OK, this is a novelty for me! I am using wireless internet! This means that you all are getting a post a few seconds after it left my brain, traveled through my arms and into my fingertips (sorry for the spelling mistakes). Happy New Years! Here is a fun little fact, I am here in the Marshall Islands in the first time zone in the world... This means that I will experience the new year aproximatley 19 hours before any of you! So, greetings from the future... If there is any big bad thing that happens in 2008 I will call you all and tell you to be ready.
My family are all stuck under the covers in their hotel rooms fighting a stomach virus, so their new years will not be so great...
Meanwhile, Glenda is looking for her next big adventure... I wouldn't be suprised if she stayed behind to master outrigger canoes...
Go Ducks
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
What's on the Tube?
Do you ever think about what it would be like if your life was a television show? What if, every week, millions of viewers around the world tuned into a section of your life? Sometimes, especially now that I am on a tiny coral atoll in the middle of Micronesia, I wonder how my own show would do.
The questions that churn through my head are would people like my character on TV, would the show be boring and what kind of product placement could I snag...
OK, the last one was a little tongue-in-cheek but you get what I am saying.
Some weeks I am sure that my ratings would be high.
Be sure not to miss the newest installment of “Tall Man in a Little Island” where our hero educates impoverished youth, braves the depths of the sea with fins and a spear to catch dinner and still has time to work on the next great American novel...
Well, maybe the last section of the show would experience a drop-off in viewer ship. There is only so many people in the world who would be content to watch me peck away at me laptop — and I don’t think that mothers count in the Neilson Ratings — but it would be a good opportunity to get a Dell Computers tie-in anyway.
However, there are also many times here where I know even the camera men would be yawning.
And on this episode of “Tall Man in a Little Island,” or protagonist spends three hours trying to stem the flow of ants invading his cupboard — and his thumb is his only weapon...
There isn’t even an ad tie-in for this one. Maybe I could do something with Raid where there are fifteen seconds of me in my kitchen squishing ants one by one with my thumb before big, red lettering is stamped across the screen, “Don’t be this idiot — use Raid,” the announcer would proclaim.
It’s an idea...
Anyway, I am pretty sure that my Christmas Special would be a hit. My two brothers, mother, father, aunt and girlfriend (who are all visiting, and have brought gifts, including fresh coffee — someone get Starbucks on the phone) and I went down to the Rita Christian Church to watch Marshallese Beat.
Beat is something that the Marshallese do every Christmas. It is a sort of choreographed dance that is put together by the local churches. The dances range from completely contemporary to little numbers that show a fishing story. The girls go in one line and the boys go in another and the tall white tourists come and watch.
Actually, my family and I were the only foreigners watching but right when we came in the Pastor of the church came over and offered us the best seats in the house. My mother, father and aunt all took him up on his offer and marched up to seats in the front on the left side of the altar. They were laden with shell necklaces, homemade fans and water and juice. They watched kids and adults do some incredible dancing.
My brothers, girlfriend and I watched and laughed from the pews. Less than 48 hours off the plane from blustery, cold Oregon and my family were the guests of honor in a Marshall Island’s Christmas. Simply a tight shot of their faces would be priceless — the running punch-line could be how my family laughed at every Marshallese joke told in Marshallese despite the fact that they know no Marshallese.
I think that would have gotten some respectable ratings — I am pretty sure Neilson counts extended family in their polls.
I’m still thinking about what advertising I could plug in...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The questions that churn through my head are would people like my character on TV, would the show be boring and what kind of product placement could I snag...
OK, the last one was a little tongue-in-cheek but you get what I am saying.
Some weeks I am sure that my ratings would be high.
Be sure not to miss the newest installment of “Tall Man in a Little Island” where our hero educates impoverished youth, braves the depths of the sea with fins and a spear to catch dinner and still has time to work on the next great American novel...
Well, maybe the last section of the show would experience a drop-off in viewer ship. There is only so many people in the world who would be content to watch me peck away at me laptop — and I don’t think that mothers count in the Neilson Ratings — but it would be a good opportunity to get a Dell Computers tie-in anyway.
However, there are also many times here where I know even the camera men would be yawning.
And on this episode of “Tall Man in a Little Island,” or protagonist spends three hours trying to stem the flow of ants invading his cupboard — and his thumb is his only weapon...
There isn’t even an ad tie-in for this one. Maybe I could do something with Raid where there are fifteen seconds of me in my kitchen squishing ants one by one with my thumb before big, red lettering is stamped across the screen, “Don’t be this idiot — use Raid,” the announcer would proclaim.
It’s an idea...
Anyway, I am pretty sure that my Christmas Special would be a hit. My two brothers, mother, father, aunt and girlfriend (who are all visiting, and have brought gifts, including fresh coffee — someone get Starbucks on the phone) and I went down to the Rita Christian Church to watch Marshallese Beat.
Beat is something that the Marshallese do every Christmas. It is a sort of choreographed dance that is put together by the local churches. The dances range from completely contemporary to little numbers that show a fishing story. The girls go in one line and the boys go in another and the tall white tourists come and watch.
Actually, my family and I were the only foreigners watching but right when we came in the Pastor of the church came over and offered us the best seats in the house. My mother, father and aunt all took him up on his offer and marched up to seats in the front on the left side of the altar. They were laden with shell necklaces, homemade fans and water and juice. They watched kids and adults do some incredible dancing.
My brothers, girlfriend and I watched and laughed from the pews. Less than 48 hours off the plane from blustery, cold Oregon and my family were the guests of honor in a Marshall Island’s Christmas. Simply a tight shot of their faces would be priceless — the running punch-line could be how my family laughed at every Marshallese joke told in Marshallese despite the fact that they know no Marshallese.
I think that would have gotten some respectable ratings — I am pretty sure Neilson counts extended family in their polls.
I’m still thinking about what advertising I could plug in...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Here Comes Santa
My earliest memory of Christmas is sitting in the back of my family’s minivan, the weather outside frigid, and on the radio there was a fake news program playing.
“Well there has been another sighting of old Santa Claus boys and girls,” the overly excited announcer said. “It looks like he is heading west. Rudolph looks amazing.”
I sat there peering out, my nose growing numb on the cold window, hoping with all my soul that I too would be able to catch a glimpse of Old Saint Nick.
A few years later I learned that the radio program was fake, and I also realized that the concept of one man delivering gifts to millions of people in one night was a little far-fetched.
I forgave my parents for their lies, it seems that the general rule on this one is that lying to children is OK in the case of Christmas, but I still mourned the loss of that Christmas magic I used to feel leading up to the 25th of December.
Coming to the Marshall Islands, I had no idea what to expect around this holiday of tinsel.
My students started filling me in throughout my first five months here. They told me about the dancing that everyone will do, they told me about the parades where candy is flung out like hail from the sky and they told me about the singing.
I was excited to experience all of the new aspects of Christmas in an entirely new culture. However, as little as I would like to admit it, as this month approached I began to feel pangs of longing for the old Oregon Christmas I was used to. I began to get emails from people back home talking about their new Christmas trees and how they were excited that egg-nog lattes were out again.
I started remembering every Christmas in my house: we wake up late and then crowd around the tree in our pajamas and socks and open the gifts one by one with our steaming teas and coffees hovering below our lips. It takes hours. I thought, “how nice would it be if Santa Claus were real?” then all the people on this world would be a little bit more connected than before. Maybe some semblance of Christmas spirit would permeate things. I would be just one man
away from Oregon.
Alas, I had learned long ago that Santa Claus was a myth and Christmas spirit was usually attributed to a little too much nog in the egg-nog.
The other day though a Christmas miracle happened that made me turn a 180 — Santa Claus came to my house.
I came in the door and there he was standing. His beard was full, curly and white and his cheeks were rosy. He held a sprig of holly in his hand and blue and red lights shot out from his beard. He was dancing by bending his hips and thrusting a fisted hand to the sky like he was calling for revolution. He was 14 inches high and was made in China.
It was a Christmas miracle.
Or a strange side-effect of globalization.
Either way, here was irrefutable proof that Santa Claus was showing up all over the world.
Things are rarely what they seem. Magic shows are invisible wires and trap-doors, coral atolls don’t float, they are just clinging onto a sinking volcano and Santa Claus doesn’t drive his sleigh of flying reindeer all around the world in one night.
He does get everywhere though — or at least to the Marshall Islands — and that is pretty amazing to me. It makes me feel close to home in a place as far from it as I can get, and that is Christmas magic if I ever knew it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
“Well there has been another sighting of old Santa Claus boys and girls,” the overly excited announcer said. “It looks like he is heading west. Rudolph looks amazing.”
I sat there peering out, my nose growing numb on the cold window, hoping with all my soul that I too would be able to catch a glimpse of Old Saint Nick.
A few years later I learned that the radio program was fake, and I also realized that the concept of one man delivering gifts to millions of people in one night was a little far-fetched.
I forgave my parents for their lies, it seems that the general rule on this one is that lying to children is OK in the case of Christmas, but I still mourned the loss of that Christmas magic I used to feel leading up to the 25th of December.
Coming to the Marshall Islands, I had no idea what to expect around this holiday of tinsel.
My students started filling me in throughout my first five months here. They told me about the dancing that everyone will do, they told me about the parades where candy is flung out like hail from the sky and they told me about the singing.
I was excited to experience all of the new aspects of Christmas in an entirely new culture. However, as little as I would like to admit it, as this month approached I began to feel pangs of longing for the old Oregon Christmas I was used to. I began to get emails from people back home talking about their new Christmas trees and how they were excited that egg-nog lattes were out again.
I started remembering every Christmas in my house: we wake up late and then crowd around the tree in our pajamas and socks and open the gifts one by one with our steaming teas and coffees hovering below our lips. It takes hours. I thought, “how nice would it be if Santa Claus were real?” then all the people on this world would be a little bit more connected than before. Maybe some semblance of Christmas spirit would permeate things. I would be just one man
away from Oregon.
Alas, I had learned long ago that Santa Claus was a myth and Christmas spirit was usually attributed to a little too much nog in the egg-nog.
The other day though a Christmas miracle happened that made me turn a 180 — Santa Claus came to my house.
I came in the door and there he was standing. His beard was full, curly and white and his cheeks were rosy. He held a sprig of holly in his hand and blue and red lights shot out from his beard. He was dancing by bending his hips and thrusting a fisted hand to the sky like he was calling for revolution. He was 14 inches high and was made in China.
It was a Christmas miracle.
Or a strange side-effect of globalization.
Either way, here was irrefutable proof that Santa Claus was showing up all over the world.
Things are rarely what they seem. Magic shows are invisible wires and trap-doors, coral atolls don’t float, they are just clinging onto a sinking volcano and Santa Claus doesn’t drive his sleigh of flying reindeer all around the world in one night.
He does get everywhere though — or at least to the Marshall Islands — and that is pretty amazing to me. It makes me feel close to home in a place as far from it as I can get, and that is Christmas magic if I ever knew it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, December 10, 2007
Here Comes the Lady
My girlfriend came to visit me here in the Marshall Islands this last Thursday. I had been counting down the days one by one ever since she bought her ticket. My frame of reference was broken down into B.T. and A.T. (her name is Tiffany). People would ask me if I wanted to do something and I would run it through my head to see where it fit in relation to her.
In my class I shoved it into the regular lineup of other mundane announcements. Quiz on Wednesday, basketball game on Thursday and Tiffany will be here in 29 days. Towards the end of my countdown I elicited groans from the crowd.
“Ah, Mr. Tim,” my student Bryant said one day, “all you talk about is Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany all day and we are tired of it!”
Finally the day came and I took a cab out to the airport way too early and set about waiting. I paced all around the airport until she came and I am sure that if it were a bigger a facility with more security concerns, I would have been stopped and questioned. As it was, her plane was only ten minutes late, a ten minutes that seemed so long I felt 80 afterwards, but 10 minutes nonetheless.
There she was the girl I had been waiting for. She looked as beautiful as ever and had enough bags to cloth the entire island through a snowstorm if the climate should suddenly shift.
“It is so gorgeous,” she told me. “From the plane, I could not believe how beautiful it was.” I looked around and saw the coconuts swaying in the sunny breeze with turquoise beaches glimmering beyond. Suddenly I remembered that when I first touched down, I too saw all of these things and was blind to the trash and grit that has later caught my eye.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” I said.
After she unpacked we went for a walk and along the way we saw many of the neighborhood children.
“They are so cute,” Tiffany said. “I love how every one of them gives you a smile when you wave at them.” I looked around and saw how wherever we went children popped out from their front yards and down from trees and waved their tiny waves and smiled their enormous smiles. Some shouted “hello” and some shouted “yakwe.”
“Yeah, I suppose they are,” I said.
A couple of days later the yacht club where I am a member (that’s right, I’m a “yachtie”) took us out on a “Learn to Sail Day.” We learned a little about the foreign language that is a yacht, cut the jib and all that, and then went out for an afternoon jaunt around the Majuro Lagoon. At the end of the day we glided back into port and drank coffee and ate cookies and talked with the couple who took us out. They were in the beginning of a five-year around the world trip. After a swim off the deck they took us back to shore.
“Sometimes I want to pinch myself because I am not sure this is real,” Tiffany said. “Sometimes it seems too perfect, like it is made up, like it is a ride at Disney Land.”
I saw the sun setting on the horizon and the coconut trees all black outlines in a sky on fire. I heard the lapping of tropical water on a dinghy. I saw a dock materializing and I knew that home was close by.
“Yeah, I suppose I live in paradise.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
In my class I shoved it into the regular lineup of other mundane announcements. Quiz on Wednesday, basketball game on Thursday and Tiffany will be here in 29 days. Towards the end of my countdown I elicited groans from the crowd.
“Ah, Mr. Tim,” my student Bryant said one day, “all you talk about is Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany all day and we are tired of it!”
Finally the day came and I took a cab out to the airport way too early and set about waiting. I paced all around the airport until she came and I am sure that if it were a bigger a facility with more security concerns, I would have been stopped and questioned. As it was, her plane was only ten minutes late, a ten minutes that seemed so long I felt 80 afterwards, but 10 minutes nonetheless.
There she was the girl I had been waiting for. She looked as beautiful as ever and had enough bags to cloth the entire island through a snowstorm if the climate should suddenly shift.
“It is so gorgeous,” she told me. “From the plane, I could not believe how beautiful it was.” I looked around and saw the coconuts swaying in the sunny breeze with turquoise beaches glimmering beyond. Suddenly I remembered that when I first touched down, I too saw all of these things and was blind to the trash and grit that has later caught my eye.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” I said.
After she unpacked we went for a walk and along the way we saw many of the neighborhood children.
“They are so cute,” Tiffany said. “I love how every one of them gives you a smile when you wave at them.” I looked around and saw how wherever we went children popped out from their front yards and down from trees and waved their tiny waves and smiled their enormous smiles. Some shouted “hello” and some shouted “yakwe.”
“Yeah, I suppose they are,” I said.
A couple of days later the yacht club where I am a member (that’s right, I’m a “yachtie”) took us out on a “Learn to Sail Day.” We learned a little about the foreign language that is a yacht, cut the jib and all that, and then went out for an afternoon jaunt around the Majuro Lagoon. At the end of the day we glided back into port and drank coffee and ate cookies and talked with the couple who took us out. They were in the beginning of a five-year around the world trip. After a swim off the deck they took us back to shore.
“Sometimes I want to pinch myself because I am not sure this is real,” Tiffany said. “Sometimes it seems too perfect, like it is made up, like it is a ride at Disney Land.”
I saw the sun setting on the horizon and the coconut trees all black outlines in a sky on fire. I heard the lapping of tropical water on a dinghy. I saw a dock materializing and I knew that home was close by.
“Yeah, I suppose I live in paradise.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, November 30, 2007
Here Goes Nothing
I am always nervous about doing new things with my class here. For some reason I fear that my kids will think it is lame and boring and not want to participate. It is probably some lingering self-doubt from my middle school days when I couldn’t sit at the “cool” table in the lunch room. So when I had the thought of starting a new club, I didn’t know if it would fly.
Two weeks ago I swallowed my doubts and I started a fitness club. On Tuesdays I meet with the girls and on Wednesdays I meet with the boys. We start off with some stretches and then move to some strength exercises like pushups, sit-ups and lunges. Most of them complain, but much to my relief, many show up. After that I lead them in whatever game I feel like playing on that particular day.
Lately, what with the Duck football season down the tube, we have been playing soccer. Now I love soccer but I have always been horrible at it. Most of the kids here however have never played and that makes me the best player on the field — plus I double most of their size.
It might sound mean, but when else am I going to be able to score a hat-trick in a game?
Anyway, all of the kids and I have a great time. There is usually a lot of good-natured trash talking between the two teams and some pretty ridiculous after-goal celebrations.
These kids will know English when I am through — or at least they will know how to say “in your face!”
This is some of the most fun I have had with my kids while being on-island. I get to see their personalities and senses of humor. I get to see how they interact with each other outside of class. They, in turn, get to see that their teacher is a normal enough guy — when he isn’t waving his shirt over his head after a particularly sweet goal — and is concerned with more than if they brought in their homework like they were supposed to.
After every Fitness Club meeting I bring back all of the kids to my place and get them water and we sit around the front of my house and chat. They usually try and teach me Marshallese and then laugh their heads off as I mispronounce everything. Meanwhile I ask them what word after word in English means in Marshallese.
While I know a lot more than when I got here — nothing — I still have not gotten much past the caveman stage of “I hungry, I tired, I thirsty.”
The other day after fitness club, one of my boys named Parent even climbed the two and a half storey coconut tree in my yard and knocked down some good eating for me. We hacked open the fresh coconuts and passed the milk around — delisious.
The whole thing about Fitness Club so far has been that it is a laid-back way for me to get to know my students, and I love it. It has not flopped like I feared it might and maybe I can put these middle school insecurities to bed already.
One day in class last week I had every student share with the whole class what their favorite sport is while I was taking role. There were some kids who said basketball and volleyball and then we got to Bobby Lucky.
“My favorite sport is Fitness Club,” he said.
I was smiling too big to tell him that Fitness Club is not actually a sport.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Two weeks ago I swallowed my doubts and I started a fitness club. On Tuesdays I meet with the girls and on Wednesdays I meet with the boys. We start off with some stretches and then move to some strength exercises like pushups, sit-ups and lunges. Most of them complain, but much to my relief, many show up. After that I lead them in whatever game I feel like playing on that particular day.
Lately, what with the Duck football season down the tube, we have been playing soccer. Now I love soccer but I have always been horrible at it. Most of the kids here however have never played and that makes me the best player on the field — plus I double most of their size.
It might sound mean, but when else am I going to be able to score a hat-trick in a game?
Anyway, all of the kids and I have a great time. There is usually a lot of good-natured trash talking between the two teams and some pretty ridiculous after-goal celebrations.
These kids will know English when I am through — or at least they will know how to say “in your face!”
This is some of the most fun I have had with my kids while being on-island. I get to see their personalities and senses of humor. I get to see how they interact with each other outside of class. They, in turn, get to see that their teacher is a normal enough guy — when he isn’t waving his shirt over his head after a particularly sweet goal — and is concerned with more than if they brought in their homework like they were supposed to.
After every Fitness Club meeting I bring back all of the kids to my place and get them water and we sit around the front of my house and chat. They usually try and teach me Marshallese and then laugh their heads off as I mispronounce everything. Meanwhile I ask them what word after word in English means in Marshallese.
While I know a lot more than when I got here — nothing — I still have not gotten much past the caveman stage of “I hungry, I tired, I thirsty.”
The other day after fitness club, one of my boys named Parent even climbed the two and a half storey coconut tree in my yard and knocked down some good eating for me. We hacked open the fresh coconuts and passed the milk around — delisious.
The whole thing about Fitness Club so far has been that it is a laid-back way for me to get to know my students, and I love it. It has not flopped like I feared it might and maybe I can put these middle school insecurities to bed already.
One day in class last week I had every student share with the whole class what their favorite sport is while I was taking role. There were some kids who said basketball and volleyball and then we got to Bobby Lucky.
“My favorite sport is Fitness Club,” he said.
I was smiling too big to tell him that Fitness Club is not actually a sport.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Did it just get wierd in here, or is that just me?
Really weird stuff happens here in the Marshall Islands.
I think that it has something to do with the fact that we are only a few degrees away from the equator. My theory goes something like this: As we are sitting on an island that is situated at the earth’s widest spot, we are spinning faster, which in turn makes normally impossible things run-of-the-mill-normal.
Case-in-point one — glass bottles act like rubber balls.
A few weeks ago my friends Katie, Robbye and I were sitting on the dock, waiting for a boat to take us to the island of Eneko for the night. As we sat there we all saw a glass beer bottle fall from the sky, bounce up off the parking lot, fly over an idling car and skitter to rest a few feet away completely unharmed. By all conventional standards that bottle should have been shattered but it was totally fine. I don’t know what is weirder about this case, the fact that after looking all around none of us could see where in the world this bottle could have dropped from, or the fact that we almost didn’t mention it to each other after it happened.
I think another side-effect of this weirdness is that while you are here, it seems normal.
Case-in-point two — I have super powers.
One day in class my student Bobby told one of his classmates to do something very vulgar to his mother.
“Get up out of your chair Bobby, and come talk to me outside,” I said to him in the sternest voice I have. Bobby didn’t move. “Bobby,” I said, “the whole class will just have to wait until you get up and talk to me outside.” Finally Bobby got up. He knew that he was in big trouble now and tears started pooling in his eyes. “I can’t believe you said that, Bobby, we are going to have to talk with your parents about it.” When I went to open the door to the outside hallway to have my little chat with Bobby a man was standing there.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Can I see Bobby?” the man asked. “I am his father.”
Yep, that is right, it was his father. Through some freak side effect of spinning so fast on the earth’s equator I now have the power to instantly call students’ parents to my door with thought. The rest of the students quaked in their seats.
Case-in-point three — old women fight like professional wrestlers on HBO.
One morning as I was prepping my classroom for the inevitable flood of shoving and shouting that is the sixth grade I heard a commotion outside. I opened my door and looked off the second floor balcony to the field below. There in the grass were two very old ladies, maybe in upwards of 75 years old, and they were vehemently spitting insults at each other like it was a rap battle.
“Everyone get back in class,” I shouted at my students. Reluctantly, heads bowed and feet shuffling, they filed into my class. Then, as I started to close the door on the last student the shouting erupted even louder. I turned around in time to see Old Lady One deck Old Lady Two in the face. Kids from other grades ringed the two ladies and the school-yard brawl was on. It digressed from there into a bunch of hair pulling as two teachers pulled them apart.
I only remembered to tell anyone about it a full three weeks later.
This place makes the impossible seem everyday — if only it could be applied to things like curing cancer instead of making beer bottles into rubber balls, giving me super powers and making old ladies pummel each other.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
I think that it has something to do with the fact that we are only a few degrees away from the equator. My theory goes something like this: As we are sitting on an island that is situated at the earth’s widest spot, we are spinning faster, which in turn makes normally impossible things run-of-the-mill-normal.
Case-in-point one — glass bottles act like rubber balls.
A few weeks ago my friends Katie, Robbye and I were sitting on the dock, waiting for a boat to take us to the island of Eneko for the night. As we sat there we all saw a glass beer bottle fall from the sky, bounce up off the parking lot, fly over an idling car and skitter to rest a few feet away completely unharmed. By all conventional standards that bottle should have been shattered but it was totally fine. I don’t know what is weirder about this case, the fact that after looking all around none of us could see where in the world this bottle could have dropped from, or the fact that we almost didn’t mention it to each other after it happened.
I think another side-effect of this weirdness is that while you are here, it seems normal.
Case-in-point two — I have super powers.
One day in class my student Bobby told one of his classmates to do something very vulgar to his mother.
“Get up out of your chair Bobby, and come talk to me outside,” I said to him in the sternest voice I have. Bobby didn’t move. “Bobby,” I said, “the whole class will just have to wait until you get up and talk to me outside.” Finally Bobby got up. He knew that he was in big trouble now and tears started pooling in his eyes. “I can’t believe you said that, Bobby, we are going to have to talk with your parents about it.” When I went to open the door to the outside hallway to have my little chat with Bobby a man was standing there.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Can I see Bobby?” the man asked. “I am his father.”
Yep, that is right, it was his father. Through some freak side effect of spinning so fast on the earth’s equator I now have the power to instantly call students’ parents to my door with thought. The rest of the students quaked in their seats.
Case-in-point three — old women fight like professional wrestlers on HBO.
One morning as I was prepping my classroom for the inevitable flood of shoving and shouting that is the sixth grade I heard a commotion outside. I opened my door and looked off the second floor balcony to the field below. There in the grass were two very old ladies, maybe in upwards of 75 years old, and they were vehemently spitting insults at each other like it was a rap battle.
“Everyone get back in class,” I shouted at my students. Reluctantly, heads bowed and feet shuffling, they filed into my class. Then, as I started to close the door on the last student the shouting erupted even louder. I turned around in time to see Old Lady One deck Old Lady Two in the face. Kids from other grades ringed the two ladies and the school-yard brawl was on. It digressed from there into a bunch of hair pulling as two teachers pulled them apart.
I only remembered to tell anyone about it a full three weeks later.
This place makes the impossible seem everyday — if only it could be applied to things like curing cancer instead of making beer bottles into rubber balls, giving me super powers and making old ladies pummel each other.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
A Three-Day Trip
The day was cranky with rain and wind. Majuro’s coconut trees bowed in each passing gust, their branches flailing outward like the arms of teenagers at a rock concert. With my bag packed I headed over to the Roxanna. For 17 dollars I bought my way over to an island named Arno. The Roxanna is a twin-engine speedster. It is built with a long nose and a boxy behind. It splits its way through waves rather than over them and on the ride to Arno my blue rain coat caught wind like a plastic grocery bag in a supermarket parking lot. Behind me Majuro shrank into memory and Arno rose up, a thin ribbon of flat land packed to the brim with coconut trees. The town I headed to was named Ine. On this island one of my fellow volunteers worked and I was set to spend a long weekend with him, observing the differences between volunteering on an outer island and an inner island. I was the only “repelle,” or foreigner on dock when we arrived. It was a Friday and I found the captain of the Roxanna and asked him if he was going to return Monday. “Yes,” he told me. I shouldered my black Adidas bag of belongings and picked up the plastic bag of groceries I had brought for Greg’s host family and surveyed my surroundings. Everywhere I looked would have been perfect for the cover of a magazine. White-sand beaches, coconut trees and barely anyone in sight. I walked into Ine town, with its total of 35 houses, and looked for Greg’s house. When I found where Greg lived, I approached with numbers as neighboring kids flocked and joined rank. “Repelle,” they said to me with their 100-dollar smiles. “Rimashall,” I said back. Greg’s house was about 30 feet from that of his host family’s and sat low and huddled to the ground as if anticipating a storm. On the inside it was just possible for me to stand up straight. Greg showed me all around his little town. The day pouted all around us and the grey clouds threatened rain. As we walked everyone stopped to chat with Greg. He knew everyone. People chopping up the pandanous, a fruit with a hard, pointy outside that always looks like it is ready for battle, paused with machetes held loosely in-hand to ask who I was, shake my hand and tell me hello. There were kids playing hop-scotch on squares drawn in the mud-path and others climbing high in trees. They all shouted things to Greg. That night Greg’s host mother made us dinner and we all squatted on the floor and made small talk about the election that was set to happen the next day. It was in Marshallese and it was simple. “You will vote tomorrow?” “Yes, I will vote tomorrow.” Her smile was brilliant. For the next three days I was Greg’s shadow. We snorkeled over a reef that dropped off so sharply into a black abyss I got vertigo. We saw a shark. We played baseball with a broken paddle for a bat and an old foam buoy for a ball. We made jokes about girls with Greg’s oldest host brother and I read books with his youngest — a first-grader named Rino with a smile from a Crest commercial and the happiest disposition I have seen this side of Mr. Rodgers. At the nights, before we slept, I watched Greg practice his “step” dancing with the rest of his community. Step dancing is a Marshallese Christmas tradition where groups within the community learn a quasi line dance with moves meant to resemble traditional Marshallese work. The dance choreographer made the joke that he was looking for a Marshallese wife for Greg. Everyone laughed. When the weekend was supposed to end, the Roxanna didn’t come for three days, so I hopped a truck and went to the other side of the island to catch a different boat. When I said goodbye to Rino we traded necklaces. He got a small pendant of a saint and I got an old key hung on some fishing line. On the third day of the Roxanna not showing up I hopped a truck to the next town over, Arno, Arno, just before the sun set. I was going to catch a different boat the next day. I stayed with a lady who put me up in a cabin right on the sand. I slept in my hamock and watched the sunrise the next day. Before I left she gave me shells she had gathered. The boat ride back was bright. |
The love you give comes back in the end.
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Monday, November 12, 2007
Musical Marshallese
One of my favorite things to do during class when my students are working on something like a journal or definitions for our spelling words is to walk around singing popular songs and changing the words.
“Beautiful Girl” becomes “Beautiful 6C,” and “Nobody Want To See Us Together” becomes “Nobody Bothered With Homework.”
I usually get a pen or a ruler to be my microphone and I channel my best sleazy lounge-singer act and I close my eyes and belt out the tunes. I trample through pitches way too high for me and I dabble in tones much too low. I usually sound like a teenage kid going through puberty who is giving a speech.
“You are so bulaat, Mr. Tim,” my kids say as they laugh and giggle hard. Bulaat is the Marshallese word for tone-deaf.
The reason why it is such a crack-up to these kids for me to be singing at the top of my much-less-than song-worthy lungs is because they themselves are such good musicians.
All of my kids can sing more songs from memory than a DJ spins in an hour. Not only do they know all of the words to these songs, they also can sing them well. They move from high to low with the unfettered freedom of birds.
This is in stark contrast to how things where when I grew up in the states — nobody wanted to be heard singing. Unless you were a good singer anyway and went to voice lessons, kids kept their voices tucked away. Maybe you would sing to yourself when you were in the shower, or maybe you would sing along in a duet with the radio in the car, but you would never just sing with a bunch of your friends.
This is definitely not the case here in the Marshall Islands. A common sight are kids of all ages, boys and girls, to be walking down the street with their friends, strumming on a ukelele and singing a song beautifully. Men sit with their wives in door stoops and pick through a new song, or sing an old one. English or Marshallese, it doesn’t matter, it is all music and they are all good at it.
One of the best times to walk here is right after the sun has set. First of all that is the time of night when there is a soft light coating everything — attaching itself to people’s faces, window and mirrors in one final stand against the darkness. Also there is the smell of smoke from cooking fires hanging in the air and playful sight of kids running around chasing each other in a never-ending game that I still don’t understand. And finally, over it all, there is the soft pattern of music.
For the kids, it is surprising that I can’t sing. For them, everyone simply can sing — at least on some level.
Maybe everyone here can sing because having things like radios, CD’s and iPods is so recent. Maybe 100 years ago, before there was radio in America, everyone could sing in the states too. Maybe we just all got lazy because we could have music with a flick of a switch.
Or maybe Marshallese have some sort of singing gene. They did use singing as a way of navigating long-ago, so it would be a desirable trait.
Whatever it is, I am bulaat and they all think that it is hilarious. Meanwhile this place has made the malfunction of my iPod less relevant. Walking through neighborhoods and past benches is like tripping through different radio stations with you feet being the tuner knob. When you find something you like, you just stop moving your feet and sit and listen a while. If they are kind people, then you might sing along as well.
Bulaat.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
“Beautiful Girl” becomes “Beautiful 6C,” and “Nobody Want To See Us Together” becomes “Nobody Bothered With Homework.”
I usually get a pen or a ruler to be my microphone and I channel my best sleazy lounge-singer act and I close my eyes and belt out the tunes. I trample through pitches way too high for me and I dabble in tones much too low. I usually sound like a teenage kid going through puberty who is giving a speech.
“You are so bulaat, Mr. Tim,” my kids say as they laugh and giggle hard. Bulaat is the Marshallese word for tone-deaf.
The reason why it is such a crack-up to these kids for me to be singing at the top of my much-less-than song-worthy lungs is because they themselves are such good musicians.
All of my kids can sing more songs from memory than a DJ spins in an hour. Not only do they know all of the words to these songs, they also can sing them well. They move from high to low with the unfettered freedom of birds.
This is in stark contrast to how things where when I grew up in the states — nobody wanted to be heard singing. Unless you were a good singer anyway and went to voice lessons, kids kept their voices tucked away. Maybe you would sing to yourself when you were in the shower, or maybe you would sing along in a duet with the radio in the car, but you would never just sing with a bunch of your friends.
This is definitely not the case here in the Marshall Islands. A common sight are kids of all ages, boys and girls, to be walking down the street with their friends, strumming on a ukelele and singing a song beautifully. Men sit with their wives in door stoops and pick through a new song, or sing an old one. English or Marshallese, it doesn’t matter, it is all music and they are all good at it.
One of the best times to walk here is right after the sun has set. First of all that is the time of night when there is a soft light coating everything — attaching itself to people’s faces, window and mirrors in one final stand against the darkness. Also there is the smell of smoke from cooking fires hanging in the air and playful sight of kids running around chasing each other in a never-ending game that I still don’t understand. And finally, over it all, there is the soft pattern of music.
For the kids, it is surprising that I can’t sing. For them, everyone simply can sing — at least on some level.
Maybe everyone here can sing because having things like radios, CD’s and iPods is so recent. Maybe 100 years ago, before there was radio in America, everyone could sing in the states too. Maybe we just all got lazy because we could have music with a flick of a switch.
Or maybe Marshallese have some sort of singing gene. They did use singing as a way of navigating long-ago, so it would be a desirable trait.
Whatever it is, I am bulaat and they all think that it is hilarious. Meanwhile this place has made the malfunction of my iPod less relevant. Walking through neighborhoods and past benches is like tripping through different radio stations with you feet being the tuner knob. When you find something you like, you just stop moving your feet and sit and listen a while. If they are kind people, then you might sing along as well.
Bulaat.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, November 4, 2007
PenPals
Yesterday was a big day in grade six, section A. Those 28 students got letters in the mail from their brand-new pen-pals. These Marshallese kids who have never needed to wear anything heavier than a long sleeve tee-shirt were about to meet kids who live in Beaverton, Oregon, where owning a heavy fleece is a prerequisite.
The concept of fleece is not even in the Marshallese frame of reference.
These were definitely two different worlds and I was not sure if my kids would be able to relate or if their new Oregonian pen-pals would even hold their attention.
Anyway, along with the letters from rainy Beaverton came actual photos of their new pen-pals that their teacher Ms. O’Looney had sent along. On the back bulletin-board of my classroom I made a big presentation of the letters. I photo-copied the class letter that Ms. O’Looney had sent and then I hung up all of the photos under the heading “6A Pen Pals.”
The reaction among my group of sixth-graders was akin to what might happen if Brad Pitt walked into a teenage burger joint. The students clambered to get in close to the photos of their new friends. They ringed out three and four deep to get just a tiny glimpse of these kids thousands of miles away.
Word of warning to Ms. O’Looney’s class: be prepared for mobs, cameras and unparalleled attention if you should ever happen to come out Marshall Island way because you have pushed aside Eminem, 50-Cent and Kayne West as the most talked about foreign people in my sixth-grade classrooms.
Suddenly 6A, a group of kids who often have trouble focusing on assignments and paying attention, was a solid group of scholars quietly and intently focused on writing a quality letter in English to their new pen-pals.
This phenomenon didn’t stop in section 6A either. As is often the case with new celebrities, word of mouth spread fast. Soon kids from other sections were poking their heads in and asking to see the photos of the “repelles.”
In section 6D, myresident funny-man, Laijab frantically motioned me back to the photos of the Americans.
“Mr. Tim, you see this girl?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“She will be my wife.”
“Go back to your seat, Laijab.”
Suddenly other kids in other sections were asking if they could write to section 6A’s pen-pals. I asked them when they were going to find the time to write a letter.
“We will do it after school, Mr. Tim,” they told me.
I felt like calling the hospital and arranging a group check in for my sixth-graders so the doctors could examine their heads.
“What seems to be the problem,” the receptionist would ask.
“Well, my sixth-graders actually want to stay after school so they can work on their English,” I would answer in a concerned tone.
“We are sending an ambulance right away,” he would say. “Just stay calm.”
After school I was reading through the letters that my 6A had drafted. It was the neatest, most thoughtful and carefully written collection of prose I had ever received from them. I sat back in my chair and scratched my head in wonder about the drastic change that had swept over my class.
Then I heard a knock at my door. It was Laijab.
“Can I borrow a book?” he asked. I nodded my head yes and walked back to my desk. When I turned and sat down there was Laijab, down on one knee, proposing to a picture on the wall.
“Go home Laijab,” I said, laughing.
“Sorry, Mr. Tim, sorry,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
Turns out that holding their attention was not an issue— now if I could only get them to talk about something else.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The concept of fleece is not even in the Marshallese frame of reference.
These were definitely two different worlds and I was not sure if my kids would be able to relate or if their new Oregonian pen-pals would even hold their attention.
Anyway, along with the letters from rainy Beaverton came actual photos of their new pen-pals that their teacher Ms. O’Looney had sent along. On the back bulletin-board of my classroom I made a big presentation of the letters. I photo-copied the class letter that Ms. O’Looney had sent and then I hung up all of the photos under the heading “6A Pen Pals.”
The reaction among my group of sixth-graders was akin to what might happen if Brad Pitt walked into a teenage burger joint. The students clambered to get in close to the photos of their new friends. They ringed out three and four deep to get just a tiny glimpse of these kids thousands of miles away.
Word of warning to Ms. O’Looney’s class: be prepared for mobs, cameras and unparalleled attention if you should ever happen to come out Marshall Island way because you have pushed aside Eminem, 50-Cent and Kayne West as the most talked about foreign people in my sixth-grade classrooms.
Suddenly 6A, a group of kids who often have trouble focusing on assignments and paying attention, was a solid group of scholars quietly and intently focused on writing a quality letter in English to their new pen-pals.
This phenomenon didn’t stop in section 6A either. As is often the case with new celebrities, word of mouth spread fast. Soon kids from other sections were poking their heads in and asking to see the photos of the “repelles.”
In section 6D, myresident funny-man, Laijab frantically motioned me back to the photos of the Americans.
“Mr. Tim, you see this girl?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“She will be my wife.”
“Go back to your seat, Laijab.”
Suddenly other kids in other sections were asking if they could write to section 6A’s pen-pals. I asked them when they were going to find the time to write a letter.
“We will do it after school, Mr. Tim,” they told me.
I felt like calling the hospital and arranging a group check in for my sixth-graders so the doctors could examine their heads.
“What seems to be the problem,” the receptionist would ask.
“Well, my sixth-graders actually want to stay after school so they can work on their English,” I would answer in a concerned tone.
“We are sending an ambulance right away,” he would say. “Just stay calm.”
After school I was reading through the letters that my 6A had drafted. It was the neatest, most thoughtful and carefully written collection of prose I had ever received from them. I sat back in my chair and scratched my head in wonder about the drastic change that had swept over my class.
Then I heard a knock at my door. It was Laijab.
“Can I borrow a book?” he asked. I nodded my head yes and walked back to my desk. When I turned and sat down there was Laijab, down on one knee, proposing to a picture on the wall.
“Go home Laijab,” I said, laughing.
“Sorry, Mr. Tim, sorry,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
Turns out that holding their attention was not an issue— now if I could only get them to talk about something else.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, November 1, 2007
We Want Candy
There is always lots of talk about Christmas miracles, about how it is a magical time of year but what about Halloween miracles? Those can happen too, right? I mean, sure it doesn’t have the same emotional pull as a Christmas miracle, what with the snow and bells and everything, but it would still be something special.
On Halloween, I told my class that whoever came to my house with a costume at 5 pm would get candy.
At 4:30 there were about ten kids crowded around my front door.
“We want plenty, plenty candies, Mr. Tim,” Joseph shouted.
“Give me candies for me and my friends,” Laijab joined in.
I scratched my chin and examined all of their faces one by one.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Didn’t I say that I would only give candy to people in costumes?”
“Yes, but we don’t have money to buy costume!” Kenny said. He crowded in close.
In my head an internal battle was set off. I wondered, was I being incredibly cruel to deny these kids candy simply because they didn’t have access to buy a costume? Would giving them candy despite a costume constitute a Halloween miracle?
“Hold on,” I said. I walked into the house and found my friend Dan reading a magazine in the front room.
“Dude, there is going to be a riot out there,” I said. “All of the kids are shouting for candy.”
“Don’t give it to them,” Dan said over the top of his magazine. “If you do then they will be asking for candy all of the time.”
“Dan, it is Halloween.”
“Oh, really? Wow, I forgot about that. Well, yeah give them candy. Only if they have costumes though.”
“Yeah, that is what I thought.”
These kids were never going to have the means to get a lot of things in life, so if they wanted to succeed despite that they would have to start thinking outside of the box.
I went back out to the front steps of my house and addressed the eager crowd. I waited for them to be quiet and they shushed each other. They wanted to hear what I had to say. After all, I was the man standing in front of them and their sugar.
“It is 4:37 now,” I said grandly with a sweep of my arm. “If you want candy you have to go dress up as something and come back at 5.”
“But Mr. Tim!” the students groaned.
“Be creative!” I shouted and went back inside.
At 5:05 I was sitting in my room, rocking out to my iTunes when there came a frantic knocking on my door. It was a fellow teacher named Darren.
“Uh, you had better come,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“There are lots of kids calling for you.”
When I went back outside, there was the posse of my kids. All of them had their faces covered in flour and they were growling out in monster voices.
“Hey great job,” I said and I handed out candy.
“We want more,” Joseph said.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” I told him.
“What if we come back with a new costume?” he asked.
“Well, then maybe we could talk.”
I went back inside. I made dinner, I drank a cup of coffee and played some guitar. Then at 7:30, a giant knock came at my door. This time it was Liz.
“There are more kids that want you.”
I came back outside to an even larger roaring than before and there were my kids, augmented in numbers, with face paint of all kinds and colors smeared on their faces.
I was very impressed with their determination to have gone from having nothing to making not one but two of their very own incarnations of a costume. They made their very own Halloween happen.
I joined them as we pranced around in front of my house — a gang of monsters terrorizing a tropical island.
A Halloween miracle — who would have thunk?
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
On Halloween, I told my class that whoever came to my house with a costume at 5 pm would get candy.
At 4:30 there were about ten kids crowded around my front door.
“We want plenty, plenty candies, Mr. Tim,” Joseph shouted.
“Give me candies for me and my friends,” Laijab joined in.
I scratched my chin and examined all of their faces one by one.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Didn’t I say that I would only give candy to people in costumes?”
“Yes, but we don’t have money to buy costume!” Kenny said. He crowded in close.
In my head an internal battle was set off. I wondered, was I being incredibly cruel to deny these kids candy simply because they didn’t have access to buy a costume? Would giving them candy despite a costume constitute a Halloween miracle?
“Hold on,” I said. I walked into the house and found my friend Dan reading a magazine in the front room.
“Dude, there is going to be a riot out there,” I said. “All of the kids are shouting for candy.”
“Don’t give it to them,” Dan said over the top of his magazine. “If you do then they will be asking for candy all of the time.”
“Dan, it is Halloween.”
“Oh, really? Wow, I forgot about that. Well, yeah give them candy. Only if they have costumes though.”
“Yeah, that is what I thought.”
These kids were never going to have the means to get a lot of things in life, so if they wanted to succeed despite that they would have to start thinking outside of the box.
I went back out to the front steps of my house and addressed the eager crowd. I waited for them to be quiet and they shushed each other. They wanted to hear what I had to say. After all, I was the man standing in front of them and their sugar.
“It is 4:37 now,” I said grandly with a sweep of my arm. “If you want candy you have to go dress up as something and come back at 5.”
“But Mr. Tim!” the students groaned.
“Be creative!” I shouted and went back inside.
At 5:05 I was sitting in my room, rocking out to my iTunes when there came a frantic knocking on my door. It was a fellow teacher named Darren.
“Uh, you had better come,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“There are lots of kids calling for you.”
When I went back outside, there was the posse of my kids. All of them had their faces covered in flour and they were growling out in monster voices.
“Hey great job,” I said and I handed out candy.
“We want more,” Joseph said.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” I told him.
“What if we come back with a new costume?” he asked.
“Well, then maybe we could talk.”
I went back inside. I made dinner, I drank a cup of coffee and played some guitar. Then at 7:30, a giant knock came at my door. This time it was Liz.
“There are more kids that want you.”
I came back outside to an even larger roaring than before and there were my kids, augmented in numbers, with face paint of all kinds and colors smeared on their faces.
I was very impressed with their determination to have gone from having nothing to making not one but two of their very own incarnations of a costume. They made their very own Halloween happen.
I joined them as we pranced around in front of my house — a gang of monsters terrorizing a tropical island.
A Halloween miracle — who would have thunk?
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Getting Tumbled
For the first time in the history of the Marshall Islands Spear and Surf Club charter members Dan “Thinning in the Front but a Jungle in the Back” Caccavano and Tim “Take a Shower Already” Lane financed to have a word-class photographer to come out and shoot a surf session at the club’s highly confidential secret surf spot that is somewhere behind the high school rumor has it. The photographer, Joe “I Only Dress Like a Golf Pro” Fore was primed and ready to get some killer shots of the club shooting the curl and hitting the green room hard. The outing proved to be immensely successful as Joe managed to snap this little gem. It is artfully out of focus and Mr. Fore chose to use an angle that increased Dan’s prominence on the wave and reduce the appearance of the wave’s actual size (which was inching north of 20 feet to be sure). 
When the club first paddled out on the frothy surf a crowd of eager young children spotted the shoreline hoping for a glimpse of one of their surf heroes dropping in on a killer wave and hitting the rail hard. Many of them had markers in hand to get an autograph when Dan and Tim resurfaced. The crowd thinned out after a short while however after Dan and Tim failed on repeated attempts early in the session to stand up on the frothy wild beast-like waves. When pressed for an explanation as to why they struggled early in the session, Dan had this to say.
"Listen, I am all about getting the kids excited about surfing, but if they cannot appreciate a good wipe out and washing machine combo, then they are not true Dan and Tim fans because that is just what we do,” Dan said as he repeatedly kissed his fingers, tapped his chest and then pointed to the sky.
Meanwhile Tim was unusually tight-lipped about the beginning session.
“Picasso painted masterpieces, Chef Boyardee made some mean spaghetti O’s, and Dan and Tim, we just get wet,” Tim said in a low mumble.
For the few fans that hung out in the hot sun, they were gainfully rewarded by a couple of slick rides from Mr. Caccavano. Tim struck out however, wave after wave, and so the day was Dan’s. Tim refused to comment on his lack of waves but Dan had this to say about his ever-present partner in crime.
“Some guys think surfing is all about riding waves. It is not. Surfing is in here,” Dan said as he pointed to his heart. “And that means that you have to mess around in the white wash and fall on your face a little, because that is surfing too. Any guy who goes out there and gets killer ride after killer ride without getting smashed up in a mean rinse cycle is no surfer in my book. My
Broseph over there (taps his heart and points to Tim) he is one of the best surfers in the world, because that is basically all that he does. I think that he falls better than he rides – and that is pure.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
When the club first paddled out on the frothy surf a crowd of eager young children spotted the shoreline hoping for a glimpse of one of their surf heroes dropping in on a killer wave and hitting the rail hard. Many of them had markers in hand to get an autograph when Dan and Tim resurfaced. The crowd thinned out after a short while however after Dan and Tim failed on repeated attempts early in the session to stand up on the frothy wild beast-like waves. When pressed for an explanation as to why they struggled early in the session, Dan had this to say.
"Listen, I am all about getting the kids excited about surfing, but if they cannot appreciate a good wipe out and washing machine combo, then they are not true Dan and Tim fans because that is just what we do,” Dan said as he repeatedly kissed his fingers, tapped his chest and then pointed to the sky.
Meanwhile Tim was unusually tight-lipped about the beginning session.
“Picasso painted masterpieces, Chef Boyardee made some mean spaghetti O’s, and Dan and Tim, we just get wet,” Tim said in a low mumble.
For the few fans that hung out in the hot sun, they were gainfully rewarded by a couple of slick rides from Mr. Caccavano. Tim struck out however, wave after wave, and so the day was Dan’s. Tim refused to comment on his lack of waves but Dan had this to say about his ever-present partner in crime.
“Some guys think surfing is all about riding waves. It is not. Surfing is in here,” Dan said as he pointed to his heart. “And that means that you have to mess around in the white wash and fall on your face a little, because that is surfing too. Any guy who goes out there and gets killer ride after killer ride without getting smashed up in a mean rinse cycle is no surfer in my book. My
Broseph over there (taps his heart and points to Tim) he is one of the best surfers in the world, because that is basically all that he does. I think that he falls better than he rides – and that is pure.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, October 26, 2007
Building More Than Canoes
In the Marshall Islands, as is the case anywhere in the world, there are kids that slip through the cracks. These are kids who do not finish public schooling, often have family troubles and sometimes struggle with alcohol abuse. Due to the new globalized world the Marshall Islands are a part of, kids who would once have a spot in the traditional Marshallese culture are now simply young and unemployed.
Cue the “Waan Aelon in Majel Program” or WAM. Translated into English it means “Canoes of the Marshall Islands Program,” and it is aimed at giving options to kids who do not have many.
Things started in 1989 when Alson Kelen, a Marshallese man who graduated from Chemeketa Community College in 1991, traveled all around the many small atolls in the Marshall Islands on a grant from the Department of the Interior. His job, along with college Dennis Alessio, was to document just exactly how a Marshallese canoe went from logs to speedy outrigger. As they documented the process on atoll after atoll, one thing caught Kelen’s eye.
“We saw on the outer islands that whole groups of people would come together to build these canoes,”Kelen recalls. “Even during that documentary stage we were thinking about how this could be educational.”
So Kelen came back to Majuro with the idea of building traditional canoes. On and off over the next nine years Kelen put together canoes with the help of neighborhood kids and in 1998 they took the then ambassador from Australia out for a ride. He was so impressed with what he saw that he offered Kelen a grant to start a youth program. In 1999, WAM was incorporated.
“That’s when we started to get more serious,” Kelen says.
Kelen started crafting the WAM program into something other than a way to preserve the art of canoe-making but also a way to help disadvantaged kids out. Most of the kids enrolling in the program were basically “street kids,” Kelen says and making them accountable was a crucial beginning step.
“The fact that these kids can come in and punch in and punch out is a huge thing in itself,” Kelen says.
WAM is priming these kids for employment and it starts from the very beginning. Each kid needs to submit an application and come in for interviews. As part of the program all are required to get training in math, English and life-skills along with alcohol abuse counseling.
Students come in for phase one, a sixth-month course of study focusing on building canoe models and working on basic carpentry skills, and then choose whether or not to pursue the program further in stage two, up to two years focusing on advanced wood-working and fiber-glassing.
The changes in the youth have been clear and encouraging.
“When they first come in here they are kind of lost,” Kelen says. “They are kids from the streets. They are nervous, shy and afraid. You see a lot of changes. They start working together as partners and they bond together.”
Each incoming class for stage one is 14 students and seven can eventually move on to stage two. However there has been a problem recently — all 14 kids want to move on to stage two. This is perhaps the biggest signal of change in these kids at risk. They have gone from being undependable and unemployable to kids who simply do not want to stop learning and improving.
“These were kids who would get nervous when I asked them to do work and hide in the bathroom,” Kelen says. “Now they are kids who don’t want to stop.”
Kids slip through the cracks everyplace in the world — unfortunately they do not have a place like WAM everyplace in the world to help them back up to solid ground.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Cue the “Waan Aelon in Majel Program” or WAM. Translated into English it means “Canoes of the Marshall Islands Program,” and it is aimed at giving options to kids who do not have many.
Things started in 1989 when Alson Kelen, a Marshallese man who graduated from Chemeketa Community College in 1991, traveled all around the many small atolls in the Marshall Islands on a grant from the Department of the Interior. His job, along with college Dennis Alessio, was to document just exactly how a Marshallese canoe went from logs to speedy outrigger. As they documented the process on atoll after atoll, one thing caught Kelen’s eye.
“We saw on the outer islands that whole groups of people would come together to build these canoes,”Kelen recalls. “Even during that documentary stage we were thinking about how this could be educational.”
So Kelen came back to Majuro with the idea of building traditional canoes. On and off over the next nine years Kelen put together canoes with the help of neighborhood kids and in 1998 they took the then ambassador from Australia out for a ride. He was so impressed with what he saw that he offered Kelen a grant to start a youth program. In 1999, WAM was incorporated.
“That’s when we started to get more serious,” Kelen says.
Kelen started crafting the WAM program into something other than a way to preserve the art of canoe-making but also a way to help disadvantaged kids out. Most of the kids enrolling in the program were basically “street kids,” Kelen says and making them accountable was a crucial beginning step.
“The fact that these kids can come in and punch in and punch out is a huge thing in itself,” Kelen says.
WAM is priming these kids for employment and it starts from the very beginning. Each kid needs to submit an application and come in for interviews. As part of the program all are required to get training in math, English and life-skills along with alcohol abuse counseling.
Students come in for phase one, a sixth-month course of study focusing on building canoe models and working on basic carpentry skills, and then choose whether or not to pursue the program further in stage two, up to two years focusing on advanced wood-working and fiber-glassing.
The changes in the youth have been clear and encouraging.
“When they first come in here they are kind of lost,” Kelen says. “They are kids from the streets. They are nervous, shy and afraid. You see a lot of changes. They start working together as partners and they bond together.”
Each incoming class for stage one is 14 students and seven can eventually move on to stage two. However there has been a problem recently — all 14 kids want to move on to stage two. This is perhaps the biggest signal of change in these kids at risk. They have gone from being undependable and unemployable to kids who simply do not want to stop learning and improving.
“These were kids who would get nervous when I asked them to do work and hide in the bathroom,” Kelen says. “Now they are kids who don’t want to stop.”
Kids slip through the cracks everyplace in the world — unfortunately they do not have a place like WAM everyplace in the world to help them back up to solid ground.
The love you give comes back in the end.
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Sunday, October 21, 2007
Kool-Aide and Top Ramen
I knew when I first landed in the RMI that even this remote coral atoll was not immune to globalization. What I didn’t know was just exactly how random those influences seem to be.
For example, my students’ favorite foods is Top Ramen with Kool-Aid. They smash up the package of ramen on the floor with their heel and then sprinkle in half a packet of red Kool-Aid, half a packet of Top Ramon seasoning and shake it up. They pick out the pieces of dry ramen from the package and come away with their lips and hands stained red.
My students also love pogs. The pogs here come from Japan but they are basically the same as the ones that were popular in my childhood. For those of you who are not aware of what pogs are, here is a quick tutorial.
Pogs are little circles of cardboard with pictures and designs printed on them. To play pogs, each player puts in five of his pogs and they stack them up. Then, each player takes turns throwing another pog at the pile to try and knock off as many pogs as they can. The pogs they can knock off they get to keep.
It is a phenomenon that is all over the island. Walk anywhere and you will see kids kneeled, with one knee resting on a flip flop, throwing pogs. In turn their arms cock up over their heads and with a flash they release a throw at the pile.
I have literally had to tell kids in the middle of class to get off the floor and get back to reading.
“Seriously Winton, what made you think that it would be OK to get out of your seat and kneel on the floor and throw your pogs?”
“Sorry, teacher, sorry.”
In addition to ramen, Kool Aid and pogs every boy in the sixth grade is obsessed with hip-hop culture. Everyone owns at least one do-rag, retro jersey or fake gold chain. For some reason out of all of the American influences they see on TV and movies, the youth of the RMI have embraced hip-hop culture. Most students here can recite the words to the raunchy hip-hop song, “Smack That,” verbatim but will get fidgety and nervous when you ask them how their day went.
Top Ramen and Kool Aid, pogs and hip-hop culture are the three main imports I have seen so far in the RMI.
It boggles my mind.
Out of all of the influences getting beamed in, the ones that have stuck most evidently are these three things.
Why exactly is it that the kids here all want to be like 50 Cent? The youth have seen images of the news as well as rap videos. Why are there not legions of little Stone Phillips’s running around with trite smirks and odd inflections in their voices? There are other foreign foods to eat, other foreign things to do and certainly other foreign counter-cultures to emulate.
The answer, it seems, is accessability Top-Ramen and Kool Aid can be bought for less than 50 cents, a pack of pogs are a quarter and hip-hop artists are a lot closer to the reality they face day to day.
Hip-hop is a culture where the predominant players are all dark-skinned and rebelling against establishment in the coolest ways. They sing and rap about coming up big from a poor background. For a dark-skinned Marshallese young person who comes from poverty, that is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Stone Phillips didn’t have a chance.
Globalization has reached even the most remote of places in the world, but who would have known that Kool-Aid and Top Ramen, pogs and hip-hop would be the lasting evidence of it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
For example, my students’ favorite foods is Top Ramen with Kool-Aid. They smash up the package of ramen on the floor with their heel and then sprinkle in half a packet of red Kool-Aid, half a packet of Top Ramon seasoning and shake it up. They pick out the pieces of dry ramen from the package and come away with their lips and hands stained red.
My students also love pogs. The pogs here come from Japan but they are basically the same as the ones that were popular in my childhood. For those of you who are not aware of what pogs are, here is a quick tutorial.
Pogs are little circles of cardboard with pictures and designs printed on them. To play pogs, each player puts in five of his pogs and they stack them up. Then, each player takes turns throwing another pog at the pile to try and knock off as many pogs as they can. The pogs they can knock off they get to keep.
It is a phenomenon that is all over the island. Walk anywhere and you will see kids kneeled, with one knee resting on a flip flop, throwing pogs. In turn their arms cock up over their heads and with a flash they release a throw at the pile.
I have literally had to tell kids in the middle of class to get off the floor and get back to reading.
“Seriously Winton, what made you think that it would be OK to get out of your seat and kneel on the floor and throw your pogs?”
“Sorry, teacher, sorry.”
In addition to ramen, Kool Aid and pogs every boy in the sixth grade is obsessed with hip-hop culture. Everyone owns at least one do-rag, retro jersey or fake gold chain. For some reason out of all of the American influences they see on TV and movies, the youth of the RMI have embraced hip-hop culture. Most students here can recite the words to the raunchy hip-hop song, “Smack That,” verbatim but will get fidgety and nervous when you ask them how their day went.
Top Ramen and Kool Aid, pogs and hip-hop culture are the three main imports I have seen so far in the RMI.
It boggles my mind.
Out of all of the influences getting beamed in, the ones that have stuck most evidently are these three things.
Why exactly is it that the kids here all want to be like 50 Cent? The youth have seen images of the news as well as rap videos. Why are there not legions of little Stone Phillips’s running around with trite smirks and odd inflections in their voices? There are other foreign foods to eat, other foreign things to do and certainly other foreign counter-cultures to emulate.
The answer, it seems, is accessability Top-Ramen and Kool Aid can be bought for less than 50 cents, a pack of pogs are a quarter and hip-hop artists are a lot closer to the reality they face day to day.
Hip-hop is a culture where the predominant players are all dark-skinned and rebelling against establishment in the coolest ways. They sing and rap about coming up big from a poor background. For a dark-skinned Marshallese young person who comes from poverty, that is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Stone Phillips didn’t have a chance.
Globalization has reached even the most remote of places in the world, but who would have known that Kool-Aid and Top Ramen, pogs and hip-hop would be the lasting evidence of it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, October 15, 2007
Swimming Into the Great Abyss
On a coral atoll there are two places to go swimming. Ocean-side or lagoon-side.
Lagoon-side is always the safer bet of the two. There are no waves to deal with, the tide is not an issue and there are not as many sharks.
Lagoon-side has its own issues as well though. The water is sometimes murky with sediment and the trash problem of Majuro is very evident under the water. I have seen bottles and cans, plastic bags and diapers, moving and swaying in the water. It is tragic and disgusting but it is not life-threatening.
At least I think it is not — maybe those diapers should be checked out.
Until recently, I stuck strictly to lagoon-side swimming. Aside from the fact that there are less sharks on lagoon-side, the sharks that are there are reported to be smaller than ocean-side ones.
However, as I was leaving my house one day I looked out to the ocean and saw that it was as calm and glassy as a lake and I decided to reconsider. I called my field director to find out her point of view on the issue.
“Hey Tam,” I asked, “do people around here go swimming on ocean-side?”
“Why, are you thinking about going out there?”
“Yeah, I was thinking about it. It seems really calm now.”
“You know, people sometimes use the ocean as a bathroom.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, people do go swimming out there, but I just thought that you should know...”
I went back to my little house and sat on the front steps to think it out. A few yards away, the ocean swayed and pulsed in a gentle and inviting rhythm. On one hand I had big sharks, a strong tide and the knowledge that I would be swimming in someone’s giant toilet. On the other hand I murky water and lagoon trash — including the ever present and always disturbing diaper.
I decided to leave the choice up to fate — fate being one of my neighbors.
I knocked on my friend Courtney’s door.
"Hello?” she said.
"Hello, want to go snorkel on the ocean side,” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Oh good...”
It was decided and I had nothing left to do but swallow my fear and put on a strong front. I ran back to my house and gathered my equipment and we headed down to the water.
We tiptoed out into the ocean, careful to avoid any nasty sea creatures, until we got into deep enough water to strap on our fins. We stroked out side by side and the incoming waves washed over the tops of our snorkels. We blew out the water and kept on going. We started to get into a rhythm where we knew when to dive deep under the incoming waves and soon we were in deeper water where waves were not an issue. Here the water was crystal clear with no trash.
Underwater it felt like being in a cathedral. The ocean made a clicking sound that I have heard is from the coral. Cut into the sea floor were deep channels that were coated in coral and life. I swam into half-enclosed channels that almost formed tunnels and came out the other end feeling like a fish. My visibility went on and on and I imagined that if my sight could echo like my voice then I would hear no refrain from the murky depths into which a stared wide-eyed.
The fish out here were bigger and moved in larger numbers. On the edge of my field of vision, where the blue sank finally into black I saw shapes of fish that were much bigger than any I had seen before. Most of the time I imagined them to be sharks hungry for human, but with longer gazes and more careful eyes, I was able to see that they were just monstrous reef fish.
when the tides started to change Courtney and I swam back to shore. On the way back in I turned over underwater and watched waves crashing from a fish’s perspective. They broke hollow and white. They rose up into cylinder shapes before erasing themselves with a bubbling whiteness.
I came to shore feeling refreshed.
Maybe I would start swimming ocean side more often. You can surf there, the water is clearer and contrary to what Tam warned, it doesn’t feel like someone’s toilet.Plus, I didn’t see a single diaper over there...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Lagoon-side is always the safer bet of the two. There are no waves to deal with, the tide is not an issue and there are not as many sharks.
Lagoon-side has its own issues as well though. The water is sometimes murky with sediment and the trash problem of Majuro is very evident under the water. I have seen bottles and cans, plastic bags and diapers, moving and swaying in the water. It is tragic and disgusting but it is not life-threatening.
At least I think it is not — maybe those diapers should be checked out.
Until recently, I stuck strictly to lagoon-side swimming. Aside from the fact that there are less sharks on lagoon-side, the sharks that are there are reported to be smaller than ocean-side ones.
However, as I was leaving my house one day I looked out to the ocean and saw that it was as calm and glassy as a lake and I decided to reconsider. I called my field director to find out her point of view on the issue.
“Hey Tam,” I asked, “do people around here go swimming on ocean-side?”
“Why, are you thinking about going out there?”
“Yeah, I was thinking about it. It seems really calm now.”
“You know, people sometimes use the ocean as a bathroom.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, people do go swimming out there, but I just thought that you should know...”
I went back to my little house and sat on the front steps to think it out. A few yards away, the ocean swayed and pulsed in a gentle and inviting rhythm. On one hand I had big sharks, a strong tide and the knowledge that I would be swimming in someone’s giant toilet. On the other hand I murky water and lagoon trash — including the ever present and always disturbing diaper.
I decided to leave the choice up to fate — fate being one of my neighbors.
I knocked on my friend Courtney’s door.
"Hello?” she said.
"Hello, want to go snorkel on the ocean side,” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Oh good...”
It was decided and I had nothing left to do but swallow my fear and put on a strong front. I ran back to my house and gathered my equipment and we headed down to the water.
We tiptoed out into the ocean, careful to avoid any nasty sea creatures, until we got into deep enough water to strap on our fins. We stroked out side by side and the incoming waves washed over the tops of our snorkels. We blew out the water and kept on going. We started to get into a rhythm where we knew when to dive deep under the incoming waves and soon we were in deeper water where waves were not an issue. Here the water was crystal clear with no trash.
Underwater it felt like being in a cathedral. The ocean made a clicking sound that I have heard is from the coral. Cut into the sea floor were deep channels that were coated in coral and life. I swam into half-enclosed channels that almost formed tunnels and came out the other end feeling like a fish. My visibility went on and on and I imagined that if my sight could echo like my voice then I would hear no refrain from the murky depths into which a stared wide-eyed.
The fish out here were bigger and moved in larger numbers. On the edge of my field of vision, where the blue sank finally into black I saw shapes of fish that were much bigger than any I had seen before. Most of the time I imagined them to be sharks hungry for human, but with longer gazes and more careful eyes, I was able to see that they were just monstrous reef fish.
when the tides started to change Courtney and I swam back to shore. On the way back in I turned over underwater and watched waves crashing from a fish’s perspective. They broke hollow and white. They rose up into cylinder shapes before erasing themselves with a bubbling whiteness.
I came to shore feeling refreshed.
Maybe I would start swimming ocean side more often. You can surf there, the water is clearer and contrary to what Tam warned, it doesn’t feel like someone’s toilet.Plus, I didn’t see a single diaper over there...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Ballin'
Well, it is ````````````tough times for an aspiring ``writer ````````````````````her`e ``on ````````M`aj`````uro. I opened up my `computer t`he `````````````````````other day and ```````````````found that there was something off. My tilda key was locked down and insisted on splashing itself across my screen in an`noying flashes of persistance. Needless to say that when you are deep within the tangles of your own thoughts and the thoughts of all of your characters, the last thing that you `w`ant or need is to have a giant like of things that look like an apostr`ophie jam out across the screen. I am kind of frustr`ated right now. I have tr`ied everything that I know to fix it but nothing seems to work. I flipped off the key and cleaned out underneath it and it appears that nothing is physically holding it down, so I can only guess that this is the first of many humidity breakdowns that is headed my way... wow, it seems to have slowed down quite a bit. This makes me happy. Very` happy````````````````````````````````````````````````. Damn it. I spoke too ``````````so`o```````````n. anyway, I have started p`laying basketb`all after school in my` flip flops sometimes. It is very fun and I get an automatic excuse any of my shots don’t fall. I am wearing flip flops!
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The love you give comes back in the end.
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007
A Little Football Anyone?
At the end of each Friday class I make everyone stand up and do the “It’s the Weekend Dance.” For some of the kids this is a harrowing experience. They are at the tail end of their elementary career and will be big bad middle-schoolers next year so they are right on the border of being “too cool” to do things like that. Getting up and grooving with your teacher is not really the hippest thing to do.
I still make each and every one of them show me a little shake in their step before they leave the room though. Their bruised and embarrassed young egos will heal and I feel like the dancing breaks down barriers a little bit — between them and me but also amongst themselves.
Plus it always gets me into the weekend laughing and feeling pretty good.
Anyway, this last Friday, while we were getting down on our weekend groove, I told the kids that if anyone would like to play, I was going to be at the high school field with a football at four o’clock.
Of my four sections of sixth graders — that is over 120 kids total — I expected that maybe five would show up. After all, I was the totally uncool teacher who made kids do totally uncool things like dance in class.
After school I went home and took a little power nap before kick-off time. When I woke up it was five minutes to four and I didn’t really feel like playing football anymore. I felt like curling back up and falling to sleep. It was my weekend. Besides, I knew that hardly anyone would show up.
Then I thought about those poor one or two kids that did take the time to come and play, how sad would that be if their teacher ditched out on them?
So I yawned, rolled out of bed and into the hot sun and trekked over to the field. Right when I stepped out of my front door, little Monica Joel ran up to me.
“You are late Mr. Tim,” she told me with more attitude than I thought could have been possible to bottle up in her miniature frame.
“No, I am not,” I told her.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“4:02,” I told her.
“Then you are late.”
I smiled and thought, well it looks like it will just be Monica and I, throwing around the pigskin. This was not necessarily a bad thing because Monica cracked me up. She once told me I looked like a broom because I was super skinny and have bushy hair.
Anyway, Monica led me all of the way to the field, shooting sass the whole way. When I came around corner, to my surprise, the field was chalk-full of kids decked out in Rita Elementary red and blue.
“You’re late, Mr. Tim, you’re late!” kids shouted at me.
It looked like the “It’s the Weekend Dance,” had not, in fact, made all of my kids avoid me like the plague.
There were about thirty kids who showed up. Laijab, the biggest kid at school and only eleven, had somehow gotten his hands on some lacrosse pads, which he thought were football gear, and he lined up opposite of me. He smiled and pointed at my face.
When “hike” was called Laijab ran straight for my chest.
If Monica referred to me as broom, then she would have called Laijab a bowling ball. I toppled roughly to the ground. Laijab cheered.
“No tackling,” I breathed out softly from collapsed lungs.
“Aw, that is so boring, Mr. Tim,” Laijab complained and got off my chest.
Maybe it would have been better if my “It’s the Weekend Dance” had scared my kids away after all...
I still make each and every one of them show me a little shake in their step before they leave the room though. Their bruised and embarrassed young egos will heal and I feel like the dancing breaks down barriers a little bit — between them and me but also amongst themselves.
Plus it always gets me into the weekend laughing and feeling pretty good.
Anyway, this last Friday, while we were getting down on our weekend groove, I told the kids that if anyone would like to play, I was going to be at the high school field with a football at four o’clock.
Of my four sections of sixth graders — that is over 120 kids total — I expected that maybe five would show up. After all, I was the totally uncool teacher who made kids do totally uncool things like dance in class.
After school I went home and took a little power nap before kick-off time. When I woke up it was five minutes to four and I didn’t really feel like playing football anymore. I felt like curling back up and falling to sleep. It was my weekend. Besides, I knew that hardly anyone would show up.
Then I thought about those poor one or two kids that did take the time to come and play, how sad would that be if their teacher ditched out on them?
So I yawned, rolled out of bed and into the hot sun and trekked over to the field. Right when I stepped out of my front door, little Monica Joel ran up to me.
“You are late Mr. Tim,” she told me with more attitude than I thought could have been possible to bottle up in her miniature frame.
“No, I am not,” I told her.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“4:02,” I told her.
“Then you are late.”
I smiled and thought, well it looks like it will just be Monica and I, throwing around the pigskin. This was not necessarily a bad thing because Monica cracked me up. She once told me I looked like a broom because I was super skinny and have bushy hair.
Anyway, Monica led me all of the way to the field, shooting sass the whole way. When I came around corner, to my surprise, the field was chalk-full of kids decked out in Rita Elementary red and blue.
“You’re late, Mr. Tim, you’re late!” kids shouted at me.
It looked like the “It’s the Weekend Dance,” had not, in fact, made all of my kids avoid me like the plague.
There were about thirty kids who showed up. Laijab, the biggest kid at school and only eleven, had somehow gotten his hands on some lacrosse pads, which he thought were football gear, and he lined up opposite of me. He smiled and pointed at my face.
When “hike” was called Laijab ran straight for my chest.
If Monica referred to me as broom, then she would have called Laijab a bowling ball. I toppled roughly to the ground. Laijab cheered.
“No tackling,” I breathed out softly from collapsed lungs.
“Aw, that is so boring, Mr. Tim,” Laijab complained and got off my chest.
Maybe it would have been better if my “It’s the Weekend Dance” had scared my kids away after all...
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Marshall Islands Surf Club
It gives me great pleasure and honor to announce the formation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club. The Rita Chapter had its first session on Sunday with cofounders Dan “40-Pounds” Caccavano and Tim “He-So-Pretty” Lane taking the club’s one battered and borrowed board out into a killer session of frothy two-foot rollers.
The club’s first outing was a huge success, the effects of which are being widley felt through the community at large. Mr. Caccavano took the majority of the rides in the first day as he netted a couple of intense drop-ins that had the crowd (i.e. Tim in snorkel gear) cheering for more. Tim was not to be outdone however has he jammed on one quality ride of his own that must have lasted north of a second and a half.
The sensation that is the Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club, Rita Chapter has caused a particular stir among the forighn community on island as two girls have already offered to be club “groupies.”
For those who have heard rummers swirling around co-founder Tim’s potentially career-ending injury, take heart. It is a mere scratch and was actually sustained when he started swimming in too shallow of water right next to the shore and had nothing to do with a nasty fall or a giant shark (as some have speculated in the many Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club blogs out there in the blog world).
The surf club is seeking NGO status and has plans to expand into the community and take the local youth into the waves. Never mind that the local youth far exceed both Dan and Tim’s skills in the water.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club is in desperate need of a few things to get the club really off of the ground. Mainly surfboards, booties and rash guards. Other than that we are golden. Any donations are welcomed and can be sent to:
The Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club
C/O WorldTeach
P.O. Box 627
Majuro, Marshall Islands
RMI
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The club’s first outing was a huge success, the effects of which are being widley felt through the community at large. Mr. Caccavano took the majority of the rides in the first day as he netted a couple of intense drop-ins that had the crowd (i.e. Tim in snorkel gear) cheering for more. Tim was not to be outdone however has he jammed on one quality ride of his own that must have lasted north of a second and a half.
The sensation that is the Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club, Rita Chapter has caused a particular stir among the forighn community on island as two girls have already offered to be club “groupies.”
For those who have heard rummers swirling around co-founder Tim’s potentially career-ending injury, take heart. It is a mere scratch and was actually sustained when he started swimming in too shallow of water right next to the shore and had nothing to do with a nasty fall or a giant shark (as some have speculated in the many Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club blogs out there in the blog world).
The surf club is seeking NGO status and has plans to expand into the community and take the local youth into the waves. Never mind that the local youth far exceed both Dan and Tim’s skills in the water.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club is in desperate need of a few things to get the club really off of the ground. Mainly surfboards, booties and rash guards. Other than that we are golden. Any donations are welcomed and can be sent to:
The Republic of the Marshall Islands Surf Club
C/O WorldTeach
P.O. Box 627
Majuro, Marshall Islands
RMI
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, October 1, 2007
If You Build It, They Will Come
Ever since I got here, I wanted to build a chicken coop. It makes perfect sense for me. Fresh eggs, the prospect of building something and the smell of live chickens right outside my door — OK, that last one was more of a detractor than anything else.
Moving on...
As the year progressed, my cohort Darren and I ran out of steam on the whole build-a-chicken-coop idea. We had school all day long and the only thing that we wanted to do when we limped exhausted into our weekends was stretch out our hammocks and relax under a coconut tree.
I rounded up all of the scrap wood we had gathered for the coop and started thinking of things I could use it for.
“Hey, Darren,” I said one day while I was over visiting the dorms. “What would you say if I told you that I think we should scrap the whole coop idea? I could build a shelf out of the wood instead.”
“Um, OK,” Darren said. “I guess that I am cool with that.”
We shook hands because it seemed more professional and I went outside to walk to my house. I read a book as I walked so I didn’t notice the mother hen and her group of chicks standing in my front yard until I had almost stepped on them.
I lowered the book from my eyes and stared in disbelief. Was this some sort of miracle? Some sort of divine intervention?
Laughing, I sprinted back to the dorms.
“Darren!” I shouted. “You have to come and see this!” Darren slapped on some flip flops and ran out to see what I was shouting about.
“Wow,” he said. “Maybe God is telling us that if we build a coop, chickens will come.”
Darren and I had a quick council on whether it was ethical to keep the mamma hen and her little chicks or not. All of our learning about chickens came from a children’s book that was taken from Rita Elementary, but we felt pretty confident in our decision being well informed.
On one hand, the chickens were obviously someone’s, but on the other hand, there were at least six chicks that were small and vulnerable. These little chicks might not even make it to the egg-bearing age so what if we just took a couple of the chicks and raised them safely and properly we would be like their guardian angels. We would be doing a service! And then, after 8 months of fresh eggs, we could even return those chickens to the rightful owner.
The logic worked, at least for us, and Darren and I got a basket and prepared to chase down the chicks.
In our over-grown yard, it is surprisingly difficult to grab a little chick. They routinely disappear under weeds and into thickets. We sweated and labored under the hot, tropical sun trying to corral us a chick.
Finally we got the mamma hen and all of her chicks cornered between a fence and a wall. We moved in low and fast to grab us a couple of birds.
“Yokwe,” came a voice from over the wall. Darren and I stopped in our tracks. We looked up to the wall and peering over its edge was a young man.
“Oh, hello,” I mumbled.
“The mamma hen is chirping because she is worried for her baby chickens,” the young man said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, do you know whose chickens these are.”
“They are mine,” he said.
I coughed.
“Well, good to know,” I said. “We were just capturing them — to give them back...”
“It is OK, you can leave them there.”
“OK...”
Darren and I started to walk back into the dorms. Half-way across the yard I turned back to the young man.
“Hey, you think we could buy a chick or two?”
“For what?”
“Eggs.”
“Maybe you ask again when they are grown up and I know which are girls and which are boys.”
“Sounds good, neighbor,” I said.
So, I guess that if you build a chicken coop, the chickens will come, just make sure they are not your neighbor’s.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Moving on...
As the year progressed, my cohort Darren and I ran out of steam on the whole build-a-chicken-coop idea. We had school all day long and the only thing that we wanted to do when we limped exhausted into our weekends was stretch out our hammocks and relax under a coconut tree.
I rounded up all of the scrap wood we had gathered for the coop and started thinking of things I could use it for.
“Hey, Darren,” I said one day while I was over visiting the dorms. “What would you say if I told you that I think we should scrap the whole coop idea? I could build a shelf out of the wood instead.”
“Um, OK,” Darren said. “I guess that I am cool with that.”
We shook hands because it seemed more professional and I went outside to walk to my house. I read a book as I walked so I didn’t notice the mother hen and her group of chicks standing in my front yard until I had almost stepped on them.
I lowered the book from my eyes and stared in disbelief. Was this some sort of miracle? Some sort of divine intervention?
Laughing, I sprinted back to the dorms.
“Darren!” I shouted. “You have to come and see this!” Darren slapped on some flip flops and ran out to see what I was shouting about.
“Wow,” he said. “Maybe God is telling us that if we build a coop, chickens will come.”
Darren and I had a quick council on whether it was ethical to keep the mamma hen and her little chicks or not. All of our learning about chickens came from a children’s book that was taken from Rita Elementary, but we felt pretty confident in our decision being well informed.
On one hand, the chickens were obviously someone’s, but on the other hand, there were at least six chicks that were small and vulnerable. These little chicks might not even make it to the egg-bearing age so what if we just took a couple of the chicks and raised them safely and properly we would be like their guardian angels. We would be doing a service! And then, after 8 months of fresh eggs, we could even return those chickens to the rightful owner.
The logic worked, at least for us, and Darren and I got a basket and prepared to chase down the chicks.
In our over-grown yard, it is surprisingly difficult to grab a little chick. They routinely disappear under weeds and into thickets. We sweated and labored under the hot, tropical sun trying to corral us a chick.
Finally we got the mamma hen and all of her chicks cornered between a fence and a wall. We moved in low and fast to grab us a couple of birds.
“Yokwe,” came a voice from over the wall. Darren and I stopped in our tracks. We looked up to the wall and peering over its edge was a young man.
“Oh, hello,” I mumbled.
“The mamma hen is chirping because she is worried for her baby chickens,” the young man said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, do you know whose chickens these are.”
“They are mine,” he said.
I coughed.
“Well, good to know,” I said. “We were just capturing them — to give them back...”
“It is OK, you can leave them there.”
“OK...”
Darren and I started to walk back into the dorms. Half-way across the yard I turned back to the young man.
“Hey, you think we could buy a chick or two?”
“For what?”
“Eggs.”
“Maybe you ask again when they are grown up and I know which are girls and which are boys.”
“Sounds good, neighbor,” I said.
So, I guess that if you build a chicken coop, the chickens will come, just make sure they are not your neighbor’s.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Bells
In the Republic of the Marshall Islands, militaries have come and left. Ours, and others, have built cement structures with metal cylinders to shoot missiles and rain bombs. Foreign men have been here during hostile times, far away from their loved ones, thinking they could die.
A war came through these islands and atolls and while the shaking of military might has left, there are remnants that still stand.
Outside on the beach in front of my house, there is a rusted machine with gears exposed, the teeth of which are broken and disfigured. Chipped and decayed like the remains of a robot, the ocean will turn this to sand over time --- but it has not happened yet. In the lagoon there are planes that sit swaying with bits of seaweed growing on their hulls. They are stationary ghost figures in gloomy tides.
The military men also left big, hollow shells that simply do not go away. You can burry them, sure, but where?
When the war left his place, it kept its thumb-print here.
These echoes of a not so distant time could be a bitter reminder of when the Marshallese people played host to men who they did not understand and played a part in a war they had no business being in. These relics could be a sore-spot of anger and regret.
Strangely it is not that way — at least from what I have seen.
You will hear bells when you are here. They ring out during the day and sometimes at night. They ring out when church has over and those who have finished worshiping their God make their way home. They chime when school starts and finishes. Some families have their own bells.
Children take up pieces of coral in-hand and bang the bells then they are noddy and when they wish to play tricks. It is a game that never grows tired. Children double over in laughter, collapse in the fun of ringing a bell when it should stay silent.
And so, on this island, you will hear bells at any given time and you will know that something important like school or church has finished, or maybe you will think of cheeky kids having a laugh, collapsed on the ground and it all comes from the bells.
These bells come in one size. They hang from buildings and metal stands. They stand a little more than five feet tall and are long and cylindrical. They are open at one end and they slope closed on the other.
They used to be a tool for the military. Our military or another — I am not sure. They are thick shells and even though they rust in the salty and humid air, they hold up. They will for a while. They used to be evidence that this place was taken by a military, held, contested and passed from one hand to another.
They used to be a thumb-print of a time when foreign men smoked foreign cigarettes as they prepared to fight a foreign war.
They don’t stand for that anymore.
They are just bells and they help people know when they should go to things like church or school. They are not devices that will lay waste to groups of people. Sure there are some that collapse in front of their reverberating strike — but it is children laughing at a good joke and not people dying in an attack.
Militaries have come and left this place, and there are remnants that remain.
There are also bells here now.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
A war came through these islands and atolls and while the shaking of military might has left, there are remnants that still stand.
Outside on the beach in front of my house, there is a rusted machine with gears exposed, the teeth of which are broken and disfigured. Chipped and decayed like the remains of a robot, the ocean will turn this to sand over time --- but it has not happened yet. In the lagoon there are planes that sit swaying with bits of seaweed growing on their hulls. They are stationary ghost figures in gloomy tides.
The military men also left big, hollow shells that simply do not go away. You can burry them, sure, but where?
When the war left his place, it kept its thumb-print here.
These echoes of a not so distant time could be a bitter reminder of when the Marshallese people played host to men who they did not understand and played a part in a war they had no business being in. These relics could be a sore-spot of anger and regret.
Strangely it is not that way — at least from what I have seen.
You will hear bells when you are here. They ring out during the day and sometimes at night. They ring out when church has over and those who have finished worshiping their God make their way home. They chime when school starts and finishes. Some families have their own bells.
Children take up pieces of coral in-hand and bang the bells then they are noddy and when they wish to play tricks. It is a game that never grows tired. Children double over in laughter, collapse in the fun of ringing a bell when it should stay silent.
And so, on this island, you will hear bells at any given time and you will know that something important like school or church has finished, or maybe you will think of cheeky kids having a laugh, collapsed on the ground and it all comes from the bells.
These bells come in one size. They hang from buildings and metal stands. They stand a little more than five feet tall and are long and cylindrical. They are open at one end and they slope closed on the other.
They used to be a tool for the military. Our military or another — I am not sure. They are thick shells and even though they rust in the salty and humid air, they hold up. They will for a while. They used to be evidence that this place was taken by a military, held, contested and passed from one hand to another.
They used to be a thumb-print of a time when foreign men smoked foreign cigarettes as they prepared to fight a foreign war.
They don’t stand for that anymore.
They are just bells and they help people know when they should go to things like church or school. They are not devices that will lay waste to groups of people. Sure there are some that collapse in front of their reverberating strike — but it is children laughing at a good joke and not people dying in an attack.
Militaries have come and left this place, and there are remnants that remain.
There are also bells here now.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Going the Long Way
There are two ways that I can walk into town from where I live. One goes on the main road and passes restaurants and shops and is on the lagoon side. The other way I can go winds its way along the ocean and through a neighborhood.
Here the houses are crowded closely together and all seem to be growths and extensions from one another. There is a tiny graveyard with little bleached white graves and a basketball court that is squeezed in tightly between two houses and could probably only fit two men standing shoulder to shoulder. There are bare light bulbs dangling from outside walls with orange extension cords and small tables and stoops where the older men and women sit and play a game that is close to checkers but not quite checkers.
The most noticeable thing about this neighborhood though is the people — they are everywhere.
The parents and grandparents line the borders of everything and laugh, work and talk. The kids fill the street and the small ally-ways like water fills a bucket. They hang out of door ways and from the limbs of trees. They pulse in groups of three or five or 20. They run and chase each other or all crouch and lay around some found object to analyze and dissect it. Babies are held by their big brothers and sisters sit on stairs with their siblings and comb out the tangles in their hair. Mothers call children in for dinner and fathers sit in groups with their arms folded and make jokes.
In this neighborhood that sits next to my house, you can feel community pulsing.
I have always known that I live in a section of Majuro called Rita, and I could get home in a cab with this information, but it was not until I went through this neighborhood that I actually felt like I knew where Rita was.
Coming from a place like the United States to a place like the Marshall Islands puts me in a strange spot. I am here to help and volunteer. My job description is to teach the youth so they will have a better future that they might not have otherwise had.
My mission, by its very definition, puts me into a position where I notice what these kids do not have and I attempt to alleviate that — help them onto a more even playing field with the rest of the world. So I find my mind snapping to the mold of noticing only what the people lack.
Every time that I pull water from the kitchen tap I have to first boil it for three minutes to kill any nasty microbes that could be lurking inside. This is just one example of a thing that I put onto the list that has formed in my head of what disadvantages the youth here have. “They cannot simply drink water whenever they want,” I think to myself. “That is so sad.”
When I found the real Rita however, something inside me started to change. While these kids have a lot of things to get over — poverty, poor infrastructure, spotty education and sometimes questionable nutrition to name a few — they also have some highlights to carry with them.
They have community in a trump suit.
In some places in the developed world kids are corralled off into mowed lawns behind white fences because otherwise it is dangerous. They play ball with their friends they invite over or maybe with a brother or sister, but they don’t have what the kids here have. They don’t have a roving and pulsing community of kids that are free to pursue whatever interest captures them on any given day. They do not have parents that line and pad the neighborhood.
Most of them don’t have a place like the real Rita.
So, when I walk to town, I like to walk down the street where the corrugated tin houses are stacked up like matchstick boxes on a store shelf and the children and community ebb and flow naturally like the tide.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Here the houses are crowded closely together and all seem to be growths and extensions from one another. There is a tiny graveyard with little bleached white graves and a basketball court that is squeezed in tightly between two houses and could probably only fit two men standing shoulder to shoulder. There are bare light bulbs dangling from outside walls with orange extension cords and small tables and stoops where the older men and women sit and play a game that is close to checkers but not quite checkers.
The most noticeable thing about this neighborhood though is the people — they are everywhere.
The parents and grandparents line the borders of everything and laugh, work and talk. The kids fill the street and the small ally-ways like water fills a bucket. They hang out of door ways and from the limbs of trees. They pulse in groups of three or five or 20. They run and chase each other or all crouch and lay around some found object to analyze and dissect it. Babies are held by their big brothers and sisters sit on stairs with their siblings and comb out the tangles in their hair. Mothers call children in for dinner and fathers sit in groups with their arms folded and make jokes.
In this neighborhood that sits next to my house, you can feel community pulsing.
I have always known that I live in a section of Majuro called Rita, and I could get home in a cab with this information, but it was not until I went through this neighborhood that I actually felt like I knew where Rita was.
Coming from a place like the United States to a place like the Marshall Islands puts me in a strange spot. I am here to help and volunteer. My job description is to teach the youth so they will have a better future that they might not have otherwise had.
My mission, by its very definition, puts me into a position where I notice what these kids do not have and I attempt to alleviate that — help them onto a more even playing field with the rest of the world. So I find my mind snapping to the mold of noticing only what the people lack.
Every time that I pull water from the kitchen tap I have to first boil it for three minutes to kill any nasty microbes that could be lurking inside. This is just one example of a thing that I put onto the list that has formed in my head of what disadvantages the youth here have. “They cannot simply drink water whenever they want,” I think to myself. “That is so sad.”
When I found the real Rita however, something inside me started to change. While these kids have a lot of things to get over — poverty, poor infrastructure, spotty education and sometimes questionable nutrition to name a few — they also have some highlights to carry with them.
They have community in a trump suit.
In some places in the developed world kids are corralled off into mowed lawns behind white fences because otherwise it is dangerous. They play ball with their friends they invite over or maybe with a brother or sister, but they don’t have what the kids here have. They don’t have a roving and pulsing community of kids that are free to pursue whatever interest captures them on any given day. They do not have parents that line and pad the neighborhood.
Most of them don’t have a place like the real Rita.
So, when I walk to town, I like to walk down the street where the corrugated tin houses are stacked up like matchstick boxes on a store shelf and the children and community ebb and flow naturally like the tide.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Help!
OK, so my class is in dire need of reading material. We have lots of good books to read but we need news magazines. I think that for a lot of these kids, the outside world is as real for them as the Marshall Islands is for most of you all. This is a situation I think needs to be fixed. So, any newsy magazines (or anymagazines for that matter because pictures are awesome) you should drop in the mail and send my way!
Much Love
Tim Lane
c/o WorldTeach
PO Box 627
Majuro, Marshall Islands
RMI
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Much Love
Tim Lane
c/o WorldTeach
PO Box 627
Majuro, Marshall Islands
RMI
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Goodbye
The Marshallese people have a very specialized verb in their language. It came into being as a necessity. The verb is “Lokon wa,” and to my understanding, it means to see someone’s back as they sail away.
The verb is to say goodbye without really ever knowing when you will say hello again.
Long ago, when canoes sailed off on expansive journeys across the Pacific, many Marhsallese people didn’t know if they would ever see their loved ones again. They were left with the lasting image of their friend or family member being swallowed in a vast ocean-horizon.
“Lokon wa.”
It may seem that the word is archaic in our era of cell phones, internet and airplanes, but I am not so sure — at least not here. It seems to me that the Marshallese people are in a cultural transition that will keep this particular verb relevant for a while longer.
There are two things that the majority of Marshallese children want to be — a teacher or a nurse. On this island, finding a steady-paying job other than those two professions can be difficult. People can try to work in shops but upward mobility is hard in this private sector so many people choose to pack up and leave for the land of opportunity — the United States of America.
Through the US Compact with the Marshall Islands, citizens here can move freely to the US and try their hand in our economy with little to no red tape, so people do it. Actually, whole families do it. And when families move to find jobs communities of ex-islanders gel together. There are populations of Marshallese all over the US, but locally there are large groups in Salem and Portland. Sometimes, Marshallese children born to these families don’t see much their home country and are more American than Marshallese. They use American slang, don’t know much of their mother tongue and their parents can’t bring the family home as much as they would like because plane tickets are so much money.
“Lokon wa.”
Until relatively recently the Marshallese were subsidence-livers. They would get by on the things that they could grow or catch in the sea. It was a lifestyle where community pooling was crucial to survival.
This is reflected in the culture here still. People share what they have and they are more comfortable being together than being apart.
This is slowly changing however. People want good health care and a reliable supply of food and water so they leave their outer islands and come into the mainland where they are more guaranteed of meeting these needs, and rightly so. However, they are leaving behind the simple outer island lifestyle of living off the land and having life-lessons like sharing intertwined with their survival.
“Lokon wa.”
This specialized word came to be a long ago, before everything that is happening now was even a glimmer in Father Time’s eye, but the word still holds on grimly to its relevance. The RMI is in the midst of a painful change from a place with just a rich history to a place with a rich history and a future. This change is unavoidable and as it has been with every other place in the world where “progress” has touched, a part the past is left behind. Efforts to hold onto cultural practices like canoe building are underway, but it is impossible to keep everything perserved — it is contrary to the nature of progress.
“Lokon wa.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The verb is to say goodbye without really ever knowing when you will say hello again.
Long ago, when canoes sailed off on expansive journeys across the Pacific, many Marhsallese people didn’t know if they would ever see their loved ones again. They were left with the lasting image of their friend or family member being swallowed in a vast ocean-horizon.
“Lokon wa.”
It may seem that the word is archaic in our era of cell phones, internet and airplanes, but I am not so sure — at least not here. It seems to me that the Marshallese people are in a cultural transition that will keep this particular verb relevant for a while longer.
There are two things that the majority of Marshallese children want to be — a teacher or a nurse. On this island, finding a steady-paying job other than those two professions can be difficult. People can try to work in shops but upward mobility is hard in this private sector so many people choose to pack up and leave for the land of opportunity — the United States of America.
Through the US Compact with the Marshall Islands, citizens here can move freely to the US and try their hand in our economy with little to no red tape, so people do it. Actually, whole families do it. And when families move to find jobs communities of ex-islanders gel together. There are populations of Marshallese all over the US, but locally there are large groups in Salem and Portland. Sometimes, Marshallese children born to these families don’t see much their home country and are more American than Marshallese. They use American slang, don’t know much of their mother tongue and their parents can’t bring the family home as much as they would like because plane tickets are so much money.
“Lokon wa.”
Until relatively recently the Marshallese were subsidence-livers. They would get by on the things that they could grow or catch in the sea. It was a lifestyle where community pooling was crucial to survival.
This is reflected in the culture here still. People share what they have and they are more comfortable being together than being apart.
This is slowly changing however. People want good health care and a reliable supply of food and water so they leave their outer islands and come into the mainland where they are more guaranteed of meeting these needs, and rightly so. However, they are leaving behind the simple outer island lifestyle of living off the land and having life-lessons like sharing intertwined with their survival.
“Lokon wa.”
This specialized word came to be a long ago, before everything that is happening now was even a glimmer in Father Time’s eye, but the word still holds on grimly to its relevance. The RMI is in the midst of a painful change from a place with just a rich history to a place with a rich history and a future. This change is unavoidable and as it has been with every other place in the world where “progress” has touched, a part the past is left behind. Efforts to hold onto cultural practices like canoe building are underway, but it is impossible to keep everything perserved — it is contrary to the nature of progress.
“Lokon wa.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Goodbye
The Marshallese people have a very specialized verb in their language. It came into being as a necessity. The verb is “Lokon wa,” and to my understanding, it means to see someone’s back as they sail away.
The verb is to say goodbye without really ever knowing when you will say hello again.
Long ago, when canoes sailed off on expansive journeys across the Pacific, many Marhsallese people didn’t know if they would ever see their loved ones again. They were left with the lasting image of their friend or family member being swallowed in a vast ocean-horizon.
“Lokon wa.”
It may seem that the word is archaic in our era of cell phones, internet and airplanes, but I am not so sure — at least not here. It seems to me that the Marshallese people are in a cultural transition that will keep this particular verb relevant for a while longer.
There are two things that the majority of Marshallese children want to be — a teacher or a nurse. On this island, finding a steady-paying job other than those two professions can be difficult. People can try to work in shops but upward mobility is hard in this private sector so many people choose to pack up and leave for the land of opportunity — the United States of America.
Through the US Compact with the Marshall Islands, citizens here can move freely to the US and try their hand in our economy with little to no red tape, so people do it. Actually, whole families do it. And when families move to find jobs communities of ex-islanders gel together. There are populations of Marshallese all over the US, but locally there are large groups in Salem and Portland. Sometimes, Marshallese children born to these families don’t see much their home country and are more American than Marshallese. They use American slang, don’t know much of their mother tongue and their parents can’t bring the family home as much as they would like because plane tickets are so much money.
“Lokon wa.”
Until relatively recently the Marshallese were subsidence-livers. They would get by on the things that they could grow or catch in the sea. It was a lifestyle where community pooling was crucial to survival.
This is reflected in the culture here still. People share what they have and they are more comfortable being together than being apart.
This is slowly changing however. People want good health care and a reliable supply of food and water so they leave their outer islands and come into the mainland where they are more guaranteed of meeting these needs, and rightly so. However, they are leaving behind the simple outer island lifestyle of living off the land and having life-lessons like sharing intertwined with their survival.
“Lokon wa.”
This specialized word came to be a long ago, before everything that is happening now was even a glimmer in Father Time’s eye, but the word still holds on grimly to its relevance. The RMI is in the midst of a painful change from a place with just a rich history to a place with a rich history and a future. This change is unavoidable and as it has been with every other place in the world where “progress” has touched, a part the past is left behind. Efforts to hold onto cultural practices like canoe building are underway, but it is impossible to keep everything perserved — it is contrary to the nature of progress.
“Lokon wa.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The verb is to say goodbye without really ever knowing when you will say hello again.
Long ago, when canoes sailed off on expansive journeys across the Pacific, many Marhsallese people didn’t know if they would ever see their loved ones again. They were left with the lasting image of their friend or family member being swallowed in a vast ocean-horizon.
“Lokon wa.”
It may seem that the word is archaic in our era of cell phones, internet and airplanes, but I am not so sure — at least not here. It seems to me that the Marshallese people are in a cultural transition that will keep this particular verb relevant for a while longer.
There are two things that the majority of Marshallese children want to be — a teacher or a nurse. On this island, finding a steady-paying job other than those two professions can be difficult. People can try to work in shops but upward mobility is hard in this private sector so many people choose to pack up and leave for the land of opportunity — the United States of America.
Through the US Compact with the Marshall Islands, citizens here can move freely to the US and try their hand in our economy with little to no red tape, so people do it. Actually, whole families do it. And when families move to find jobs communities of ex-islanders gel together. There are populations of Marshallese all over the US, but locally there are large groups in Salem and Portland. Sometimes, Marshallese children born to these families don’t see much their home country and are more American than Marshallese. They use American slang, don’t know much of their mother tongue and their parents can’t bring the family home as much as they would like because plane tickets are so much money.
“Lokon wa.”
Until relatively recently the Marshallese were subsidence-livers. They would get by on the things that they could grow or catch in the sea. It was a lifestyle where community pooling was crucial to survival.
This is reflected in the culture here still. People share what they have and they are more comfortable being together than being apart.
This is slowly changing however. People want good health care and a reliable supply of food and water so they leave their outer islands and come into the mainland where they are more guaranteed of meeting these needs, and rightly so. However, they are leaving behind the simple outer island lifestyle of living off the land and having life-lessons like sharing intertwined with their survival.
“Lokon wa.”
This specialized word came to be a long ago, before everything that is happening now was even a glimmer in Father Time’s eye, but the word still holds on grimly to its relevance. The RMI is in the midst of a painful change from a place with just a rich history to a place with a rich history and a future. This change is unavoidable and as it has been with every other place in the world where “progress” has touched, a part the past is left behind. Efforts to hold onto cultural practices like canoe building are underway, but it is impossible to keep everything perserved — it is contrary to the nature of progress.
“Lokon wa.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
First Week
First week of teaching... Is it always this exhausting? My voice hurts, my patience is thin and I am not sure how much longer my weary legs will allow me to walk...
The kids are funny though...
And they seem to have a ton of energy...
Just need to tap that somehow... Some sort of Matrix thing...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The kids are funny though...
And they seem to have a ton of energy...
Just need to tap that somehow... Some sort of Matrix thing...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Kids...
I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, listening to my fan and feeling pretty dang good when I heard a rattling sound followed with a thump outside of my window. I held my place in my book with my finger and I cocked my ear to the side for a moment or two and when the sounds didn’t return, I got back to reading.
Not four lines back into my book, I heard another thump. I leaned up in my bed, pulled my curtain aside, and peered into my back yard. There I saw two kids underneath the coconut tree that sits on our property. One was knocking down coconuts, while the other was gathering them up and throwing them over the fence. One saw me looking at them and yelled at his friend. By the time that I had got outside they had vanished — with my coconuts.
Cheeky kids.
I was walking down the street with a friend when I heard shouting from around a corner. I turned into a side street and saw about eight pairs of kids wheel-barrow racing. Their faces were all alight with smiles. The race started out even, hands slapping the pavement like horse’s hooves around a race track, when a pair that consisted of an older kid and a younger kid took the lead. The older kid just picked up his tiny partner and sprinted to the finish. Everyone laughed at the joke.
Fun kids.
I was eating lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the lagoon. It was a very hot day and outside of my window, I saw a group of kids leaping off of a cement dock into the lagoon. They looked so happy, and most of all very cool, so I cleared out the pockets of my shorts, took off my shirt and ran out to join them.
“Who are you?” one kid asked.
“I am Tim,” I said. “Can I swim with you.”
“Well I am in charge of this,” the kid — all of seven — said to me. “And that will be no problem.”
I hesitated in my jump, pretending to be scared to get laughs from the kids.
“You just got to go like this,” the lead kid said and did a running flip into the water.
Athletic kids.
I was mowing my lawn when a boy came out and started to assist me in pushing the mower. Whenever I turned it off to pick up some trash we had accidently shredded up, he would stoop down with me to pick it up. Then, when the mower engine was turned off, he would make the sound with his lips.
Helpful kids.
I went spear fishing with some friends and we had a pretty successful day. As with any time that you catch reef fish here, we asked some local kids what was good to eat and what was not. Most of the fish we caught were spiny red ones.
“Are these good to eat?” I asked a boy of about 10.
“No, these red ones will kill you if you eat them,” he told me very seriously. I was very disappointed but I didn’t feel like risking it and dying because I had eaten poisonous reef fish so I took them off of my ele, the wire belt I wear to hold the fish I catch, and dropped all of the offending fish onto the sand. The little boy and his friends gathered up those fish and headed away.
“What will you do with the fish?” I asked.
“We will either eat them or sell them,” he told me.
“I thought that you said they were poisonous,” I said.
“Oh, they are, but only in the eye and the tail,” he said. “We will just cut these off before we eat.”
Smart kids.
Anywhere I go I see children and they are always excited about it. They run out of their yards and away from their games to ask me what my name is and to just say hi. They come and they hold my hand and give me high-fives.
Cute kids.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Not four lines back into my book, I heard another thump. I leaned up in my bed, pulled my curtain aside, and peered into my back yard. There I saw two kids underneath the coconut tree that sits on our property. One was knocking down coconuts, while the other was gathering them up and throwing them over the fence. One saw me looking at them and yelled at his friend. By the time that I had got outside they had vanished — with my coconuts.
Cheeky kids.
I was walking down the street with a friend when I heard shouting from around a corner. I turned into a side street and saw about eight pairs of kids wheel-barrow racing. Their faces were all alight with smiles. The race started out even, hands slapping the pavement like horse’s hooves around a race track, when a pair that consisted of an older kid and a younger kid took the lead. The older kid just picked up his tiny partner and sprinted to the finish. Everyone laughed at the joke.
Fun kids.
I was eating lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the lagoon. It was a very hot day and outside of my window, I saw a group of kids leaping off of a cement dock into the lagoon. They looked so happy, and most of all very cool, so I cleared out the pockets of my shorts, took off my shirt and ran out to join them.
“Who are you?” one kid asked.
“I am Tim,” I said. “Can I swim with you.”
“Well I am in charge of this,” the kid — all of seven — said to me. “And that will be no problem.”
I hesitated in my jump, pretending to be scared to get laughs from the kids.
“You just got to go like this,” the lead kid said and did a running flip into the water.
Athletic kids.
I was mowing my lawn when a boy came out and started to assist me in pushing the mower. Whenever I turned it off to pick up some trash we had accidently shredded up, he would stoop down with me to pick it up. Then, when the mower engine was turned off, he would make the sound with his lips.
Helpful kids.
I went spear fishing with some friends and we had a pretty successful day. As with any time that you catch reef fish here, we asked some local kids what was good to eat and what was not. Most of the fish we caught were spiny red ones.
“Are these good to eat?” I asked a boy of about 10.
“No, these red ones will kill you if you eat them,” he told me very seriously. I was very disappointed but I didn’t feel like risking it and dying because I had eaten poisonous reef fish so I took them off of my ele, the wire belt I wear to hold the fish I catch, and dropped all of the offending fish onto the sand. The little boy and his friends gathered up those fish and headed away.
“What will you do with the fish?” I asked.
“We will either eat them or sell them,” he told me.
“I thought that you said they were poisonous,” I said.
“Oh, they are, but only in the eye and the tail,” he said. “We will just cut these off before we eat.”
Smart kids.
Anywhere I go I see children and they are always excited about it. They run out of their yards and away from their games to ask me what my name is and to just say hi. They come and they hold my hand and give me high-fives.
Cute kids.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Here Comes the Navy
The big news in the Marshall Islands this week was that the US Navy ship, the USS Palau, came to town. Seventeen hundred American men and women walking the streets of Majuro. Everyone knew they were coming and people whispered to each other on sidewalks and in stores, “1,700!”
I was less than thrilled at the prospect of the men in white descending upon my new city. A lady told me that the last time a Navy ship came into port, two years ago, they were rowdy, unruly, broke the only ATM in town and threw quarters to the children.
I asked her what was wrong with throwing quarters to the children.
“Well, nothing is wrong with it,” the lady said, “until every kid you see bugs you for money for months after the Navy has left.”
The first night that the Navy was in port, I did not leave my house. I stayed in my room and read a book. I did not feel like walking the streets with my countrymen as they threw back a few to many cold ones and gave my country a bad name.
Plus, the whole quarters thing — I needed my quarters for cabs and coffee — I could not afford to just start flinging them to every kid that asked.
The next day I set out to observe the damage on Majuro. I walked from my house in Rita, along the main road. At first I saw nothing. It was morning as usual in Majuro. Chickens and pigs shuffling in the dirt for food and stray dogs and cats chasing each other. Children swam in the lagoon, which sat like a teal pearl in the bright morning, and men and women sitting in front of their houses, fanning themselves.
I scratched my head and wondered where the 1700 rowdy and unruly sailors were.
About halfway into the center of town I started to hear a low rumbling sound. I thought to myself, ‘OK, here it comes.’
As I got closer to the noise, however, I found that it was nothing like what I had expected. There were no passed-out sailors or doors hanging loosely on their hinges. Instead there were just Navy men and women hard at work constructing playground equipment in front of Uliga Elementary School. I knew that the Navy was going to do some humanitarian work, I just didn’t expect it to be the first thing I saw.
Later on I learned from the USS Palau’s priest that those men and women I had seen working on the playground equipment and the other projects of improvement going on around town had elected to do the work themselves. It was all voluntary.
While the Navy had taken my school, Rita Elementary, off of the list of improvement projects, they still were doing much around the rest of the town — and it was being done voluntarily.
When I finally got to town there was a line of almost 100 Navy men overworking the sole ATM in town. At the Flame Tree bar I heard people from the military getting rambunctious. And then, to my chagrin, a gang of kids asked me for quarters. This was more of what I expected. As I stood there though, an Australian friend came up to me.
“Imagine how rough that is,” he said. “You spend months trapped on a boat and all you want is a cold brew to wash down your throat and you can’t get any money out!”
Earlier, I had the opportunity to go out on the USS Palau and tour it. It is not like these men and women are sleeping in King’s quarters. They are stacked in bunks like sardines and I am sure that even on a ship as large as the Palau, the walls start shrinking after a while and people go stir-crazy.
I still don’t agree with holding off school in the RMI for another week so the Navy can work and yeah, the Navy got a little rowdy and clogged up the ATM when they were here but I can forgive them these offenses. They have helped out Majuro and the RMI and they deserved a little fun.
I will never, however, forgive them for throwing quarters to the children.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
I was less than thrilled at the prospect of the men in white descending upon my new city. A lady told me that the last time a Navy ship came into port, two years ago, they were rowdy, unruly, broke the only ATM in town and threw quarters to the children.
I asked her what was wrong with throwing quarters to the children.
“Well, nothing is wrong with it,” the lady said, “until every kid you see bugs you for money for months after the Navy has left.”
The first night that the Navy was in port, I did not leave my house. I stayed in my room and read a book. I did not feel like walking the streets with my countrymen as they threw back a few to many cold ones and gave my country a bad name.
Plus, the whole quarters thing — I needed my quarters for cabs and coffee — I could not afford to just start flinging them to every kid that asked.
The next day I set out to observe the damage on Majuro. I walked from my house in Rita, along the main road. At first I saw nothing. It was morning as usual in Majuro. Chickens and pigs shuffling in the dirt for food and stray dogs and cats chasing each other. Children swam in the lagoon, which sat like a teal pearl in the bright morning, and men and women sitting in front of their houses, fanning themselves.
I scratched my head and wondered where the 1700 rowdy and unruly sailors were.
About halfway into the center of town I started to hear a low rumbling sound. I thought to myself, ‘OK, here it comes.’
As I got closer to the noise, however, I found that it was nothing like what I had expected. There were no passed-out sailors or doors hanging loosely on their hinges. Instead there were just Navy men and women hard at work constructing playground equipment in front of Uliga Elementary School. I knew that the Navy was going to do some humanitarian work, I just didn’t expect it to be the first thing I saw.
Later on I learned from the USS Palau’s priest that those men and women I had seen working on the playground equipment and the other projects of improvement going on around town had elected to do the work themselves. It was all voluntary.
While the Navy had taken my school, Rita Elementary, off of the list of improvement projects, they still were doing much around the rest of the town — and it was being done voluntarily.
When I finally got to town there was a line of almost 100 Navy men overworking the sole ATM in town. At the Flame Tree bar I heard people from the military getting rambunctious. And then, to my chagrin, a gang of kids asked me for quarters. This was more of what I expected. As I stood there though, an Australian friend came up to me.
“Imagine how rough that is,” he said. “You spend months trapped on a boat and all you want is a cold brew to wash down your throat and you can’t get any money out!”
Earlier, I had the opportunity to go out on the USS Palau and tour it. It is not like these men and women are sleeping in King’s quarters. They are stacked in bunks like sardines and I am sure that even on a ship as large as the Palau, the walls start shrinking after a while and people go stir-crazy.
I still don’t agree with holding off school in the RMI for another week so the Navy can work and yeah, the Navy got a little rowdy and clogged up the ATM when they were here but I can forgive them these offenses. They have helped out Majuro and the RMI and they deserved a little fun.
I will never, however, forgive them for throwing quarters to the children.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, August 31, 2007
Ah, the Sweet Pacific
My house in the Marshall Islands is 15 feet from the ocean’s edge. That is not saying a lot because everything here is about 15 feet from the ocean’s edge — but it is still special to me. At night, when I am laying in bed, I can hear the ocean. It is a quiet, white roar that lulls me to sleep and wakes me up again come morning. When everything is working just right there is a breeze that comes in off of that ocean and into my room. It makes my curtains sway and dance and it cools me off. That ocean that is 15 feet from me is the same ocean I had back home — the great Pacific Ocean.
The ocean is an important thing for me here. Not only is it a link home, it is my air conditioning. On nights when there is no wind, my room temperature gets hot and heavy with humidity and I am left to toss and turn on tangled sheets, slowly sweating and melting into my own bed.
On nights like that I can’t sleep and when I can’t sleep I hear things. The first night that I spent in my house I woke up to this strange scuttling sound. It was a small sound but in my quiet, personal hot-box it seemed to shake the walls. I sat up in bed and turned on a flashlight. There on the floor was a big, reddish cockroach exploring a the puddle of water I had spilt from my Nalgene right before I went to bed. Carefully and slowly, so as not to scare off my prey, I grabbed a thick book (“Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens) and floated it over the roach where he felt out with the puddle his huge antenna.
BOOM! I dropped the book but the roach had sensed what was coming and almost avoided the strike altogether, but two of his legs were caught under the oppressive weight of Victorian literature. The roach clawed at the air from the flat of its back and struggled to free its legs. Then, as I moved in for the kill with a second book (“Teacher Man” by Frank McCourt) the little beast did a desperate thing which I am sure I couldn’t do in a similar situation. The roach ripped his body away from his legs and scrambled back under my bed.
I stared at the legs sitting there, and I contemplated cleaning them up, but it was late and all I wanted was to find some sleep during that sweltering night so I laid back down.
As the night went on and the Pacific failed to give me more breeze, I woke up and out of curiosity, shined my light down on the legs of the cockroach. The legs were covered by ants. I shrugged, and went back to sleep. The next morning when I woke up there was nothing on my floor. No hobbled roach, no missing legs and no ants.
It was the circle of life.
So, things are very nice at my house when the Pacific is wafting up a breeze, if not then things get downright savage.
In my house I will have one roommate. His name is Hemant and he was an investment banker in New York for three years before he came here. When we all opened accounts for our meager volunteer stipends and were debating between checking and savings, Hemant did the only sensible thing and opened up both. Hemant is a nice guy but is so sarcastic sometimes you do not know what to do — laugh or run.
Aside from the two rooms for Hemant and I, there are a kitchen/living room and a bathroom. Both are pretty good sized but as there is construction going on a few feet from the side of the house every morning so when I get up to make some coffee in my boxers there are construction workers busy building the new section of the high school and that can be a bit awkward.
The living room is a pretty big section of real estate and when the Pacific is kind, it stays pretty cool. We have not been able to make much use of it however, as a volunteer named Cox has used it for his bedroom until he gets a boat to the outer island where he teaches.
To get to my house you have to walk past the dorm, where eight other volunteers live, on this thin little path that is severally overgrown. Every time that I am on that thing, especially at night, I am paranoid that I am going to get bit by one of the poisonous centipedes that live on this island. It wouldn’t kill me, but I hear that it hurts pretty bad.
All in all life is pretty good 15 feet from the ocean. Life is even better when it is whipping up a breeze, but I don’t have to worry because the windy season will be here in about a month, and those will be some high times when I sleep right through the scuttling sounds from the floor.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The ocean is an important thing for me here. Not only is it a link home, it is my air conditioning. On nights when there is no wind, my room temperature gets hot and heavy with humidity and I am left to toss and turn on tangled sheets, slowly sweating and melting into my own bed.
On nights like that I can’t sleep and when I can’t sleep I hear things. The first night that I spent in my house I woke up to this strange scuttling sound. It was a small sound but in my quiet, personal hot-box it seemed to shake the walls. I sat up in bed and turned on a flashlight. There on the floor was a big, reddish cockroach exploring a the puddle of water I had spilt from my Nalgene right before I went to bed. Carefully and slowly, so as not to scare off my prey, I grabbed a thick book (“Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens) and floated it over the roach where he felt out with the puddle his huge antenna.
BOOM! I dropped the book but the roach had sensed what was coming and almost avoided the strike altogether, but two of his legs were caught under the oppressive weight of Victorian literature. The roach clawed at the air from the flat of its back and struggled to free its legs. Then, as I moved in for the kill with a second book (“Teacher Man” by Frank McCourt) the little beast did a desperate thing which I am sure I couldn’t do in a similar situation. The roach ripped his body away from his legs and scrambled back under my bed.
I stared at the legs sitting there, and I contemplated cleaning them up, but it was late and all I wanted was to find some sleep during that sweltering night so I laid back down.
As the night went on and the Pacific failed to give me more breeze, I woke up and out of curiosity, shined my light down on the legs of the cockroach. The legs were covered by ants. I shrugged, and went back to sleep. The next morning when I woke up there was nothing on my floor. No hobbled roach, no missing legs and no ants.
It was the circle of life.
So, things are very nice at my house when the Pacific is wafting up a breeze, if not then things get downright savage.
In my house I will have one roommate. His name is Hemant and he was an investment banker in New York for three years before he came here. When we all opened accounts for our meager volunteer stipends and were debating between checking and savings, Hemant did the only sensible thing and opened up both. Hemant is a nice guy but is so sarcastic sometimes you do not know what to do — laugh or run.
Aside from the two rooms for Hemant and I, there are a kitchen/living room and a bathroom. Both are pretty good sized but as there is construction going on a few feet from the side of the house every morning so when I get up to make some coffee in my boxers there are construction workers busy building the new section of the high school and that can be a bit awkward.
The living room is a pretty big section of real estate and when the Pacific is kind, it stays pretty cool. We have not been able to make much use of it however, as a volunteer named Cox has used it for his bedroom until he gets a boat to the outer island where he teaches.
To get to my house you have to walk past the dorm, where eight other volunteers live, on this thin little path that is severally overgrown. Every time that I am on that thing, especially at night, I am paranoid that I am going to get bit by one of the poisonous centipedes that live on this island. It wouldn’t kill me, but I hear that it hurts pretty bad.
All in all life is pretty good 15 feet from the ocean. Life is even better when it is whipping up a breeze, but I don’t have to worry because the windy season will be here in about a month, and those will be some high times when I sleep right through the scuttling sounds from the floor.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, August 27, 2007
The Walk of Shame
Spearfishing is not like what you see in the movie “Cast Away,” where Tom Hanks kills a fish from 30 feet away by flinging a sharpened stick into shallow water. Spearfishing actually involves strapping on snorkel gear and swimming around with a spear and a sling made up of rubber tubing and shooting at the bigger reef-fish as they poke around in the coral.
The first time that I learned how to spearfish was about two weeks ago on a small island called Jelter. Out there the fish were plentiful and rather stupid. They din’t seem to notice when you cocked back your spear and they made aiming easier by staying in the same general area. By the end of that first day I had caught seven fish and was feeling pretty good about myself.
In Majuro, however, catching a fish is decidedly harder. This weekend I went out with some friends into the Majuro Lagoon to test my luck.
One of the problems of living in such a small community, and being a minority within that small community, is that everyone knows everything that you are doing. As we walked down to the water it was hard to hide what we were up to. We all had fins, snorkels and five and a half foot metal spears. As we walked everyone that we saw gave us questioning smiles and giggled with whomever they happened to be standing with. The one Marshallese friend going with us, Sonny, walked a few feet behind the group.
Once in the water I found there to be plenty of fish to go after, the only issue I had was that the fish were just too dang smart. All of the city and country stereotypes seemed to be true. The country fish were more docile and easier to get a hold of while the city fish were quick and always one step ahead of me and my spear.
I couldn’t catch anything and the ele around my waist, a wire belt where you hang the fish you have bagged by poking them through their eyes, was noticably empty. For some reason, every shot I took with my spear was just a little ways off in one direction or the other.
As I paddled around I saw a really big octopus with eyes as big as mine that could have saved me from a walk of shame back to my house empty handed, but I did not take a shot because I wasn’t sure if it was good to eat. Later on as I was telling my friend Jeremy about it (he has been spearfishing for two years) and he was surprised I hadn’t gone for it.
“Those are really good eating,” he said.
When I found out the process for catching an octopus however, I was happy I hadn’t done it. To catch an octopus you first get it riled up by poking it with your spear. Then, when it gets angry enough, you stick your hand at it and it will wrap all of its tentacles around your arm. Once this happens you bring it up to the surface, pull back its hood and bite it between the eyes to kill it.
Seriously, that is a little too hard-core for me.
Anyway, after five hours of fruitless fishing the whole group headed back with our eles hanging empty from around our waist.
Everyone we passed stared and pointed and Sonny walked a good 20 feet behind us.
Later that night a taxi driver told me he had seen me that day.
“Yes, I saw you walking,” he said. “I wondered, ‘where are all of the fish they caught today?’”
“We just ate them all raw on the beach,” I lied to him.
He didn’t believe me.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The first time that I learned how to spearfish was about two weeks ago on a small island called Jelter. Out there the fish were plentiful and rather stupid. They din’t seem to notice when you cocked back your spear and they made aiming easier by staying in the same general area. By the end of that first day I had caught seven fish and was feeling pretty good about myself.
In Majuro, however, catching a fish is decidedly harder. This weekend I went out with some friends into the Majuro Lagoon to test my luck.
One of the problems of living in such a small community, and being a minority within that small community, is that everyone knows everything that you are doing. As we walked down to the water it was hard to hide what we were up to. We all had fins, snorkels and five and a half foot metal spears. As we walked everyone that we saw gave us questioning smiles and giggled with whomever they happened to be standing with. The one Marshallese friend going with us, Sonny, walked a few feet behind the group.
Once in the water I found there to be plenty of fish to go after, the only issue I had was that the fish were just too dang smart. All of the city and country stereotypes seemed to be true. The country fish were more docile and easier to get a hold of while the city fish were quick and always one step ahead of me and my spear.
I couldn’t catch anything and the ele around my waist, a wire belt where you hang the fish you have bagged by poking them through their eyes, was noticably empty. For some reason, every shot I took with my spear was just a little ways off in one direction or the other.
As I paddled around I saw a really big octopus with eyes as big as mine that could have saved me from a walk of shame back to my house empty handed, but I did not take a shot because I wasn’t sure if it was good to eat. Later on as I was telling my friend Jeremy about it (he has been spearfishing for two years) and he was surprised I hadn’t gone for it.
“Those are really good eating,” he said.
When I found out the process for catching an octopus however, I was happy I hadn’t done it. To catch an octopus you first get it riled up by poking it with your spear. Then, when it gets angry enough, you stick your hand at it and it will wrap all of its tentacles around your arm. Once this happens you bring it up to the surface, pull back its hood and bite it between the eyes to kill it.
Seriously, that is a little too hard-core for me.
Anyway, after five hours of fruitless fishing the whole group headed back with our eles hanging empty from around our waist.
Everyone we passed stared and pointed and Sonny walked a good 20 feet behind us.
Later that night a taxi driver told me he had seen me that day.
“Yes, I saw you walking,” he said. “I wondered, ‘where are all of the fish they caught today?’”
“We just ate them all raw on the beach,” I lied to him.
He didn’t believe me.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
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