My journey to the Marshall Islands began in a trashy Greyhound station in Eugene. It was sketchy in all sences of the word. There were people who I didn't trust, busses that never seemed to come and a general feeling in the air that someone was about to get robbed or hit on.
Eventually my bus came though and I said goodbye to my girlfriend and stepped aboard a bus packed almost to the brim with sweating humanity.
The trip was full of slightly unsettling occurrences.
Every single time I glanced at the man next to me, no matter the time of day, he was staring straight back with his high-domed head and thin, snake-like smile. Meanwhile, the bus driver couldn’t seem to keep in one lane and liked to do 80 all of the time and behind me a man kept screaming on his cell phone about how he just got out of jail and he was about to beat people up.
Suddenly the 900 some miles left to go to Los Angeles seemed impossible.
What was I supposed to do though? I had paid for the bus ticket and I had a flight leaving the next day out of LA so I pulled out my Ipod and plugged out the Greyhound with my headphones and soothed my worries away with some Sufjan Stevens and his band.
Through the mountains near Shasta I got deep into my thoughts with Cat Stevens. In Sacramento I had a mid-journey pump-me-up session with the Killers. Taj Mahal got me through a rest-stop in the middle of nowhere and Nora Jones helped me keep my cool when I missed three different buses in a row and wasn’t sure if I would make it to LA.
I made it though, with music as a guide — and my batteries lasted the whole way.
One of the first things I learned after stepping off the plane in the Marshall Islands — after coming to grips with the fact that it is so humid here is feels like you are just stepping out of the shower all of the time — was that before the people of the RMI had the luxuries of modern navigation, they relied on a sort of vocal map passed down through the generations in the form of song. They would literally sing as they rowed and through the lyrics they would be reminded that there was a coral reef to be avoided here, or a swift current to be careful of there.
The songs kept them on course.
I have only been in Micronesia for a couple of days now and all of my time thus far has been spent pushing through an intensive training course designed to get me ready for what lays ahead with a room full of little brown faces peering up at me expecting me to give them direction through the day. While this role has intimidated me in the past, being here so far in the tropics has made me come to peace with it.
I think that I need to be realistic and know that I am not always going to do or say the exact right thing all of the time — but I will do my best.
Sometimes things seem to be completely off the course, like when you are sitting next to a creepy man, riding on a swerving monster bus from hell or trying to take a nap a few rows ahead of a guy who is itching to go back to jail with the fast end of his fist, but if you have a loose guide to get you through, like music, it is possible.
For my little bus journey down south I had singers from Sufjan Stevens to Nora Jones to help me, the people of the RMI long ago had rich oral histories to help them and now, hopefully, 35 little kids at Rita Elementary in Majuro, RMI will have me.
Eventually my bus came though and I said goodbye to my girlfriend and stepped aboard a bus packed almost to the brim with sweating humanity.
The trip was full of slightly unsettling occurrences.
Every single time I glanced at the man next to me, no matter the time of day, he was staring straight back with his high-domed head and thin, snake-like smile. Meanwhile, the bus driver couldn’t seem to keep in one lane and liked to do 80 all of the time and behind me a man kept screaming on his cell phone about how he just got out of jail and he was about to beat people up.
Suddenly the 900 some miles left to go to Los Angeles seemed impossible.
What was I supposed to do though? I had paid for the bus ticket and I had a flight leaving the next day out of LA so I pulled out my Ipod and plugged out the Greyhound with my headphones and soothed my worries away with some Sufjan Stevens and his band.
Through the mountains near Shasta I got deep into my thoughts with Cat Stevens. In Sacramento I had a mid-journey pump-me-up session with the Killers. Taj Mahal got me through a rest-stop in the middle of nowhere and Nora Jones helped me keep my cool when I missed three different buses in a row and wasn’t sure if I would make it to LA.
I made it though, with music as a guide — and my batteries lasted the whole way.
One of the first things I learned after stepping off the plane in the Marshall Islands — after coming to grips with the fact that it is so humid here is feels like you are just stepping out of the shower all of the time — was that before the people of the RMI had the luxuries of modern navigation, they relied on a sort of vocal map passed down through the generations in the form of song. They would literally sing as they rowed and through the lyrics they would be reminded that there was a coral reef to be avoided here, or a swift current to be careful of there.
The songs kept them on course.
I have only been in Micronesia for a couple of days now and all of my time thus far has been spent pushing through an intensive training course designed to get me ready for what lays ahead with a room full of little brown faces peering up at me expecting me to give them direction through the day. While this role has intimidated me in the past, being here so far in the tropics has made me come to peace with it.
I think that I need to be realistic and know that I am not always going to do or say the exact right thing all of the time — but I will do my best.
Sometimes things seem to be completely off the course, like when you are sitting next to a creepy man, riding on a swerving monster bus from hell or trying to take a nap a few rows ahead of a guy who is itching to go back to jail with the fast end of his fist, but if you have a loose guide to get you through, like music, it is possible.
For my little bus journey down south I had singers from Sufjan Stevens to Nora Jones to help me, the people of the RMI long ago had rich oral histories to help them and now, hopefully, 35 little kids at Rita Elementary in Majuro, RMI will have me.
The picture is courtesy of Dan, and is of a sunset literally 30 feet from our house...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
1 comment:
Hi Mr Lane,
Please let us know if you need anything for your classroom or students-
Cindy
Post a Comment