Growing Up Free in an Island Paradise

Picture, if you can, a children’s paradise--a place where kids are totally free, safe and essentially infallible, where there is neither hunger nor want and where they are both treasured and loved.

Peter Arthur can tell you such a place exists because he grew up there, along with his two younger brothers and a sister.

It’s called Pohnpei, a 150-square-mile island in Micronesia, where his family moved from Laguna Beach 18 years ago to build a resort hotel.

As recounted in last week’s Family Life, the first five years were spent without electricity or running water, living on a platform with a thatch roof and no walls while Peter’s father wrestled with bureaucracy.

It may have been terribly frustrating for the parents, but for the children “it was the most wonderful time of our lives,” says Peter, now 28 and a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

“It was ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ all over again,” he says. “We had no rules because there was nothing to regulate in the conventional sense.

“Here we are living in a tree house miles from the nearest village in a place where you can literally live off the land, surrounded by bananas and mangoes and breadfruit and apples, where you can spear fish a few feet from shore.

“I don’t mean we ran wild; we had responsibilities. Every member of the family participated in building the house and later the hotel.”

Nor was education ignored. “We walked a couple of miles to school, and we always read a lot. Mother read to us from the time we were tiny, and we continued to read to ourselves as we learned how.”

What made the experience even more special for the Arthur children was the Pohnpei culture.

“Foreigners are not the most welcome people there,” he says, “but we were children, and that makes a very big difference because children are very special people to them.

“Everyone treats any child as their own. They stop and talk to you, give you little gifts, give you something to eat or drink.

“If a child is walking along and is hungry or thirsty or needs a place to sit down, it’s not just accepted--it’s expected that he will walk into the nearest house.”

And, he says, the Pohnpein society’s rules simply don’t apply to children. “They just remember what they did as children and accept the fact that children do things differently than adults. They never bother you, although they are always watching out for you.”

But what if a child does something malicious?

“Some adult--or even another child--will take you aside and explain in a gentle and kindly manner that what you did was not a good thing and that people won’t like you if you keep doing it. Then, they will tell you why it’s important for people to like you and for you to like them and then, more than likely, they’ll tell you a funny story and send you on your way.”

Humor, he says, plays a big part in the process of dealing with and educating children. “Old people are honored and respected and, consequently, listened to. Every evening, you will see an older man sitting with a group of young men, telling them stories, answering questions.

“They share their experiences, everything from how to identify the habitat of stingrays to their first time with a woman--and it’s always told with humor, so you hear a lot of laughter.”

Surely there must be some perils to youngsters running around a jungle, aren’t there?

“Coming from California, you would think there are a lot of dangers,” says Peter. “There are stingrays and bonefish and cliffs with sheer drops and rivers that turn into raging waters at the drop of a hat and, of course, everybody carries a machete, but very few kids ever get hurt.

“First, they learn very early to identify the harmful things in the ocean and how to stay away from them, and everybody learns to swim very early, so if you get washed downriver, you know enough to just go with it and swim ashore as soon as you can.

“There are no snakes or dangerous animals on the island, just some wild deer. So you’re safe anywhere at any time.

“The big thing is you absolutely never hear of anyone doing physical harm to another person. After all, if you did something like that, people wouldn’t like you.”

How about automobile traffic? “There are cars,” says Peter, “but the roads belong to the children, the dogs and the pigs. Cars are expected to drive around them--and they do.”

The lushness of the land makes going hungry in Pohnpei impossible, says Peter. “You can throw a dead stick on the ground, and it will sprout in a couple of days,” he says.

“You can’t believe the amount and size of the fruit that grows wild. Papaya, for example, just takes over an area you might have cleared. It’s junk food there, a weed that you’ll eat if there’s nothing else handy--and there’s so much else handy, you seldom eat it.”

Does he plan to return?

“Right now, I want to see if I can succeed here,” he says, “I’ve just gotten used to wearing shoes again, which was no small accomplishment after not even seeing a pair for years.

“But just last night I had a dream. I was in a little boat near Pohnpei’s outer reef, fishing one of my favorite spots. . . .”

Send your comments to Family Life, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Please include your phone number so that a reporter may call you. To protect your privacy, Family Life does not publish correspondents’ last names when the subject is sensitive.