Xavier Day Ridiculous Fun

When I first started working at Xavier, I thought some of the “traditions” held by the students were somewhat silly, but this past weekend has solidified my thoughts. Working at a boarding school is certainly an “interesting” experience, especially when it entails all boys, because it becomes summer camp-esc on the weekends. A lot of the ridiculous events are meant to “scare” the freshmen and would be thought of as hazing in an American context. At Halloween, the returning students pretended that one of the junior boys had become possessed. The boy acted as if he was having seizures and was even removed from the rest of the student body to be “taken to the hospital.” Many of the staff members thought this was ridiculous and pretty much crossing the line of being inappropriate. Not to mention that it certainly advocates the misconception commonly found out here that seizures are a result of evil spirits or black magic. No joke- one of the Micronesians I know told me that when he was younger, his friend would occasionally have seizures and they thought the cure for a seizure was to punch the person and pull on his or her ears. So, whenever his friend had a seizure he would punch him and pull his ears. Within a short while, his friend’s seizure would end. Therefore, not only could he have possible brain damage post-seizure, but he would also have bruises all over his body! That’s whole other story though. So in the end, freshmen boys ended up “scared” from the Halloween “tradition,” and some of them even had trouble sleeping for several days.

Now, here comes Xavier Day. It is a 2-day celebration of the Feast of St. Xavier, including running, basketball, volleyball, coconut husking, basket weaving, arm wrestling, obstacle courses, tug of war, relay races, sprints, a dizzy race, eating contests, etc. (I now have a really cool purse made of coconut leaves thanks to one of my students). It was a lot of fun for the students and me. As I have mentioned before, I really enjoy the opportunities I get to spend time with the students, especially the girls outside of the classroom. My favorite event had to have been the dizzy race. So the scheduled activities were all fun and appropriate, but the events of Friday night (before Day 2) would absolutely not occur anywhere else but at Xavier High School. The boys from different island nations (Palau, Yap, Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and the Marshalls) planned to fight each other at multiple times throughout the night in an effort to pump themselves up to be competitive for the continued games on Saturday- literally, violent, physical fights, but staged or fake so that nobody actually got “hurt” (or at least that was the hope). Now, only the freshmen didn’t know that the fights were deliberate so again, the intention of the night was to scare the freshmen and to make them cry. At least that is what resulted from it last year based on what the other volunteers said. Now, don’t you feel like you are at summer camp, because I do! So the fighting started at about dinnertime with banging, screaming, shouting, etc. and continued intermittently for a couple hours. I wonder how long this has actually been a tradition? I know my mind is American, but the whole night I just couldn’t cease to think this would never happen anywhere else and it is only a matter of time until the “tradition” turns out of control and dangerous. I guess that stems from the American mentality that has been ingrained within me the last 22 years. Even better, on Saturday morning all of the girls planned physicals fights to occur on each vehicle. Imagine 8 girls on the back of a pickup and 2 or 3 of them trying to beat each other up also.

While the fighting events were ridiculous in my opinion, all of Saturday’s events were fun and inspiring. While the idea of the day was not foreign to me since I grew up participating in “Field Days” in school, never did I have such a day in high school. It wouldn’t have worked very easily in a school of 1200; however, this notion really got me thinking about how different my upbringing was in a well-to-do American family. The students here absolutely love Xavier Day. They look forward to the next year’s games the day after the games end, they “train” throughout all of the first semester for the relays, and they talk to encourage each other as if participating in Xavier Day is a life or death decision. It’s actually pretty funny to witness. This is what I heard one of my juniors saying on Saturday to his friend that was getting nervous about a race, “Man, you can’t chicken out now. You only have one Xavier day left after this!”

After watching the enthusiasm of the students, I thought about how as I child I was always involved in something that gave me something to work towards. Whether it was ballet or baton, soccer or softball, swimming or gymnastics, or even choir or band, I was always actively involved in activities that inspired me to work towards a goal. The children of Micronesia are not given this gift. Very little to nothing is organized to provide that opportunity or build the skills that come along with participation in such. I always grew up around facilities for such activities. Back home one of the top priorities of schools is maintaining and enhancing its facilities. It is somewhat refreshing to see how resilient the students are and how much can be accomplished without a state of the art field or gym. A little sand laid down for track lines works excellent!

Anyways, I think this is one of the reasons why Xavier Day becomes a very big deal. It is organized, it is competitive, and it is something that most other kids all across Micronesia don’t have. Now, this year in my first few weeks of being in Chuuk, I saw the Sapuk elementary school hold running races. So maybe things are starting to change little by little, but there is a long road ahead. The way people talked about the “Sapuk games” it was the biggest event to occur in the village in a long time. Most of the schools are struggling to minimally function without reliable teachers and functioning facilities (bathrooms, septic systems). And the organized volleyball [and basketball] I had been participating in has since stopped due to escalating violence between men of different villages. The odds seem against community organizing.

But, the Xavier Day events ended with the Senior-Freshmen team beating the Junior-Sophomore team. It was nice to watch the united, happy spirit among the students despite defeat. They all had fun regardless of the winning or losing. The juniors prepared a cheer for the seniors and the whole school joined hands in a circle across the whole field to pray together at the end. A little Jesuit cheer had to come in at some point.

A New Boil

So I've quickly learned that a bad spot for a boil is the tip of your elbow! Today and tomorrow is "Xavier Day," which is basically like a huge field day for the kids with sports events and eating contests in celebration of the Feast of St. Xavier. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. Happy Friday! A week and a half until Semester Exams (and then I'm basically a fourth of the way done)! Hope everyone enjoyed the pictures I sent out last weekend. If you didn't get the email, let me know. Talk soon. Peace.
-Steph