Black And White Driftwood Managaha Island

Title

Black And White Driftwood Managaha Island

Artist

Mark J Dunn

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Managaha Island South Pacific .Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. It is a form of marine debris or tidewrack.
In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and food for birds, fish, and other aquatic species as it floats in the ocean. Gribbles, shipworms, and bacteria decompose the wood and gradually turn it into nutrients that are reintroduced to the food web. Sometimes, the partially decomposed wood washes ashore, where it also shelters birds, plants, and other species. Driftwood can become the foundation for sand dunes.
Most driftwood is the remains of trees, in whole or part, that have been washed into the ocean, due to flooding, high winds, or other natural occurrences, or as the result of logging. There is also a subset of driftwood known as drift lumber. Drift lumber includes the remains of man-made wooden objects, such as buildings and their contents washed into the sea during storms, wooden objects discarded into the water from shore, dropped dunnage or lost cargo from ships (jetsam), and the remains of shipwrecked wooden ships and boats (flotsam). Erosion and wave action may make it difficult or impossible to determine the origin of a particular piece of driftwood.
Driftwood can be used as part of the decorative furniture or other art forms and is a popular element in the scenery of fish tanks.For the Tanapag people, Managaha was the best place for carrying out the Carolinian custom of fiighiiló. “What belonged to a person who died, you take it and have to put it in the casket before you close it,” Rosa Castro explains. “But leftover possessions, the second day after you bury the person you can take all of what belonged to that person and put it in bags. And we get together all the family members and we ride the boat, we carry those to Managaha, where they burn it.”
"Aghurubw brought a large number of Carolinians to settle in Saipan. At that time, the Spaniards had taken all of the Chamorros from Saipan down to Guam, and when he arrived here there wasn’t anybody here. There were houses but no people were found on the islands, so he called it Seipel, ‘empty journey.’
"And when he died, because of his stature in the community, he was buried on Managaha. My recollection of the way they buried him is that they dug not the conventional type of grave where you have a rectangular shape. They dug a hole and they buried him standing up, and the rationale behind that is so that people don’t walk on his grave. If you have only the head and the shoulders, it’s a very small area, and very unlikely that you will step on him because of the area that is covered."
"The small tombstone is really depicting only that he is buried on the island, but his body is not in that area. It is really a secret. Nobody knows where he was buried. We only know that he was buried somewhere there. But because of that secret, and the traditional custom of not stepping on his grave, that dictates that he is buried secretly and only a few people know where. And those people who buried him must be dead by this time.
"The Refalemei clan seems to be very active with Aghurubw, and so I would deduce that the Refalemei clan is the same clan with Aghurubw. His clan and my clan are different clans. We do not recognize him as a chief from this village because he’s not a chief from this village. He’s from other areas. So normally, people from Tanapag don’t go down and celebrate Aghurubw. The Refalemei clan would get together and invite people and even Governors and Congresspeople would go down and celebrate, but we normally don’t."

Managaha island sits off Tanapag on the edge of the lagoon that forms Tanapag Harbor. A flat coral islet, Managaha plays two important roles to the people of Saipan. The first has to do with a historical navigator who brought Carolinians to this island. He is important to all the Carolinians on Saipan. For them, Managaha—known as Ghalaghal in Carolinian—was a very, very sacred and taboo place.
“There is an important navigator buried on Managaha," Ben says, "and his name is Aghurubw. During the German time, even before that—even back into ancient times, the Carolinians were already sailing throughout the central Pacific areas, and they would come to barter, to trade for cigarettes or for clothing, or other goods. But this navigator came with several canoes to settle on Saipan.
"Originally they thought Aghurubw was from Satawal because that’s where he left to come to Saipan. But other scholars hinted that he is probably from the Chuuk side, Puluwat, other islands in those areas.

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February 5th, 2018

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