Rearview: Ex-Peace Corps volunteer recalls her time on Kosrae

‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Those were the words of President John F. Kennedy at his inauguration in 1961.

The Peace Corps pro-gram began in March 1961, 60 years ago. Ethel Fleming told me the president’s speech inspired her to become a Peace Corps volunteer.

“I graduated from UH Manoa in 1966 and heeded the president’s call. I trained on Molokai as a public health volunteer and arrived by tramp steamer on the island of Kosrae in the Eastern Caroline Islands, Micronesia, that fall. No airplanes flew there in those days.”

A few thousand people inhabited its 42 square miles. “I felt I was a Honolulu girl going to another island, only smaller,” Fleming said.

“The islands used U.S. money and postage, and folks also traded. Most made money by selling copra so they could buy basics such as soap, matches, kerosene and also treats like American chewing gum. There was also coffee, rice and sugar offered in little stores.

“Once on shore, wobbly after being seasick during the ocean voyage, I could basically understand what the islanders were saying. It seems that folks came to the harbor to await whatever was going to be offloaded and were curious about the ‘new people.’”

The Peace Corps had taught her basics of the language. “At least we could initially say simple things in Kosraen such as, ‘My name is …, what is your name?’ ‘I’m thirsty’ or ‘Where is the toilet?’”

“We each were assigned to different villages. Some villagers were asked to transport us on what few gasoline-powered vehicles there were on the island: motorcycle or a WWII truck that also was used to transport produce, pigs, goats, chickens, crabs and people. All passengers paid 10 cents a ride,” Fleming recalled.

“The main road didn’t encircle the island. It also cost 10 cents for the canoe ride across the harbor to the other side of the island. Otherwise, folks walked.

“The average annual income of folks on that island was $80 a year, mostly from selling copra. It was mainly a subsistence life: fishing and farming.

“We were paid $90 a month. I paid $20 a month rent and also hired someone to wash my clothes. I bought many handmade fans and hats, and was so pleased that these older women would quickly go to the store to buy necessities.

No indoor plumbing

“Kosrae is not an atoll, but a high island, meaning it had mountains, rain, and streams. People used water catchment or went to the pipe at the end of the village to get water. That’s were clothes were ‘beaten’ clean and, at dusk, where people bathed — first the women, then the men.

“There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. An island girl like me knew what ‘benjo’ (bathroom) meant, but not every family had one! The first time I had to go, I was offered pages from a Sears catalog.

“I later found out the co-op in the main village sold toilet paper and not only kerosene lamps, but a one-burner kerosene stove. I had thought I’d have to look for firewood like I did in Peace Corps training, as did most of the islanders.

“Each village offered a room for the assigned (Peace Corps volunteer) to reside in someone’s house. Some volunteers wanted an island-style house with woven, split-bamboo walls and thatched roof, which they paid to have built for themselves,” Fleming said.

“I lived with a family in a small house that had 13 kids,” she continued, “right in the middle of the village across from the church. They let me use a modest bed. Most people slept on lauhala mats on the floor when night fell.

“Once folks reached 80 years old, they had a small house built for them. My ‘grandfather’ in the family had a pet rooster and enjoyed telling me about the old days. I watched him make rope from coconut fiber.

“Somehow I acquired a pet cat, Squeeky. While I fed it canned sardines (what ‘looks’ I got from passersby), it was also adept at stealing a fish from the nets that brought in the daily catch. However, it served also to catch rats that were after the copra. When it had kittens, some of them went to live with families in other villages.

“Young boys up until they reached age 5 wore no clothes, but girls were dressed modestly from the beginning,” according to Fleming. “The Livaie family also cooked crab for me every Saturday night, as there was extra family help from the older kids who returned from the high school in the center of the island to their own villages on the weekends.

“I would buy a whole tuna when available for 10 cents a pound and give it to my family. They’d fry it in their cookhouse and prepare a slice for me. They made their own oil from coconut.

“Even though I lived in Honolulu all my life, it was on Kosrae that I learned to eat breadfruit every which way, and have loved it since then. Luckily, I have a friend on Oahu who shares his crop with me.

“We all waited for the ship which arrived every six weeks for any mail, even the by-then-old Time magazines. Sometimes (the volunteers) were ‘hungry’ to speak Eng­lish and wondered what was happening in America,” Fleming said.

“The hospital was staffed by an islander trained in Fiji as a medical officer. It had a generator for needed emergencies and a foot-operated dental drill.

“I boiled water every night and filled my canteen with it for the next day.

“My assigned family had an amazing father, Papa Elswerd (named after Ellsworth, a white sea captain), who built me a small enclosed shower outside off the house with overhead water catchment into a 55-gallon drum with a spigot that I used daily. But one afternoon I noticed a young guy up a coconut tree who was watching me, so thereafter, I took a bath at night!

Reverse culture shock

Fleming lived in Kosrae as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1966 to 1968. “The island now has electricity, indoor plumbing and even a laundromat!” she said.

“When I returned home to Oahu, it was like a reverse culture shock. What was the meaning of people saying ‘Far out’ and ‘Outta sight’?”

“The best part of my experience was keeping in touch with the Livaie family all these years,” Fleming said. “Two of the kids, now middle-age, live and work in Honolulu, and I see them regularly. The local pandemic has postponed the annual large group gatherings in Honolulu such as ‘Liberation Day’ (from the Japanese occupation during World War II), church serv­ices or the Christmas celebrations.

“We Peace Corps volunteers who now live in ‘modern’ communities don’t get bummed when the electricity goes out, because we lived in subsistence societies, using water catchment, fishing and farming to survive.”

Were other readers in the Peace Corps? If so, tell me about it.

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Have a question or suggestion? Contact Bob Sigall, author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books, at Sigall@Yahoo.com.