Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island
Chapter 3- In Country
Eight miles high, and when we touch down,
you'll find it's stanger than you felsls...
-- The Byrds, "Eight Miles High"
Before the flight attendant could finish telling us to keep our seat belts buckled until we reached the terminal, we reached the terminal. Unlike the maze of taxiways of Newark or Houston, its a straight shot from runway to terminal in Palau, and wordy FAA-required speeches just have to get short shrift. Like the FAA is going to come out here and crack skulls anyway.
The ground crew wheels a staircase up to the door of the plane, and ninteen steps later, I finally set foot hit Palauan soil. O.k., Palauan concrete, Whatever. It's the symbolism that's important.
A twenty-two hour travel oddessy was at an end, and I was home-- whatever that means-- for the next year.
Just inside the cavernous, whitewashed arrivals loung, I was approached by Natus and Terry, the designated welcoming committee from the Court. "Brian? Welcome to Palau!" Natus grinned, extending his hand. How did they know, out of all the passengers on the plane, I was the guy they were looking for. Probably because I was the only 30 year old white guy on the plane. Had the Court hired an elderly Asian, they'd have had a little bit more of a challenge.
We waited for my bags at the carousel as Natus and I chatted about nothing of consequence. Finally, after everyone else's luggage, scuba gear, and duct-taped coolers had been claimed off the baggage carousel, my two small bags emerged. I started gathering up my gear and pulling out my customs forms. Natus stuck out his hand helpfully, and I went to hand him one of my lightest bags. But actually, he wanted my passport, entry papers, and customs declaration form, which he handed over to immigration, nodded to the immigration officer and customs agents, and scooted me past all the lines and out into the main terminal. I sort of regretted leaving that 80 pounds of raw cocaine back in Plattsburgh, but, well, hindsight....
Out in the lobby, passengers who had finally cleared customs were getting draped with floral leis by their tour guides who were perched under signs with Japenese lettering. I later found out that the Court delegation had a lei for Jill, my co-clerk, when she arrived. I also found out that Kendall, one of the outgoing clerks, had been snubbed like me when he arrived. I made a mental note for when I later file my sex discrimination lawsuit.
We bypassed the meeting and greeting going on and headed out to the parking lot. I hiked past numerous gleaming white tour busses parked out front, expecting to be shown to a big Cadillac with the court logo, but Natus and Terry suddenly stopped at a rickety old microbus. I threw my bags in the back, and started walking around to the right to climb in, until I realized that the steering wheel was on that side. Terry chuckled over my confusion as Natus explained most of the cars here get shipped in from nearby Japan and Korea, rather than across the entire Pacific from California. Unfortunately, the Japanese drive on the left, or at least have their steering wheels on the right hand side of the car. But, like the U.S., Palauans drive on the right side of the road, thank God. I walked around to the other side of the truck and climbed in. Natus started it up, and we rumbled out of the airport parking lot and into the darkness.
We headed off down the twisting road from the airport, the tail end of a long procession of cars and busses heading south towards the ill-fated K-B Bridge and the main island of Koror. Palau's airport is on the island of Babeldoab. As best I can tell, it's pronounced "bobble - dop," but pronounciation, and even spelling here, seems to be pretty variable-- Babeldoab and Koror are often spelled "Babelthaup" and "Oreor."
Over the mile or so drive towards the bridge, I noticed the distinct lack of streetlights along the road. I guess that explains why, as we made our final approach, there was practically no light to be seen down on the ground until the runway lights suddenly appeared. I tried peering out of the truck to try to see what my new home was like, but the darkness on either side of the road was effectively impenetrable.
We were already rumbling over the bumpy sine wave that serves as the "temporary" K-B Bridge when I realized where we were. In the dim glow of a few orange streetlights on the banks of the channels, I could just barely make out the two hulking bridge supports. At first, they just looked like tall, sharply-angled concrete walls, until I noticed lampposts and railings still lining the steep slopes the disappeared into the dark ocean.
Until this point, the story of the collapsing bridge had been nothing more than a detached joke to me. It was the perfect metaphor to tell people to instantly convey the absurdity of my situation: "they built this gigantic bridge, and it fell down!" Even Natus joked that, just a couple of weeks before the collapse, the President had reviewed some repairs that had been done on it and announced that the bridge would stand for the next 100 years.
But looking up at the massive and silent structures that were once a symbol of national pride, it suddenly seemed less funny and much more tragic. I guess it's a little like an American imaginging the Statue of Liberty toppled over, laying there in a heap of crumpled metal. Anybody who saw it in its glory would certainly be humbled, and probably a little cynical, watching the old girl rust away, day by day. It was clear, even from the wreckage that still stands, that the K-B Bridge, stretched out in a thin, silvery line towards the far shore, must have been indescribably beautiful.
As we rubmled our way over the ribs of the temporary bridge, Natus explained that assured a $17 million dollar settlement having been recently reached in the lawsuit between the government and the various parties involved with the bridge collapse, and that the proceeds were going to go to build a new span. By the time he finished telling me this, we were onto Koror island, and twisting our way back and forth along a winding road that climbed a ridge overlooking the lagoon below.
Natus absentmindedly pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "That's where you'll be living," he said, but by the time I sorted out the words from his soft-spoken Palauan accent and processed them, the aforementioned house was just a receding whitish blob quickly hidden by a swath of trees and a quick bend in the road. Seconds later, Natus also pointed out the Chief Justice's house, but again, it disappeared into the dark before I could get a good look.
Eventually, the buildings lining the road got closer together, and the streetlights and illuminated signs made it clear we were going through some commercial area of town. A brightly-lit Mobil gas station sped by on one side, a three-story strip mall on the other side. It was clear, though, that the Court's description of the place in its first letter to me was pretty accurate:
Most American cities look like all the trees were cut down, the buildings put up, and a few trees planted to create the illusion of nature. Koror, on the other hand, looks like the buildings were put up in places hacked out of the jungle, but the jungle still dominates.
I'd been combing the internet and bookstores trying to formulate some mental picture of "downtown Koror." And I was finally here. Did it look like what I expected?
I used to live in a small city in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I'd often drive through small mountain towns like Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. Koror seemed a lot like those little towns. There were no suburbs-- roadside scenery seemed to change suddenly from thick forest to a few blocks of strip malls and small hotels, then back to forest as you're suddenly leaving town. There was clearly no uniform zoning law, since some buildings were set back only a few feet from the highway. Parking space, even in front of commercial buildings, often seemed like an afterthought, and many drivers just solved the problem by parking on the shoulder of the road. Most of the buildings were rarely more than two stories high, and designed only for functionality, totally lacking in any style. Most were just simple concrete or tin bunkers with perhaps a coat of paint added for decoration. In fact, many of the concrete buildings had tufts of reinforcing bar oddly sticking out of the top, just in case the owner someday decided to add more stories. Hand-painted signs greatly outnumbered commercial ones.
Strangely, private houses were frequently wedge in small plots of land next to commercial buildings. These houses were often makeshift, one-story tin-roofed shacks with few windows. Many were fronted by a gravel patch serving as a driveway, or by no front yard at all. Several had a small wooden carports built nearby, which served more as makeshit patios than garages. Palauans refer to them as "summer houses," apparently because they spend more time outside under these shelters than in their regular homes. There were clearly residential side streets leading off the main road, but it was also clear that many houses were just built wherever space allowed, and sometimes the only access to a home was along a narrow gravel path along the edge of someone else's property or a scramble down a muddy hillside. Many residential areas reminded me of mobile home parks back in the states.
The overall impression I got of Koror was that of a small, rural town deep in the woods or mountains in the U.S. Or perhaps the traditional Hollywood representation of the small Meixcan border town. The latter observation was prompted by the constant presence of wild chickens wandering along the roadsides, ocasionally being chased by the equally ubiquitous wild dogs ("No, no, no," I was corrected the first time I asked about them. "Not wild dogs. Palauan dogs.") that lazily napped in the rain gutters just off the side of the road.
Natus pointed out various sights here and there-- PNCC's surprisingly tiny downtown office building; the small Post Office, inexplicably painted bright orange; a brand-new gymnasium built specifically for the recently completed Olympic-style "Micronesian Games"; the modern, high-rise Outrigger Hotel, incongruously built in the middle of downtown; and, finally, the Supreme Court. Housed in one of the few-remaining Japanese buildings from before World War II, the two-story courthouse looks more like an old-fashioned movie theater than the typical, white marble, steps-and-coluumns-style courthouses in the U.S. A marquee over the main entrance announces "Palau Supreme Court," while an ornate chevron of red stakes decorates the roof in a distinctly un-judicial style.
We continued on, crossing over the causeway onto Ngerakebesang ("nur - ack - uh - bess - song"), a small island to the northwest of Koror, and home to the four-star Palau Pacific Resort, universally accepted as the finest hotel/restaurant in the country. Of course, in the dark, it looked to me like just another packet of dim lights nestled in thick jungle. Having seen what there was to see this time of night, we turned around and headed back to town. The court was still cleaning out the house I was going to be living in, so I was going to temporarily stay with Kendall, one of the court clerks finishing up his term.
I lugged my gear up a flight of stairs to Kendall's place, following his lead by slipping off my shoes outside, a custom nearly universal in private homes here. Kendall's apartment was a pleasant enough place, with a breezy living room and wrap-around porch facing the jungle on two sides. I parked my bags in a spare bedroom, when Kendall informed me that we were invited to a party elsewhere that night. Although I was now into my 25th sleepless hour since waking up this morning in Houston, I figured that a party would give me a chance to meet some of the other Americans here and give me a reason to stay awake a few more hours so that, when I woke up the next morning, I'd be somewhat accustomed to local time. Along the way to the party back on Babeldoab, Kendall talked about aspects of the job at the court, and about life in Palau in general. I tried to pay attention to what he was saying about what I could expect at work for the next year, but the combination of curiousity about my new surroundings and my total exhaustion kept me from catching more than a fraction of what Kendall was saying.
We got to the party after a 10 minute drive or so (the island speed limit is 25 mph, but between traffic and strategically placed speed bumps make it difficult to exceed that anyway), and turned off onto a dirt side road. After a short trip up a trail that looked less like a road than a hiking path, we came to the home of a guy named Rick, an attorney in some government agency whose name I quickly forgot. Nearly all of the 20 or so people crowding around a picnic table and some wooden benches under the carport were American attorneys working for the Palau government in some capacity. I chit-chatted with several of the people there, and found myself welcomed to Palau about a dozen times. Everyone asked when I had arrived, and I got a big kick out of telling them "oh, maybe 40 minutes ago." I nursed a beer and made small talk with lots of new people, while also getting plenty of advice about living here that was instantly lost in my sleep deprived brain. We hung around for an hour or so before heading back to Kendall's apartment.
I collapsed into bed, 25 hours, 10,000 miles, and half a world away from where I had started this morning. I fell asleep instantly.
This chapter uploaded on 10/9/98.
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