The Yapese people

Harm en Cindy op reis

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The Yapese people

Family

At Yap, everything relates family and family relations. Everybody knows their family members up to its seventh line. This has to be like this, since on diffent lines, different rules apply. Because it is a very small island and the families are big (10 or more children), the genealogical register is not really a tree but a spaghetti structure. An uncle at your mother's side can be your brother at your father's side, nephews are brothers and nieces are sisters. Yep, no structure to be found at all...

 

One of the most import rules is that a woman is always below a man. There are a lot of rules on how a woman has to behave when she is near her cousins, nephews and brothers. For example, she is not allowed to pass them when they are sitting somewhere; she either has to wait, crowl, or find an alternative way! This rule still applies! The rule does not hold (!?) for uncles and fathers. The father/ daughter behaviour is quite normal in our view. The behaviour near uncles is very complex. The woman has to use another language when communicating with uncles (other words, sentences). The uncles have an important role in their life, she has to ask for permission for everything she want to do. Also, complicated rule apply to communication among women. To give an example, women are not allowed to touch women from mother's side, but they can touch women from the father's family. Are they related to both the father and the mother (which is 9 out of 10 times the case), then the father's sides rules apply.

Marriage and divorce

What is very interesting at Yap is the marriage and divorce rituals. We shall start with the marriage since in most cases these precede the divorce rituals (and also this is not trivial at Yap!).

The marriage

Up until today, the man looks for a women in his own caste,. Nowadays, the rules are fading out... The man asks via its female relatives (mainly aunts) permission at her male relatives (mainly uncles and cousins) to marry her. As soon as her uncles and cousins grant permission, she has little choice.

After granted permission, the woman is introduced to the female relatives of the man. A ceremony takes place where she receives a lavalava(traditional skirt). In this way, she gets accepted by her future family. Next, a marriage ritual takes place. Nowadays, marriage takes place at the churcg, this used to be at the community house in the man's village. This was not officially written down. The family of the man 'pays' the family of the woman with stone money, lavalavas and other valuables. The woman moves to the village of the man. It is not really clear to us how the marriage itself takes place. Probably this can be compared to a marriage in a Catholic church in our country.


A lavalava is being weaved...

 

The divorce

The only reason to divorce is when the man is unfaithful (women apparently do not do this at Yap). When the man cheats, both the man and his girlfriend are responsible. He is cheating and she has to know that he is married. As a result, the wife can ask het male relatives to go to the homes of the two cheaters to confiscate goods. They do this by wrapping them in young palm leaves (including televisions and cars). When the cheaters arrive home, they find out that their possesions are being picked up later. The consequences of the bad behaviour is accepted without discussion (you have to or you are arguing the entire island). The man can apologise by offering loads of lavalavas, money and other valuables to the womans family. The wife's family always accepts the offer. If the excuses do not do, they keep the offers and the and man has bad luck. If the apology is sufficient, the affair is put aside and never taked about again.

The villages

The people still mainly live in small villages. You should not think of streets with houses, but of a forest with sheds. A village contains a community house, a mens house and often a church. A village actually is one family or a few families that are closely connected. They do everything together, from fishing to growing the children. The houses in the villages originally were built of wood and leaves. After the typhoon of 2001, the people decided to use concrete fundings and a lot of metal. Not as beautiful, but understandable. The houses stay sheds with only one or two rooms. Cooking, washing and visiting the bathroom is done outside. Inside they sleep and store some goods. Actually, they are small shelters for the tropical rains.


A shed built after the typhoon
A traditional house

 

Clothing

As mentioned a few times, women are expected to wear lavalavas. These are coloured, woven skirts. It takes weeks to weave one skirt. This makes them very valuable. Nowadays, almost all women wear them. The modern generation also wears t-shirts, the old generation is topless and apparently were this for all their life ;-)

Men also wear traditional clothes: the so-called thu. These are blue of white cloths that they wrap around their hips. The wrapping is not like a skirt, they also wrap inbetween their legs. It looks a bit like sumo wrestlers. Depending on your age, you have to wrap differently, showing more or less muscles. We also saw men in a purple thu, no idea why... When men leave Yap and wear pants, they wear a thu under it. This looks very weird! Modern Yapese men wear shorts and baskelball shirts.


A lavalava but also modern clothings
A man in a thu

Children wearing traditional clothings
but also jeans...

 

Everybody dresses as if he is on a holiday. So no suits! Beach slippers, t-shirt, shorts, that's it! We love this! Even the modern generation is not worried about fashion. A law is proposed to ban ties and suits from Yap! We vote Yea!

Floral wreaths

The only fashion at Yap is wearing floral wreaths at your head and like a necklace. In contrast to what you'd expect, it is mainly the men and tough guys that wear them. So did Harm! A rules exists that tells a woman to hand over het wreath as soon as a man asks for it. The woman is not allowed to refuse and has to make a new one for herself. Cindy ws not willing to join in this tradition. Too bad! But enough women left to ask for a wreath ;-)

 

Communication

What we do not yet understand is the tough communication with the Yapese people. Despite speaking the same language, we had plenty of time and we kept repeating, everything went wrong. Every day we got a breakfast we did not order, even if we asked them to repeat our order. Also, making an appointment at Yap is impossible. Three times in a row, a taxi did not show up and arranging something via the hotel's reception turned out to be not possible. In our opinion it is not that hard, but it just did not work out. Maybe it is us, or it is because everybody is chewing betel nuts all day, we have no idea.

What we also found out is that the commercial people at Yap think that we (read: western tourists) have infinitly much money. For a simple tour you pay a lot! In contrast to that, when you try to arrange something they all of a sudden offer it for free!?