Reporter’s journal from the Island of Yap

Feb. 20, 2010
Mary Kay Magistad from Yap

I’m sitting on my balcony, at the Pathways Cottages in Yap – not cottages, really, but bamboo houses on stilts, high in the trees, with thatch roofs. They overlook a lagoon, and coconut palms sway in the breeze. It would be idyllic – except that the busiest street in town runs right in front of this place. Now, on an island of 8,000 people, in an archipelago of 12,000, the busiest street in town isn’t exactly gridlocked – but there are enough cars swooshing past on a regular basis to break the island idyll. For that matter, so does the chainsaw my next-door neighbors choose to run at 7am.

Yap is an island of genuine tropical beauty
Yap is an island of genuine tropical beauty, of rare and colorful plants and birds and coral and marine life, including huge and gentle manta rays, who draw divers from all over the world. It’s a place that has held onto its traditions more firmly than most islands in the Pacific. Here, some women still go bare-breasted, without men giving them a second look, while baring your thighs is considered licentious. It’s a place where you can walk down ancient stone paths into villages, to find “stone money banks” – not buildings with tellers, but round limestone disks in the open air, three, four, up to six feet in diameter, propped up along the walkway. These are owned by individuals and kept by villages, and are used as symbolic exchange for major events – to ask forgiveness, if someone in your village has wronged someone in another, to ask the family of your daughter’s fiancé to take good care of her, once she’s married, to thank someone for a particularly heroic or generous act.

Stone Money Bank

The stone money goes back centuries
The stone money goes back centuries, maybe even millennia. It was mined on the island of Palau, almost 300 miles west, and brought back on bamboo rafts, tied to the back of mahogany canoes with sails made of pandamus fronds. Legend has it that the idea that started it all was that various villages on Yap were arguing about what kind of money to use, and one village chief – looking up at the moon – said it should be round and substantial and beautiful, like the moon. Other village chiefs agreed, and Yap explorers went in search of the right material. They found it on Palau, and after a couple of battles to establish their right to mine there, they started bringing it home. In the 19th century, an Irishman named O’Keefe got in on the act, and used his much bigger ship to bring much bigger pieces of stone money back from Palau. In return, he took copra (dried coconut), and other goods. He disappeared at sea, on a voyage to Hong Kong.

Yap

Yap was never overrun with people
Yap was never overrun with people. Even now, its total population on several islands is 12,000, with just 8,000 on the main island. It has the feel of a small town – or several of them, all strung together – with old people reminiscing over the olden days and anxious to keep Yap’s ancient traditions alive, and a trendy younger generation in hip-hop pants and reflector shades, with mp3 players and internet accounts, immersed in an entirely different world. It’s not that they’re surly and dismissive of the old – not even that they’re surly at all. Young, beefy guys with tattoos and dark shades, will nod and say “Good Morning, M’am” as they pass you on the road.

Yap youth

That’s for those who are walking – and very few are. I like to walk. It helps me get to know an area. It gives me a chance to serendipitously meet people, or happen across hidden corners with a story to tell. As I walk around Yap, I see that very, very few other people do walk. Almost everyone drives. It’s part of a change of lifestyle that is the lament of public health officials here. They say life expectancy has fallen by about 20 years over the past couple of generations of embracing modern life – cars, processed foods, drinking beer. Hypertension and diabetes are on the rise here. So is anemia in pregnant women, low birth-weight in babies, and obesity in children.

Yap seems to be struggling a bit
Yap seems to be struggling a bit with how much of the outside world to embrace, to adapt, to let in. The parts of the island that are ‘modern’ are low-slung and makeshift – homes made of corrugated tin, shops that look like they could fold up in a matter of hours, if the need or desire arose. Even the government offices feel like pre-fab structures – and ones fraying at the edges, at that.

The United States gave Yap money for decades
The United States gave Yap money for decades, when it was part of the Trust Territories. Now it’s part of an independent nation – the Federated States of Micronesia — but one without much of a sense of direction when it comes to economic growth. Tourism is important, Yapese say, but only three flights a week come to Yap, and the Yap Tourism Board says they get 5,000 tourists a year in a good year. Hotels often have 30 percent occupancy – and yet, most of them still charge $150-$200/night. Meals cost twice what they would most places in Southeast Asia. Everything’s pricey, which does nothing to bring moderate-income young tourists in their 20s and 30s to Yap – a natural constituency, given the stellar diving and hiking and even surfing on offer here.

But it doesn’t seem anyone’s rushing to get 8 percent economic growth here. One Yap Tourism Board member I chatted with in a beachside café said “We really have what we need to live, on this island, and the question is how much we want of what else is out there.” The outside world has brought convenience – cars, instead of walking, canned food and processed meats, instead of yams and taro and freshly caught fish and seafood, television and the internet instead of sitting in the bamboo and thatch men’s houses at night, hearing stories from the elders and carrying on a tradition that has been passed down for centuries. All of this has happened within living memory, and Yap is still trying to find its balance. The answer is not necessarily to shut its doors and go back to its old ways – but to pick and choose, to not assume that what comes from outside is better than what comes from the the island itself.

Yap Mens House

At least, Yap has a leg up on Saipan’s and Guam’s Chamorros, who pretty much speak English. Yapese speak Yapese to each other, and English only when speaking to an outsider. Many are sophisticated – they’ve lived in the US, gone to high school or even college there – but have come back because they prefer life on their island. There is hope.

- Mary Kay Magistad