OOG

There's a publication I found here called OOG, which stands for "Only on Guam." This mag purports to get military personnel used to Guåhan by providing some cultural and historical info, a business directory, maps, and other miscellaneous information for the deployed personnel here.

Here's my OOG experience for today.

We bought this shelf that was pretty big, but given that we've been so far able to stuff lots of crap into our Toyota Matrix, we were optimistic that at least we'd be able to put the shelf into the back with the seats down, tie it in, and just roll back home with the back trunk open. Well, naturally the stupid shelf didn't fit, and in the process we ripped one 40-pound bag of rock salt we had previously bought for my auntie's water softening system... all over the floor of the car.

Anyway.

We're standing there with a bunch of salt pellets at our feet, filthy from the dust on the shelf which we had carried laboriously throughout the Micronesia Mall, and pretty pissed at each other after a long day hashing out this grant proposal due on Tuesday. But some random guy comes up to us, offers his truck (as in, "We got a truck. Let us help you" as opposed to, "Do you need help?"), and drives the shelf to our house--and also helps us get it in the house. We're taking him and his wife (who was also in their truck with their four kids) to dinner. No word yet as to if the kids are with the babysitter, but even if we end up springing for four kids' meals, we'd be overjoyed to pay back the favor.

And so while some might bitch about OOG in the context of, "The power don't work" and "The government can't do anything right"--I want to emphasize the Chamoru concept of generosity, which has pretty much saved our butts for the past three weeks.