Kris Kristofferson
Me, Jesus and Bobby McGee
There are songs to make you sing; songs to make you want to dance. There are songs of love, songs which tell stories; songs which arouse patriotism and songs of protest. There are song to make you laugh, and songs to make you cry. Hearing Janis Joplin sing Bobby McGee always makes me want to cry – and it usually succeeds.
Meketeketang. A long time ago, leaving the airport in Koror, Palau after two years of Peace Corps found me filled with mixed emotions. Going home after the experience of living – being completely immersed – in a no-longer strange or foreign culture was going to be both happy and challenging. True, I would see family and friends I had not seen in years. But I would also be leaving behind family, friends and a life I had come to love. Truth be told, it was unlikely any of us who had shared that life would ever see each other again.
The itinerary I’d planned took me from Koror, Palau, to Colonia, Yap, then on to Agana, Guam. From Agana, a hop to Truk, and then to Kolonia, Ponape. I had planned this route so I would have a stopover in Ponape to reconnect with my great friend “Cop” and have a few days of vacation with him. (That, in itself, is another story for another day!) After a few days in Ponape, I would leave Kolonia, stop in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, and finally arrive in Honolulu. After a short layover in Hawaii, it would be back to the mainland, through Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and finally Elmira, NY, and home. Long flights; short hops. Worlds of difference.
The first leg, Koror to Kolonia, was uneventful. The flight was fairly full, lots of Palauans, some going to Yap, more heading to Guam, some to Honolulu. With each stop, my hold on the last two years grew a little less tight. In Guam, we had to deplane and wait for a connecting flight east through Truk to Ponape. Many of the familiar faces and much of the language I’d come to speak and enjoy would not be reboarding. Each stop, each leg put further distance between me and the previous two years of my life.
After a few days in with Cop, it was finally time to leave Ponape. The stewardess on our flight – yes, she was still a stewardess back then – recognized me. Although I didn’t know her, she knew that I’d lived in Palau. Her name was Deedee, and as she told me, she knew somebody who knew me, and she thought she’d even seen me at such-and-such a place once when she was home. Small world. Maybe I wasn’t becoming as far removed as fast as I thought. Anyway, she spoke Palauan to me and made me feel at home as we settled in for the long flight to Hawaii.
Curiosity got the better of me. I asked about her name, “Dee”. She laughed. Yes, she said, it was an unusual nickname for a Palauan girl. When she had first enrolled in Flight Attendant training school, the other girls began to use variations on her full name, Dilmei. She was Dill, Dilly, May, even Delma , Della and Mamie. “Better not use ‘May’”, they’d said, “unless you’re ready to say “May not!” a lot.” “’Dill’ sounds like a pickle,” they said. “’Dilly’ll turn into “Doozy.” On and on it went until Dilmei finally said, “Just call me D.” “D” soon became Deedee – and she’d been fine with that ever since.
I hadn’t been long seated when Deedee approached and asked if I’d mind if a young man sat next to me. His name was Jesus Ngirabelochlech, she told me. I knew the family. Jesus was flying to California. On his flight from Koror, he had had a family member and friend with him until they reached Guam. He’d flown from Guam to Ponape by himself, but there had been other Palauans on the plane going to the Community College of Micronesia. They’d gotten off and he was now alone for the first time – and afraid. Since we were now both alone, would it be OK if we flew together? I said, “Chochoi!” Yes!
Jesus was 17, a high schooler. He’d gone to high school in Koror, but a year or so back, his family had also arranged for him to go to school in Agana, Guam. Not too long, though. Just enough to give him a taste of life outside of Palau. Now, they were sending him to California to live with a family member to finish high school. They wanted him to have every opportunity and possibly even go to college. He spoke English, but there on the plane, he was too nervous and too afraid to do so. After leaving the loved ones who’d traveled to Guam with him, after seeing the last of his connections to Palau get off the plane in Ponape, and afraid that he might never get back home again, Jesus was about ready to crumble. I, a Palauan speaking chad r nebard, a Westerner, became both his link to the past and possibly his link to a new life.
We settled in for the long flight to Hawaii. We talked. Lots of things came up.
He wanted to know how I spoke Palauan so well. I suggested that he was talking melengmes, the Palauan cultural phenomenon of saying what one thinks another wants to hear – just to be polite. But he insisted. Frankly, I needed the reassurance. I told him that I had had great teachers, a great family and lots of good friends who’d helped me along the way. He’d be comfortable with his English in no time, once he was in California and living among all the Americans. That didn’t really help. It only made him more anxious.
In no time at all, we were calling each “Cholei”, friend. In less time, he was calling me “Udelei”, a sort of friendly honorific which roughly translates into something like “Big Brother.” I liked that.
“What if they don’t like me? What if they laugh at me? What if I can’t wear shoes? What if it’s too cold?” So many things to worry about. I told him that I had exactly the same fears when I first went to Palau. Except I changed “too cold” to “too hot”. Now, I told him, one of my biggest fears was exactly the same as his: what if I can’t wear shoes. I hadn’t worn shoes in two years, I told him. We laughed.
We ascended, leveled briefly and descended onto Majuro in no time. As we looked out the window of the plane, we both said the same thing at the same time. “It’s too skinny!” Majuro, from our perspective was a very long, very narrow beach. No real land. No hills. Nothing but a strip of sand. And we were landing. Looking out our windows as we landed, we saw nothing but ocean. We both hoped that the tide was as high as it was going to get. Otherwise, there’d be no airfield at all. There was not going to be a lot of time on the ground in the Marshalls, but we each wanted to be able to say that we’d been there, so we left the plane, walked into and out of what functioned as a terminal and got back onto our plane.
Not long after we took off again, it was time for our in-flight meal. (It was meketeketal time, remember.) When our turn came, Deedee was our server. The dinner was salad, roast chicken, baked potato and peas. There was also some kind of dessert, coffee, tea and other drinks. (I have to tell you that for all the bad rap airplane food got, I usually liked it. For me, it was hot, filling and actually fairly tasty. I know that I was in a minority.)
I undid my silverware, opened up my meal and began to prepare the food the way I wanted it – salt, pepper and butter on the potato; dressing on the salad; Coke over ice in a plastic glass.
I was just about to dig in when I noticed that Jesus had barely opened the things on his tray. “Ngarang?” I asked. ( “What?”) “Chitiim?” (Don’t you like it?”) Ngdiak songeringch? (Aren’t you hungry?)
He looked toward me barely holding back the tears in his eyes. “Yes,” he said, “I’m hungry. But I don’t know what this food is or how to eat it.” And holding the knife and fork that were on his tray, he added, “And I don’t know how to use these things.”
I chuckled. Not in a mean way, but to let him know that I’d experienced the same things when I had first come to Palau.
“Basically,” I explained, “American meals are a lot like Palauan meals. There’s going to be odoim and ongroul. – protein and starch. Salads and vegetables are also often included. “No mengeloch, eh?” He laughed. To be a full Palauan meal, there had to be protein and starch. To have one without the other was like mengeloch…like a man having sex alone without a woman. Usually, I added, the protein part of an American meal was cow, pig or chicken – beef, pork or chicken – cooked in different ways. Sometimes there might be fish, I told him, but most of the fish I’d had as a kid was tuna from a can. In Palau, it was just the opposite: lots of varieties of fish, but most of the meat was Spam in a can. The starch was usually, rice, tapioca or taro, in some form. For American meals, it was usually potatoes or pasta. Maybe rice, depending on where you lived. No shoyu, though. Get ready for salt and pepper – and ketchup. Tonight, we’re having roasted chicken, baked potatoes and peas.
“What about these?” he asked, pointing to his utensils.
“Oh, yeah,” I added. “And no chopsticks. Usually. Maybe you’ll be able to get some in California, though. My small town…..No.”
I showed him how to deal with his knife and fork. He experimented, got some food into his mouth, made a mess and was about to give up. “You know…sometimes it’s best to just think of this as finger food.” We both put down the silverware and started eating with our hands. Again, we laughed.
Jesus’d begun to feel better. “After Hawaii, when we get to America, maybe we can see each other sometimes. You know, after school. On Fridays. Sometimes? Does your family have a car? Maybe you can drive to my auntie’s house,” he said in Palauan. “We can ‘play’.”
It was now my turn to hold back the tears. I knew that after this trip, in all likelihood, we would never see one another again. All he knew was that he was going to live with his mother’s sister’s husband’s sister and her family in a place called San Jose in California. And I lived in America, too. Yes, I said, maybe we can. When he asked where my small town was, I told him Pennsylvania. About 2,800 miles from San Jose. That would be like driving a car from Koror to Kolonia, and back. The look he gave me told me that he understood. We didn’t talk for a while.
“Does your Auntie have a phone? Do you know her number?”
“Yes. No.”
“Do you know her address?”
“San Jose, California.”
“What’s her name – her last name?”
“I don’t know. It’s American.”
Silence.
“You want my phone number? And address?”
“Sure.”
I gave him both.
More silence. Then some sleep.
After the long haul from the Marshall Islands, we landed in Honolulu very early in the morning. Jesus’ family had arranged for friends to be at the airport to meet him and take him to their home during his layover. His flight was scheduled to leave later that evening for San Francisco. Mine left in the early afternoon for Los Angeles. His family friends insisted that I go with them to their home to rest and eat. They would bring me back to the airport in plenty of time to catch my flight home. I accepted the offer. It would not have been polite to refuse.
Although I have no idea where we were in Honolulu, the air was warm and sweet, the company was familiar and the food was comforting. Jesus’ friends delivered me back to the airport in plenty of time. I thanked them. Jesus and I, friend and big brother, said our good-byes. Yes, we will see each other soon in America. I’ll drive. This time, however, we both knew that we were talking melengmes.
I was now “in America”, flying home alone. I had been given the gift of a few extended hours of a most powerful life experience. I had let go. I had been let go.
As we flew across the Pacific, I decided to listen to the music coming through the earphones. I had never heard Janis Joplin sing “Me and Bobby McGee” before. But there she was. The voice. The lyrics. The emotion. As Janis sang Kristofferson’s words…
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing, that’s all that Bobby left me, yeah,
But feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,
Hey, feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.
It was the right song at the right time, a small, powerful life experience in its own right. A journey; love; letting go. The emotion was overpowering.
I cried when I heard Janis sing that song. I still do.