Little Maya seemed completely oblivious the hullabaloo around her. From looking at her, you wouldn’t realize that this is her party. The drooling and staring off into space were too engrossing, and she simply couldn’t be bothered to give her guests as much as eye contact or a smile.
Maya wasn’t there for most of the party. I got there a couple hours in. Still made it before lunch time. Palauans have celebrated first births in more or less the same way since time immemorial. Food. Alcohol. Gifts. They transcend time and culture.
Although new motherhood in the United States is usually a private affair; in Palau, it’s very public. There were well over a hundred people gathered in the sweltering, unrelenting, adjective-defying heat. Fortunately, the families erected open tents to provide shade. There were no other haoles present except for Ryan and Holly. There was also one Japanese tourist couple happily taking pictures. I work with Maya’s grandma, so I have an in. And the tourists weren’t exactly party-crashers. First birth ceremonies are generally open to all; but hopefully they got permission to take pictures, like Holly did.
Lunch was soon served. I spoke with Rachel yesterday, who is an American lawyer who is married to a Palauan man and has lived in Palau for many years, and she mentioned her family’s obligation to contribute to the party.
“Let me think; this time, we’re money.”
Huh?
“The man’s side is money; the woman’s is food.”
It looked like the man’s side has it easier. There was a veritable Mt. Everest of food: fried fish, crabs and crabs and crabs, chicken, veggies, taro, tapioca. And not one (because, really, who serves just one?) giant cooked whole pigs, with their sad lifeless snouts staring at me accusingly (their eyes were closed, so, yes, they stared with their noses). I didn’t eat them, but Ryan said the skin was delicious. Yipes. Oddly, Terry (Grandma) escorted us to the front of the line, which seemed wildly inappropriate. But in a country with rigid social hierarchies, I’m not sure one can decline haole privilege. Though we profoundly apologized to everyone in line.
While gorging ourselves, we were treated to a dance by a group of girls from the new Dad’s hometown. They wore flower print dresses, garlands on their waists, and flowers in their hair. Palauan dance is not exactly like thetourist-consumable hula I’ve seen, but it’s hard not to see the relationship—it was the same magical hip movements; by girls who barely had hips! Women their mothers’ and grandmothers’ ages, on the other hand, definitely had hips and were prepared to wield them. As the girls finished up their last song, several older women danced up on stage, dollar bills in hand. They matched the girls’ apparently familiar movements and walked along the line of them, placing a greenback in each girl’s hand. By the end of their dance, each girl had a fist full of dollars. Literally.
Too cute!
After some more sitting and waiting and singing, Mom finally arrived. The singer, a woman of about forty in a yellow sarong and yellow shirt, started a slightly more solemn song which gradually increased in rhythm and bawdiness. Out of the house came the new mom and her mother. Mom was the iconic image of Palauan femininity and fertility: She wore a crown made of feathers from one of the islands’ many sea birds, a coconut shell bra, a coconut shell belt, and a cumbersome grass skirt in red and black. She held her right elbow to her body with her left hand and a leaf covered in oil in her right. She marched out, choking on her laughter and grimacing a bit in the heat. Her skin was covered, drenched, and shimmering with coconut oil and herbs, a secret recipe, which is always unique to the family or clan, but which left her with a decided yellow hue.
The first birth celebration comes after days—up to ten—of isolation by Mom. She stays at home (here “home” is a family member’s house—Mom and Dad live in Hawaii) and is pretty much limited to caring for her baby and taking “baby baths.” One Peace Corps Volunteer I spoke with described the Palauan baby bath as a “steaming hot douche” punctuated with “splashes of boiling water” which is only slightly deflected by the oil mixture rubbed on the skin. A few weeks ago I was talking to the law librarian who had her first child in California and, upon her return to Palau, tried to avoid the whole business. She was told by her mother, in no uncertain terms, that she “shouldn’t have gotten pregnant then.” For all its unpleasantness, the bath, according to the same PCV, may have some health benefits. For a more informed account than mine, and with better pictures, see this blog.
For the next several hours (I left after about an hour and a half) Mom would stand on the platform/dance floor and receive gifts of dancing and dollar bills from the women in attendance. She was pretty much only allowed to move her hips. Her mother provided water, the occasional pat down, the occasional re-oiling, and a bottle to spit out betel nut. The singer was not in the background; she was on the dancefloor shaking her hips, occasionally sitting on a bench and grinding against it in a way that wasn’t subtle.
Even though not a single woman in attendance had so much as a shoulder exposed, the dancing and grinding around Mom was anything but prudish. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers grabbed Mom’s hips to help her sway them; all the while doing their own version of a booty dance. One great-grandmother hobbled (but still shaking her booty like a champ) up to the singer and indelicately stuffed a dollar down her shirt. At one point the singer began a song and started to massage her right breast. I don’t know Palauan, but I think Holly got it right that it was probably a song about breastfeeding.
Holly and I, of course, joined in on the platform—right at the end of a song, just to drop some money in a basket. I regret not shakin’ it with the grannies, moms, girls, and toddlers on stage. It was an amazing party and ceremony. One thing I love about Palauan culture is that, for all its religiosity and conservatism, it is able still to celebrate fertility and motherhood in a way that doesn’t deny the human-ness of the whole thing. The ceremony was bawdy but not lewd, a distinction that seems to get lost in the States. [Steps on soapbox. Prepares to use a potentially warped interpretation of other culture to indict members of her own.] The fact that American religious conservatives don’t see a difference between a breast exposed to nourish a child and one exposed to arouse is not just puritanical—it’s pathological. It’s another way that mothers are shamed, rather than celebrated. And of course, heaven forbid that the sexual side of fertility be openly celebrated, by women of all ages, out in the open. Think of the children! [Steps off soap box.]
The party raged on well after I left. I’m reasonably sure, by the number of beverages in reserves, that it will go well into the rest of tonight. Not many babies can say they had such celebration in their honor—Maya is a lucky kid!
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