What Is It About Chuuk?
What is it about the place? I ask myself this every time I visit Chuuk. We get into the rented car at the airport and make our way down to the boat pool on Weno at the usual speed of about 3 mph. Some of the downtown area is paved, while in other places the potholes are even deeper than I had remembered. Regardless, the long line of cars seems to crawl along at the same speed. It’s a challenge for those on foot to cross the street as they look for a little space between the tightly packed vehicles, but somehow they make it across safely. Some things never change, as the axiom goes. The condition of the road and the traffic are a case in point.
But as we inch our way down the road, I look this way and that. On the left is a long line of colored skirts hanging outside a small store. Ah, those skirts, so pretty as they flutter on the line, are distinctive of this place, I think. Over on the other side is a store with a name I have never seen before. Isn’t that close to the Bayview, the small but well-known hotel from way back when? Yes, I remember when Xavier juniors held one of their first proms there, with the Cecilia School girls invited to provide dance partners.
On we go past the old landmarks: the former post office, the gutted buildings and old quonsets that were once TTC, the boat pool and graveyard of Star of the Sea, and Singeto’s store, whoever may be running it these days. How can I be bored, despite our creeping pace, when every tiny store triggers a memory as I ask myself what used to be there way back when?
It’s the same experience later in the day as we make our way up the other side of the island toward Xavier. The old hotels and eating places near the old crusher are now closed down. The houses that I could once identify with a particular family look different now, but I couldn’t remember the family name anyway. Over there, set back some distance from the road, is a three-story stone house. Nicely designed, even if the stairs are somewhat chipped. How is it that I never noticed that place before?
Everywhere I look, the place is haunted with touching memories. But then come the greetings: the bright smiles of recognition, the hugs and handshakes, the stories about when and where we first met, and the laughs over the crazy things that were happening all around us way back when.
This place may have the worst roads in the world, I think, but it has always been special to me. So have its people—the ones I now proudly call my family.
