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MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL MICRONESIA
Sept/Oct. 2008
By Michelle Newman
Located 13 degrees north of the equator and 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii, Guam is part of the Marianna Island chain which includes Rota, Saipan, and Tinian. The 4,000-year-old rich Chamorro culture awaits you at the annual Guam Micronesian Island Fair in Ypao Beach Park.
Part of the whole cultural immersion experience is flying on Continental/Micronesia's Island Hopper where you literally hop from one island to another heading in a southwestern direction. As the flight progresses, you begin to sense that an adventure awaits as Islanders wearing traditional mar mars (floral headdresses) and colorful moo moos board the flight.
I expected to find old rusty WWII jeeps, left over Japanese bunkers, thatched huts, and monkeys swinging from the palm trees in Guam. Instead, I encountered the 'Las Vegas of the Pacific.' DFS Galleria, the Plaza, and Tumon Sands Plaza line Tumon's main road and are filled with upscale designer boutiques such as Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Burberry. With Japan only a three-hour flight away, the fashion-forward Japanese account for 80 percent of Guam's tourists and they love to shop in Guam's glitzy duty free malls for the latest couture fashions.
Nearly 20,000 Islanders and visitors gathered from all over the Pacific to attend the 20th Annual Guam Micronesian Island Fair, a three-day colossal cultural event at Ypao Beach Park. At last year's event, the Guam Visitors Bureau went all-out to showcase and celebrate Micronesia's rich heritage and culture with live entertainment, regional crafts and cuisine, native dance, chanting, and even caribou rides for the kids.
Governor Felix Camacho kicked off the event announcing "Guam is in the midst of a cultural renaissance," also stressing the importance of maintaining and honoring their rich Chamorro heritage.
Islanders from neighboring islands including the Marianas, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands came out in full force to share their culture, crafts and cuisine with visitors and other natives.
Oral history, traditional dance, and chanting are an important part of Micronesian heritage and are passed down from one generation to another. Glowing golden dancers from Yap and other islands performed beneath the moonlight, their skin glistening from coconut oil and ginger.
The fair was a shopper's dream come true. An outstanding array of specialty handcrafts were available for sale including intricately woven baskets, boxes, fans, flowers and wall hangings woven out of palm, pandanus, and hibiscus fibers, ornately carved billfish spear tips, coconut shredding benches, homemade mango jelly, fine black south sea pearls from Pohnipei, and valuable Spondylus shell pendants.
The Yapese sold traditional hibiscus skirts (weighing nearly 20 pounds) and wove colorful mar mars while relaxing beneath the palm trees. The women ingeniously looped one of the ends around their big toe and used it as a 'third hand' to stabilize their weavings. Yap is the exotic island known for huge stone money discs and where renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead studied the island's intact and authentic culture. The Yapese Chiefs personally welcomed visitors and encouraged them to visit Yap for the Yap Festival held every year at the beginning of March.
The Marshallese women, who are reputed to be the finest weavers in Micronesia, demonstrated their elaborate form of needle weaving, similar to European lace making using young palm fibers and weaving intricate patterns.
Master craftsman from Guam and Palau were on hand to demonstrate their fine wood carving. The richly carved and painted Palau storyboards are quite collectable representing ancient legends and myths. There was even a token suruhanu (traditional healer) on hand available for consultations or massages.
One of the highlights of the fair was the Guma Higai (a traditional A-frame thatched hut) constructed by a group of dedicated Chamorro men. This architectural masterpiece was built out of individually woven palm panels that were assembled together using hand twined hibiscus rope. Once finished the hut was decorated with a large tortoise shell, shark jaw, and a gigantic caged resident coconut crab.
With all of the fiber handcrafts and the traditional thatched hut at the fair, it is obvious that natural fiber plays such an important role in all of the Micronesian islands and historically how necessary it was for survival. Palm, hibiscus, and pandanus fibers provided food, clothing and shelter for the islanders.
Pandanus was woven into rectangular and square mats and were stitched together to use as sails for outrigger canoes. The hibiscus tree was processed, dried and cured and used for strong rope and grass skirts. The coconut palm provided fruit, milk, fuel, and fiber for weaving.
After recuperating from three intense days of nonstop cultural immersion, song, dance crafts and food, I still craved more Chamorro culture. So off I went for the third time in nine days to my favorite spot in Guam, Gef Pa'go Park in Inarajan. Imagine a tropical version of Colonial Williamsburg where visitors learn about the Chamorro culture from Village Elders. This recreated ancient village is fascinating and cultural experts explain to visitors how the Chamorro lived, survived, and adapted to their environment.
Village Elders give hands on demonstrations of rope making, salt making, weaving with natural fibers, and coconut candy making. It is truly amazing how strong the hibiscus bark rope is. Rose Y. San Nicolas, a Chamorro, invited me to spend an afternoon with her for some hands-on experience. Rose demonstrated how to twine rope with a Biradot Tali, an old fashioned wooden twisting device. She also taught me how to make divine coconut candy with freshly grated coconut cooked on an open fire. Rose showed me the beautifully woven pandanus baskets and boxes that were used for food storage, and floor mats for sitting and sleeping.
While we picked some pandanus leaves, Rose explained that it is best to pick the dry brown leaves, however, the green leaves can be used if they are boiled for 15 minutes in water until they change to a deeper and darker shade of an olive green. She folded several pandanus leaves into 8-inch sections and placed them in boiling water for about 15 minutes until they changed color.
After cooking, the leaves are removed from the water, unfolded, and hung up to dry on a clothesline in the sun so they become lighter. Once they are dry they are rolled up sort of like a big roll of raffle tickets and stored on this roll until ready to be woven. Now that I've had a hands on experience, I have a greater appreciation for this labor-intensive process and will never complain about the price again.
The Guam Micronesian Island Fair was so great that I've already marked my calendar for October 17-19 for this year's fair. Hope to see you there and be sure to bring lots of sunscreen and a hat.
CONTACT INFO: www.visitguam.org
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