An Indirect Culture

My friend Sonson committed suicide 3 weeks ago in response to his father's edict that Sonson not marry the girl he had been dating for some months. After a 3 day drunken binge, he hanged himself with an a-frame tshirt on the fence of the Chuuk State Supreme Court building, knowing his father would find him when he arrived there for work in the morning.

This example is perhaps the most illustrative, in my experience, of Chuuk's indirect culture. The anger and frustration and pain that Sonson felt as a result of his family's rejection of the "love of his life" found no outlet. And that's because people here do not talk about their feelings with one another. Families do not address issues head-on; instead, they show how they feel through indirect cues: silence, absence, not cooking meals, not doing the laundry, getting drunk, becoming abusive. Eventually, frustration and pain go away, or they get buried deep down, and folks move on. When pain and sadness don't go away, however, and its not culturally appropriate to express yourself with your family or your friends or even a neutral third party, what's left? For Sonson, it was the ultimate show of indirect anger and pain: "look what YOU made me do."

I don't mean to suggest that people here are fundamentally broken or that families are "messed up" or noncommunicative. They simply express themselves in a way that we, as Americans, find confusing, circuitous, and complex. You'll never hear a mother praise or compliment her daughter - in private or in public. In fact, you'd be more likely to hear the mother call her daughter stupid, ugly, incompetent, and lazy IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE before you'd ever hear her say "oh her hair is just so beautiful, isn't it?" It's not that her mother thinks those things - certainly not! But in this culture, a mother would never think to be so ostentatious or conceited as to brag about her daughter. By saying all the negatives, the listener automatically rejects them as clearly false, and is left with the impression that the girl is simply quiet, sweet, humble, and respectful of her mother sitting next to her. And by replying in kind, the listener is able to flatter both the mother and the daughter in what amounts to the most indirect conversation of one's life. I've actually seen this happen, in person, when a young man came to ask my cousin's family for permission to marry her. The speeches were enough to make you think she was worthless. Until the young man, while shaking his head, effectively said: it doesn't matter, I still want to marry her. And the blessing was sealed.

This cultural passivity and indirectness has affected me, too. While living on Satowan, I errantly listened to my host family tell me they didn't want me to pay them a monthly host family allowance. (Peace Corps encourages us to give between $50-$75 each month to our families for food and other expenses). Knowing that my host family was rather well-off, I thought they were just proud to be able to host me, and I worried that if I forced the issue or gave them money anyway, I might offend them or appear to be the "American" and not the "son" I wanted to be. Of course, by refusing to accept the money, they were just being indirect. If I'd asked again, they would have still said no. But if I'd insisted, they would have relented and done so gratefully. It took me a few months of reading between the lines (late or no meals; laundry once a month; weird glances; lots of silence) before I realized there was even a problem, and then still longer before I realized it was all because I was too eager to not pay them each month. I blame myself for being miserly and too eager to not pay them. Now that I'm on Moch, that situation almost replayed itself, until the fourth or fifth time I demanded that my host family give me a dollar figure each month, and we made an agreement. Although its not culturally appropriate to have a conversation about money each month, I do because, for me, it's not worth suffering through the indirectness and resultant guilt and embarrassment.

So what does this mean? I don't know. I'm not trying to draw any big conclusions. These are just observations about a culture and a way of dealing with feelings that we, in America, would consider to be unhealthy and counter-productive. I'm not going to say that they are always unhealthy and counter-productive, but the alarming rate of suicide per capita speaks for itself. For these reasons, mental health (really, just being aware of what depression means and what you can do to get help) is going to be an important part of our camp in June. Here in Chuuk, there is a department in the Public Health sector called SAMH (Substance Abuse and Mental Health). SAMH has been negligent in presenting information about mental health, in my opinion, when they make presentations to youth. Twice in as many months, a SAMH representative has been to the Mortlocks to give a presentation. One was an assembly for HS students on Moch talking about the risk of cancer from smoking cigarettes and inhaling second-hand smoke. The other was an assembly for the Protestant youth groups during the Easter rally where they talked all about cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and betel nut, and their negative effects. Mental health just gets glossed over, again, because its culturally difficult (if not impossible) to speak directly and frankly about feelings, sadness, and suicide.

Maybe camp will be a first step in that direction. In memory of Sonson, and for future boys who might think like him, I hope we can do something.