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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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