Writing is memory

George Koch, an 80-year-old multi-billionaire from New York was asked when would he hang-up his gloves. He said that like writers who write until old age his goal continues to be focused on improving the lot of others with services he provides. Admirable!

Writing is a calling and I will scribble until the allure of the grand and colorful sunset irresistibly beckons my taking the final leg of this long fruitful journey. For now, it’s business as usual of praying, reading, writing, writing, and more writing in both languages! There’s a lot more to talk and write about in straightforward and congenial fashion or trail blaze issues in the name of justice for “we the people!”

What we write and leave behind turns into history or issues to remember events that were on the forefront during the last six decades. I’ve been privileged to see major local and regional events as a journalist for 40 plus years.

Through it all, I found myself sandwiched between neo-colonialism and my own cultural tradition. In the midst of impositions our people had the resiliency to adapt in order to survive. At least they’ve hung unto the skirt of cultural tradition amidst the low-spirited resolve clinging to one another in silence. I was revolting asking: need it be this way moving forward? Equally wary too that it takes a process, a protracted process, building upon meaningful self-rule.

If anything, the stealth imposition of the “ways of others” had us questioning the essence of the self to the extent where contradiction and inconsistency have fearfully become a cultural fad. We want to retain what we have while simultaneously spouting for greater self-rule. Or is it a slow awakening that there are better days ahead thus the spouts of embryonic discontentment?

We had up to 1975 to partake in the Micronesian island nation-building plan. But it was also the same year President Ford signed the Covenant Agreement. It dashed all personal hope and vision of joining a larger island community.

Occasionally, some would engage verbal bravura about indigenous rights hoping to navigate conflicting impositions against the self since after the war. The agenda, though wrapped in the trappings of a vision disintegrates in disorientation, time and again. To foster stability on an issue we treat with wobbly knees, it begins with what’s known as “decolonizing” the mind. And it requires almost a religious conviction on that long journey to a brighter tomorrow!

The current arrangement grants time and opportunity for the political process to evolve into maturity. It would eventually present a firm ground to discuss and dispose of the future of the indigenous people with some semblance of sober disposition.

It entails a process—a long journey—to bring home the message coming to terms with the self. Be ready to sink your teeth into it lest it turns into another dismissive mañana.

Well, we should wade in the water momentarily and pray for high tidal shift soon before heading to safe port. Show of incompetency makes the NMI fertile ground for corruption and gradual federal takeover. Self-government definitely requires competency! It’s all in the palm of our hands!

A-bomb: The one issue I haven’t been able to fathom was the thermonuclear hydrogen-bomb experiment in Bikini on March of 1954. I spent about two weeks in Rongelap, Utirik, and Bikini with the atomic energy commission in the examination of the folks adversely affected by radiation. The rate of problematic thyroid issues is 20 percent above national average.

I can’t imagine the instant disappearance of an entire island, death and fatal deterioration in the health of the islanders critically affected before their relocation. Need they be made into human guinea pigs?

I remember the entire island on Rongelap and Utirik standing on the shore waving adios as the LCU pulled out. I left with a heavy heart knowing most would develop fatal thyroid disorder and must deal with it in the best way they know how for life. To this day I still ponder upon the permanent destruction of a way of life all for the wont of finding out the strength of the A-bomb. Hell, the deserts of California, Texas and Arizona are just as good a venue than Bikini!

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Noumea, New Caledonia, land of the Kanaks or indigenous people troubled my usually sober mind in the relationship between an arrogant colonial power and locals. Returning from a grocery store one evening, I saw an old lady exit a tin shack behind a huge two-story palatial home. I asked her what’s the shack about. She said that it’s her home after hours as a maid. Hmmm! It must be a modern version of slave-master relationship. Troubling!

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Historic: It was in 1978 when our constitutional government was established. There were pillars that navigated the inception of self-government. The formative years were filled with excitement mired even in the prolonged feud over the definition of a “unified” budget. I was there and watched the historic lowering of the curtain, so to speak.

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My presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is working two primaries: the Democratic Party and the FBI. With a sordid history of lies, maybe she won’t lose the former but could easily crash land on a fatal reef in the latter. Hilary is the representation of Washington decadence. If she fails the FBI primary, would democrats field the sentimental favorite Joe Biden or the more substantive John Kerry?

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Indeed, I’ve focused absorbing the lessons of history where I’ve gathered sufficient contemporary credentials of island communities north and south of the equator. Indeed, it was a memorable journey though not done yet.