Ifalik

This has appeared on a doorway on Finchley Road. It seems an appropriate thing to see as I walk to and from work, since that's about how I feel by the end of most days!

Nothing much to tell about yesterday -- more book covering, book repairing, shelving, wrangling little kids in the Lower School, etc. A typical day. I wore a gray sweater to work that I'd worn in Penzance, and I became aware about halfway through the day that it didn't smell very fresh. Don't you hate it when you suddenly realize that people might be cringing as you walk away from them, wondering if your shower is out of order? That made me self-conscious for the rest of the day.

After posting my old school certificates the other day I began thinking about another episode from elementary school. I remember we did a unit in the fourth grade about a remote coral atoll in the Pacific. I couldn't immediately remember the name, but it eventually came to me -- Ifalik. I haven't thought about this in years, but I remember being very interested in life on Ifalik, which seemed like a tropical paradise with a lagoon and people eating breadfruit and that kind of thing. There was a lot of emphasis on the breadfruit.

I got to wondering why kids in rural Florida spent multiple days learning about life on Ifalik. I suppose it's just as valid as learning about life in India or Germany or anywhere else, and in fact Ifalik -- as part of the Caroline Islands in Micronesia -- was a territory administered by the United States at the time. So maybe that made it even more relevant, as a far-flung part of our own country. (It has since become independent.) I did some Googling to see if anyone else on the interwebs mentioned this specific memory from school.

I didn't find any first-hand accounts, but I did find a "Teacher's Guide to Economic Concepts" for fourth to sixth graders from 1975. On page 101, under "Division of Labor: Specialization: Interdependence," it listed a fourth grade textbook called "Regions Around the World." Page 74 of that textbook is summarized this way: "Ifalik is isolated. Its contacts with the world beyond the reef are very limited. The people meet most of their needs with things that are found on the atoll."

So my guess is, we were using that textbook. And maybe I remember the breadfruit so prominently because the whole point was to study the economy of Ifalik, which would have concerned labor and food production. It's funny what sticks in our heads, isn't it?

Addendum: Here's a post from a travel blogger who more recently visited Ifalik and a nearby island, and has some excellent photos of life there.