Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island
Chapter 4- Palau By Day
... like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be.
-Theme from "Gilligan's Island"
O.k., maybe it's not quite that bad. I've been here all of a few hours, and have discovered that Palau does indeed have phones, lights, motorcars, and even a few luxuries here and there. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I woke up the morning of my first full day in Palau to the sound of roosters and rain. I don't know when the rain started, having slept like a rock until about 8:00 a.m., but I laid in bed listening to it, contemplating whether the roosters I could hear crowing off in the distance minded being wet, and wondering how I was going to get from Kendall's apartment to the courthouse in what sounded like a pretty vigorous rainfall. I hoped that, just by wishing it to be, I could move my umbrella from a box in the custody of the postal service somewhere between Plattsbugh and Koror to one of my bags stuck in the corner of the room. Apparently, I didn't wish hard enough because when I finally got up, the umbrella had not appeared.
I showered, then idly flipped channels on the t.v. set for a few minutes. I came to a stop, however, at the Today show, that was broadcasting news stories that I had already seen in New York a week ago. I later learned that, while Palauan cable does get live international feeds from CNN and ESPN, programming from the major American broadcast networks comes in on tape from the San Francisco affiliates, and gets shown precisely seven days after it airs in the U.S. The effect was a little disconcerting, like watching a t.v. show you taped years ago, only to have the news anchor come onscreen to announce "we'll have highlights from today's testimony at the O.J. Simpson trial after tonight's episode of Seinfeld." Finally, by about 9:00 a.m., the rain had tailed off enough that I figured I could go for a walk to the courthouse without being totally soaked.
I strolled the mile or so from Kendall's apartment to the courthouse taking in the sights. Downtown Koror by day more or less matched the image I had gotten of it from Natus' truck the night before. A few couple blocks down the hill from Kendall's place, I strolled by the twin monoliths of Palau retail, Surangel's and the Western Caroline Trading Company, known locally as "WCTC." These two shopping plazas, each housing a grocery store and department store, perpetually face off against each other at the edge of downtown, constantly battling for dollars of Koror's 12,000 residents.
I kept walking, passing the national legislature building and the community college. Next door to the college, at Palau High School, students in light blue uniforms milled around courtyards outside the classroom buildings. Crossing the street from the high school put me at the courthouse, wetted mildly by a combination of rain and sweat. Even with the rain keeping the temperature down, my body instinctively knew enough to start sweating and to keep it up for several days.
A sign on the front-- and only-- door of the courthouse surprisingly read Employees Only. "No problem," I figured. I was an employee, or at least would be as soon as I got on the other side of that door. The door opened directly into the tiny, cramped office of a somewhat surprised-looking Palauan woman. "Hi," I said, trying to pretend that I hadn't just tromped into the middle of someone's work, "I'm Brian Bergevin, the new court counsel." Fortunately, she apparently had been expecting my arrival, and smiled, introducing herself as "Rose" of the budget department. She offered to escort me to the office of Gene Murret, the Clerk of the Court (and, technically, my boss). Along the way, she introduced me to several other office staffers whose names I instantly forgot. I'm awful at remembering people's names when I'm introduced to them, and I knew that today was going to be a constant reminder of that personal failing.
We walked out a back entrance of the office and into a big parking lot around the back of the courthouse, around the perimeter of which were the entrances to all the various courtrooms and offices. Inside, the Clerk's office, I was shown the staff diligently recording case dockets and official legal records by hand, not on computers. I was pointed to my own personal court mailbox, where I was going to receive all of my mail for the next year. Home delivery of mail doesn't exist in Palau, and there aren't enough post office boxes to go around, so many people just get their mail through their employer's post office box. Amazingly, a piece of junk mail from Gateway Computers had already beaten me to Palau.
Someone then escorted me to the law library, where I would have my office. I was re-introduced to Kendall, and also met Rick, another outgoing Court Counsel, and Jill, my recently-arrived co-worker. We exchanged pleasantries, then Kendall and Jill proposed going to lunch at the Rock Island Cafe next door.
The Rock Island Cafe, due to its proximity to the courthouse, is a favorite gathering place for the legal community, and because it's got pizza and ESPN on all day, it's also the hangout of choice for American expatriates. When we arrived, one of the t.v.'s in the corner of the dining room was showing soccer on ESPN, and the other had a live broadcast of the last half of Monday Night Football on this late Tuesday morning. For the second time today, I was baffled by the incongruity between the time and date my senses were reporting as accurate and the time and date the t.v. was insisting it was.
While waiting for lunch, we were joined by Judge Miller, one of the four Supreme Court justices. Only the Chief Justice is native Palauan; the other three are all American attorneys who were recruited in the states for lifetime appointments here. Kendall pointed out that I was to be living in the house that Judge Miller used to live in, but had moved out of because he had three young children and the house was located on a blind corner on the main highway. The judge made some comment abut the house not having any ceilings, which didn't make much sense to me and I therefore interpreted as being metaphorical. Kendall observed that it was the ideal "party house," but didn't really explain why.
Judge Miller then turned to me and said, "the house is haunted, you know." Allegedly, one of the prior occupants was a government official who was having an affair with a 16-year old local girl. After he attempted to break the relationship off, she came to the house one night and hung herself from the large mango tree out front. A second occupant of the house was also alleged to have attempted suicide there, and the house was only a few doors down from the home where Palau's first President was assassinated. I asked if the Judge had actually seen any of these ghosts, and he was forced to admit that he hadn't. He did say that strange things happened there, but refused to elaborate, expressing concern that he probably shouldn't have even started talking about it on my first day here. I don't believe in ghosts at all, but I did wonder if the house's reputation was much of an issue with the natives. I envisioned the garbage man refusing to come pick up my trash because of the "evil spirits" inhabiting the place.
The Judge then explained about the day the K-B Bridge collapsed. Apparently, he was doing some work outside his house that day, when he heard a loud rumble. He looked up towards Babeldaob and saw a cloud of dust rising from the place where the bridge was. Once the dust cleared a little and he realized the bridge was gone, he ran out to the road and began stopping cars on the road, since that house is one of the last things between downtown Koror and the bridge.
After lunch, I decided that since I wasn't supposed to start work until the next week, I should probably move the couple of boxes that had already arrived from Buffalo to my new digs. One of the maintenance guys from the court drove me and my boxes to my new house. About 2 miles up a hill from the court, we pulled into a strange looking house directly across from the U.S. embassy.
How to describe my new place? Well, let's see. It's a long, narrow, one-story concrete box, topped by a sharply angled, Polynesian-style tin roof. The side of the house facing the road is almost completely windowless, except for a big, steel-clad front door. A small, overgrown front yard is separated from the road by a thick curtain of trees, which becomes a full-blown jungle as it rounds the side of the house. Directly up the driveway is a large wooden carport, covering a concrete slab nearly the size of a basketball court.
The back of the carport looks out through a break in the jungle over an phenomenal, postcard-like view of the lagoon. The low, green mountains of Babeldoab rose on the horizon in the distance behind a wide stretch of bright blue ocean, dotted here and there by tiny green islands. Turn your head to either side, and the view is framed by thick jungle-- plants that are so large that they seem almost fake. Coconut, mango, and plumeria trees dot the small strip of backyard separating the house from the jungle. Just below my house, clinging precariously to the steep hillside is my "neighbor" and his small, tin-roofed house. I mentioned before that, unlike America, houses here are not necessarily arranged along streets. People build wherever there is space, and worry about access later, and later that day, I was a little surprised to find my neighbor, an older Palauan man, pull up in his car, park on the property line of my driveway, and slowly hike around the back of the carport and down the hill.
I unlocked the side doors of the house that faced the carport, and walked into the living room. Judge Miller's remark at lunch about the house not having ceilings suddenly made sense. The living room opened straight up to the large wooden beams and rafters supporting the corrugated tin roof. With the exception of one of the bedrooms and the bathroom, all of the rooms just ended at the top of the walls, looking into the cavernous, open space above. The effect is actually quite striking-- like a ski lodge with an exposed cathedral ceiling.
Even if you didn't look up, the house still seemed a little quirky. On three sides, the entire upper half of the outside walls was a series of screened windows, so as to catch any errant breeze that happens by. The kitchen opened up onto a second full bathroom (which itself opens up to the outside), although the toilet was set off in a closet inside. The other bathroom also hid the toilet behind a partial wall, leading me at first glance to wonder whether there was a toilet in there at all. The place was furnished with a quirky collection of furniture, including a large wooden desk and table, an office chair on wheels, and a futon with a black metal frame. Someone had hung some curtains-- actually swaths of baby blue fabric silkscreened with some petroglyphs and the word "Palau" on them-- from thin PVC pipes in each of the rooms.
I went to open the front door that faces out towards the road, only to find it blocked by some construction debris, and, inexplicably, an old, unused toilet sitting on the front porch. Since I had already concluded that I had the same number of toilets as bathrooms, I figured I'd either have to find something to do with the spare toilet, or else resolve to use the side door from now on.
After dropping off my boxes at the house, I caught a ride back to the court with the maintenance guys and took care of some paperwork, including getting a work permit, which would allow me to stay in Palau for more than the 30 days that tourists are limited to. By about 2:00, I was ready to go home and start unpacking. But along the way, I figured I'd check out one of the grocery stores.
Second only to "what will Koror look like," the question of what the grocery stores would contain was the biggest question I had about the place. I stopped by Surangel's, a huge, gray concrete bunker that bears bright orange sings advertising "grocery," "department store," "souvenirs," and "hardware." I apparently wandered into a side door, and found myself in the "hardware" part. Small appliances dotted the shelves, sharing space with office supplies and shampoo, while plastic lawn furniture, "priced specially" filled the wide aisles. Rounding a corner brought me to the frozen food section, which housed a quirky collection of stuff. One whole case was given over to ice cream, while another had an assortment of t.v. dinners, Wolfgang Puck gourmet frozen pizzas, frozen vegetables, and frozen bagels. A couple of aisles featured a decent collection of canned soups, pastas and sauces, cookies and crackers, and so on, although some of the products were unfamiliar Japanese or Filipino creations. The produce section was less impressive, and the few fresh fruits and vegetables were pale and undersized compared to their American counterparts. All told, Strangle's fit somewhere between a large convenience store or small supermarket in the U.S.
I had anticipated that prices would be astronomical In Hawaii, I had found an ordinary box of breakfast cereal priced at $7. Surprisingly, though, things in Palau were not as bad as I had expected. Cereal was $3-4 a box, a bag of Doritos went for $3, and so on, about the same price as you would pay in a convenience store in the states. I picked out a few things, then headed for the registers. Checkout stands here have no conveyer belt, but merely a small shelf where you put your merchandise on for the cashier to handle.
(Postscript to this story, since the grocery issue won't come up again for quite some time: I made some frozen pasta when I got home and as it was cooking, glanced at the expiration date on the package. It said "use or freeze by Sept. 15, 1998," and it was already Sept. 29th. Hmm. Since then, I've noticed that lapsed expiration dates in stores are fairly common. Discussing this subject with a friend brought the comment that "you have to lower your standards a little bit here.")
By the time I got home, some of the house's other residents had come out to see me. Not the alleged ghosts, but a handful of tiny geckos that skittered away up the walls or across the counter as soon as I got near. Unlike houses in the states, where it's often preferable to seal up the house as much as possible to keep heated air in in the winter, houses here are far from airtight, and just about any flying or crawling creature that wants to come in will be able to do so easily. Geckos, looking like small salamanders, are some of the least unwelcome members of this group since they eat other insects in the house. I've identified at least four different ones that seem to be in here on a regular basis, and am contemplating whether giving them names is warranted.
I've also noticed that all over the tile floors of the house are tiny ants scurrying back and forth. They're about a third of the size of the typical ant you might find outside, and they're easy to overlook unless you're actively looking for them. It's possible to sweep them out the door, but within a day or two. Like the geckos and other insects-- I've already found and tossed outside at least one live cockroach and three dead ones-- the ants are an inevitable consequence of the location, and just about every house I've been to here has the same problem. Insects are just something you must learn to live with here.
And so, my first full day on Palau came to an end. (Well, I've omitted some details about unpacking and so on, but this chapter's getting kind of long...) I'm finally in my new home. I was interrupted twice at night by someone knocking on the window of the bedroom, but it was only the judiciary's security force. Apparently, after dark, the court has its own security people that occasionally patrol the judge's houses, and since the court owns my house too, I'm on the route. That's sort of reassuring. Maybe it won't be so bad here after all.
This chapter uploaded on 10/9/98.
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