Hitchin' It

The thumb is a very powerful thing.

Way back when, in the dawn of time as cavemen were just learning the ropes of fire, it allowed us to make tools and thrive rather than survive. It has changed over the years to be sure, but it is still an important part of humanity.

Now, thumbs up means a good movie and thumbs down means a bad movie and no one needs rules when there is the rule of thumb. Here on the Marshall Islands the thumb is also powerful. It is your ticket to a free ride. Hitchhiking in the US has long ago gone to the wayside as a dangerous activity reserved for those desperate or dangerous.

For people here on this little coral atoll, it is just the decent thing to do.

There is one main road on Marjuro. Where the island permits it there are small outlets of side roads, but for all intensive purposes, one cement vein pulses through the atoll. It is not like there is some great worry that someone will pick you up and take you on a joyride to shady sights unseen and spur off a televised nationwide search like back in the states.

It doesn’t matter anyway because a nationwide search here means someone climbs a coconut tree and looks around because the Marshall Islands, at their highest point, stand a mere seven feet above the sea level.

I shouldn’t put light on the dangers of riding with strangers but here on this little remote speck of coral, I feel safe jacking up the thumb and hoping for a ride. The benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Sure, in the back of a truck I am exposed to the elements, but in this heat and humidity, I probably needed a shower anyway. Yeah, with my head looking over the top of the cab, tongue lolling out like a dog going to the lake, I get my fair share of insects in the mouth, but I need the protein anyway because rice sure isn’t doing it for me. OK, people talk to me in a language I don’t really get, but then again, I get to listen to people talk in a language I don’t really get.

Also, and this is the best part, a hitchhikers thumb is a free pass to get a glimpse into the Marshallese culture I wouldn’t normally see. That little back window is a little portal into a world that I am usually not privy to.

I see Marshallese couples dressed in their Sunday best holding hands, I see children making faces at me and young men resting on their window sills, cigarette dangling from their lower lip, contemplating palm trees and beach-scapes.

Most of all I see what it is like to trust someone whose name you don’t know. I sit and trust that they will drive safe enough that I won’t be flung from the back of the truck. I trust that they will stop when I want them to and I trust that they won’t go too far out of the way to bring me to where I am going.

Gas in the Marshall Islands costs in upwards of $4.50 a gallon and most people here make less than that an hour and still, almost every time I jump in the back of a truck, the driver goes out of his way to get me where I am going.

The Marshall Islands has a culture that is extremely community-based. This can be frustrating in the classroom when you ask for unique responses about what a kid’s favorite song is and he is only comfortable saying what his neighbor said, or when you find your pen missing at the end of the day because personal property is a weird concept here and everyone thinks everything is, well, everyone’s; but when it comes to hitching people pick you up because if they were in the same spot they’d expect it from you, community-based culture it is a fabulous thing.

It has fostered my faith in trust — and that lesson all came on the end of the odd digit out.

The love you give comes back in the end. --------------------------------------------------------