Near the end of the Pwo ceremony, a bundle of sacred medicine (the dark packet being tied in this picture) is tied to the navigator’s wrist. It contains two kinds of coral – a stinging coral and a kind called Porow, the hardest variety found on Satawal. The coral symbolizes the power of the Pwo – his toughness and his authority. “His word is stinging and as hard as the hardest coral,” explains navigator Lambert Namobey Lokopwe, a colleague of Mau’s who was initiated into Pwo in 1997. ”Sometimes there are jealous navigators,” Lambert continues, “so when a navigator is leaving on a journey somebody who may dislike him will do from the shore certain things so he would go and never return. So that navigator knows that somebody may do that so he performs a blanket sting – a sting backwards for whomever is doing it - to block it. To block and sometimes to attack so that he is disabled. But the main thing is power. Pwalupwal is the word for putting a wall around himself and his canoe and his crew. It simply means ‘covering’ - but in this case it is putting a wall all around himself and his crew and his canoe so that whoever is doing adverse things will not penetrate.” The feathers - asafen-weriyeng - seen on the bracelet are from Asaf - what Lambert calls “the big bird.” Photo and Commentary: Sam Low