Pitufa.at

We had heard that Chuuk was a diver’s paradise and expected a cute, touristy place. Instead we found a dirty, run-down little town with lots of closed shops, dilapidated buildings and a big, official rubbish dump smack on the seaside…
We also expected an American range in the shops (Micronesia is closely affiliated with the US), but the amount of ultra-processed food full of corn syrup and saturated fat was still shocking. We couldn’t even find milk powder that contains just milk (like everywhere else in the Pacific)–the only kind available contains sweeteners and all kinds of additives. No wonder diabetes is a big problem here…
After almost 3 months without supermarkets we were running low on basics (despite our own garden and all the preserves we made in times of plenty in PNG, so we still stocked up on staple food (cheaper than anywhere else in the Pacific), but looking for vegetables we only found artificial-looking jumbo veg on steroids–all imported from the US. Even the eggs come from California!!
Apart from the doubtful nutritional value it’s also sad to see a Pacific nation making itself completely dependent of imported food. Almost nobody grows vegetables here (apart from the usual suspects taro, breadfruit, bananas and papaya), shop owners blame lazy locals, locals blame poor soil and the next problem is that there are no seeds available: ACE hardware sells soil and seed growing kits, but no actual seeds! Turns out the laws on importing seeds are so strict that only the ministry of agriculture is allowed to give out seeds and they don’t. We found their office in an unmarked building on the outskirts of town without a sign outside…
Real development aid would be a campaign to raise awareness for improving soil with compost and home-made eco-fertiliser and seeds and crops easily available together with workshops on how to successfully plant… I’ll try and write to government agencies and development aid organisations about this. So annoying. So stupid. And could be so easily improved…