Most Mystifying Micronesian Magic!

The following tale of the Pacific is, believe it or not, absolutely true...

We (my wife and I ) lived for over seven years on the island of Yap (one of the island states of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), some 1,000 kilometer south of Guam, way out in the Western Pacific Ocean).

We had a car, a Suzuki Samurai vintage 1987, which I bought new early 1988, and had shipped from Morgan Hill, California to Yap with the rest of my household stuff back in 1999, when I first moved to Yap.

After giving my wife driving lessons (never do this: bad idea!) over at the abandoned old airport runway, down in Gilman, she wanted to get her own personal driver’s license, and we had to use our own car for the “test drive.” Unfortun­ately, the odometer cable had gone permanently out of service—rusted through by the fresh and clean but highly corrosive salt-saturated Micronesian air—several months earlier, so the Yapese inspector refused to let us use our car for the examination ride (working speedometer a requirement).

So I start scouting for another cable. I went over to one of Yap’s two car repair shops, and inquired as to the time needed to order an odometer cable for a Suzuki Samurai model -87. Hiroshi-san (the Japanese owner, a good friend of ours) informed me that Suzuki only stock parts for 15 years, but we could give it a try... and if they still had the item in stock, it would take from six to ten weeks to have it shipped.

My wife was so disappointed, having looked forward to finally be able to drive around the island, on her own, for quite some time… What to do?

After scouring Yap for abandoned cars, asking around in many villages, from Gilman (down south) to Gagil (up north), I actually got some promising leads! I managed to hack my way through thick jungle vegetation, to find a few Suzuki Samurai wreck locations, all thoroughly jungleized, and none of which had a usable odometer cable to salvage. Fat chance…

So I went back to Hiroshi-san, to try my luck ordering a cable from Japan. As I stand there negotiating with the girl behind the desk, Martin (young Yapese guy, worked for Hiroshi-san as a mechanic) came in, and told me he had overheard my earlier discussion with Hiroshi-san, and that he seemed to recall that he saw something like what I was looking for in a scrap heap behind the hospital, a few years back... Grasping for this rather fragile-sounding straw, I said, “Hey! Let’s go check it out!”

In a flash, we’re off to the nearby Yap hospital, and enter the jungle behind it. We finally locate this huge scrap heap, a veritable chaos of old engine blocks and radiators and axles and wheels and many thoroughly corroded things of unrecognizable shapes and sizes, and several big piles of mixed scrappy old car-related stuff.

I remember thinking to myself, “Finding a working odometer cable here… Yeah, right!”, and listlessly poked around in the miscellaneous heap, when suddenly my eye happened to fall on a suspicious-looking small piece of white plastic, sticking out from under one huge pile of junk...

Pulling it out, I discover to my total amazement what it was that I had found: a brand new odometer cable for Suzuki Samurai model 1987, packed in factory plastic, with protective grease. Condition: brand factory new! I had my broken cable removed and the new installed (took Martin all of ten minutes), and my wife got her Yap State driver’s license the very next day!

The subject 1987 Samurai, seven years later (photo snapped in March 2009)

What I have ever since been asking myself, time and time again, is: How could this have happened? What were the chances???

The moral of the story: Be very careful what you wish for! It may well—and especially if you’re assisted by ancient Yapese “white magic”—come true!

Henry Norman

PS. I have stored some photographic memories from my seven years on Yap in a Picasaweb photo album: Check it out via goo.gl/reOUz!