The belief system at Yap

Harm en Cindy op reis

Antarctica Argentinië Paaseiland Chili Trinidad & Tobago Guatemala Verenigde Staten Hawaii Micronesië Japan Noord-Korea China Namibië

The belief system at Yap

The monster of Yap

A lot of myths exist at Yap. The one that intrigued us most, is the myth of the monster of Yap. We were talking to some people on the typhoon that destroid the most of Yap in 2001. We were told that the old generation still beliefs that hurricanes and earth quakes are caused by the monster of the sea. In their opinion, Yap is located on a huge stone. This stone is wide at the bottom and very small at the top, like a triangle. At the top of this triangle, Yap is situated. If the people do not respect the nature and the environement, the monster get angry and starts eating at the side of the stone, which causes earth quakes. Because he is not ammused, the sea gets nervous. So it is important to respect the laws of nature! The new generation looks at this thought as a myth, since "the more we know, the less gods we need for explaining things".

Religion

Originally, Yap is animistic, like almost everywhere in the world: everything that cannot be understood is explained by creating a god for it, like the monster of Yap. So there were gods of the moon, the land, the jungle etcetera. Furthermore, they original Yapese people believed in reincarnation: you return as a plant or an animal. This "religion" is no longer practised in Yap since the Spanish introduced Christianity. In the traditional outer islands (as they are called), you can still find the animism. Unfortunatly, we had no possibilty to visit these islands.

Nowadays, over 80% of the Yapese people is Catholic. The smart Spaniards used the chiefs to convert the islands by introducing the heaven and hell. The Yapese of course thought it would be much more interesting to go to heaven than to return to the earth as a banana tree of fruit bat. And who can blame them? Apart from catholics you can find evangelists, jehova witnesses, protestants, babtists (who are having there own radio station at Yap!), bahai mormones and 7th day evangelists. To quot out guide: " more religions than inhabitants!" Remarkable is that there are hardly any atheists, everybody beliefs in a bigger force.


A church. Watch the drawings at the wall

 

The ceremony

Coincidently, a big ceremony was planned during our stay at Yap to remember a priest that passed away. We had ourselves being invited for the ceremony twice, so we decided to go. It started at 11 AM, so everybody arrived at about noon. The Yapese quarter of an hour is very long. The ceremony started with a religious worship. Interesting to see was that the Catholic mass was unified with the Yapese tradition. After the mass, a big lunch was arranged. They had food for everyone (over 700 people)! The lunch took about two hours, after which a program of dancing and singing started, performed by the local church communities. It was amazing to see how all these different people had a big party together: from modern rap to traditional dances. The most impressive whas the final dance, where all women sitting in a long line sang and danced with their arms. We had never seen this before!


The mass
Appyling the oil

The preparation
And more preparation

The dance
The dance

The youngest in line
The oldest in line