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.
--------------------------------------------------------