the origin of the coconut

Two and a half years ago, the first event I covered at the still unnamed local newspaper I work(ed) at, was an evening of Halloween-themed storytelling, hosted at the house of a loopy old man into crystals and his entirely too young wife in sunglasses, at a beach house in Ipan.

Told on large lawn leading to a dark beach, the stories were an amalgamation of the typical campfire spook story (dead aunts appearing the back of cars, zombie maidens arising from the sand) and ancient-sounding legends I guessed were made up for the event.

(I still ended up asking one of the story tellers where the tale about the taotaomo’na stalking a pig hunter in the jungle came from, to which he incredulously replied, "I made it up.")

One of the storytellers at the event was a local historian, whom I have since bumped into several times while frantically running about the island doing reporterly things.

He once talked to me about medicinal plants at a family-sponsored public clean up that I was sent to only because someone knew someone or bought an ad, or maybe both.

He took me down to see a hotno -- one of the few remaining Spanish outside ovens on Guam.

I watched him peform a blessing as the now nearly extinct ko'ko' were reintroduced to Cocos, and met him while bopping about festivals -- a jovial uncle/aunt of the Chamorro cultural revitalization.

I don't know if I really made that much of an impression on him -- except as one of the dozens of annoying reporters who has likely called him over the years asking about cultural whatever. Or maybe I'm the only one. I don't know.

I think many of my journalistic endeavors were simply excuses to look at stuff that I find cool, and the coolest stuff I encountered on Guam usually had to do with historical or cultural or scientific or otherwise non-journalistically relevant topics.

It seemed fitting, therefore, that for my last assignment I sat across from him at a fold-out table at the Department of Parks and Recreation office -- which is now inexplicably underneath the bleachers of the island's baseball stadium -- and listened to a story.

Ostensibly I went to him to add his cultural expertise to a story I was working on about a book on Chamorro folk tales.

But, I didn't really need to talk to him about the project, which it turns out, is actually not happening/on hold, in the way that projects run by very small grassroots nonprofits find themselves.

So while I plied him for wisdom about the importance of folktalkes in Chamorro culture, and tried to get answers about how that art has been lost in the younger generations, he told me the story of  Sirena, the disobedient girl turned fish -- which on the face of it seemed to be a warning tale for children to obey their parents. 

But the tale, he explained, had more to do with the detrimental effect negative words have on children -- as a mother's curse causes eternal separation from her now mermaid daughter.

Breaking into a Chamorro chant, he told me the story of Puntan and Fu'una -- the island's gods of creation.

And he told me about the origin of the coconut, which for some reason stuck in my head.

The story goes:

A young maiden is dying (there always seems to be a young maiden in these stories, he tells me). A young maiden is dying, and her parents ask her what they can do to save her.

And she tells her parents they must go into the jungle, and find a fruit from which no one had ever drunk.

And her parents go into the jungle, and search and search, and whenever they found a fruit, someone had  already tasted it.

They returned unsuccessfully, and the girl died.

But from her grave rose a tree that no one recognized. And from the tree grew a fruit that no one recognized. And when the young maiden's father took the fruit, he shook it and heard there was liquid inside.

And when he opened the fruit, he said, 'this is the body of my daughter.'

And the fruit was the coconut, the fruit of life, from which all things spring.

And then, with much less fanfare, he told me another story, about a maiden whose life was also at peril, and whose parents went searching in the jungle.

But the parents did not search for fruit, but for a piece of the Holy Cross, which the maiden said would heal her.

There was no Holy Cross, but the parents brought her a piece of wood, and told her it was the Holy Cross. And she so much believed them, she was saved.

She was giving salvation by a higher power, but she did not give herself in the way that our first maiden had, my friend the historian said.

I don't know what these stories mean -- beyond being an example the stupid ways that Christianity ruins stuff. 

I didn't actually use any of this stuff in my story, which I wrote, a few perfunctory quotes from the historian included.

But I got to hear a story. 

And now, in turn, do you.