Beyond That Horizon

One morning Pita announced that he needed to take his favorite shirt down to the lagoon and soak it in the salt water. I guess he was going to try some ancient island secret to get a stain out of his favorite shirt. We jumped in the truck ( he didn’t have a driver license so I had to do all the driving) and headed for the lagoon.

While going down the embankment of the lagoon, Pita stubbed his toe on a piece of coral and ended up with a big gash. So, while he was at the water’s edge, he soaked his bleeding foot in the salt water, too.

A day or so later, his foot became infected and he was quite ill. I took him to the hospital to have him checked out. The medic on duty put him into a room and hooked him to an IV. For the next few days, I sat in his room and did nothing – well actually I read books and listened to music. It was very relaxing. The hospital was an open-air building that was not cleaned regularly. This was the first of a few interesting experiences I had at that hospital.

One time, we went to the hospital to visit Be’nug, a church member who was mentally challenged - kind of a simpleton. Be’nug was in for some kind of ailment. We had Jeff with us, a Pohnpeian joker who liked pulling people’s chains. As we visited with Be’nug, who incidentally looked really sick, Jeff told Be’nug that he had just spoken with a doctor who said he would be taken in for surgery real soon. He said they were planning to saw one of his arms off and sew a baseball bat in its place. Be’nug’s eyes lit up and he got real scared. Jeff laughed thinking he was funny. Later that night, Be’nug packed his things and escaped – he didn’t want to go the rest of his life with a baseball bat for an arm!

Jeff was a pro baseball fanatic. He named his three sons after famous baseball players. They were Willie-Mays, Roger-Maris, and Mickey-Mantle. Those were their real first names; no joking!