Sengebau Poetry Competition & other thoughts

The front cover to the book Microchild: An Anthology of Poetry featuring the face of Mr. Sengebau at its center.

This is a picture of Ms. Merced giving a presentation to my thoroughly excited 7th grade English class.

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: