Cultural Day and Lelu Night Market

Coconut baskets made of banana leaves

Last Saturday was Cultural Day, a celebration hosted by the 5 villages on Kosrae.  This year the elders of each village were responsible for the program.  Last year the children put on skits about cultural heritage (canoe building, fishing, cooking, growing taro) but I had to wonder how relevant any of that was or would be to those small humans, growing up in this world today.  

The elders chose to display hand crafts -- this was the FIRST time I have seen traditional handcrafts on display or for sale anywhere, in the combined 6 months I've been here.  Such a delight!  Not just for me, the asset (foreigner, tourist), but for all the Kosraeans who came and bought up everything for sale with glee!

 

The celebration began with a lot of "sham sham" (speeches by dignitaries and organizers).  All the dignitaries were greeted with wreaths for our heads, even the men. 

The keynote speaker is wearing a lei of ylang ylang.

           

The celebration was held in the Tofol gym.  All around the edges were tables displaying crafts from the different villages and other groups who wanted to be included.

 

Fabrics and Kosraean skirts covered many tables.  Two-pronged sticks were for picking up leaves.

  A woven dove (Kosrae fruit dove, Ptilinopus hernsheimi, formerly rare and endangered, now protected on Kosrae) decoration displayed by the proud and happy artist.

There were tables and tables of local food.  Everyone was in line for it.  I even saw mangrove crabs!  These little packets contain fah fah, a local sweet (pictures are below showing how it's made).  See the mallet for pounding the taro in this picture.

  

There were many displays of woven decorations, fans, hair ornaments, baskets.

The baskets made by Tafunsak were full of ylang ylang blossoms, sweetly refreshing.

Like plumeria takes me to Hawaii, ylang ylang brings me to Kosrae.

A man was making fah fah in the traditional way: taro is pounded with a wooden mortar on a thick very hard wooden platform.  Bananas were pounded in, then flat pancakes were topped with milk squeezed from the copra (coconut meat).  The top is light pink in the end.

    

My friend Harland managed to snag a grass skirt, so pleased with himself, and he gladly modelled it for me.  Two friends from the hospital (a doc and the head of the laboratory both from Fiji) joined me by the sign.  

  

Outside the gym is the recycling operation:  cans are crushed when the can crusher is working (a new one is coming soon) and crushed cans are taken away by ship (when the ship comes in).  Plastic bottles on the other hand accumulate, and are masked by the obliging Merremia vines.

           

On Friday night, Lelu village put on a Night Market, which it had not done for some time, maybe years.  The way I found out about it was by dropping by the Lelu admin building where I expected to find my friend Gasma (facilities guy for that building).  Gasma introduced me to the Mayor.  I laid out my complaint:  

I love to swim at the pier, but, --- the Mayor interrupted me, he said we used to have trash cans there but the kids dumped all the garbage into the water so we took the cans away --- and I said, yes, now there is trash everywhere and I pick it up when I go there to swim.  Could we get a metal can --- and he interrupted me again and said Oh yes! let's do that and bolt it to the lamp post.  I offered to pay for the can.

I also told him that the fresh-water shower is no longer working because the shorter pipe one had lost its faucet so it seemed the water had been turned off.  Oh yes, he said sadly.  They (the kids) broke the pipe, and since we are in a drought * we had to turn the water off, couldn't let it keep running.  I said, really? a drought? 

 

*I had learned that FSM has declared a drought, but also that Kosrae is not experiencing anything different from its normal heavy rainfall, 195 in/yr.  

He grinned, and said they would fix the pipes soon.  When are you coming back? he asked, and told me they'd have it fixed for me by then.

Then, he invited me to the Lelu Night Market, with a lot of excitement!  They hadn't had a night market for some time, maybe years.  A lot of planning went into it, by the Lelu community.  There were people from all over the island at the market, lots of music and festivity.

The evening was so much fun.  There were tents and tables everywhere loaded with food.  Lots of chairs to sit in and watch the dancing on a center stage.  Many groups presented dances from all around the Pacific Islands.  Some did funny skits, hilarious even, people falling out laughing.

  It was all so friendly and relaxed with laughing everywhere.

 

These ladies had a vat of fish soup and gave me a bowl, delish.

Here is Stella with Josefina, her young friend, and Custina and her daughter.  We were sitting at Dominic's Pizza's table, which runs out of the Aquaculture Clam Farm.

I bought a jar of pickled giant clam meat, for sale for $25.  Let's see if that gets home in my suitcase.

    

Osun