Saipan

Why I love Saipan?

Well, first of all my apologies tothe one or two readers I here for not writing anything for nearly 2 months, but there are other obligations in the life of a college student.

But to the topic: Angelo Villagomez sent me a comment to mention why I love Saipan. Do I love it? Yes, and no!

To answer this question completely, I would have to dig in my past. So get your favorite beverage and some sashumi, this might be a longer story.

It is an open secret that I met the best wife in the world (mine) via the internet while I was sitting in the cold and rainy Netherlands, using a chat program to keep the cost for contacting my buddies in Germany low. So, now there she knocked on my door under the handle of "isla bonita". The more we chatted with each other, the more I fell in love with her - and after six years of marriage, I love her more and more. To make a short story long: I gave up my career in middle management, sold my house and moved to Saipan.

Leaving the airport of Saipan was something that changed my life completely. After sitting in different airplanes for 16 hours, and spending the same amount of time in climatized - meaning effing cold - airports I walked into a wall of hot air when walking out of my first door in Saipan. It was a "wow" sensation. 2000 was a hot summer in Europe, but not as hot as here, and I was in love with the island right away.
Jetlagged as I was the first couple of days, I enjoyed the trips over the island. It was a new world for me. The third world look of parts of Saipan were very romantic for a westerner, and I closed my eyes to the trash all over the place.
However, I sobered up rather quickly. Finding a job wasn't easy. Either I was overqualified or underqualified, or I simply had the wrong family ties. But somehow I still survive.

Did the love to this place lessen in the last six years? - Yes, it did! But differently than you might think.
When you google for Saipan, the first thing you might find will be the infamous saipansucks site. While this guy is not necessarily wrong, one should keep in mind that this site was created by a disgruntled guy with his head in the sand. But this is actually my main point of critique: The head in the sand.
There are many things wrong on Saipan, as elsewhere in the world. Saipansucks describes them all. However, it is fine to describe things that could be improved, but you also should get your act together to fix them, or at least help to fix.
And leads me to the point where I hate Saipan. Whenever I get introduced to yet another uncle or cousin by my wife, the first question is "and how do you like our island". My answer is more polite than honest meanwhile. Why? Well, the thing is that whenever you are invited to one of the many rosaries, and the discussions go to the government, it only leads to bitching, but if you suggest sometghing you are shouted down. How can a foreigner know how to solve our problems? At the beginning, I was rather frustrated about this xenophobia, but meanwhile I have the feeling it is rather the fact that the locals are afraid from the changes, and the incommodities related to the changes. The status quo is something to bitch about, but to change something would be too much work.

Angelo sent me a link to the anti-saipansucks site http://www.welovesaipan.com/
I quickly looked over it. The first thing you see is that folks contributing to this site are either FOB or come back home after a long absent. What about the folks living in this place and never had the chance or the will to leave the island? What would be their contribution to "we love Saipan"?

Besides the fact that it would be impossible to have a beer in the shadow of a mango tree just wearing a pair of Hawai'i shorts in Germany, I love Saipan, because it is the best place in the world to raise your kids in a still somehow healthy environment. However, as it looks at the moment, our kids won't find much of a future here, unless we stop to rely on rip-off-artist style foreign investors, but rather think of what we have available and build our future based on this. All it needs is a bit of thinking outside of the box.

I will be a teacher somewhen but hate grades. I'd rather give comments on a student's abilities. For Saipan I'd say "this place has the tools available for improvements. It just would have to want to".

To Angelo's request: I am not sure if this blog entry qualifies me to be included in the welovesaipan site, but I still love this effing place!

posted by Claus @ 5:21 PM