The Street-sign

It was five minutes, probably less, into my holiday that I saw it. I was in a car, travelling from the airport along an exceptionally smooth road. After five months of living on Weno speeds above 40km/h terrified me and we were at least doing 60; I was gripping my seat. But this was Pohnpei, the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia and the next state along from Chuuk. I was warned that things would be different.

Brother Tomi indicated right and swung the car off the street. It panned across my sight, hypnotically staring back at me. I swallowed slightly, loosened my grip on the car-seat and sighed almost inaudibly. It was at this moment, after I had taken a few seconds for my mind to appropriately respond to its beauty, that I thought, ‘Everything is going to be just fine.’ I followed it in the rear-view mirror until it passed out of sight. I turned to Tomi, who was also a Xavier High School resident on break, and swooned, ‘There are even street signs.’

It took me a while to understand my shock at the sight of street signs. I had not spent long hours pondering their absence; unlike barista coffee, uninterrupted electricity and public transport. For us children of the first world the appreciation of street-signs is a deeply subconscious affair. They provide a necessary service, but are almost invisible within the structure of the suburban environment. Seeing them again is kind of like finding a favourite childhood toy again. Life was not overly difficult without it, but upon its rediscovery one is more likely to fully understand its emotional sway. Thus I found myself agape at a simple aluminium pole with a metal oblong inscribed ‘Kasalehlie St’.

This sight alone could have made my holiday. I will admit that my focus on it could have been seen as extreme. Just about everyone I talked to on the island –Jesuits, volunteers, embassy staff, locals, nuns, embarrassingly drunk compatriots at the ‘Rusty Anchor’ bar- were treated to my philosophical musings on the topic of street-signs. By the third time it came up in conversation with the Jesuit Volunteer community on the island, one of them finally confessed that they were a little freaked out by my obsession with them.

And so I feel obliged to explain it. Street-signs represent the order and logic that seems absent from Weno. Even the steps involved in erecting a street-sign imply this. Firstly, one has to have something that can be classified as a road. His applies to very little of the ‘road’ system on Chuuk. The majority of Chuuk’s ‘roads’ would be more aptly described as a humourous line of dirt or a collection of potholes in a concentrated line. Only a few brief strips of tarmac fit the given description.

Secondly, someone has to actually name the aforementioned street. In Chuuk, the ‘roads’ are simply named after where they go to. Mostly, it’s to town. Other examples include: the ‘road’ to the Korean Research Center, the ‘road’ up to Xavier High School (which could just as easily be classified as a small mountain range) and the ‘road’ that goes past the Stop and Shop. No amount of public awareness of government intervention could ever shift the practical basis of this naming system. And I can never imagine anyone fitting ‘The ‘road’ that takes you past that strange Peace Corp building with the concrete sphere on top of it’ onto a street sign anyway.

And finally, the sign was clean and shiny and set at a perfect right angle to the pole. Nothing is ever clean and shiny on Weno. Period. The signs that are there, mostly for stores and a few government offices, look as if someone had gone on a mad spree of sign making I the early nineties and had briskly given up since then. The more recent of signs tend to be either hand painted or, as is becoming increasingly popular, stenciled. In any sense, it is a long way from the shiny metal Helvetica of Pohnpei.

In the end, Pohnpei reminded me of one of those sleepy towns on the Central Coast where the populations swell over the summer months. There were small blocks of quirky housing that felt vaguely suburban. Here was a main street, a few supermarkets and a couple of restraints. It had one of those small, two projector cinemas that played movies that had come to the rest of the word months go (Inception came out the day I left and I missed Toy Story 3 entirely). The moment where this felt strongest was when I visited the Australian Embassy to vote. It looked like every small government office I had been in my entire life. There was the dull white paint, the rectangular lobby filled with government-issued brochures and posters, the inoffensive cubicle layout. If the office wasn’t staffed mostly by Pohnpeians I could have been waiting in any tax office, any Centerlink, any Legal Aid branch (and I know those well).

That’s not to say that I didn’t find the island beautiful or unique; I loved it. But whereas the other tourists might just be awed at the spectacular cultural sites, I was in awe at the beautiful sealed roads that lead to the cultural sites. Whilst most tourists were amazed by the view from the restraints there, I was amazed that I could order a sandwich on bread that did not taste like sugared cardboard. To them, the island was a curious and magical slice of life in the Pacific. To me, it was also a curious and magical slice of life back home. Perhaps it was the restoration of subconscious symbols of the developed world, things I had taken for granted my entire life, that gave me an inexplicable sense of the familiar.

Leaving behind 24 hour power and decent internet is never easy. Add to this a strange feeling of home and the prospect of return may seem daunting. But I missed the staggering mess that is Chuuk. Three days later I walked back from St Cecilia’s after our first day planning the new school yea A plastic, vertical rectangle read ‘Welcome to Yongku Peninsula’. Hs sign had been erected during my second month on Chuuk. It is the closest thing to a real street-sign we have over here.

The ‘n’ in ‘Yongku’ was back to front.

It was nice to be back.