Summer of 1971

In the summer of 1971, 

    McDonald's had just opened its doors in Guam, I got my first kiss, and my parents sat four of us children down to announce their big plan to move from our home in Guam to California. My immediate reaction was shock, the move would be thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean and California was like another world to me. 

💃Feelings of unknown I felt in my stomach, swirling all around the way gumballs in those giant machines do when a quarter is placed in its slot. The move would mean leaving behind my friends, my newfound status in teenaged life, and the place in which I was born and had spent my entire life up to that point. Who would answer the door when my two best friends come knocking at six o'clock in the morning to pick mansanan potaki (small stinky apples) and go on bike rides?  Who would follow the Techa (Novena Prayer leader) from house to house, praying in front of elaborate nativity scenes for nine days and then, who would eat all the treats on the last day? 

👪 The closeness of our community that made it so special was also what made it so difficult to leave. Days after the announcement in the living room, my thoughts drifted between excitement and sadness.  I could not bear to leave, having just reached such and exciting age. i was fourteen years old and having finally overcame the ugly-duckling stage-scrawny and overly shy--received my first kiss from the cutest boy in the neighborhood. My dark curly hair finally relaxed into soft waves and I was at that dizzying height of instropection and adolescence mourning every seeming catastrophe between enjoying hours on the telephone, cheerleading, sports and of course, that first kiss.  

It was peculiar set up at summer camp. Raymond and three of his friends approached two of my friends and me. One of the boys cleared his throat, apparently metamorphosing from boy to man, and croaked. "Lou, Ray wants to talk to you." "Okay," I answered. Ray and I sat under a huge Kamachili tree surrounded by our friends and right then and there he kissed me. It was fantastic, I was in heaven for a second or two.

Fleeting from that euphoria, with nostalgic memories of days past flipping like the pages of photo album, I achieved so

me tacit rank in the teenybopper society, became popular for the brief span I had on island.  For a while, it seemed that kiss would serve to relieve the grief of leaving.

Unfortunately, the ties I had to my home extended far beyond girlhood adventures.  I had never lived anywhere else, our home was small and wooden and lit mainly by sunlight that filtered through the expanse of a multitude of large, screen windows.  As an architect, my father built the house conducive to the elements_Guam's tropical breezes blew sweet scents of fruit tress and flowering plants surrounding our yard into the  house_and every year since he built it in 1952, he would paint the house the same colour, foam green with sea green trim.  

My siblings and I to include the 4 elders, were all born at home by a midwife named NanKala, for the very reason that the eldest, born at Naval hospital right after the war.   That which my Mother experienced a horrible birthing of her firstborn.  She couldn't hold my brother Robert immediately after entry in to the world as the Anglo doctors thought babies needed to be washed scrubbed off as well as the moms and kept away for a day. It took two decades later when Kennedy's Job Corp-turned hippies helped change birthing  protocols 2 decades late.

Deeper ties not ever wanting to leave was that we all attended the same school from Kindergarten to middle school.  Everyday, we walked to San Vicente Catholic School, which was quite far but never felt its distance with the constant chatter and laughter amongst us.

After my parent’s announcement, my brothers and sister’ shrill screams of excitement could be heard from afar.  "Will we have our own room", we all wondered aloud and "Snow!  Freeways!  skyscrapers!"   We shouted the things we thought we might see, Mom and Dad laughing at our childish delight.

Orchestrating the actual relocation was more of a chore.  there were clothes to be sorted, dishes to be packed, and quite simply the lives of six people to be uprooted and moved overseas.  We packed our set of World book encyclopaedias that Mom and Dad purchased, by saving every penny they could spare, from the door-to-door salesman who came every Saturday morning the year before.

My parents instructed us to throw everything we did not need into the fire they had blazing in the yard, after Dad had refurbished the house as nice as new to a renter already excited to replace us as guardians of 'Gima Fleming', eyo I bula fruta yan flores siha.'  Our lawyer that handled the rental agreement fell in love with the 19 year old solid wooden home.

As the fire blazed, I rested on a smooth large rock near the fire; when I saw my only pillow, fall into the fire, bursting into tears, I leaped off the rock and quickly grabbed the pillow from the inferno.  I hugged it and buried my face in it, crying myself to sleep, the reality of what lay ahead finally realised.

The first significant event in my life gave me opportunities to see many different cultures, people, and places.  I appreciated my differences as well as the differences in people and their ways.  I also gained a clearer perspective of my parents' courage and stamina.  They were struggling financially, didn't speak or write English well, yet their vision for a brighter future for the younger four despite that my folks were already in their 50's, made a giant change in their own lives for us.  

No barriers for these two folks, Ursula and Tommy; within 3 years, and in my junior year, we moved into our own new home they purchased from hard work and sacrifices they both made for the love of family and home in Monterey, CA.

Research Paper on Yapese Dances and Legends

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Mankind End

Mankind End 

by Lourdes Fleming Alonso

The thunderous roar plunged deep into the darkest blue hole

awakening the meekest of us.

Immediately, night turned to day

Lasting longer than the one sixty years ago in 1945.

Explosive bright lights flickering tiered floral display

While illuminating the whole place;

a kaleidoscope of colors decorative and delicate

Except the terrifying bed gutted and slashed

where once laid the last vestige of the two-leggers.

It was apparently an important one

because they recovered it many years back.

Relentless, the cruel purges continued;

sludge killing and chemical poisoning 

turned the most colorful tapestries gray

and then the Giants disappeared.

Those blessed small enough to squirm 

 into the tiniest crevices---invisible---

manage to extinguish the misery

of the atmospheric conditions all around.

The apocalyptic blast was unlike any other.

The surreal bizarreness of the silence engulfed.

Finally, an end to the two-leggers!

AMOT

AMOT -  I value this CHAMORU WORD TO MEAN TWO THINGS,  ONE IS MEDICINE THE OTHER IS TO TAKE AWAY....I THEORIZE TO TAKE AWAY THE SICKNESS.

Rewound

The coal black jagged backstreets of  the village island was strewn with vagabonds, immigrants, surfers, goners and losers', handicapped, mentally retarded motte crew community of 2051 in Guam.  Yet it looked like right out of --- storybook of 10-14th century Europe with its 100 year wars.

Buildings charred, empty, dilapidated, baron land making it impossible to envision the once tropical trade wind and  joggers and sun tanners stretched peacefully all over the powder-white sandy beaches just 30 years ago.

 

A woman walking humped over with a long skinny crooked stick carrying her salvaging basket woven of plastic bags left over from days of plastic manufactured right on this once bustling island by the one and only Gene and Lydia Fleming Black Plastic Company' in the 80's.

The humped woman thinks she's died and gone to hell as she treks painfully uphill, she hears the mentally challenged, overweight and bald genderless people,  of their

 own making, ...they put on weight to keep the sex-hungry animals called men at bay and bald so to keep the lice and cockroaches off.

They call out, 'eh put some clothes on' to the 'cool cat surfer chics and dudes,, as the surfers rinse off their naked thin, sun-burned bodies from the water they've collected several hundred miles south in CHuuk Lagoon, the only island in Micronesia with unpolluted water.  About a thousand filled bags they'll sell for their meager lives.  The plastic bag was the only resource not worth a penny to the RICOS, (rich islanders crooked office subject). The new race remained indestructible buying up all bottles and all other recyclables for the Chinese, whose voted in our President , as we now are ruled by Chines president. (For ? ..later)

As the woman switched her carriage to her other shoulder  to ease the crease on her leathered-tanned  arm, it’s swishing plastics sounds stirred up the pack of hungry sleeping dogs.  They slept so soundly content with their morning feast earlier when one of the four-legged animals chewed-off a drunkard-sex-craved two-legged animal that no one bothered to help.  For some unknown reason, the old woman, firm in her believe, that this is 'Hell', closed her eyes, opened her arms up to the sky.

Here's what she saw...her life before her.  In  2012, all the pleasantries and 

.  Write in.

Rewound:  2000... Describe her good island living.

But when she opened her eyes, she saw the mangiest and biggest dog of the pact right on her, standing face to face, paw to palm, spread-eagle.

What she thought of again was that this is HELL, and so if she's in HELL, to hell with it all, she looked right at the dog and said, 'come on now be cool!  And when she felt that he was not going to let the pack see him cower to the gentle woman's touch, the woman felt her blood heat up and shouted 'oh yea how about I crack,.'..and from out of no where one surfer chic clad only in baby blue colored bra and panty, blond and fit, pulled an arrow the old woman had never seen before.  It looked like it was made out of whale-bones, possibly or bones of ancient people of CHamoru Micronesian in the Marianas. In sudden, all she heard was this ,'wisp' on her left side, and then a flying pack of dogs kicked up not dust, leaving nothing behind but dusts of gold filigree - 

*  (Truly I dreamt in detail above and below recorded story).  Historical facts researched .

Trickle

White sandy bunnies in bikini..'surfs up bro' called out one Shallese.  White-tanned golden people all around.  Breath of crisp linen scent fill the air in the year 2050.  Sprits  of underground perfume possibly siphoning through fiber optic sized earth deodorizer extending from the continental US or neighboring Guam, an island now the home to elitist tax haven mixture of land wealthy Guamanians and well-off military retirees.

The beach bunnies and frogs spent from long day of swimming and sunning, not knowing that the ground they are rolling around in is anything but powdery sand. The model-like group of teens are necking under the scorching purple sun.  Their eyes are violet and speckled with white dust resembling winter summer clear starry night.

As the setting sun lower, making room for the gray moon, a vacant eyed tribe walk past, heads lowered.   Completely invisible to the teens.  One wonders, are they ghosts?  

Facts below not dream.

http://youtu.be/1tnpD4ORmzM

Script:The world exposed of US's Lunatic idea to dump garbage and more toxic waste... In a thriller, murder, love in the trickle of the poison of deranged minds in beautiful people as toxic as the island...so beautiful yet contaminated.    

Characters are the new locals (children, of the once vital U.S military  post now citizens there and known as the Shallese of the Marshalls, who were  left behind to remain as they are contaminated in idyllic sizzles and fizzles into the atmosphere .   The main character is from an atoll, Arno,, having witness the dehumanizing effects of the atomic bomb test in 1954, dubbing the explosive 2 piece bathing suite Bikini, while  in France the two-piece bathing created more memories for the Great Ones, obviously .   The locals often scad in bikini and life idyllic.  But as a returning ghost.  learned the island is built from garbage and toxic wastes that helped pay for her college degree in the mainland she trickles in with the ghosts to return carma (at it's best..twists n turn). Come up with plot

Turns out the ghosts are super magnetically powered humans due to years of radioactivities leaking into their food and water, and air.

These 'ghosts', having managed to collect all the metals of earth and built themselves a super island home in space, self sufficient and terrestrial like-beings able to keep from illness or pain and formed a nation that is about to blow the arse of U.S. Continent and the  manufactures of the first known silken-siphone Garbage bin from west coast to Marshalls 

MAJURO, Marshall Islands — Bucking the global trend, a chain of Pacific islands is eyeing a multimillion-dollar plan to import American garbage.

While countries around the world are giving a thumbs down to the international trade in waste, the Marshall Islands sees profit and possible salvation from a plan to import up to one-tenth of the nontoxic waste produced on the West Coast.

The waste would be used as landfill to enlarge the chain of remote, low-lying atolls. In return, the Marshall Islands would also get millions of dollars in fees for the trash.

The nation's  parliament passed a resolution in March authorizing President Amata Kabua to negotiate a deal with a California-based company to ship millions of tons of rubbish.

Several other Pacific islands have recently turned down similar deals offered by U.S. firms to dispose of trash.

Admiralty Pacific Inc., a waste disposal company, hopes to begin transporting garbage to the Marshalls, 4,200 miles southwest of the United States, by June, 1990, and eventually ship tens of millions of tons a year.

Kabua, who first endorsed the scheme last October after meeting with Admiralty officials, says he wants the garbage for the money and for badly needed landfill in the archipelago.

The atolls cover a 70-square-mile area and few of its islands rise more than 5 feet above the sea.

But the environmentalist group Greenpeace is accusing the company, which says it wants to ship 10% of household waste produced on the U.S. West Coast, of trying to evade American regulations on waste disposal.

International Treaty

Most of the world's nations reached agreement on March 22 in Basel, Switzerland, on an international treaty to control the export of hazardous waste.

The convention aimed to curb what African countries called "garbage imperialism," dumping of waste by the West in the Third World.

Admiralty's owner, Dan Fleming, says the company will respect Majuro and Washington safety laws in shipping the waste to the Pacific nation, an operation he says will be cheaper than transporting it by land to other parts of the United States.

Imported waste is not a new concept to the 43,000 inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, a double chain of low-lying coral atolls that Washington used as a nuclear testing site in the 1950s.

Is it happening?  Who is getting the money?  Look at the deplorable living among the garbage by beautiful azure water.

Some 66 nuclear weapons were exploded on Bikini and Enewetak atolls at that time, and some areas are still uninhabitable due to radiation contamination.

The islands were a former United Nations Trust Territory administered by Washington until gaining semi-independence in 1986. They depend on U.S. aid for 90% of their government budget.

Members of Majuro's Parliament hotly debated the resolution on the garbage plan before passing it on March 10 by a 20-3 majority. Critics raised fears that the Marshalls might unknowingly end up importing toxic waste.

Sen. Hiroshi Yamamura, who represents an island contaminated by radioactive fallout from the 1950s testing, said Majuro had no way to be sure that the waste was safe.

"Do we really trust the Americans?" he asked in Parliament. "How can we know that the so-called household garbage is nontoxic waste?"

"Admiralty Pacific may hide the toxic waste in order to get the money," said Senator Tony de Brum. "More than 40 nations have turned down the U.S. offer regarding the dumping proposal. Why should the Marshall Islands accept it?"

In the last year, Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Tonga have turned down a variety of waste disposal and incineration schemes proposed by American firms.

Greenpeace estimates that a ton of American household garbage contains 20 pounds of toxic material, such as cleaning fluids, lead-based paints and pesticides, and that their removal would make a deal like the one proposed by Admiralty unprofitable.

President Kabua, who hopes to bring in as much as $56 million a year importing the trash, and his cousin and sponsor of the resolution, Sen. Imata Kabua, said Majuro could hire scientists to evaluate the safety of the plan.

The Majuro government says the plan still depends on the completion of environmental, landfill and other studies to see if it will benefit the Marshall Islands.

Admiralty is expected to complete an engineering feasibility study, which it began in January, this month.

The British pressure group Ark said last month that global warming because of the pollution-induced "greenhouse effect" could raise the world's sea levels by more than 15 feet over the next 60 years.

If such studies prove true, the Marshalls could be totally submerged.

https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/42669/solid-waste-management

-marshall-islands.pdf

(In progress 11/17/15)

http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/once-a-nuclear-test-site-group-of-pacific-islands-face-oblivion-again-1.380964#gallery

Note: include Poetry readings of 

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2014/09/23/marshall-islands-poet-we-deserve-to-do-more-than-just-survive

http://northwardho.blogspot.tw/2014/09/kathy-jetnil-kjin-cli-fi-poet-of-world.html

https://g.co/kgs/vWYZQ5

Wealthy retirees visit the Narshalles:  get photo credits from PATA, 

During a Pacific Asia Travel Association meeting held in Majuro, an avid hiker trailed off the path of from the  group of 10 elderly members.  Known for her soulful spiritual connection to land, her friends left her to her own path.  The first light of sun rise had just allowed Cher her glimpse of the locals wiggling out of a resin-like cocoon.  Pure glossy white webbed, a scent of rubbing alcohol filled the air.  The stark difference of herself waking up out of bed with messy hair  and  bloodshot eyes, the locals appearance of prepared disco-ready cone shaped haired glimmering across the silvery blue water splashes that awaits  their athlete bodies for their 10 miles swim across to ArnoAtoll.  Cher who packed in her fins and goggles chose a save distance to follow the jet setters , possibly 20 of ageless male and female equal in number. 

Once there, a row of coconuts were lined up for each to place between their thighs just halfway above waterline.    Twirling the coconuts it’s their thighs while holding up in unison towards the eastern horizon.  

Cher have heard from her once best friend Lana about how her a Great grand Aunt taught some of her cousins whose from the island of Tinian,  Arno regarded as the Sex School Island made Lana’s daughter Mara cringe with stories about teaching moves in the water to help one be a generous partner in the act of sex: face up floating and feeling the waves just lift and drop every inch of the body but to focus the move as if you were under your partners body.  Lana herself a descendant of Spanish catholic decrying sexual desires, halted from passing down her paternal tradition. Curious now, she asks herself indeed how did this traction come into their life.  Even before he violent no bomb, historical pirates travels of Bully Hayes.

Open scenes SPANISH WAR1600-1636?  Gold filigree Research War, Trading Route in the 1700's

Insert pre Americans records, land management ask Peter Alexis if he has all the papers I researched.

Input Amot ...see Amot book

This dream few years back and write in the 17 hours inflight Cali to GUam.  The white surfer chic when I awoke I remembered it was Sarah Diaz then (MOSAS)❤️

      

Cultural Resume

Lourdes U. Alonso​

My personal reactions' journey is my main focus of this multicultural resume.  The spiritual values instilled in me at an early age helped me screen out the ugliness and allowed me to move on without begrudging anyone.   I was born to Ursula Adriano Untalan and Thomas Flores Fleming.  Born in Barrigada, Guam by a midwife named Nankala'.  I was born and raised in the wooden house my Dad designed and built.  I moved to the mainland when I was 14 years old.  

RACIAL EXPERIENCE

0 TO 10 YEARS OLD -  BARRIGADA, GUAM  -  1956 – 1966 Early on in our home, roles were assigned without question according to one’s age and gender. For example, my Mom did all the cooking, cleaning, and raising all 9 children.  Cooking and cleaning were Mom’s work, the breadwinner was Dad.  Our job was to excel in school and the art of music.  Every sibling had to learn an instrument by grade school.  Prayers replaced depression.  It is these early years too that I learned that suicide is a sin, and death is entry to the everlasting life.  

When I was ten years old I experienced my first racial slur. The neighbor’s whispers about our family name (Fleming) being ‘Americano’ and that we looked ‘mixed’, and known to be ‘of‘Gupalao’ race’,--- and I remember hearing an adult neighbor said it out in a disparaging tone.  I never repeated it to my Mother as I considered her feelings.  Gupalao is a derogatory word for Micronesian.  It was my own feelings of inferiority, for my Mother, of her dark skin and my curiosity of how she kept to herself and her family.  Still I sensed her power of having a deep sense of herself and probably never even was affected by mine and others’ ignorance.   My Mom’s mix of ¼ blood Filipino and Chamorru and alas, born in Yap Island, was immediately a gossip item that increased as her art in the garden flourished.  And still, I find the need to defend her by saying to myself little did they know that a book was written about her in the early 1930s for their fashionable and refined lifestyle when she was very young growing up in Yap supported by their hard work in their Copra Trading business there.

11 TO 13 YEARS OLD  - 1967 - 1969

Around this age I noticed that there was a unified sense that we had to be perfect little respectful girls and separate from our peers who were ‘wild’.  We made sure we did not wear any makeup or short skirts or else our elderly Aunties would indiscreetly pinch us till our skin turned blue.  These same Aunties curse girls whom choose to break the unspoken rule of being virtuous. 

When a group is criticized because of being different, my mother would constructively mention all the positive aspects of them.  For instance, she’d say “the Filipinos have a great bustling society with a lot more professionals than Guam does”, and shakes her head in disgust; she tells us of how the navigational skills of the outer islanders are still practiced, then questions the locals, “why do they think they’re better than anyone?”

There was an ‘air’ of prejudice towards the Filipinos and other small population of Micronesian in contrast to the high regards given to the ‘Americanos’.  The close-knit Chamorru neighborhood in Barrigada welcomed the White contract teachers, inviting them to their fiestas.  As I now recall, there were no Filipino or Outer-Islanders in our neighbor.  I witnessed first-hand the effect of such ramification of such discrimination at Ypao Beach.  There was a big celebration happening in the park and being that it was a public park, we freely entered the pavilion, only to be attacked by a large angry crowd of young Filipinos wielding chains, sticks and one of them had a machete, we ran like death upon us as fast as we could back to the car.  I did not feel resentment against those young men.  Instead, I only felt an exhilarating episode in my lifetime.   I did not know it then, but truly, I now can say my parents’ teachings on values of human kindness from the time I could hear, allowed me that understanding of their rebellious anger.  “No group should be made to feel ashamed of themselves.  (Sue, 2007, p. 20)

14 TO 18 YEARS OLD 1971 - 1974

Ethnocentrism became ever-present during this period.  A neighborhood girl moved in from Saipan.  Reflecting back on how she must have been an object of curiosity to the community because she was “Saipanese,” this girl made it her job to be discriminatory first.   I suppose having caught wind of my parents’ birthplace in Yap; she would constantly tease me about it.  As a result of her clever and aggressive nature, she became quite popular, needless to say, accepted quickly into the community.

Later into my teens, I experienced injustice in the form of power of one’s position in the workplace.  It happened on my first day in high school in Guam.   I was late for my Counselor’s appointment; he outright called me a liar when I told him I couldn’t find his office.  I learned immediately to be leery of men of authority.  The following year in California, a racial antagonistic attack against me, chased off from a restaurant sitting area, it hurt.  It hurt most because it came from a White businessman.  This came at the worst time to experience socio-economic disparity.  We had just moved to California in 1971. In Guam, my Dad was always a self-employed carpenter and when the H2 workers were brought into the island it pushed him right out of the workforce. So being an immigrant, and the bottom of the totem pole, I felt the ugliness of racial prejudice.  Once again, I feel grateful for my religious values, because I do not harbor ill-feelings against these White men, but an awareness of that pain which I will never inflict on anyone as what was inflicted onto me.  

Education

The University of Guam, Master of Arts in Counseling

Skills

Understanding the diverse populations and being aware that for people to function better in our society, I will recognize the heart and soul of the human being, his societal group, and the universal dimensions.

Referrals

Dr. M. Artero

MOTSIYAS...COOKING WITH WHAT YOU GOT

COOKING WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT

Motsiyas is one of my favorite dishes and a traditional one here on Guam, yet I have no recollection of it being served in my childhood home. I imagine the reason I can’t remember ever eating this dish while growing up is that, with nine kids and the proliferation of canned goods in the cupboards of the early 1960s, my mother dismissed the individually wrapped morsels as just too time consuming to prepare. 

The first time I actually tasted this dish was when I returned to the island in the 80s.  It was at San Dimas Fiesta in the southern village of Malesso and after just one bite from the greasy tinfoil packet, I began my investigation—if you can call badgering old men for their recipes at parties an investigation.  

I visualized how one might prepare for this dish.  I saw myself running to catch a wild chicken, and within only seconds of scurrying, I managed to twist its neck, slice through its quivering throat, and drain its blood into a pot of boiling water steamed, a reminder of my slow pace.   This macabre fantasy was not my invention, but rather a memory.  

In 1960s Barrigada, walking home from elementary school, I passed a scene exactly as I described.  Except it was a crooked old man, tall and lanky, sweating, with a cigarette in his mouth.  He knocked the rooster against a post and twisted its neck right out of its misery.   I ran from that grotesque scene as fast as I could, glimpsing a big black pot roasting over a tangantangan fire as I took one last peek through the leaves of a pink hibiscus bush. It didn’t occur to me that the recipe I would spend years seeking and countless hours perfecting had just happened upon me!

Each time I prepare Motsiyas, some other memories come back as clear as the drops of water that roll gently on my face off of the leaves I pick early in the morning to ensure freshness.  As I begin the leaf gathering, washing, and chopping, I wonder why the traditional preparation of the dish’s ingredients are gizzards, feet, livers, and all the undesirable parts of the chicken.  And then, I ask myself why only the leaves.  Why not the fruit of the pumpkin, or tomatoes?  And stuffing them into the necks?     I began to recollect the stories my Mom, Dad, my teacher Mrs. Antonia Perez at San Vicente School, stories during the days of the Japanese Occupation in 1941 till the Liberation in July 21st 1944. 

The one story that stirs as I cook this dish is of Mrs.Antonia Perez’s.  She began with how as a 9-year-old, she walked around with one red shoe, because she found only one, and thought that it was better than none, most exiting still, that it was patented red and can easily slip her right foot in. The story of the war told through the eyes of when she was that little girl, remained so, despite that now she’s my teacher.   As I listened, all ears, feelings of pain welled inside of me.   It is the cruelty she elaborated on as the soldiers paddled away at children, women, and old men’s back to execute the perfect vegetable and fruit gardens, food for the Japanese army.  

Unfortunately, the perfect garden is for the plates and palates of the enemy.  The Chamorro’s were to eat only the leaves, the roots, the undesirable parts of any food.

Still, Motsiyas, forever remains a mystery for me and do ask any old-timer its methods of preparation.  Indeed, it is always the same.  After hearing all its ingredients stuffed into the neck then wrapped in banana or pumpkin leaves, I began to theorize that this dish was a creation from one’s survival art technique.

Truly the delight when it is served is with a heartfelt love of eating, and more so, cooking with what you’ve got. 

Here’s the recipe. Pay close attention to the ingredients:

Gizzards​donne & donne leaves​onions garlic

Liver​pumpkin tips​& leaves​sea salt

Chicken feet​tomato leaves​lemon juice *

coconut milk

​

Boil down wild chicken

Add meat mixture chopped with onions garlic, salt.    Add leaf ingredients on for a few minutes then drain mixture saving the chicken broth.   Stuff ingredients down the chicken neck, plug ends with more leaves, drop into the broth with added lemon juice *optional, coconut milk

So when my mother decided right out of the blue that she was going to serve us for dinner one evening in 1980, I paid close attention.  Here is her easy way of preparation.

Let’s start in the garden.  Here’s a shot of our donne.  I use all the above ingredients but replace feet and gizzards with only chopped chicken breasts, salt pepper seasoned with fresh coconut milk and pumpkin tips placed in a palmful you fit in fresh steamed banana leaves wrapped and tied pillows.

to drop into hot boiling chicken broth. A dish known in Chamorro as Motsiyas.

I remember clearly what I learned from my Mom that one time!  And that is the easiest way to prepare this old recipe passed down from family to family.