{"id":949,"date":"2020-04-13T02:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T02:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/?p=949"},"modified":"2020-04-15T09:46:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T09:46:51","slug":"castaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/travel\/castaways\/","title":{"rendered":"My Fellow Castaways"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you recognize the characters in the photo above, then you’re as old as I am \u2026 or you watched the re-runs in the 70’s and 80’s. Today, I’d like to introduce you to my fellow castaways here on Kosrae. They’re some of the loveliest people to be marooned on an island with. There are only a handful of expats on this remote island and we naturally tend to seek each other out. It’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only person who came to Kosrae and has decided to stay. Some of these folks have been here for years. I’m the newcomer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is Matt<\/a>. He’s from Old Lyme, Connecticut. He came to Kosrae in 2008 to teach at the high school. After 4 years, Matt saw that many of his former students were in the US working for minimum wage or unemployed because there are few job opportunities on Kosrae. As Matt says \u201cI felt like creating jobs for them. The artist in me wanted to do something.\u201d After 2 years of research, he created Green Banana Paper<\/a>, a company that makes paper products from the trunks of banana trees. Today, Matt employs 25 people. His business is a success. Go to his website and buy some of his beautiful products. Matt ships worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here’s Mark from Franklin, Tennessee and Maria from Italy. Mark came to Kosrae years ago to be the manager and dive master at Pacific Treelodge Resort<\/a>. Maria came here in 2006 to scuba dive Kosrae’s famous reefs. Although Maria hadn’t planned to stay very long, she ended up taking a full series of scuba classes with Mark. By the time she completed her divemaster certification, she flew home to Italy to tell her parents that she’d met the man she wanted to marry. I stayed with Mark and Maria when I first arrived in Kosrae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Josh owns the Kosrae Nautilus Resort<\/a>. It’s the only resort on the island with a swimming pool. In 2016, the former owners chose a novel way to sell their multi-million dollar property. Instead of paying a realtor to find a buyer, they sold 75,000 raffle tickets for $49 AUS each. Josh, a 26-year-old tax accountant from Wollongong, bought 3 tickets for less than $100 US<\/a> — and won! After a brief visit to verify that this resort is debt-free, fully staffed and profitable, Josh made the obvious choice: He quit his desk job and moved to Kosrae to run his resort. The Nautilus is my social center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ashley is from Peachtree City, Georgia. She\u2019s the National Cultural Anthropologist<\/a> at Kosrae\u2019s Historic Preservation Office (HPO)<\/a>. With an MA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, she came here in 2016 to document Micronesian cultures. She and her team record oral histories, conduct ethnographic walk-throughs and carry out site visits to understand the culture and history of the islands. This supports the nation, education, environmental conservation, and tourism. About once a week, I volunteer at the HPO. Occasionally, Ashley needs a geologist (i.e. me!) when she visits one of Kosrae\u2019s ancient stone ruins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carlos is a biologist from Puerto Rico. His first visit to the South Pacific ended when his sailboat shipwrecked on Samoa. In 1984, he came to Kosrae as a marine biologist for the Peace Corps. He married a local girl and took her back to PR. In 2006, he returned to Kosrae with his wife and 3 children. Carlos studies and collects data on spiders, geckos, birds and whales. He also works to defend Kosrae’s reefs from Crown of Thorns Starfish<\/a>. Carlos speaks fluent Kosraean. Of his 5 grandchildren, 2 live in Kosrae. (The eldest is shown here.) Carlos and I took 150 high school students to the Wiya Bird Cave<\/a>. After I explained the geology, Carlos taught the students all about the Swiflets and how they construct their nests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here are Daniel, Megan and their daughters Lauren and Emily. Daniel is the pastor at the Tafunsak Baptist Church<\/a> on the north coast of Kosrae. Although Daniel is originally from Ohio, 4 years of his childhood was spent on tiny Jaluit Island<\/a> where his father was the pastor. Megan is from Michigan. They met in Pontiac, MI. Before coming to Kosrae, Daniel was a youth pastor in Evart, MI, Their first daughter, Emily was born in Big Rapids, MI<\/a>. Small world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I attended Daniel’s church on Easter Sunday and helped hide the eggs for the Easter Egg hunt. In this time of global crisis, it was a joy to have something so normal to do. It’s magical that there’s a place in this troubled world where a few children are growing up safe and secure, running and playing with friends, without the worry of the Coronavirus. Happy belated Easter! (Click on any picture to zoom in.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When this virus is over and we’re all free to travel again, I’ll probably leave this paradise and my newfound friends. If someday you come here to Kosrae — and I recommend that you do — you will be welcomed by some of the loveliest, friendliest, most interesting castaways! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you recognize the characters in the photo above, then you’re as old as I am \u2026 or you watched<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":73,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1064,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/1064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoa.com\/2019b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}