Storyboards

One of the traditional Palaun buildings is known as a bai. It is a completely wooden structure - no metal is used at all during construction - that served as a men's meeting house. The walls, both inside and outside, and interior beams are decorated with colorful stories and motifs that depict the legends from all over Palau. Generally, each village would have one that served as the meeting place for the clan chiefs of the village. In the bai, they would congregate and discuss important matters affecting their communities.

In 1929, a visiting Japanese artist and anthropologist became enamored with the carvings and paintings on the bais and was very sad to learn that the Palauns were no longer building them. He then introduced the concept of carving similar scenes on pieces of wood and selling them to the Japanese in Palau (Palau was under Japanese administration at that time). These carvings became known as storyboards and are now considered a traditional art form of Palau. Today, they are carved by master carvers and their apprentices (or prisoners in the Koror jail if they've been good) on local wood - usually mahogony or ironwood - and display images of the local legends and myths. They can take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks depending on the size. Sometimes, the piece of wood is carved into a shape like a turtle, manta ray, or fish before and then the legend is carved on the body of the animal (like a carving within a carving). To finish the storyboards, they are sometimes painted to add splashes of color or they are left with their natural wood finish. Shoe polish is usually applied to protect the wood and make it shine.

Justin and I have been keeping our eyes open for some storyboard to bring home and we finally found some. We went to several places, but our favorites were from the Tebang Wood Carving Shop, where you can watch the carvers work. We looked at the Koror jail gift ship where inmates who've displayed good behavior can carve and sell their storyboards, but surprisingly, they were more expensive and usually not as good. To be fair, some of them were quite good with a lot of detail and depth in the carvings, but those were usually in the thousand dollar or more price range. Anyway, we found three that we liked and managed to bargain for a price of $115 each (down from $150 each). Admittedly, I didn't do much of the bargaining - that doesn't seem to be a forte of mine but I better work on that since I've been told that absolutely everything in Southeast Asia is negotiable. Justin bought two carvings on wood that was shaped like a turle that tell the legends of the Ngibtal Tree and Ngemelis and the . I bought a rectangular one that also has these same two stories carved on it. Mine has both a turtle and a manta ray carved in the rectangular piece of wood with the legends carved within the bodies (I guess that becomes a carving within a carving within a carving). Now, we just have to figure out the best way to ship them home!