Lamotrek

Some interesting information about the island -

The Lamotrek is a beautiful example of Yapa's archipelago and people. Woleai is not an archipelago with a WW2 story, although there are shipwrecks of two Jake floatplanes on the shore and a Zero combat aircraft in the wreck. It has a basic education equipped with textbooks and computer for all instructors supplied by a large photovoltaic install.

The kids are sent to Woleai for further schooling. It is a technical college with a strong focus on arts and crafts and the young women are particularly keen to prove their weavings. Averagely, they are accustomed to the West and have been the object of some sociological research in Europe, but still proud to cultivate their own minds.

Humans represent the gentleness, tolerancy and kindness that seem to be rooted in Japanese civilization.

SEAILING HELENA: Lamotrek Atlas, Micronesia

Lamotrek, Micronesia. For the first we drank "tuba" sweet-sour sap from the chestnut trees, cinnamon, cute for the ladies and kids, acidic for the men, because it is then fermentated and contains 6 to 8 per cent alcoholic beverages,

at Lamotrek there are four round trips, men meet at 3 o'clock in the afternoons to" collect" their mornings and to speak and to work, at 5 o'clock they go again to" collect", i.e. they go to their trees to pick up the tubas for the next round of drinks, which lasts until 8 or 9 o'clock in the evenings, then it is bedtime to go to bed.

We' ve been to a berth, and sometimes just above a reef top, it looks narrow, but it's still 5 meters below the bate. It' a traditional practice for the locals to mark their faces with a lipstick, like the kid in the photo.

Where the man is sitting, his tube is near, some make a cord of coir fiber. The production of ropes from coir is a general profession. Loaf of fruits cooked with coir milks. They chew the walnut in Micronesia. Around the walnut betelnut, it thickens ad lime it ( "the lemon powder"), and a leaf (which makes the lips fully red), many humans chew and spit all around.

On the bottom under the grate a fly net is made to keep the fry out of the water, there are lots of fly, on the lefthand side there is some coir to make a line. and the empty tube flask is waiting to be stuffed.

We' ve had a good period in Lamotrek, a very nice and tradtional civilization, many new things we've learnt and good folks we've encountered, but our Micronesian times are short, so we have to go, good-bye Lamotrek.