LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
BOOKED Solid |
A Review By Rebecca James |
Sex Lives of the Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial PacificJ. Maarten Troost
The drive was long, but beautiful. We stopped a few times just to absorb the view of surprisingly blue water frothing up against creamy brown smooth rocks and white sand. I could get used to this. The highway was depressingly pockmarked with garbage, however, and I found myself wondering how someone could be so distracted by McDonalds or Burger King or cigarettes and forget what beauty is right crashing there. As we entered the small surfing town of Rincon, Puerto Rico, that odd juxtaposition of natural splendor and human interference continued. The salsa and reggaeton soon poured into my skin with the heat of the sun, though, and I felt everything else fade into the background. I only had a week, a short vacation from reality, but J. Maarten Troost and his girlfriend decided to merge reality and island living for two years in the Republic of Kiribati on the Island of Tarawa. After many days of hot, dusty travel on airplanes that rapidly decreased in size, Troost, a 20-something post-grad-student without much of a plan, finds his images of South Pacific brown skin and tiny bikinis somewhat tattered and faded. Along their journey, their knowledge of atolls (small islands formed by volcanic material) expanded to include refuse, pollution, toxins, and heat. Troost was getting nervous. And then Tarawa appeared. We flew over the northern part of the island, a ribbon of land topped with palm trees and bisected by channels feeding the ocean into the lagoon. The tide was in and the lagoon seemed incandescent, a startling fusion of greens and blues. On the ocean side of the atoll, white streamers of broken waves rushed toward barren beaches. Villages of thatch appeared. [...] And then... something was wrong. My inner ear was confused. My stomach lurched. The engines screamed. Sylvia's hand gripped my arm, seeking comfort, finding none. We raced over the tarmac like a careening hovercraft, not quite making contact with the ground. Still flying. And then we began to ascend. Tarawa gone. The blue ocean. The blue sky. Again. The pilot spoke: "Ah... sorry about that. There were pigs on the runway. We'll just swing around and try again." So begins Troost's love/hate relationship with Tarawa. His humorous perspective as a kept man for his employed girlfriend (it was her research that took them there) allows him to explore the atoll and abandon all preconceived notions of friendship (an old surfer becomes his constant companion), generosity (the art of bubuti, a complex system of reassigning possessions that manages to submerge most native Kiribati's desire to become more successful), and proper pooping etiquette: And then I saw what confronted me. It rested directly between myself and the shore. It was massive. I had never seen anything like it. I sensed its power. I became very, very frightened. It was an enormous brown bottom. The possessor, a giant of a man, was squatting in the shallows, holding on to a ledge of coral rock. He emitted. He emitted some more. He was like a stricken oil tanker, oozing brown sludge. When he was done, he wiped himself with sticks. Not leaves. Sticks. Small branches. Twigs. And they were coming my way. Riding the ebbing tide, the sticks honed in on me. I became the North Star for shit-encrusted sticks. Whichever way I moved, and I was moving very quickly, these sticks seemed to follow. They were closing in. I began to curse. In Dutch. This only happens when something primal is stirred. Somehow, though, Troost finds a kinship with the people on the island. Along the way, he teaches them the limitations of The Macarena as an example of fine music while they teach him flexibility, perseverance, and cultural perspectives on dogs as pets versus speed bumps (being on an island changes everything). Troost has a distinctive voice as a young writer; his work with Sex Lives and subsequent travel memoirs carves him a place next to another funny man of worldly wanderings, In a Sunburned Country's Bill Bryson. He manages to use humor as a vehicle, but the tenderness and affinity he feels for the people of Tarawa are evident. Blending research and trivia with his own experiences, he creates a very readable, highly entertaining record of his time on the tiny atoll. In my own short time on the island of Puerto Rico, I was chased by roosters, ignored by stray dogs, served more fried food than I care to admit, and horrified by litter, but I was also completely humbled by a culture with values so opposite my own North Eastern angst. Like Troost, I found a place for these differences in my heart. I want to run away to an island, too. Rebecca James divides her time between teaching and graduate study in Allentown, Pennsylvania and reading and relaxing in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 18, No. 04 May 02, 2008 |