Ideal

The first person I met after I got off the plane at Roman Tmetuchl International Airport Koror was a warm and joyful man called Doug. Doug used to be in the US Marines. One day he took a holiday to Palau…and never left. Doug has worked for a few different tour companies, has a family, has become part of a clan…and spends holidays working through each of Palau’s 250 Islands.

It’s hard not to idealise a place like Palau sometimes. While the rest of these blog posts will be dedicated to critically reflecting on Palau, this blog is for gushing.

My favourite thing I learned about in Palau was its culture. Palau has clan structures, with around 5 clans making up the country. Clans are entered through marriage. One of the most beautiful aspects of the clan structure was the way families in a clan helped each other. Say for instance there is to be a marriage in the clan and the newly weds need a house. Each family in the clan will pitch in some money or work to build that couple a house. When someone else needs a house, this new family unit will pitch in to help them in return. The same goes for medical bills, first child ceremonies, and other large life events. What a novel idea…helping each other! It was truly refreshing hearing about this practice after being weighed down by my own society’s obsession with independence before the trip. This came out of hearing about the ‘war on young people’ debate on housing prices and job availability. Interdependence sounds much better.

One of the best things about travelling is the new perspective it gives you on your own society. One of the more amusing ways this happened was when our tour guides described, often whilst supressing laughter, the times they saw the ‘Survivor’ reality tv show filming on Ulong Island. In a culture that is still resisting saturation of globalisation, it was a nice reminder of the absurdity of some of our practices in the realm of entertainment here in the west. One of my favourite stories is how the contestants in the Japanese edition of survivor would swim out to passing tour boats, begging for food.

Another aspect of Palau that I enjoyed idealising was its leadership. One thing we slowly began to realise as we met more people, was that everyone seemed to have a relatively close relationship with a leader in the country in one way or another. Sometimes this was an aunty who was a senator or a friend’s grandfather who was a village chief. The flipside of this is that the leaders of Palau collectively know most of the people they represent. There seemed to be a unity between the hopes of the people we met and those of the government, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this had something to do with it. Of course there was plenty of criticism of the government too. The way they had dealt with the recent drought left much to be desired for example. Nonetheless the Palauan government have pioneered conservation efforts such as the Protected Areas Network. Perhaps our government could learn a lot from this leadership.

Also, Palau is very beautiful…