Out of Pod Experience

OK, here's the background. I was a volunteer with a certain volunteer organization sponsored by the U.S. government. My group was sent to a little island state in the western Pacific, east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea. One of the islands had closed itself off to all outsiders after the end of World War II. Some say they wanted to preserve their culture against Western influences. Others that they didn't want Christian angels coming in and chasing off the local spirits. And others that some American wrote an article in Life magazine that described them as primitive savages, so they just said "Stay out modern world." In any event, the island was 2 1/2 miles long, one mile wide, no car roads, no electricity, population 87 people. You could get to the next island's port town in about 40 minutes by motorboat, but it was still very isolated. Not much to do, except sometimes fish during the day when the weather was right and the fish were running, and get drunk at night on palm wine. This is in the tropics, too, so every day is about the same all year-- not much season change to mark time passing. Nothing happening from day to day, same old thing, same old people with the same old stories. But at the same time no privacy from each other either. People get a little stir crazy/cabin fever. It kind of gets built into the environment in that kind of isolated environment-- boredom, depression, and neurosis.

Anyway, this island also had a tradition of people going berserk and murdering each other. Usually it would happen when some guy had been on a two-week drunken binge on the main island. He'd come back with a bottle of vodka or two, and that plus the palm wine the guys had already had would push things over the edge. Somebody would lose his mind, and out comes the machete. (Everybody has one-- you use them as a tool all day in daily island life). Usually the source of the trouble was something that happened years ago. For example, the victim had slept with the guy's sister 3 years ago, but they'd still been smiling along at each other for 1,000 days, no problem. But today is the day this guy on a crazy two-week drunk decides to just let it go and get his justice. Bang, somebody killed or maimed in the middle of the night at some little homestead clearing in the rain forest. Which incident just adds more to the morose, neurotic mood of the place. And of course, guess what? Six months, two years, three years, ten years later the victim's brother or cousin or somebody is going to remember that incident, and....

OK, so if you believe all that so far, I'll throw in one more fact. A lot of times when one of these incidents is happens, across the island other people are experiencing weird phenomena. Like, the ghost of a previous murder victim may appear. Or some spirit they had worked with in the past comes back barking at them or whatever. This happens simultaneously while the violence is going on. Or at least the best anyone can tell. There's no electricity for phones, so the stories come out later and the timing of events has to be pieced together.

Not what you'd call an "island paradise." I think these days it has changed, though. Most of the young people just got out and moved more urbanized places around the Pacific.

Ohhhh ... loved the story, awesome!!!

That kind of life story is what I find more valuable sometimes than money. Goes with being a shrink I guess , hearing people complain over and over of the same stuff, you begin to crave diff life stories. Thanks for sharing! +1!