Oddly enough, I was out last night, only my
"boat" was considerably smaller. Between my class schedule,
weather, and the tide, I have only gotten out bodyboard surfing a few
times, but those few times have been quite nice.
When I was in Peace Corps we were encouraged to have a "secondary
project." Secondary projects were all the rage, and success as a
volunteer was measured in part by having a good secondary
project. While I am sure there were some useful and productive
secondary projects, many were "flashes in the pan" that likely fizzled
upon the departure of the volunteer.
I never did find a secondary project. I pretended that an attempt
to plant winged beans was a secondary project, but beetles ate all of
the flowers. Once I discovered that Okuapemman had hosted
volunteers since the 1960s, I realized that I could plant pineapples
for the benefit of volunteers who might come after me. And so I
planted every pineapple top.
A couple of the Peace Corps volunteers here have, as a "secondary
project", taken up teaching some of the local young kids to surf.
Kosraens have an ancient tradition of surfing. In the local
language surfing is referred to as lallal noa. The local boys
and small girls of Malem village still haul out any piece of flattish
wood, these days preferably a hunk of plywood, and surf the waves that
break at the reef's edge. The two volunteers have taught about 20 kids
to surf.
They were assisting their new most recent pupils last Saturday.
The local kids are quite capable swimmers and are very level headed in
the water. Malem has a channel in the reef and every so often a
kid gets swept out into the open ocean. The kids know to either
come back through the surf or tread water until an adult is sent out to
help them back in through the reef breakers.
Saturday one of the two pupils said he wanted to try to catching some
waves on his own (each pupil is on a board provided by one of the
volunteers). So while the two volunteers worked with the other
boy, the one tried his own hand at paddling into the surf.
He wasn't able to catch a wave and eventually wound up in the
channel. Now our local boys know to avoid the channel when they
play on the reef, but once in the channel this chap was not sure what
to do. He began to try to paddle to shore, but the channel was
ripping out too fast, so he was going backward. This apparently
shook him, he looked a tad worried, but said nothing and kept paddling
harder towards shore. He eventually reached an equilibrium where
his paddling balanced the current, and he was starting to look tired.
So I caught a wave into the inside and then paddled into the
channel. I then used my broken Kosraen to explain what was
happening, and told him to look at the water surface. The
channel, like all rips, forms a uniquely bouncy surface consisting of
triangular or pyramidal waves.
Being a body boarder with fins, I towed him on his board sideways out
of the channel. As we went I pointed out the features of the
bottom (the water here is two hundred foot visibility, no kidding) that
he could also use to determine where he was relative to the rip.
He seemed much relieved.
He then headed in along a path I suggested (using local referents) and
made it back into the smaller waves of the reef shelf.
I asked the one volunteer if he had explained the channel. He
said he had gone over it a number of times, but the kid had gotten
confused. We use the channel to get out through the breakers to
the line-up, the kid had thought that was also the way back for some
reason.
Anyway, I thought the secondary project was one of the better one's I'd
ever heard. No, the project was not going to improve the economy,
assist a family, or provide rural development. The project is
simply making some small boys experience joy and excitement. And
that is worthy.
~~~
It has been a busy summer on Kosrae, finals loom next week.
Still, when I do get free time I try to spend it with the kids rather
than in front of the computer. Three nights ago the kids and I
got out onto the reef - a shallow high tide - and Sharisey and Marlin
tried bodyboarding the waves that run on top of the reef. Small
waves. Marlin was all excited when one wave carried him all the
way to shore.
It's not like they can swim. The water was two feet deep at our
launch point and shelved up to the beach, so everyone could stand
up. Marlin is learning not to panic when he tumbles off the board
into the water, which is great progress. Sharisey tried starting
in slightly deeper water. Just being on the reef is helping them
gain some water sense.
You can catch a picture of Shrue at the recent baptism of her twin
nephews at:
http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/kosrae/twins_baptized.html
This summer I am using GNU Image
Manipulation Program 2.2, an open source photo editing package with
more bells and whistles than I know what to do with. Earlier in
the summer I found that 2.2 had a new filter based on the the retinex
theory. NASA apparently worked out a retinex algorithm.
Anyway, retinex often does odd things to a photo, but occasionally it
works miracles.
The page at http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/ca/images.html
includes the original shot, in which the white wall behind the subjects
caused everything to underexpose. I did my usual tweaking of the
balance and curves in the second shot on that page. In the third
shot I took the original image and applied only the retinex
filter. The filter has brought out details in their dresses and
faces, made the girl in the dark doorway visible, and had an enormous
impact on the reflection in the church window. All with the
filter simply running completely in default automatic mode.
The upshot, as I understand it, is that the filter processes an image
in manner akin to our brain, which automatically readjusts the
brightness and contrast across a scene so as to make the whole scene
visible to our brain. Something like that.
I should note that I somehow pulling this off on an old Windows 98
computer with limited RAM. I remain impressed with GIMP and
continue to use it. I used GIMP to index down the PNG on http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/ca/419fraud.html
to only 32 colors, letting GIMP decide on the optimization. The
result is small 34 Kb screen shot image with color fidelity.