First Birth Ceremony

Over the weekend, Shirley, one of my co-workers, invited the foreign PICRC crowd to her sister’s first birth ceremony. The first birth ceremony is one of the most important Palauan traditions, and historically served the role of a Western wedding. Tourists usually wouldn’t get to experience this side of Palau, so we were fortunate that Shirley was so inclusive!

Our group of eleven arrived and was seated in what was clearly the “tourist” section. As Shirley’s sister was prepared for her entrance, the women of the family set up intricate floral and palm decorations around the yard and a live singer treated us to Palauan tunes in what turned out to be the most impressive display of vocal and speaker system power and endurance I have ever heard. Women danced around the singer, waving dollar bills that they ceremoniously stuffed in the singer’s cleavage at the end of each song. A sumptuous bento lunch was served, and then Shirley’s sister was unveiled, clothed in her clan’s traditional costume.

PICRC Foreigners (and Friends)

Becca, a lawyer from New Jersey, Katherine, a fellow PICRC intern from Portland, and I pose with palm decorations.

Shirley's sister, in traditional garb and pose, walks on woven palm mats.

From what I understand, the customs vary slightly from clan to clan, but all involve a “hot bath:” the woman is sprayed with boiling water in a private cleansing ritual with the women of her family. To protect her skin, she is bathed in a mixture of oils and herbs, and may only bathe in these oils and boiling water for a certain period leading up to the ceremony: for Shirley’s clan, ten days. The oils turn her skin yellow, and she was radiant in the sun, brightly colored from head to toe. All of the herbs, the plants in her headdress and clothing, and the fruit and floral decorations around the yard are highly specific and symbolic, and the procedure of how to mix them and where to find them is passed down orally through maternal lineages. I’ve heard that there are over 300 plants used in a traditional first birth ceremony—talk about local ecological knowledge! Palau is a matriarchal society, and in this ceremony it was very clear that women have the power. Traditionally, men were not even allowed to come to these ceremonies, but restrictions have become more lax over the years (and the women typically no longer go topless). It is frowned upon if men join in the dancing, however.

Shirley’s sister stood stoically in the middle of the yard as women danced around her, sprinkling her feet with hot water and herbs. Periodically a family member would give her water or a betel nut (a ubiquitous Palauan pastime, more on that later), but she did not alter her pose for the duration of the several-hour ceremony. We were exhausted and sweating profusely seated in the shade—I can’t imagine how strenuous it must have been to stand, arms raised, for so long in the sun. After about an hour, her husband came out with the baby for group pictures with the extended family. More dancing followed, and then she was led back into the house, her sisters placing woven palm mats before her so that her feet would not touch the ground. This marked the opening of the dance floor, and Shirley gave us the green light to add our embarrassing white people moves to the mix. The older Palauan women danced delightedly with us, laughing, and, at the end of the song, brought us up to the singer to deposit our singles.

Shirley (in pink) dances with the women in her family.

Some of the women started dancing with the fruit display; we learned later that this was not tradition but just for fun.

I'm fairly sure the speakers went up to eleven.

Exhausted, we took off after about five hours, but by the looks of things the party was just beginning. My host family tells me that their oldest son and his wife are expecting their first baby in the upcoming months, so I'm hoping to get another first birth ceremony experience before I leave!

Koror-Babeldaob Bridge, 11-10

One of my first dives in Palau and my first time using my underwater camera was underneath the main Koror-Babeldaob bridge (Babeldaob is the biggest island). Underpass diving isn't what Palau is famous for, but shore dives are basically free and I was happy to be in the water! It was murky and there wasn't much happening, but a great opportunity to try the macro settings. When I was taking pictures for the National Park Service I struggled for months to get anything closer than a foot away in focus, so I'm excited about these initial results.

Hello and Haiyan

Hello!

I’m spending five months in Palau on a Pforzheimer Foundation Public Service Fellowship, working as a research intern with the Palau International Coral Reef Center (PICRC). I’ve been here two weeks so far and will attempt to catch up with everything that has happened, and then will (theoretically) regularly update this blog to record some of my experiences and photographs.

I’m helping out with various research projects at PICRC, studying both the ecological and social sides of marine conservation. I’ll also work with public outreach and education efforts at the center’s aquarium. I’m living in Koror, the population center (Palau is a chain of over 300 islands, and Koror hosts the commercial center and around 14,000 people), and staying with a host family, Stephen and Zabeth Kyota, who live a five-minute bike ride away from the center. For now it’s just the three of us, but they have three kids: a son in the US military, a daughter in college in Guam, and a son at a boarding high school on the island. I’m hoping the younger kids will be home for the holidays soon and I’ll be able to meet them!

My sleeping arrangements; the fan is by far the most important attribute of the room.

PICRC

From PICRC's dock

The most noteworthy event so far was Super Typhoon Haiyan. I arrived on Sunday, November 3^rd, and by Wednesday the office had closed to allow people time to secure their homes and stock up on water and non-perishables before the storm hit that night. Katherine, another American intern at PICRC, was house sitting at a high-end (for Palau) apartment, so the younger/Western crew at PICRC (Chris, a postdoc from Australia; Johanna, a German researcher working with Chris; and Julien, a postdoc from France) spent the afternoon and night there, watching movies, sharing snacks, and enjoying the typhoon-proof concrete walls and generator. It ended up being a great first typhoon experience: I was so happy to have people to hang out with, felt very safe, and admittedly, still slightly jet-lagged, slept through most of the storm.

The following morning it was calm and people were out on the streets clearing strewn vegetation. From what I could see in Koror there was minimal damage and everyone was okay. We didn’t regain power at my host family’s house for about three days, and then we started hearing reports that Kayangel, the northernmost island, had been completely flattened: not a single house remained standing. Fortunately everyone had survived more or less unharmed, and they were taking refuge in the cultural center in Koror. Around that time we also heard the initial news from the Philippines. Needless to say, we were extremely grateful that Palau was relatively lucky, and our hearts heavy with the thought of the unimaginable destruction 500 miles to the west (Do consider donating to relief efforts in the Philippines!).

Safely ensconced, we watched storm clouds gather over Koror.

The generator only served outlets on the ceiling, obviously intended for emergency lights. We didn't let that get in the way of our movie marathon. 

Men clear fallen trees from the road. 

One of the reasons I applied for this fellowship was to work and live with communities for whom the effects of climate change and ocean degradation are not distant possibilities but lived realities. On small islands with little elevation, there’s nowhere to go when the sea comes in. Palau historically is not in the usual path of typhoons, but was devastated last year by Typhoon Bopha; the most recent typhoon before that was in the 1980s. Of course, we can’t directly attribute Haiyan to climate change, or create a definitive trend out of two consecutive storms, but there’s no question that this is unusual, and devastating to these small island communities. We can think of Eric Pooley's apt analogy that circulated around the time of Superstorm Sandy: we can’t directly connect any one of Barry Bond’s home runs to steroid use, but we can look at the larger trend and note that changes are afoot.

I still experienced the storm very much from the “haves” end of the spectrum, but am nonetheless humbled by the power of the storm and the resilience of these communities. Haiyan provided a prompt reminder of why I’m here, and will set the tone for the work I do over the next five months.

More pictures and hopefully much lighter anecdotes to follow soon! If you would like to read more about my diving adventures, check out my Our World-Underwater National Parks Internship blog. For more filter and fewer of these pesky words, follow me on Instagram.