uncle mikey 

and the famed winged bean

Californian, Peace Corps Anthology

Peace Corps Samoa

 

      Michael was twenty-six, tall and well-muscled. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia he wittingly or unwittingly subscribed the polite mannerisms of "The Grand ole' South." That and his Southern accent endeared nearly every volunteer in Peace Corps Teachers' Group 27 to him.

     However, one thing he possessed and didn't care to became known as "The Turmoil Factor." Uncle Mikey, as the other group members affectionately referred to him, showed himself to be bright, energetic, and positive. His long rang goal was to become a doctor.  Consequently there were a few things he needed to prove to himself. At the core of his needs was the desire to have a True Peace Corps Experience.

     Now a True Peace Corps Experience, so maintained its advocates, entailed roughing it as opposed to taking a posting in some electrified city with access to hot water, porcelain toilets, and recognizable cooked foods. Roughing it meant casting off all semblances of western civilization and going hog-wild native.

       Uncle Mikey's hard-core-roughing-it-option planted him firmly on the Polynesian island of Savai'i.  The very heart and soul of Polynesia many would declare.  Accordingly, he was shipped to the last village just before the edge of the end of the known world. There, he was placed under the gentle tutelage of the local chieftain, who also happened to be the headmaster of the school Uncle Mikey taught in. Mikey's new world was finite, limiting, and small.  Throw in the fact that Mikey didn't have the kind of female contact he desired for many moons and "Things" began to occur.  Boiled down to its simplest, Mikey got ornery.  Then it didn't take too long for "The Turmoil Factor" to rear its ugly head.  Usually it would manifest its self quite clearly. Wherever Mikey was, things would screw up. Plans would go awry. Simple things became complex, and the unifying element in all this was...Uncle Mikey.

     Now this is where the much-famed winged bean entered the scene.  It is necessary to first explain in Mikey's Peace Corp training he had been exposed to

basic gardening. The ideal was to grow a thriving garden and set a positive example of industry for his host village.

     Uncle Mikey tried to introduce the new U.N. praised winged-bean. This was a delicious, nutritious green bean which could grow in sand, shade, and sun

basically anywhere.  It couldn't easily be under-watered or over-watered.  It was idiot proof and sat in the good graces of the all powerful grant giving U.N. Agricultural Committee.  He put in a request for some of these magic seeds and low and behold not too many low tides later he received a package of seeds.

Uncle Mikey liked it. 

      In order to save his sanity he focused his entire being into a garden of mammoth proportions.  Every day after teaching he spent hours toiling over his fertile soil. Good little gardener that he was, he ringed his garden with bright yellow marigolds. Training had taught him this kept away a wide variety of evil garden insects and had a stunning aesthetic effect.  Hopefully, villagers would be so awed they’d follow his good example and flowers would blossom, beans would grow and productivity would increase throughout the isles.

     Apparently some of the village children did notice.  In this very same village there resided a mangy, scraggly old hag of a horse.  Bones, sores, and

hair held it together.  It was the youngest's child's job to tether the horse each day after it finished hauling in bags of copra from the island’s interior.

On one particular day the child became so intoxicated with Mikey's flowers he staked the horse's long coconut hemp tether at the edge of Uncle Mikey's garden.

     In the morning the sleepy village of Faga awoke to a piercing shriek, which may or may not have been a welcome change from the usual pig grunts or rooster crowings.  It appeared that the village’s one and only Peace Corp volunteer had gone completely berserk.  He was seen running amok in the village, kicking a poor old horse in the posterior region.  As the horse fled, Mikey spewed forth a Samoan vocabulary that both impressed and shocked his chief. Next, Uncle Mikey was seen pursuing a small child. The child, who had so far survived to the age of six, rapidly decided that he also wanted to live until the ripe age of seven. He ran and he screamed.  The villagers poured from their huts gawking, guffawing and chuckling until their sides hurt.  They all knew the Samoan adage - it is much better to see a spectacle than it is to hear about one later.

     Eventually the horse ran off and the child found refuge in the anonymity of the swelling crowd.  Uncle Mikey sat in the complete ruins of his garden. The horse had consumed everything: marigolds, peppers, tomatoes, and wing-beans.  It was reported Mikey said,  "When I got up in the morning, I saw that there damn horse in the middle of ma' garden chewing, defecating and burping. It was the BURPING that got me fired up."

     After that, the villagers gave him a little more space. The child received a public tongue-lashing and there was much chiding to the effect that the horse

looked better after all that food.

 

     Uncle Mikey is now a proctologist in Richmond.