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| The front cover to the book Microchild: An Anthology of Poetry featuring the face of Mr. Sengebau at its center. |
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| This is a picture of Ms. Merced giving a presentation to my thoroughly excited 7th grade English class. |
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| Me with two of my seventh grade students after I handed them their certificates for participation in the poetry contest. It always brings me a joyous feeling when students try something new that they never would have done before. Even though they did not win the $150 first place prize, I am very glad for their courage and participation. |
Dear
Friends, Family, and Readers:
Last month (October 25) a couple of
my students took part in the N.M.I. Council for the Humanities Eighth Annual
Valentine Sengebau Poetry Competition. I
am just now writing about it because my students received their certificates at
chapel (so I could put a blog picture up) and we had a class presentation on
poetry from the N.M.I. Council by Ms. Merced (a member of the council). The poet featured in this competition is a
Palauan, but his adopted home was Saipan.
He was the youngest of twelve children and was raised by friends and
family because his father died in a storm with several other Palauan men that had gone fishing at a nearby island. Much of his poetry reflects this loss and the
loss of culture suffered by many of the island peoples in the Mariana Islands. Sengebau
was educated at Berkley during the Vietnam era protests. After asking Merced if I could have
permission to put a poem or two of his online, she said, “Yes, of course.” The work of his written below is from the
published collection of works (put together by the N.M.I. Council) titled Microchild. The poem below is not my
favorite poem of his, but it is a little shorter so I thought it would fit well
on the blog posting (my favorite is a poem title Elubel meaning “bankrupt”). The MLA citation for this book is:
Sengebau,
Valentine N. Microchild: An Anthology of Poetry. Saipan: Northern
Mariana Islands
Council for the Humanities, 2004. Print.
“I
know” By: Valentine Sengebau
I never cease to be amaze
By
the damage
Inflicted
by the mythical cornucopia
From
some civilization.
If
one believe in Utopia
And
conditioning of others
To
be followers of that devotion
I
feel the breeze
Blowing
thru the islands
Eradicating
gerontocracy
And
seeding democracy
For
the future
Promised
lands
Full
of puppets
On
the show-window.
That’s
psychology
My
friend
Believe
me.
I believe this poem represents the
poet’s amazement and frustration with his fellow islanders. It is as though they have believed in the
Utopian ideals brought by the various cultures to have arrived on Saipan (i.e.
the Spanish, German, Japanese, and American etc.). The only way to bring about
Utopia is through the conditioning of other people by convincing and training
them to believe what you believe. Many
have tried to achieve Utopian Society throughout history, but they find only
disillusionment. That disillusionment becomes a devotion that must take place
everyday creating a person who has become a slave to a belief. This is much like the men of the Odyssey eating lotus flowers. The breeze he mentions is the fickleness of
change and of human opinion. The modern
age is all about going with the next best device, but what happens when that
device is actually political and not technological? The next line tells us that such devices remove the
“gerontocracy” or system of village elders that once ran many of the cultures
on Saipan and throughout the Micronesian Islands. Once democracy took hold of the island, the
once simple way of life became complex.
In a democracy many people have a say in government and that simple fact
takes power away from the traditional way of life leaving more say to newcomers
to the islands. The words “promised
lands” are ironic because they show a defeat of local culture. The lands used to be promised to them by
their elders through marriage and true freedom.
Now that democracy has landed in Saipan, the government has taken control
of many lands and limited traditional freedoms.
This take over (as the next line implies) creates people who are puppets
and do whatever the government wishes them to do or the law will
intervene. In Saipan the rebel spirit is
alive and the government in many ways I believe has created an us against them
mentality that still exists as it did when the U.S. took Saipan as a
commonwealth after WWII. The reason he
says that it is “psychology” is that in reality a master con-artist wins by
making you feel as though you are the winner.
I believe Sengebau sees the locals as the losers in a takeover that was
never their fight from the beginning of the Spanish arrival on Saipan’s shores. It is truly amazing how much a small poem can
say! If you care to finish the blog here
is a Saipan poem by me haha
Coconut Evangelism By: Me
1) Heavy, green, and buoyant
2) you travel to distant lands
3) from your native home.
4) Driven by a force unseen
5) you come to a land unfamiliar
6) to hopefully sink down roots.
7) You’re darker now than at first
8) and many things wish to devour
9) you in the new land covered in sand.
10) The sun, however, shines down on
11) you, helping you to grow before
12) anything can befall you, for you have
13) already fallen once.
14)
The milk inside you—white, nourishing,
15) helps your seed grow through
16) your outer skin through the trinity
17)
revealing tenderness to those fortunate
18) enough to see it.
19) Soon you will grow tall and provide food,
20) shelter, and life to others. It was for this
21) purpose you have life and have sunk roots
22) into the sand.
23) May you soon send others on journeys
24) similar to yours, whether a vast distance
25) or nearby, so that your love will travel to
26) many peoples and lands.
Elements
to my poem are as follows (This explanation can be made into a Devotional too) :
(1-3) Like Kara and I coming to Saipan was a thing
that made us feel heavy and was a great burden, packing to come here and
working hard over that summer. We
remained buoyant, however, and made it to Saipan, MP thousands of miles from our native land.
(4-6) We came here because I had a feeling in the
pit of my stomach that God was calling us to Saipan “unseen force.” That we
might find something in this new land and maybe put down roots. We won’t be staying here much longer but we
did put down roots for two years.
I
liken this to John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its
sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of
the Spirit” (NIV).
(7-9) We are much darker than when we left
Minnesota and when any missionary teacher arrives there are many things that
try to devour or destroy your time on the island much like coconut crabs and
ants etc try to get into coconuts.
Things that devour are culture shock, homesickness, physical sickness,
trouble at work, and general island craziness. I relate this devouring idea to
Psalm 27:2, When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who
will stumble and fall” (NIV). Sometimes
it is not people but things that seek to devour.
(10-13) We have Christ who shines on our time spent
in Saipan and who helped us sink roots into Saipan (the making of friends etc)
before anything bad could force us to leave.
There is nothing to worry about anyway because we have already fallen
short of God’s glory, he would not abandon us to our doom a second time. I
related this to Psalm 97:11, Light shines
on the righteous and joy on the upright in heart” (NIV).
(14-18) Once the outer shell of a coconut is removed
the white milk on the inside that tastes so good and was used as plasma in WWII
can be accessed through one of three circles that forms on a coconut shell. Two
of the circles are always hard, but one is always soft. The soft circle allows the seed to grow up
out of the milk and form a root that breaks the husk and plunges a root into
the ground giving rise to a coconut tree.
(19-22) Over time we grew tall and more comfortable
on the island of Saipan, but not comfortable enough to stay more than two
years. I will miss Saipan when we do
eventually leave, but for now it is home.
While here we have provided food for others by having parties and have
hopefully touched the lives of our students leading them closer to Christ
Jesus. Why else would God have placed us
here? Even though one has to be careful
not to take this verse out of context I believe that Philippians 2:13
represents this stanza, “13 for it is God who works in you to will
and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (NIV).
(23-26) I pray that the love we have shown to those
on Saipan will be remembered and that our students will have adventures of
their own someday like coconuts that fall from trees representing us as
teachers. It could also mean that we would spread word about Saipan to those in
the states that they may have fun adventures of their own at S.C.S. or
elsewhere on the island. In all things, however, we should be as this verse
from James states…James 4:13-15, “13 Now listen, you who say, “Today
or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on
business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will
happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little
while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the
Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (NIV).
I
hope you enjoy my many explanations.
This poem could even be used as a short Bible devotional, however, it is
not my best writing… I hope you enjoy the pictures!
Sincerely,
Grant
Standard Chamorro Time in Saipan is also Guam Time:
