NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I was searching for a slingstone. It is an artifact, an ancient weapon that one rarely finds just lying around Guam, however today I am saddened to find a place where I there are plenty of them. Peering through the gaps in a fence made of orange plastic which guards the multi-million dollar remodel for the Okura Hotel, I see scattered and crushed beneath backhoes and bulldozers fragments of the slingstones I am seeking. These sights of development are becoming more common on Guam, in anticipation of the massive military increases the island is expecting over the next few years. Vague but monstrously huge sums of money are being dangled before the people of Guam by local business leaders as well as Federal and military officials, and people are clamoring both on and off of Guam to get a piece of the action. Around the island we see the halom tano’ (jungle) being cleared and the tåno’ (land) being hollowed out. In places such as Okura, the excavation is resulting in huge collections of A

The word lemlem in Chamorro, is one I rarely hear spoken, but am nonetheless regularly made to feel its meaning is being invoked. This is especially so in the diaspora, when people constantly, tragically circle around the term when they speak of Guam and how its changing, losing its culture and its flavor, and never going to be like it was when they were there. " Lemlem" means roughly "to fail to recognize something because of how it has changed" or "to be surprised at how different something is when you see it again." I remember during my research years at the Micronesian Area Research Center, finding an article from the Guam Daily News in the late 1960's about my great grandmother's brother Jose Pangelinan De Leon, who after spending more than twenty years in the states following World War II, was returning to Guam to visit relatives. A section of the article towards its end, dealt with how surprised Jose was about the look and the composition o