Conservation and Kindness

Recently, after what seems like a month of feasting and celebrating, things are picking up again and I’ve settled down to conduct interviews around the capital of Koror. As my stay comes to a close, I've been interviewing people left and right. Each is a wonderful experience. I learn something from every person I meet. It's impossible to write about all of the interviews I've done - but I decided to pull out a few memorable moments from the past few weeks.

Sustainability - Connections between Environment and Culture
Back in December I interviewed Madelsar Ngiraingas from the Sustainable Land Management Project. One thing we talked about, and which my interviews are quickly confirming, is the perception of ‘sustainability.’ Here in Palau sustainability is viewed as largely a western concept – an imported, kind of in-vogue word tossed about by politicians and conservationists. When you describe the idea of sustainability, people find currency in it and can relate to it in their lives, but the word itself has a lot of baggage.

Afterall, conservation is ingrained in Palauan culture. Traditionally, if an area of the environment was threatened, chiefs would place what is called a bul, or a traditional resource management mechanism, on that resource. It could be as simple as placing a palm frond in an area of the village to symbolize a taboo, or declaring a temporary moratorium on fishing a particular species of fish.

But even if there’s a traditional bul or an official government ban on taking a certain fish – like Napoleon Wrasse, for example, some Palauans still feel entitled to fish it because it’s part of their culture. I’ve heard of several occasions in which Palauans were thrown into jail for illegal spear-fishing in preparation for a funeral or another custom – such a misdemeanor, however, is seen as an honor to the family.

“You have this blurring of lines,” Madelsar explained. “We want to conserve, yet we also want to be Palauan. We want to stay connected to international conservation interests, yet we have to balance local economic and political interests.”

So there's a fine balance between between culture and conservation. The turtle, for example, has an important function in Palau culture. The toluk, or hawksbill shell bowl, is still used as a form of Palauan money. Palauans also eat turtle for special customs, including first birth ceremonies and funerals. Recent legislation has created turtle seasons, to protect the green and hawksbill species.

“Culture and Nature go hand in hand. You can’t separate them. You have specific types of foods that speak to our culture, but then those are also natural resources in our environment. You can’t separate nature and culture anymore. And people are recognizing that in this really in-your-face way now.”

It’s no small task then, peeling away the layers to identify different targets. The Sustainable Land Management Project has been working from the bottom up, speaking with different communities to identify concerns while jockeying conservation groups, NGOs, developers, and traditional and government political leaders.

If you sit back and listen to Palauans “talk story,” the connection between nature and culture is clear. The landscape determines the way people live.

“The culture and the people. At the end of the day that’s what it’s about. Keeping us from becoming extinct. Because there’s only 20,000 of us in the world. And our island is very very small.”

On Kindness:
One of the people I had a chance to interview last week was Lynn Wickersham Polloi, a member of the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers to arrive in Palau in the mid ‘60s. Lynn lives in the Belvedere Apartment Complex -Beautiful view in Italian - overlooking the rock islands. After a short tour, we settled into chairs in a room of blues and greens, its walls covered with the work of local artists.

Sipping tea, we talked about her experience. When she was first assigned to Palau, she had to look the country up on the map. Many Americans had not heard of Micronesia. She told me about her arrival in Palau from Seattle on a Sunday, her flight over the rock islands “with all those gradations of blue and green,” a sight that still takes her breath away. She and her fellow volunteers would walk for miles along the coral roads, there were only a handful of cars then. Lynn laughed as she recalled her first years teaching English – when she would run across the street to the local store to grab a can of corned beef or a banana to use as props in her classes. In the early '60s some of the older Palauans spoke Japanese, but few spoke English. Now English is everywhere.

After the interview we leafed through old pictures. Lynn with her fellow Peace Corps volunteers at the airport where they used to spend their Sundays watching the arrivals, bopping at the local dance clubs, the Boom-Boom Room and the Cave-In. The boy’s dormitory after a typhoon. Outside Maristella school with the other teachers. Lynn’s hair is short, styled in a fashionable coif, looking young and radiant in a white-blue dress with an empire waist. Recently one of her former students told Lynn she always remembered her coral lipstick and the smell of her perfume – which her mother sent in large economy-sized bottles.

Lynn met her husband at a First Birth ceremony and ended up staying in Palau, where she raised four boys (their wedding photos stand in one corner of the living room) and worked as a teacher, in the U.S. Embassy, as a principal at Xavier Academy on the island of Chuk in FSM, and even a short stint as a commercial baker.

At one point in the interview I asked Lynn who she was, and she paused a minute, before looking over her shoulder towards her kitchen. “I’m a woman who loves life and loves family. I’ve got a little magnet on my refrigerator that I’ve decided is my philosophy, it reads: ‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible,’ actually it’s from the Dalai Lama. I admire the way he treats other people.”

I smiled as she leaned back in her rocking chair. “‘Be kind whenever possible,’” she repeated. “‘It is always possible.’ So I try.”