Location: Palau
GOOD MORNING BLOG READERS!!!! Or whatever time it may be for you at this moment. Anyway, I hope you’re having or have already had a good morning because we had a GOOD morning on Argo. 1) It was not raining today, 2) It was laundry pickup day, and 3) Kelsey had BANANA BREAD! After breakfast, everybody loaded into the dinghies to go on an Island Tour with our friend Mac from Paddling Palau. Mac grew up on the island and is very knowledgeable about all the history and culture. Unfortunately, Gabe and I had to skip out on the tour today to watch over Argo, but boy, do I have a treat for you. I asked Sidney what the tour was like, and she orated this beautiful monologue for me (off the dome), which I have transcribed below. I hope this will provide you equally with information about our day as well as the deep, dark inter-workings of Sidney’s brain. Please enjoy. “Palau culture is a matriarchy. Women had babies and raised them to be chiefs or warriors by whispering in their ears words of encouragement to become either chiefs or warriors. Also, women are in charge of the money; men don’t mess with that. Also, once they become chiefs, they go to the men’s meeting house, and they have these aggressively large meetings, and they are not allowed to leave the meeting until the decisions are made. They sleep in the house, and there are these tiny triangles on the floor so they can pee through it. War was very planned out, like it wasn’t a surprise, ever… always planned. But to win the war, you had to cut off the correct chief’s head. So, in the meeting house, the chief’s head would be taken. But what if they took the wrong head?? Then, it had to be confirmed by someone else. If they confirmed that it had the right head, they put it in a bowl. A rock bowl. But they could only have a max of three heads at once. So, if they had too many heads, they had to hide the other heads. Uh, what else was I gonna tell you…. chiefs…chiefs…warriors.. there’s GIANT SPIDERS. Giant spiders. That you can’t kill because they’re supposed to tell you about the weather. All of the houses in Palua are built like canoes, and none of them have a single nail in them. Like puzzle pieces. Or woven and, like, tied together. And they’re all built sun up to sun down… what direction is that? West to the East? East to west. I guess east to west. Also, if you were a warrior, you’re not allowed to go to whatever this afterlife situation is. I remember this because I have a huge brain. Don’t put that in there- I sound full of myself. Okay. So, the warriors killed everything- they’re warriors that’s their job to behead chiefs. But they can’t talk about the afterworld because they’re jinxing the afterworld. It’s not to be talked about. But when you get buried, you have to take all of your belongings with you so that you can’t haunt the real world. Mac’s grandmother was haunted by her father, so they had to go through all of these ceremonies to stop the haunting. Okay. Then, we also toured the hills that they made. Essentially, Palauans pulled up to Palau and said ‘it’s too hard to build a home here’. So they dug up the top soil and made these hills of soil called crowns? I think. But archaeologists have found human remains in some of them, so we know they’re burial sites. 25 year old male. Maybe a 10-year-old male? There is a huge difference- I’m not sure. And it’s interesting because they’re always buried with their mother’s side. It’s WOMEN, WOMEN, WOMEN. BECAUSE a man’s half of the family could reject you if you do something bad, but the women are stuck with their family forever…. uhmmmm. Did you write about the waterfall yet? We also saw some big rocks and had a bento box. But then we went to the waterfall where we “hiked” – make sure to put that in air quotes because it was more of a walk. Actually, there was a specific sign that said ‘don’t swim if it’s been raining recently’… but we swam. I don’t know what you want me to say. It was cold. And nice. Unlike the boat water. Are there details I missed? And then, incredibly kindly, Mac and his besties, who drive the other vans, took us to get gelato at an AIR-CONDITIONED MALL…. WITH FREE WIFI!!! SO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS, KACKIE. MORE EXCLAMATION POINTS. Should I get my PhD to lecture like this more often? Feels like a lot of work. To lecture. Then, we went to OverDrive. A really nice dive shop run by Cruise Control- which is another dive center. And then you can say, “Sidney got the coolest jacket ever, just one! And then add a winky face. 😉 Mum. Mum with a U”. Then we came home and put away all the food for three weeks. It was a great team effort and a display of hard work. Then we had incredibly fast showers because Mac pulled up for dinner, and we were all mid-washing our hair. Then, we had to take a momentary pause so all the boats could shuffle around without causing us any prop injuries. Okay. We then got dressed in foulies because it was raining, pouring, raining, pouring, never a glimpse of the sun. Then, we had the SHOCK of a lifetime. Steph told us we all had to be in dry clothes for dinner because the air conditioning was ON, and for the first time ever, we were gonna eat DOWNSTAIRS. We then proceeded to have pizza with Mac. And squeeze. We held hands and discussed what object from the boat we would choose our fake hand to be if we needed a fake hand. Mine would be a fan. Because I have chronic sweating issues. Mac wanted pliers. He was between a rock and a hard place and he didn’t know what object from the boat to choose because he’s never been on the boat before. (That’s just the truth of it). Now we are about to have a presentation by Mac about Palau. Where I look forward to learning more about Palau. Thank you for listening to my internal monologue, which I have made external for Kackie. Please have a wonderful day. From Sidney, written by Kackie. Wow, this is a beautiful fish. Blue Corner was the most magical day of my life. Hey Steph- can I use any ramen for my ramen noodle salad?”. I think Sidney said it all. Maybe too much in some parts, not enough in others. But you get the drift. Or maybe you don’t. Anyways, I think everyone had a really awesome day!!