Up Pohnpei by Paul Watson

Author:Paul Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

PROGRESS AND POLITICS

What had begun as a shower minutes before was now a deluge, a downpour of biblical proportions. The stream of water running off the roof of the stand sounded like a waterfall. Nonetheless, completely exposed to the elements that had already soaked them to the skin, a group of dedicated athletes was jogging round the running track at PICS Field. The only problem was that these weren’t footballers; they were the island’s track and field team. My players were nowhere to be seen. I was sitting in the stands, completely on my own.

While football had struggled to gain a foothold in Micronesia, athletics was an established, respected activity. Unlike our players, whose attendance was never guaranteed, the athletes turned up come rain or shine, or rain and shine, as was most often the case. Standing in the driving rain were the athletics coaches Michaela and George.

About the same age as me, Michaela had come to Pohnpei from America as a Peace Corps volunteer but had settled in and taken a job at the US embassy. She had begun coaching the track team in her free time and dedicated more and more of her time and effort to trying to get the best out of Pohnpei’s young stars. I could hear her yelling orders through the driving rain. She sent her athletes off for a warm-up lap and came towards me, seemingly oblivious of the weather conditions.

‘How are the soccer team getting on?’ she asked.

I told her that things had been going well, but admitted that I had been left in the lurch. Not even Dilshan had turned up yet.

‘It takes time for these guys to see you mean business,’ she said sympathetically. ‘At first they treated me terribly. It was even worse because I’m female. But if you just keep coming out here then eventually they realise you’re not going to disappear and you really care.’

I asked Michaela for examples of what she’d had to put up with. She told me that on several occasions locals had followed her all the way home from PICS Field making lewd suggestions. While she’d be trying to teach athletes a technique, onlookers would stand around insulting her in Pohnpeian and telling her students not to listen to her. Michaela knew this because she’d learned the language very quickly and shocked the culprits by responding in their native tongue. After that, the insults stopped.

Michaela’s colleague George, a jolly local, was making his way towards us and held out his hand with a smile. He added to Michaela’s pep talk.

‘Don’t let things get to you,’ he said. ‘It’s so hard to get sport taken seriously here. There’s no funding for it, so people don’t think they can get anywhere with it. I’ve been doing this for ten years and I end up spending my own money on equipment. The track is full of holes but what can we do? Just keep trying to make a difference because these guys do appreciate it, even if they don’t always show it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.