot of RAIN, pot holes, and funerals.  March coincides with Lent. Today is Palm Sunday, next Sunday is Easter.  Winter has been hard on the old folks.  There have been many funerals and get togethers.  It is something I treasure here, you will see why. It is pouring POURING rain here today (Sunday).  Lovely to listen to, rain pelting on corrugated metal roofing all around my windows.  Last week I walked the hill to the Justice Department in the rain, and was joined by Senator Linden Jackson! who told me that there is a drought emergency declared in FSM, but obviously once again they have forgotten Kosrae.  (This happens because Kosrae is only 7% of the population of FSM and is located geographically a long way away from the other states.)(I guess)  Kosrae gets upwards of 165 in / yr of rain.  It's green and tropical and there is no shortage of water.  Except: when it rains this hard, they turn off the ...

  Annie Bonno is the lead at KIRMA (Kosrae Island Resource Management Association) for Invasive Species.  She and her colleagues took Nick's COM class on a field trip and invited me along.  I had gone last year also; this year we saw more and were told more, it seems KIRMA has grown into its role as field trip educator.  (Annie, two other female colleagues and I rode in one car at the start: this was the 'girls' car, the 'boys' were in the other car.  You might imagine the kind of chatter this led to!) We got in the car at Tofol and drove to Utwe and beyond, to see our first invasive plant, Clerodendrum.  It was brought in as a decorative garden plant and took off.  In the spot they stopped, a small plot of land by a stream had been cleared of the invasive, and KIRMA was monitoring the success of the clearing.  They had used shovels and chemicals to remove the plant.  It straggles back in, and gets whacked back.   This invasive grass app...