Happy 4th of July!
All across the states people are celebrating ‘Murica and Freedom with flag shirts, cheap beer, and hot dogs. Saipan, a US territory, is no exception, although my personal celebration actually happened on the 3rd of July rather than the 4th, mostly because, well that cheap beer can cause quite the doosey of a headache and half the team I work with here on island chases birds at 5am. Therefore, in order to save ourselves the aggravation of an Ashai induced hangover, we celebrated on Sunday which is fine because as the furthermost territory from the US, technically America’s day starts here anyway so we were just getting a jump on the game!
The games here were intense as we organized and competed in the 250th Saipan Beer Olympics! We were organized into teams of two, there were honorable diplomats from Canadia, North Korea, Russia, Sweden, Fiji, Nepal, and my home country of Djibouti (you can’t handle the booty!). We had several events ranging from the classic beer pong and Louisville slugger, to zipper, to the most intense wheel barrow race that I have ever competed in. Canadia came out strong in the first event knocking favored teams Russia and North Korea out of the top spots, however as the night progressed their momentum was halted by an unfortunate disappearing act by one of their players. Overall Russia came out on top, due in part to some “Heismaning” during the rely race, which some may have called foul on. Djibouti had a strong showing earning the bronze in this years Olympics. This is the best they have done since they were held in their home country over 30 years ago and they played with a concoction known as jungle juice.
Djibouti’s team was not up to snuff this year due in part to the fact that one of the players, myself, is in fact currently suffering from a tropical disease of unknown origin. Welts have begun to appear on my legs followed by small blisters that open and leave rather unattractive marks. The most interesting part of this is that since I was a swimmer, I have shaved my legs nearly every single day for the past 10 years. I have now been shave free out of necessity for almost a month and let me tell you…. Shit’s gnarly. This high increase of leg hair has earned me the name in some circles of Dirty Hippie Bitch or less enjoyably Scabie baby, since someone seems to think I have contracted scabies or the scabes (ska-aye-bu-z), as they call it. I would just like to personally clear this up and say although the name is growing on me, scabies are not. I did go to the doctor though, they laughed when I said I worked in the jungle and said to be serious about what I do, it took some convincing but I think the left over sticks and brambles in my hair finally did the trick and after some spirited biology conversation, I should be right as rain within the week.
While I am writing this post, it has actually, finally , started to rain on the islands. A tropical storm has begun to form near Guam giving us a taste of precipitation and light winds that will mostly pass us by as the storm moves over the ocean. Typhoons though, are a very real concern here in the Marianas and Saipan especially, is still reeling from one of the strongest Typhoons to hit the Marianas in the last 30 years. Typhoon Soudelor made landfall on Saipan August 2, 2015. The storm intensified from a category 2 to a category 4 typhoon as it hit the island with sustained winds of 130mph. The Typhoon downed powerlines, ripped trees out of the ground, and destroyed hundreds of homes. One of these homes was from one of our very neighbors just up the street. I asked one of my co-workers, who was at the marble palace, our field house on Saipan, last year when the storm hit, about the incident. His response was both animated and exasperated, he told me that when the neighbors roof flew into the driveway it was the last thing he expected and pretty soon he was having wizard of oz-esque fantasies of cows flying past the windows. “Electricity and sewage were out for almost a week” he said followed by a bit of a laugh as he challenged me to find the poop trench from last year in our backyard. Although I am suspicious of how well our yard pineapples are doing this year, I haven’t pursued the hunt for poop pit. The typhoon was a unifying tragedy as generally tragedies are and the effects of the storm can be seen in abandoned shopping malls and houses with caved in walls and roofs, however there has also been an increased sentiment of preparedness and safety in all of the reconstruction and new buildings springing up all over the island. The island community is certain this level of both physical and economical destruction will never happen again.
Currently I am welcoming the rain that will make my work at EBL go a lot smoother, especially if the plants cooperate and begin to fruit up and grow like they are supposed to, but there is always the possibility of too much of a good thing. So for now, mostly, I just hope the rain cools the temperature down just enough so I can have one night free of waking up in a puddle of my own sweat.
Thanks again for everyone who actually reads my posts and responds, I am working on being better about responding to comments. A special shout out to yellowribbonboutique who currently seems to be my number one fan. I’ll see you guys next week!
-earlybirdad
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