Palauan First-Born (Ngasech) Ceremony, Part Four

Around 11am the preparation of the girls begins. Usually there are a couple young girls (family members) who will flank the mother during the ceremony. At Emadch's ceremony she had four girls along with her. The older women of the family do all the beautifying.

[The older girls' attire is entirely made up of foliage]

[Early on the girls are coated with ginger, which colors them yellow. Just before the ceremony that are coated with coconut oil which serves to make them shine and smell wonderful]

Usually the celebrated mother will receive a piece of Palauan money from the father's family as a gift. It's a big deal because Palauan money is made of really old pottery and there is a fixed amount of money in the system. Most families have some, richer families have a lot. Yellow is rare and really valuable. The bigger pieces, which are round in form because they originate from pottery, are also quite valuable.
Since Emadch's husband is Australian he cannot provide a piece of money for her. So she borrowed this piece from a family member for the ceremony.

[Emadch is all rubbed down in yellow ginger, getting her hair done by a friend who came in from Australia]

[The band keeps the guests entertained while all the preparation takes place inside. (This lady has been the most popular performer since well before I came into Peace Corps seven years ago - she's made a lucrative career out of it.)]

Palauan First-Born (Ngasech) Ceremony, Part Three

Warning: there will be nudity in the posts for the next couple days, including today.

[Somebody always watches the baby - Coco Bella - while Emadch is in her steam bath]

[These are the fresh herbs ready for adding on the day of the event - this is a special mixture that differs from the previous eight days]

Emadch and a few close female relatives are already inside the 'hut' that was built the previous night. Burning these herbs is one of the first steps - this batch is put inside the tent to smoke (as opposed to the steam that follows).

The women fill these buckets with boiling water and herbs, then push them inside the tent and under a structure that Emadch is sitting on. The buckets don't stay in there long, as they keep getting traded out for freshly steaming buckets. I was standing there taking pictures of the inside of the tent but I kept getting splashed with boiling water!

There is a hole in that wooden structure (which actually resembles a crude portable toilet) that Emadch is sitting on. The buckets are put under her and the steam rises up to 'cleanse' her. Emadch told me she read that women used to have crude Caesarean operations to remove a baby if the woman was going through a lot of pain. The woman would rarely survive such an operation, but if she did it was thanks to the cleansing efforts that took place. Many of today's first-born ceremony traditions have their roots in those long-ago surgery recovery techniques.

[Everybody brings money, turtle shell jewelry, or food to contribute to the cause. Vaughn and I each brought a case of beer]

[Some of the most important women in Palau, including Bilung on the right(sitting)]

[Preparing the fruit spread/ceremony backdrop]

Palauan First-Born (Ngasech) Ceremony, Part Two

There is lots of preparation the night before and the morning of the ngasech (pronounced sorta like nah-sa).

[This is the herb bath ready for the morning fire]

These women are weaving 75 baskets that the VIP food will rest in. Emadch's mother (Tulik), who was in charge of this ceremony, doesn't like to see lots of ugly plastic that is usually floating around these ceremonies. Apparently the rules of the ceremony (imposed not by a Food Safety Commission, but instead by the traditional senior female leaders of Palau) require the food to come in plastic containers, so Tulik decided to enclose the plastic in the traditional serving dishes. It was a really neat - if expensive - idea. The food for the non-VIP's was buffet-style using paper plates.

I went to bed just before midnight and the preparation party was still going strong. There usually isn't much sleep the night before the ceremony.

[Palauan tapioca - it's ground down from the root and mixed with some sugar and water(?), then stuffed inside frond leaves, sewn up with twine, then boiled for awhile. It's a great-tasting starch]

[300 coconuts were ordered (and I think I drank at least five!)]

The women handle all of the food and preparation of the woman and girls for the ceremony while the men set up the tents, tables, and chairs. The men also are in charge of acquiring and husking the coconuts and bringing in all of the palm fronds used for decoration as well as for weaving. It's amazing to stand on the sideline (which was my role as a photographer) and watch it all come together. There are no checklists - everybody just knows what to do based on their age and gender.

The street was blocked off for the ceremony, which was a bit of a no-no, but when a woman named bilung showed up, everything that was questionable about the ceremony was automatically approved just by having bilung in attendance. Bilung is the Palauan name for her position, which is the most important woman in Palau.

Palauan First-Born (Ngasech) Ceremony, Part One

I just returned from two weeks in Palau, where I served in the Peace Corps from 2002-2004. I visited two of my three host families (the third was on a faraway island and the boat schedules just didn't line up), went on a northerly tour, went diving, and went on a five-day kayak trip. My friend Vaughn accompanied me for most of the trip and we had a blast. But the reason the trip came together this summer was because my Palauan friend, Emadch, had a baby in May and planned her ngasech (first-born ceremony) for the beginning of August. I have so many pictures from the trip (5100+) and many of them are good. So, barring anything exciting in Zamami over the next couple weeks, I'm going to do a bunch of Palau posts. We'll start with a series on the first-born ceremony.

From what I understand, Palau is the only country in the world that celebrates a woman's first baby with such a large ceremony. It usually takes place a couple weeks to a couple months after the birth of the baby. I was able to photograph Emadch's first-born ceremony in its entirety, which is rare (especially for a male). I'll start with the days leading up to the ceremony:

The number of days of 'steam baths' (for lack of a better word) depend on the status of the clan the family belongs to. They can go up to 10 days; in Emadch's case she went for nine days. Traditionally women were disallowed from having any male contact during this period, but that rule has relaxed a little in modern times. However she is not allowed to leave the house. She doesn't use the internet or cook or do anything but take care of her baby and do her steam baths twice-a-day. Emadch starts in the morning around 8am with her first 'bath'.

Emadch begins in a specially built structure, sitting on a woven coconut mat which is resting on a bamboo floor. She removes all of her clothing then proceeds to cover her body in a coconut/ginger oil.

The ginger makes the oil yellow. The mixture of ginger and coconut makes it smell really nice.

Emadch covers herself liberally with the oil to protect from what is going to happen next.

The older woman, who is assigned to Emadch during the whole nine days, starts with a tub of hot water, as seen above. It is taken from that pot in the background that is on top of the fire (which was started that morning at 5am). The water boils with many herbs and it smells nice.

The old woman starts by using those leaves (I forget their name, but they're important), dipping them in the water, then splashing Emadch with them. She starts with the face, then proceeds downward, pretty much getting the whole body (Emadch has to roll over to help out with the backside). This is repeated twice more, with Emadch reapplying the yellow oil between each iteration.

On the fourth iteration, with really hot water (quite a bit hotter than the previous three applications), the woman uses half a coconut shell to throw the water against Emadch. She starts with the face and Emadch is not allowed to squint or prepare for the water. She does wince with pain, though. This time the woman also throws a cup of the near-boiling water up inside Emadch's open legs.

The older woman then repeats these four steps three more times, which concludes the morning bath. In the afternoon the same process is repeated. Every day for eight days.

Tomorrow, the ninth day.

Palau Aerials

[It is not okay to use these images without my permission.]

I took a helicopter trip on my first morning here to get the aerial shots I always wanted during Peace Corps but could never afford to get. Here are some of the results: (oh, and the internet is waaaaaay slow here and this will probably be the last blog post until I get back to Japan on 8/18.)

[Seventy Islands]

[Natural Arch]

[Milky Way]

[A dugong, which is really rare]

The Quest for Bananas

Last week while I was waiting for the solar eclipse in a remote corner of Zamami, I spotted these 'wild' banana trees:


I went back Sunday to try and get myself a bunch.


I checked nearly every tree, including many a short distance up a steep hill, but I only found two bunches that were possibly harvestable. I mounted a kitchen knife on the end of a three-meter bamboo pole I found on the beach and went to cutting.


It's a small bunch, but I think these banana trees are well beyond their prime and I was lucky with what I got.


After coming back and looking up what to do next (hang them, I know, but is there more to it?), I got nervous that I had harvested these bananas too early. But not too nervous because it was either me or the birds.

But this is how they look four days later. I'm pretty psyched to get to eating tomorrow or Saturday. On Saturday I am leaving for Naha to leave for Osaka on Sunday to be there for my Monday flight to Palau (three freakin' days to go 1400 miles!), so I may end up taking the bananas to the friends I'm staying with in Osaka.

Zamami From Within

[Homestay families, are you out there?]

[Zamami's 105 Store gets a surprising amount of business]

[The store's parking lot. Bikes and scooters are really popular here because they are easy for short trips, they are fuel efficient, and the roads are tight]

[One of the half-dozen restaurants on Zamami]

[The main intersection in the middle of the village]

[Zamami's post office]

[The school]

[Orion beer is Okinawa's beer and there is a lot of pride in it - one of the most famous eisa (Okinawan drumming) songs is about this beer]

[A new pension/hotel - there are probably 20+ guesthouses on Zamami]

[Shisa]