English

If I may, I will tell another story. What happens when we don’t listen to reasoning? This is a story about the original navigators. Forbwaey and his brothers gathered to learn navigation. Their father was the father of navigation and our waterways.[1]

They learned and learned until they were ready. It was time for the sister to bring food for the brothers – well prepared taro cooked in coconut oil, which we call dipchig. Before eating, a special pot of the best parts of the meal was to be thrown into the ocean as an offering to the spirit Yalulwei. The sons did not do as instructed by their father. They ate their fill and gathered the trash and scraps – the empty coconut shell and the leaves used to cover the cooked taro. They threw all these into the ocean while saying, “Here’s your food, Yalulwei.” Then they went home.

This went on for a while until the navigation training was concluded. Now it was time to do the actual sailing. It was time for the navigators to discover if they could reach their destinations. During the trip with lots of people on board, they ran into a typhoon. The canoe sank, and everybody died except Forbwaey, who survived. He swam and swam until he gave up hope because there was no island in sight. Just before he sank, the water up to his nose, his feet touched something that felt like reef. He stood up and said “All right! I will live. I am standing on coral.” Then the coral disappeared, and he was swimming again. Once more he touched coral, but again it disappeared. This went on for some time.

Then a sand bar appeared. He struggled to reach the sand bar, but when he climbed onto it, the sand sank from beneath his feet. He climbed once more, only to fall back again. “Goodness why is this sand caving in?” he asked himself. All this time the spirit was living in the shelter beneath the canoe’s platform where people stay when a canoe is under sail. (There are two such platforms on a canoe. One is on the windward side and the other is on the leeward side.) Forbwaey staggered around the island. He was starving and thirsty. He finally found someone sitting in the shelter of the canoe’s platform, not facing out, but inward.

He saw a clamshell with a small amount of water inside, and a leaf with a little food on it. Just looking at the water and the food made Forbwaey hungrier and thirstier. He reached his fingers toward the food and water, but before he touched them he heard, “Ho ho! What were you planning on doing?” He wondered how it was possible that this figure was facing inward but could see him trying to steal his food behind him. Feeling sorry for Forbwaey, the spirit finally spoke to him. He asked Forbwaey what he wanted. Forbwaey said he wanted to eat because he was starving. The spirit told Forbwaey that he could not eat the food because it was so little and would not satisfy his hunger. The spirit told Forbwaey that he would find food at the end of the sand bar from which he just came.

 “What? You mean the coconut branch and old leaves used to cover cooking pots?” asked Forbwaey.

“Wasn’t that the leftover scraps you always threw into the ocean for me?” asked the spirit. “That’s not what I eat.”

Then he allowed Forbwaey eat the little food he had there. Forbwaey ate and ate and ate, and when he looked, the same small amount remained. He drank and drank, but a small drop of water always remained.

The spirit told Forbwaey that he hadn’t learned enough navigation from the training. Now Forbwaey would learn from him, for his name meant “God of Sailing.” Forbwaey learned and learned until he was better than his brothers, even the oldest ones. To this day we hear tales about Forbwaey, but not his brothers. Okay, that is enough for now.

Chief Isaac ended his telling of Forbwaey with words that became the Afterword to this story collection.

[1] In Ulithi, Falalop is the navigation island, and the one to lead tribute voyages to Yap.