He who sees, but is not seen

I spent the day with my uncle again. We got to talking about the Virgina Tech slayings, and he asked me (since Palau is so out of the loop) if they knew what was wrong with him. I offered him my opinion as well as that of some professionals; Cho was a paranoid schizophrenia.

Melvin mulled this over for a second, and then nodded and said to me, ‘you would not know this, but doctors conducted a psychological test on the island in the early 90’s’. Ok, that was paraphrased, his English is broken, but you get the idea.

I inquired further.

‘Palauans, and those with Palauan blood,’ he continued, ‘are twice as likely to develop a strong case of schizophrenia.’

Now, those of you who know me, can understand the prevalance and the interest I took in this statement. Upon returning to the hotel, I did some research.

For those of you who don’t want to take the time to read, I’ll sum up the key points.

The world rate of schizophrenia is less than 1%. That is, less than one percent of the population in any given location is likely to develop a strong case of schizophrenia. In Palau, that rate is 2%. In terms of medicine, this is a startingly large leap in risk, and it provides a very strong explanation for me.

There is no strong case made for the reason this exists, but it is believed social pressures in Palaun culture and history caused past generations of Palauan (mostly male) citizens to develop the psychosis. Since this particular disorder is a generational, hereditary thing, those passed on to their children, and their children’s children, forever embedding the disorder into Palauan blood.

As well as these findings, Sullivan and his team found that the chewing of betel nut by the local population has shown a tempermant towards keeping schizophrenic symptoms suppressed. Alkaloids in the drug itself combined with its psychoactive affects keep both positive and negative symptoms on an even keel, mitigating the need for direct and immediate medical intervention. Intriguing.

Those of you who know me, truly know me, understand the significance this holds for me. I don’t know what to say. I’m floored, really.

So we hit the main island today. Babeldaob is mostly unexplored jungle, so I got some great shots of the natural island. A few of the photos I took were raw and uncompressed, so flickr said they were too big… they were the ones of the stone monoliths, too.

Keep in mind landscape photography is not my bag; I am no Ansel Adams. But here we go.

A distance shot of the monoliths on Babeldaob. Estimates put these figures at about 2000 years old. It’s believed they are the foundations of a small village, or at least some of them are. A pretty surreal place to stand, really.

View from the freeway at one point (when I say freeway, don’t get the wrong impression. It’s not even paved). For whatever reason I am incapable of faithfully capturing the colour of the water. It’s a lot richer, purer than that. I’ll do my best.

Mezmerizing. The sky got really white because my white balance was off, sorry, but that’s not what you should be focusing on. What you see laid out right there is about ten miles of unexplored, uninhabited, wild jungle. Who knows what kinds of treasures lay in there.

Start scuba diving tomorrow. If I can convince my dad to get an underwater digital camera, I’ll get some of those up to. Ciao.

Dear reader(s);

I’ve been in Palau since Thursday (wednesday your time), and it’s Saturday now (Friday your time!), so I’ve got some pictures.

I have a lot of them, but I’m only going to upload a few for now. If you’re really interested, e-mail me and I’ll be more than happy to show you.

When I get online to check my e-mail, upload photos, or talk to people, this is my view. Most of you get to look at your wall. I get paradise =]

Down at the local market with my dad and uncle. This is a bunch of bags of betelnut for sale. Betelnut grows on the betelnut trees (surprise). You combine these with pepper leaves and what the locals call ‘lime’ (which is not lime, but is in fact crushed coral). Gets you a nice buzz =]

This is my uncle Melvin at my Grandma’s house. I forgot to upload a photo of a typical Palauan house, but I’ll get to that later.

This is my favourite photo. It’s tough to find a good picture, some way to really convey the beauty of this island nation. But I think I started to get it across here. It’s a start, at least.

And in case you wanted to accuse me of downloading these photos, here’s me. Woo.