Don't Forget to Take a Picture

*This is a picture of Pago Bay I found on the internet. It was taken by a photographer named Greg Vaughn. I have no idea who Greg Vaughn is or how to get an official copy of the picture. This is what Pago Bay was, what Pago bay is supposed to look like, what future generations of Chamorros will never see in real life.

While away from the island earning my “American Education,” I would occasionally return to spend holidays or long breaks with my family. Upon each return, I would encounter a way in which the island’s landscape had been drastically overhauled. While change in an area’s appearance over time is natural and expected, the changes that take place in our island tend to be huge; and they tend to happen at an unnaturally fast pace. With each trip home, I would slip into a kind of shock when confronted by something new. With wide eyes, I would turn to my parents and ask, “What is THIS? This wasn’t here last time. I was just home three months ago?” I would pose my confused, shocked, and panicked questions while staring out the car window, horrified and unsure of what to make of the feeling that had just moved into the pit of my stomach. My parents would continue to drive, express a sigh of disappointed acknowledgment, and then explain how the new building blocking a view or ugly road had “popped up overnight.” It’s not that my parents didn’t care, but they had learned to keep driving past the destruction after time. Some of the destruction happened so quickly that they hadn’t even taken the time to mourn the loss of a particular scenic view or plot of land. I remember the way I would sit in the car with them, trying to process what I was looking at.

I was reminded of my trips home this week, when a friend of mine returned to the island after years away. My friend is Chamorro-Hawaiian; and these last few years, she has been in Hawaii, reconnecting with her Hawaiian heritage and family. When my friend called to tell me she was back on island, I immediately cleared my lunch hour. I had so much to ask her, so much to tell her, and more than anything, I couldn’t wait to talk the way we used to. When she called to ask where we should eat, we both quickly decided that we would do what we did as high school girls. We would grab cheap food and head toward a nice view. We would go to a place where we could suck up the island’s beauty, eat food we shouldn’t, and talk about everything under the sun. I jumped into her car enthusiastically, directing her toward a fast food drive-through.

“Where should we take this?,” she asked happily.

“Turn left! We’ll go South. You haven’t left Yigo since you’ve been back, right?” I responded.

She turned left and we chatted mindlessly as she drove. Suddenly, I found myself grabbing the side of the passenger door, startled by the terrified cry coming out of her mouth. She was mid-sentence when she let out a strange shriek and lost her grip on the steering wheel.

“Oh my God!” she yelled in panic.

I looked out of the window, confused and scared. Did we hit something? Did we almost crash?

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Desiree? What happened?!” she yelled in horror, staring out of the window.

Realizing we were safe and that no one was physically hurt, I calmed down. She was staring in shock at, what used to be, Pago Bay.

“It has been like that for some time now,” I said, understanding her reaction and feeling sorry that she had to find out so abruptly.

“I need to pull over. I’m pulling over,” she said, almost lost in thought.

“We’re getting down?,” I asked, confused.

“I just need to see this,” she said, deep in thought.

I wasn’t in the mood to get out of the car and stand on the side of the road, staring at a construction site. I rolled my eyes and opened the car door, trying to cooperate.

We stood at the gate of the incomplete “Pago Bay Subdivision” in silence. I stared at the land, remembering when I had first seen the bay after it was destroyed. I remembered the reaction I had. It was not different from hers.

This is another picture of Pago Bay that I found on Guam-OnLine.com I'm not sure how I feel about the site I found this picture on, but whatever. It's still a picture of Pago Bay before it was destroyed.

I turned to look at her. My beautiful friend stared straight ahead at the gutted landscape, her hand on her chest, as if she were trying to hold herself up. Disappointed and completely sympathetic to her feelings, I looked down. “I know,” I said quietly.

“What-? I mean- Where did-? I don’t even-”

I stared at her, patiently waiting for her to connect her words and send a clear message. I felt like I had brought my friend to a morgue and asked her to identify a relative who had been brutally murdered. It was uncomfortable and I felt horrible for her; but after so much time around the dead body, I had moved beyond a place of tears. It wasn’t that I no longer found the murder disturbing, but after seeing death day in and day out, I no longer launched into tears when I walked by a dead body.

Her pupils were dilated and her eyes seemed to be darting across the scenery, as if an explanation were somewhere, waiting to meet her.

“How could anyone do this? How could...how could WE allow THIS?,” she asked.

“Desiree? What the FUCK?!,” she demanded, turning to me in desperation.

“I know. I know. I felt, or... I FEEL the same way you do. When I first saw it, I was exactly like you are now,” I said, trying to prove to her that I understood where she was coming from.

She turned to me; “You should be like I am now EVERY DAY, Desiree! What the hell?! This is just... this is just too much,” she said quietly, talking more to herself than me.

She let out a confused laugh, choking back a strange noise that I recognized as the precursor to tears. I stood beside her quietly, almost ashamed of having to be the one to show it to her. I felt like I had let her down. I don’t even know how to explain what I felt. The only word that comes close to the emotion I felt is “guilt.”

She began crying quietly, her little hands over her mouth. “Im sorry,” she said, turning back to me. “I don’t mean to be so emotional, but...MY GOD!,” she whispered, lifting her hands toward the bay. I stared at the bay with her, quietly. I immediately thought of Andrea Grajek’s paining, the increasingly popular image of the huge lagua, with his mouth open, waiting to take a bite out of the island. It looked like the parrot fish had bit Pago Bay; and I felt guilty about not gathering my Chamorro sisters to weave a net and stop it.

“Do you remember when we used to come here, when we used to drive down here and eat?” she asked, dazed.

I nodded.

She put her hands over her cheeks.

“Oh Guam! What is happening to you?! Why are we doing this to you?! Who is doing this to you!?” she asked desperately.

“Desiree, what is happening to our home?”

This is a more recent picture of Pago Bay. The construction of the "Pago Bay Subdivision has been halted and it sits like this, a gaping hole in the side of the island.

“I barely recognize this place and really, Des, it hasn’t been that long. I don’t see Tumon when I’m heading South on Marine Drive because of that disgusting new grey set of town houses. There are empty, decaying hotels at the edge of the bay and all this.. this construction? What the hell is going on? Even the PEOPLE?! Who ARE these people here?” she asked. I didn’t respond.

“Our home. Our home. OUR HOME,” she said, as if chanting to herself.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, this is... this is just crazy to me. I’m...I’m so MAD,” she said with tight lips. “Let’s go. Let’s just go,” she instructed me. I climbed back in her car quietly, not sure what to say. We drove toward another beach in silence. I figured she needed time to think. She needed time to process what she saw.

We reached a small, secluded beach and got out of the car. We unwrapped our food and quietly took bites as we watched the water lap over sharp rocks. We listened to the wind race over the ocean and looked toward the rocky, empty cliffs. I love Guam’s rocky cliffs over the ocean. They always remind me of our ancestors. I prayed that they were hiding in the cliff, watching us eat.

“You know what?” my friend asked, disrupting the silence.

“What?” I responded.

“My other home, Hawaii, and my other people, the Hawaiians, they’ve already been practically erased. Hawaii isn’t for Hawaiians anymore. So much of Hawaii isn’t what it is supposed to be. So much of what is happening there makes me sad because I feel like we lost so much; and now, when I come here and see what the island is becoming and when I HEAR what the island might become, I don’t even know what to think. Both sides of me are... being... erased. My home, or my HOMES, what is happening to my homes? And they’ve both been fucked over by the same guy.”

I let the wind and the sound of the waves respond for me. She let out a sarcastic laugh, looking at me.

“And look at us bitches. Both of us are married to statesiders,” she pointed out in disgust.

I laughed, trying to lighten the mood. But it was true. We had both married men from the states. I found myself thinking about the significance of her observation. I knew what she meant, but for some reason, I said, “I thought you said you thought my husband was handsome?”

She laughed out loud, putting her arm around me.

“Dao, your husband is VERY handsome,” she said jokingly.

“Hagu mas umbi. Sen bonitu i asagua-mu! He looks just like a HERO!” I responded, imitating the familiar voices of our biha aunties.

She grinned, “No nen, HAGU MAS! I lahi-mu lokkue! Kalan Amerikanu! He looks like MILITARY!” she said, raising her eye brows and speaking through the familiar, knowing muyu that Chamorro old ladies tend to implement when pointing out an obvious truth.

We laughed and lightly shoved each other.

I watched the wind blow through her curly hair as she gazed out at the water. I usually have a lot to say about these topics when they are discussed, but for some reason, I felt really quiet with her. I kept nodding like an idiot. I felt like her puppy. I just sat beside her, trying to comfort her with my big, sad eyes and loyalty.

She reached in her messenger back and pulled out a digital camera. She stood up, walked up and down the beach and began snapping pictures wildly. Even as we were getting back into her car, she was aiming her camera up at the cliffs, taking pictures. I listened as her camera’s shutter worked. As we buckled into our seats, she began flipping through the images she had just took.

“I need to take pictures. I need to take lots of pictures. I don’t know how Guam will look the next time I come home. I might never see the places I love again.”

My friend has taken the vow to capture Guam on her camera seriously. Over the next few days, she went every where she could, taking pictures of everything... even things that I thought were not worth taking pictures of. She was trying to fit an entire island inside a camera. My friend asked me if I had a picture of Pago Bay from before it was gutted. We had gone there so often that I assumed I would. When I got home, I realized that I didn’t have one. I didn’t have a SINGLE picture of Pago Bay as it used to be. I had been there so many times that I almost couldn’t believe I didn’t have a photo of it. I opened one keep sake box full of pictures after another, searching for a picture of Pago Bay.

Defeated, I sat in front of piles of old pictures. I never took a picture of Pago Bay. I guess I never thought I wouldn’t see it again.

I sent out a request asking my friends and relatives to share their personal photos of Pago Bay. If you have any that you are willing to share, please let me know! I was hoping to share them with my friend before she leaves.