Drunken Monkeys of Palau

As I suggested in my last post, governmental agencies have been slow to adopt any sort of policy regarding the tzombi population. Part of this failure certainly rests with members of the academic and scientific community. Despite my best efforts, many of them remain ignorant or, worse, opposed to the contributions the Tzombi people have made to human civilization.

This is especially upsetting when my petitions to those who should be sympathetic -- by virtue of their representation of certain minority groups -- fall upon deaf ears. One especially hostile response came from the Micronesian Cultural Heritage Center in Gainesville, FL, which in 2004 mounted an exhibition on Palauan Storyboards. When I wrote a thoughtful letter to the Director suggesting she include an explanatory sidebar on the origins of the so-called “Drunken Monkeys of Palau” – featured on a number of the storyboards in the exhibit – I received the following response:

Dear Mr. Weiss:

Please do not waste our time. We are under-funded and understaffed and do not appreciate the implication that Micronesian culture is so obscure as to be mocked by the likes of you. The people of Micronesia are not now nor ever have been associated with “zombies”. May we suggest you take the time to become familiar with Micronesian culture and stop making jokes at our expense.

Eva Olkenriil
Assistant Director, Micronesian Cultural Heritage Center

Obviously, I was upset by this response, as I wanted nothing more than to honor their contributions towards a global awareness of Micronesian Culture AND augment it with my own field of study. To ignore the clear evidence of a fledgling tzombi population would be irresponsible, not to mention counterproductive to their own attempts to fully explore the history of Micronesia. I sent them the following response:

Dear Ms. Olkenriil:

Please excuse my previous letter. While I realize my topic of study is obscure, I didn’t realize it was so obscure as to remain unknown to experts in the field. I realize now that it’s entirely possible you are unaware of the “Drunken Monkeys of Palau,” a folk-tale which has been documented numerous times in both the visual form of the storyboard as well as in oral retellings recorded by anthropologist Dr. Judith Steiner and documented in her book Holy Shit: Scatology and Religion in the Oral Traditions of the Southern Hemisphere.

The gist of the story is as follows: a war breaks out between the Iyebu, or “ashen ones” - a partially legendary group who live on the southernmost tip of the island - and the monkeys who live in the tree-tops over the kidnapping of the Monkey Princess Turangel ra Ochaeu. The monkeys attack the Iyebu from the trees, flinging feces down on them. The Iyebu respond in kind, which escalates the skirmish into an out-and-out feces war, which in a related myth, gives rise to Mt. Tmerou. The war escalates, with the Iyebu shooting many of the monkeys with arrows. The monkeys fall from the trees but are seen by the islanders to run off into the forest.

Eventually the Iyebu disappear, but some of the locals begin to notice that the monkeys themselves have turned ashen (the storyboard I own has a carving of a pre-deceased monkey in marked contrast with an ashen one, who is clearly gray). It is also observed that the monkeys are no longer able to balance well enough to live in the trees. They eventually take up residence in the caves of Mt. Tmerou, where they live to this day, emerging only at night.

I have sent along copies of all the documentation related to this oft-told tale. I would even be willing to loan my storyboard to the exhibition, although it’s not one of the nicest I’ve seen. I’ve included a photo. Note the ashen monkey in the lower right-hand corner, and Mt. Tmerou in the background. Please contact me if you have further questions or require further citations.

Cordially,
Rodrigo Weiss

I received the following response:

Dear Mr. Weiss:

Surely you can find a better use of your time. The storyboard you own is clearly a cheap tourist trinket, not an authentic artifact. Furthermore, the so-called “ashen” monkey seems to be a case of digital photo manipulation. Either that or the paint simply rubbed off it.

Sincerely,
Eva Olkenriil

I responded thus:

Dear Ms. Olkenriil:

Perhaps you feel the subject of the feces-fight is inappropriate for an exhibition. May I remind you of the “uncouth” nature of most of the Palauan storyboards? Do I really need to remind you of the tale of the giant with the penis so large that he blasts women across the sea when he ejaculates? I hope that your exhibition is not going to be overly chaste and ignore the more ribald elements, which make up the bulk of the folk tales.

Sincerely,
Rodrigo Weiss

And this last missive:

Dear Mr. Weiss:

Don’t write me again. Fuck off. I mean it.

Eva Olkenriil

While I was disappointed with the turn this exchange ultimately took, I remain fascinated with Micronesian culture and hope to visit the islands one day to further my research. This, despite the fact that I don’t do well in hot, humid climates, a sad truth I discovered while briefly living with my grandmother in a Boca Raton retirement community. It’s probably for the best that I wasn’t allowed to remain at Sunset Village, or my Onychomycosis (particularly aggravated by tropical weather) might have become life-threatening.

In any case, the aim of my including this correspondence here is, of course, to demonstrate the difficulty which will no doubt accompany the Tzombi people’s emergence, to use a Palauan metaphor, from the caves of obscurity into the daylight of acceptance.