Ramen With Kool-Aid, Fancy That

“Tiook!” Be gone! With dogs yipping at my feet, I hiked up my nuk-nuk and pounded harder on the pedals, speeding around the final bend of the island's sole road into the village. This is Kosrae (pronounced koh-shry), the humid crossroads where modernity and tradition are presently dancing a delicate tango.

The village air is not only rife with the smoke of an underground oom roasting a pig, but also of burning foreign trash like styrofoam boxes and soda cans. BBC News is flickering through chicken- wired windows. The drumming tune of coconuts being machete hacked is tempered by the auto-tuned beats of Akon's new hit single. Wanting to try breadfruit, I stopped at a thatched hut with hanging pandanus and bananas.

Before using her trained fingers to scale fresh eek from her ocean backyard, the Kosrean teenager manning the hut was crushing Ramen instant noodles in its bag and mixing in a Kool-Aid powder packet, consuming the hottest island snacking trend of late.

“Osh mos?” Is there breadfruit? My eyes still transfixed on her snack.

“Wacgnin, sisla koluk.” Nothing, sorry.

“Kom.” Smiling, she says to me. You. She brought the crunchy concoction closer. I tentatively submerged my fingers into the bag, choosing a few choice pieces. My fingertips stained red, and my tongue's salty, sweet, and sour sensors were simultaneously awoken. Like Kosrae's selective entrances into modern life, the taste is eclectic, pioneering, yet contradicting.

Continuing on, I biked past a rusting WWII tanker half submerged beneath the shoreline. Will the passage of time cause all new island influences to be eventually forgotten and strewn aside?

I dismounted upon seeing the familiar swish of a floral mumu in an open air kitchen. My host-mother's wrinkled hands, blackened from diabetes, reached for a ladle to scoop bowls of a recipe around since her childhood.

“Mongo, mongo.” Eat, eat.

I sip the bowl of coconut porridge, fish, and taro.

“Yeuh?” Delicious? She asks.

“Yeuh.”