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.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A lot to a Name
There is a lot in a name. People always have stories about their names. It is usually stuff about whom they are named after specifically.
I am named after my Uncle Tim so I always tell stories about my Uncle Tim. It is usually the one where he lifted a hay bale that was so heavy it snapped a tendon in his arm so his muscle rolled up like a window shade. It is pretty cool because he can flex it and you can see all of the muscle bunched up at the top. I think that I tell it because maybe, just a little bit, it makes me tougher by association.
Here in the Marshall Islands it is no different. A lot of the names have a pretty good story behind it. My friend Katy has a pair of host-sisters that are named “Silver” and “Gold.” I guess that those names are pretty self explanatory. Everyone wants to get their hands on a little silver and gold. Or maybe I am wrong, maybe those names come from a song.
Then there is the guy who was named “C & T.” No on really knew what to make of that. “C & T,” huh? Finally, when he spelled it out, we found that “C & T” is actually “Sea and Tea.”
“Those were my parents’ two favorite things,” he said.
There is a girl here named “Mississippi River,” a girl here named “D-Daddy” and a boy named “Chuck Norris.” Those are all first names.
It got me to thinking about what it would be like if every kid in the world was named after their parent’s favorite things. There is a couple in my group who said that their kid would be named “Twizlers and Beer.” I think that my kid would be named “Banana Cream Pie” and his brother would be “John Steinbeck.”
My Dad would have a son named “Airplane,” my Mother would have a kid christened “Peach Candy” and my sister would have a daughter named “Forester” — which is her dog.
This new naming system would cut down on a lot of the nervousness of meeting your girlfriend’s parents. If she was named “Volunteering in an Orphanage,” then you would probably be OK, but if she was “Cocain,” then putting off the meet and greet might be a smart idea.
Another thing to consider is how people grow into their names. Think in your head and recall certain names and instantly someone you knew who had that name will pop up and that name will instantly denote his or her qualities.
For me, “Luke” means popular, “Chris” means nice and “Andrew” means athletic.
So what if your favorite candy was taffy, but then you started to meet a lot of “Taffy’s” who were really bad people — would you still like taffy?
My guess is no because there is a lot in a name and a person changes that name a lot or a little when they have it but it is never the same after someone has it.
Like “Adolf,” “Cher” and “Becks,” most names are loaded.
Anyway, I will just wait until I meet a kid named “Foreigner” or “Tall and White” and then I will get to know that family.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
I am named after my Uncle Tim so I always tell stories about my Uncle Tim. It is usually the one where he lifted a hay bale that was so heavy it snapped a tendon in his arm so his muscle rolled up like a window shade. It is pretty cool because he can flex it and you can see all of the muscle bunched up at the top. I think that I tell it because maybe, just a little bit, it makes me tougher by association.
Here in the Marshall Islands it is no different. A lot of the names have a pretty good story behind it. My friend Katy has a pair of host-sisters that are named “Silver” and “Gold.” I guess that those names are pretty self explanatory. Everyone wants to get their hands on a little silver and gold. Or maybe I am wrong, maybe those names come from a song.
Then there is the guy who was named “C & T.” No on really knew what to make of that. “C & T,” huh? Finally, when he spelled it out, we found that “C & T” is actually “Sea and Tea.”
“Those were my parents’ two favorite things,” he said.
There is a girl here named “Mississippi River,” a girl here named “D-Daddy” and a boy named “Chuck Norris.” Those are all first names.
It got me to thinking about what it would be like if every kid in the world was named after their parent’s favorite things. There is a couple in my group who said that their kid would be named “Twizlers and Beer.” I think that my kid would be named “Banana Cream Pie” and his brother would be “John Steinbeck.”
My Dad would have a son named “Airplane,” my Mother would have a kid christened “Peach Candy” and my sister would have a daughter named “Forester” — which is her dog.
This new naming system would cut down on a lot of the nervousness of meeting your girlfriend’s parents. If she was named “Volunteering in an Orphanage,” then you would probably be OK, but if she was “Cocain,” then putting off the meet and greet might be a smart idea.
Another thing to consider is how people grow into their names. Think in your head and recall certain names and instantly someone you knew who had that name will pop up and that name will instantly denote his or her qualities.
For me, “Luke” means popular, “Chris” means nice and “Andrew” means athletic.
So what if your favorite candy was taffy, but then you started to meet a lot of “Taffy’s” who were really bad people — would you still like taffy?
My guess is no because there is a lot in a name and a person changes that name a lot or a little when they have it but it is never the same after someone has it.
Like “Adolf,” “Cher” and “Becks,” most names are loaded.
Anyway, I will just wait until I meet a kid named “Foreigner” or “Tall and White” and then I will get to know that family.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, August 20, 2007
Bring in the Red the White and the Blue
Over 1,700 US service men and women will be coming ashore to Majuro in the coming week. They will bring their hammers, saws and nails and they will resurrect, repair and revamp a dilapidated section of Rita Elementary School.
As the standing population of “repelles,” or Americans, on the island usually idles around 350 people, this large influx of pale skin will surely make a splash.
The word “repelle” literally translates from Marshallese as “those who wear pants” and came about when the first missionaries arrived on the islands in the late 1800's. The foreigners wore pants then and they will most certainly wear pants now — at least I hope. The foreigners also taught all of the islanders that it was indecent to walk around showing so much skin and they covered them right up.
This outsider influence is still felt in the Marshall Islands — sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way.
The normal start date for classes in the Republic of the Marshall Islands is August 20, but as Rita Elementary will be teeming with white-uniformed sailors, that start-date has been pushed back until September 10. I am slotted to be a sixth grade teacher at Rita, so this means that I will have close to a month of twiddling my thumbs.
Don’t think that I am whining because I am not. I am nervous to start teaching classrooms packed to the brim with sixth-graders so I welcome any extra time I can get to prepare for the ruckus that is headed my way.
However here is the thing; as Majuro welcomes any help it can get from the US — it gets a majority of its economy fueled by US Government dollars pumped into the country as part of the compact set up to alleviate damages stemming from nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll — it cannot very well turn down the offer.
In this circumstance though the help means that the children of Rita will have their class start-date pushed back three weeks. While that might not seem like a lot of time to be missing class, when you consider that the kids will most likely not have an opportunity to make up the class time they miss it makes you think — is it really helping that much?
OK, having good classrooms is very much a need in the education machine, but why couldn’t it have been done earlier, perhaps in the summer when it did not conflict with education. Also, why couldn’t this job have been done by a Marshallese company? It would have created jobs and got the community involved in improving their own educational establishment. And if the US Government had to become involved, why couldn’t they have worked out a schedule where class and construction went on at the same time?
As of now the US flag is coming in once again to save the day.
I have nothing against helping people out — that is why I am here — and I think it entirely noble that my home country would help out in the Marshall Islands, but it gets to a point where charity is not longer a boon and is more of a burden.
Having things provided effectively sidesteps the whole process of learning how to do them in the first place. What happens to the Marshall Islands when the current compact ends in 2022 and they are on their own. Will they still need the US to come in and fix their classrooms?
The Marshall Islands is a country low on resources to fuel their economy. Fish and coconuts just are not cutting it. If they are going to become more self-sustained, then they will have to get better educated, and fast.
That means that three weeks is a very long time for Uncle Sam to keep kids out of classrooms.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
As the standing population of “repelles,” or Americans, on the island usually idles around 350 people, this large influx of pale skin will surely make a splash.
The word “repelle” literally translates from Marshallese as “those who wear pants” and came about when the first missionaries arrived on the islands in the late 1800's. The foreigners wore pants then and they will most certainly wear pants now — at least I hope. The foreigners also taught all of the islanders that it was indecent to walk around showing so much skin and they covered them right up.
This outsider influence is still felt in the Marshall Islands — sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way.
The normal start date for classes in the Republic of the Marshall Islands is August 20, but as Rita Elementary will be teeming with white-uniformed sailors, that start-date has been pushed back until September 10. I am slotted to be a sixth grade teacher at Rita, so this means that I will have close to a month of twiddling my thumbs.
Don’t think that I am whining because I am not. I am nervous to start teaching classrooms packed to the brim with sixth-graders so I welcome any extra time I can get to prepare for the ruckus that is headed my way.
However here is the thing; as Majuro welcomes any help it can get from the US — it gets a majority of its economy fueled by US Government dollars pumped into the country as part of the compact set up to alleviate damages stemming from nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll — it cannot very well turn down the offer.
In this circumstance though the help means that the children of Rita will have their class start-date pushed back three weeks. While that might not seem like a lot of time to be missing class, when you consider that the kids will most likely not have an opportunity to make up the class time they miss it makes you think — is it really helping that much?
OK, having good classrooms is very much a need in the education machine, but why couldn’t it have been done earlier, perhaps in the summer when it did not conflict with education. Also, why couldn’t this job have been done by a Marshallese company? It would have created jobs and got the community involved in improving their own educational establishment. And if the US Government had to become involved, why couldn’t they have worked out a schedule where class and construction went on at the same time?
As of now the US flag is coming in once again to save the day.
I have nothing against helping people out — that is why I am here — and I think it entirely noble that my home country would help out in the Marshall Islands, but it gets to a point where charity is not longer a boon and is more of a burden.
Having things provided effectively sidesteps the whole process of learning how to do them in the first place. What happens to the Marshall Islands when the current compact ends in 2022 and they are on their own. Will they still need the US to come in and fix their classrooms?
The Marshall Islands is a country low on resources to fuel their economy. Fish and coconuts just are not cutting it. If they are going to become more self-sustained, then they will have to get better educated, and fast.
That means that three weeks is a very long time for Uncle Sam to keep kids out of classrooms.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Sharks
“There might be sharks,” he told us. “If there are, they might come within 10 or 15 feet of you, just stay calm and enjoy them. They are majestic.”
I gulped and gripped the edge of my lawn chair.
“Now, if one of the guide flicks his light back and forth, then that is time to get in the boat and get out of here,” he said with the light of the fire shining on his features in a harrowing way.
As I had gone spear fishing for my first time earlier in the day, and come back with a reef fish about the size of my hand that was tasty to eat on the fire, I figured I was up to the challenge. The group of people who wanted to go was too big to fit in one boat so I got stuck going in the second shift.
I watched the first boat go off into the starry night and sat in my hammock, awaiting my turn. The minutes crept by and I felt myself dosing off to the gentle lapping of the lagoon. When the first group came back it was close to 10:30 at night and I was considering sitting the trip out.
Plus all of the waiting had done a good job of marinating my fear of losing an arm or leg to a curious shark.
Finally, as the second group was getting ready to leave, I rallied myself to the idea of going out into a reef at night, spearing fish so their blood would be dispersed near roaming sharks and seeing what it was like to be out at sea in the dead of night. I used the logic of, ‘if I don’t do this now, I will kick myself later.’
The ride out to the spot was amazing. The stars overhead were more plentiful and bright than any nightscape I had seen in my life and the wake of the boat glowed green as phosphorescing algae got misplaced.
I didn’t speak the whole way out. I was too busy swallowing my Adam’s apple.
When we finally got out there, after stopping and starting many times to avoid the high reef heads, our guide started pairing us off with Marshallese. By luck of the draw I got a guy about my age with a sick sense of humor named Caleb.
“Ohhhhh, black tip sharks, white tip sharks,” he said to me in his best Halloween voice.
I decided to ignore the joke and laugh it off, the first group to go had not seen any sharks, and I hoped that I would not either.
Splash, into the water we went.
We were both carrying spears, but Caleb had the light, so I followed him as we poked along the reef shelf.
The first place we went was to the edge of the shelf where it sharply dropped off to utter blackness. On the way there, swimming through water no more than four feet deep, Caleb spotlighted a fish for me. I snapped him up on my first shot so things were looking good.
Right when we got to the edge though Caleb swung his flashlight down into the dark water and there, cruising with sanguine back and forth swishes of his tail was a black tip reef shark. It was about four to six feet long (hard to be exact under water) and he looked, well, absolutely majestic.
Caleb tried to scare me again by making low moaning noises, but for some reason, which I completely cannot explain, it didn’t bother me, and I was just happy to have seen one.
For the next half an hour or so Caleb and I teemed up to spear a multitude of fish across the reef. He would spotlight a fish, slow and lackadaisical due to the time of night, and I would try and skewer it. When I missed (often) he would grab it with the business end of his spear.
By the time that we got back to the boat we had a belt absolutely brimming with fish. We headed back to the shore and I regarded the stars and the glowing water.
Back at the camp our guides taught us which fish we could eat raw and so I chewed on the raw fish I had caught not an hour before, laughing with the Marshallese as they made fun of my hesitation.
That night as I swayed to sleep in my hammock, the image of the shark swept threw my mind…
I gulped and gripped the edge of my lawn chair.
“Now, if one of the guide flicks his light back and forth, then that is time to get in the boat and get out of here,” he said with the light of the fire shining on his features in a harrowing way.
As I had gone spear fishing for my first time earlier in the day, and come back with a reef fish about the size of my hand that was tasty to eat on the fire, I figured I was up to the challenge. The group of people who wanted to go was too big to fit in one boat so I got stuck going in the second shift.
I watched the first boat go off into the starry night and sat in my hammock, awaiting my turn. The minutes crept by and I felt myself dosing off to the gentle lapping of the lagoon. When the first group came back it was close to 10:30 at night and I was considering sitting the trip out.
Plus all of the waiting had done a good job of marinating my fear of losing an arm or leg to a curious shark.
Finally, as the second group was getting ready to leave, I rallied myself to the idea of going out into a reef at night, spearing fish so their blood would be dispersed near roaming sharks and seeing what it was like to be out at sea in the dead of night. I used the logic of, ‘if I don’t do this now, I will kick myself later.’
The ride out to the spot was amazing. The stars overhead were more plentiful and bright than any nightscape I had seen in my life and the wake of the boat glowed green as phosphorescing algae got misplaced.
I didn’t speak the whole way out. I was too busy swallowing my Adam’s apple.
When we finally got out there, after stopping and starting many times to avoid the high reef heads, our guide started pairing us off with Marshallese. By luck of the draw I got a guy about my age with a sick sense of humor named Caleb.
“Ohhhhh, black tip sharks, white tip sharks,” he said to me in his best Halloween voice.
I decided to ignore the joke and laugh it off, the first group to go had not seen any sharks, and I hoped that I would not either.
Splash, into the water we went.
We were both carrying spears, but Caleb had the light, so I followed him as we poked along the reef shelf.
The first place we went was to the edge of the shelf where it sharply dropped off to utter blackness. On the way there, swimming through water no more than four feet deep, Caleb spotlighted a fish for me. I snapped him up on my first shot so things were looking good.
Right when we got to the edge though Caleb swung his flashlight down into the dark water and there, cruising with sanguine back and forth swishes of his tail was a black tip reef shark. It was about four to six feet long (hard to be exact under water) and he looked, well, absolutely majestic.
Caleb tried to scare me again by making low moaning noises, but for some reason, which I completely cannot explain, it didn’t bother me, and I was just happy to have seen one.
For the next half an hour or so Caleb and I teemed up to spear a multitude of fish across the reef. He would spotlight a fish, slow and lackadaisical due to the time of night, and I would try and skewer it. When I missed (often) he would grab it with the business end of his spear.
By the time that we got back to the boat we had a belt absolutely brimming with fish. We headed back to the shore and I regarded the stars and the glowing water.
Back at the camp our guides taught us which fish we could eat raw and so I chewed on the raw fish I had caught not an hour before, laughing with the Marshallese as they made fun of my hesitation.
That night as I swayed to sleep in my hammock, the image of the shark swept threw my mind…
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, August 12, 2007
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. --------------------------------------------------------
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. --------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Hunger for Learning
Uliga and Rita, the two towns on the northeast end of Majuro, are two of the lowest income communities on island. For my very first taste of being an educator in the Marshall Islands, I got the pleasure of working with kids from these towns in a summer camp.
The summer camp is just a thinly veiled ploy to get warm bodies into chairs so volunteers, such as myself, will have a tiny glimpse of what they have gotten themselves into. The way that they get kids to skip the tail-end of their summer vacation is to literally drive a minibus down the street and herd kids on.
I was paired with three other volunteers and we were teaching basic music to fifth and sixth graders.
For my part specifically I was in charge of reading the kids a story about the sounds we hear all around us and how people can use those sounds in music. Before I got up in front of the kids I was not nervous at all. I had a good story, I had a good plan and I have always enjoyed an ability to connect with young people — I thought I was set.
Turns out I was wrong.
First of all, the minute I stood in front of the class, my mouth went completely dry and my shirt sucked onto my body with sweat.
I asked them how they were doing.
No one spoke.
I asked them if they wanted to read a book with me.
Nothing.
I read them a book and asked them what they thought.
Crickets.
I immediately had a ridiculous amount of respect for each and every one of my teachers I have ever had. I can’t imagine needing to think of things for me and every other trouble-making kid I grew up with to do every day. I don’t know why every classroom in the country is not experiencing riots all of the time.
Being up there in front of so many eyes made me nervous at any hint of silence and so I started to rush through everything I planned.
When I found out that the copies of the story I handed out were in the wrong order, I brushed past them instead of stopping and trying to salvage them. When the kids didn’t understand my vocabulary words right away, I moved onto the next thing.
The problem was, I had no next thing, and the kids were growing restless. Suddenly my lesson on sound was extremely acute to only one person in the room — me.
There came the uncomfortable sounds of shifting desks and low murmuring. The kids were asking what time it was and I was sure that if I didn’t do something soon I would have a spirited, if not bloody, rebellion on my hand. The situation called for drastic actions.
Recess.
In the classroom with me was a local American teacher who had been observing me.
“Don’t get too down on yourself,” he told me after the kids had filed out. “This is your first time teaching, and most of these kids are just really hungry.”
I walked outside and saw my whole class hunkered down against the wall, ravenously eating their lunches that were provided by my program.
Suddenly the draw of summer camp became clear; it was a chance to eat a warm and ready meal.
These kids came from Uliga and Rita where finding a job can sometimes be tough and eating breakfast is no sure thing.
They didn’t need my lesson on noises, the rumbling of their stomach was making racket enough.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The summer camp is just a thinly veiled ploy to get warm bodies into chairs so volunteers, such as myself, will have a tiny glimpse of what they have gotten themselves into. The way that they get kids to skip the tail-end of their summer vacation is to literally drive a minibus down the street and herd kids on.
I was paired with three other volunteers and we were teaching basic music to fifth and sixth graders.
For my part specifically I was in charge of reading the kids a story about the sounds we hear all around us and how people can use those sounds in music. Before I got up in front of the kids I was not nervous at all. I had a good story, I had a good plan and I have always enjoyed an ability to connect with young people — I thought I was set.
Turns out I was wrong.
First of all, the minute I stood in front of the class, my mouth went completely dry and my shirt sucked onto my body with sweat.
I asked them how they were doing.
No one spoke.
I asked them if they wanted to read a book with me.
Nothing.
I read them a book and asked them what they thought.
Crickets.
I immediately had a ridiculous amount of respect for each and every one of my teachers I have ever had. I can’t imagine needing to think of things for me and every other trouble-making kid I grew up with to do every day. I don’t know why every classroom in the country is not experiencing riots all of the time.
Being up there in front of so many eyes made me nervous at any hint of silence and so I started to rush through everything I planned.
When I found out that the copies of the story I handed out were in the wrong order, I brushed past them instead of stopping and trying to salvage them. When the kids didn’t understand my vocabulary words right away, I moved onto the next thing.
The problem was, I had no next thing, and the kids were growing restless. Suddenly my lesson on sound was extremely acute to only one person in the room — me.
There came the uncomfortable sounds of shifting desks and low murmuring. The kids were asking what time it was and I was sure that if I didn’t do something soon I would have a spirited, if not bloody, rebellion on my hand. The situation called for drastic actions.
Recess.
In the classroom with me was a local American teacher who had been observing me.
“Don’t get too down on yourself,” he told me after the kids had filed out. “This is your first time teaching, and most of these kids are just really hungry.”
I walked outside and saw my whole class hunkered down against the wall, ravenously eating their lunches that were provided by my program.
Suddenly the draw of summer camp became clear; it was a chance to eat a warm and ready meal.
These kids came from Uliga and Rita where finding a job can sometimes be tough and eating breakfast is no sure thing.
They didn’t need my lesson on noises, the rumbling of their stomach was making racket enough.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, August 5, 2007
L to the Azy
Oh lazy Sundays, how I love you.
Today I woke up and with four friends decided to see how far down the road out thumbs could take us so I gathered my snorkeling gear and camera and headed out to the central road of the island.
It didn’t take long for someone to stop and pick us up.
“You WorldTeach?” He asked. “I always help the WorldTeach.”
We climbed into the back of his red pickup and cruised out along the narrow road further than any of us had been before. As we drove along we saw family after family of Marshallese enjoying their day of rest. Most people simply DO NOT work here on Sunday so it is a day of rest and religion.
At a parking lot a few miles down the road the man pulled over and we hopped out. We walked down to the shore and spotted some pristine, white-sand beaches further down the way so we hiked on.
With the sun was beating down heavily on our backs I was getting very eager to jump into the water but as we got further and further from the parking lot the bushes and trees along the sand started filling up with the rustlings of little kids. From out of nowhere the bushes parted and a young boy hopped out.
“Yakwe!” he shouted to us.
Mikey was 13 years old and as I sat on a log with him and regarded the horizon he asked me, “you like coconuts?” to which I shook my head yes. Mikey counted out how many people were in our group and ran off.
As we waited the sky mixed and contorted on itself and darkened quickly.
When Mikey returned with his arms brimming with husked coconuts the storm was over us. We all scurried into a fort that Mikey had made and watched the world turn itself over as we sipped on sweet coconut milk.
Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Today I woke up and with four friends decided to see how far down the road out thumbs could take us so I gathered my snorkeling gear and camera and headed out to the central road of the island.
It didn’t take long for someone to stop and pick us up.
“You WorldTeach?” He asked. “I always help the WorldTeach.”
We climbed into the back of his red pickup and cruised out along the narrow road further than any of us had been before. As we drove along we saw family after family of Marshallese enjoying their day of rest. Most people simply DO NOT work here on Sunday so it is a day of rest and religion.
At a parking lot a few miles down the road the man pulled over and we hopped out. We walked down to the shore and spotted some pristine, white-sand beaches further down the way so we hiked on.
With the sun was beating down heavily on our backs I was getting very eager to jump into the water but as we got further and further from the parking lot the bushes and trees along the sand started filling up with the rustlings of little kids. From out of nowhere the bushes parted and a young boy hopped out.
“Yakwe!” he shouted to us.
Mikey was 13 years old and as I sat on a log with him and regarded the horizon he asked me, “you like coconuts?” to which I shook my head yes. Mikey counted out how many people were in our group and ran off.
As we waited the sky mixed and contorted on itself and darkened quickly.
When Mikey returned with his arms brimming with husked coconuts the storm was over us. We all scurried into a fort that Mikey had made and watched the world turn itself over as we sipped on sweet coconut milk.
Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
OK, enough already!
I am just about fed up with things here. If it is not one thing than it’s another.
If it is your turn to clean the dishes, the kitchen and the bathroom then of course, the water goes out. So then you are stuck hauling buckets of water from the silo just so you can wash up. The biggest problem with that is the path to the water goes directly through the territory of some nasty red ants. These ants just absolutely go to town on your feet. If you walk in their area, they will chow down on you innocent skin — and these guys are not happy to just take a nibble. They burrow their little devilish heads deep and spread their disgusting poison which causes you to itch and turn an unhealthy shade of purple so then you are forced to pick out the ant between your thumb and pointer finger. As you do it, you can literally see your skin tugging out as the jaws of the ant clamp tight, and then you have to kill it.
Let me tell you, this is frustrating for me because when I was little, ants were my favorite organisms in the world. I would put them in jars and watched as they burrowed, so for me, killing these ants is like you strangling your favorite childhood teddy bear...
So you have that going for you...
Then, if you finally snag some free time from the hustle and bustle orientation to go to the post-office and grab some stamps the old-timer behind the desk tells you that they are out of stamps, when you can clearly see stacks of them sitting behind the guy, and that you should probably try the bigger post office a few miles down the road.
“But the bigger post office down the road will be closed before I get there,” you tell the man, “couldn’t I please buy some of those stamps behind you?”
“Down the road...” he says and points his decrepit old finger to the outside.
So you leave, cursing under your breath, and get caught in a rain-storm...
Just about had it up to here, I tell you.
I guess that the biggest thing is that I am used to living on my own time. I am used to having my own space and my own pace.
Back home, for the most part, I could get up when I wanted to, go to sleep when I wanted to and unwind when I wanted to. If I felt like letting my mind and self settle I could go out on my balcony and decompress, people watch and pick through myself at my leisure.
Here, everything is packed together. People are never alone, and this orientation is no different. It is hard to go and steal some time for yourself, and when you do; you go and get your rump bit.
I guess this is the perfect crash-course for me for living in a new culture for the next 10 months. And I know that these feelings will pass because I have had them before. I hated Spain at first and grew to like it so much I went back, for a time in Chile, I considered coming back early but it turned out amazing and I know that I will get through this and be grateful I did.
Just right now, at this moment, I have had it up to here.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
If it is your turn to clean the dishes, the kitchen and the bathroom then of course, the water goes out. So then you are stuck hauling buckets of water from the silo just so you can wash up. The biggest problem with that is the path to the water goes directly through the territory of some nasty red ants. These ants just absolutely go to town on your feet. If you walk in their area, they will chow down on you innocent skin — and these guys are not happy to just take a nibble. They burrow their little devilish heads deep and spread their disgusting poison which causes you to itch and turn an unhealthy shade of purple so then you are forced to pick out the ant between your thumb and pointer finger. As you do it, you can literally see your skin tugging out as the jaws of the ant clamp tight, and then you have to kill it.
Let me tell you, this is frustrating for me because when I was little, ants were my favorite organisms in the world. I would put them in jars and watched as they burrowed, so for me, killing these ants is like you strangling your favorite childhood teddy bear...
So you have that going for you...
Then, if you finally snag some free time from the hustle and bustle orientation to go to the post-office and grab some stamps the old-timer behind the desk tells you that they are out of stamps, when you can clearly see stacks of them sitting behind the guy, and that you should probably try the bigger post office a few miles down the road.
“But the bigger post office down the road will be closed before I get there,” you tell the man, “couldn’t I please buy some of those stamps behind you?”
“Down the road...” he says and points his decrepit old finger to the outside.
So you leave, cursing under your breath, and get caught in a rain-storm...
Just about had it up to here, I tell you.
I guess that the biggest thing is that I am used to living on my own time. I am used to having my own space and my own pace.
Back home, for the most part, I could get up when I wanted to, go to sleep when I wanted to and unwind when I wanted to. If I felt like letting my mind and self settle I could go out on my balcony and decompress, people watch and pick through myself at my leisure.
Here, everything is packed together. People are never alone, and this orientation is no different. It is hard to go and steal some time for yourself, and when you do; you go and get your rump bit.
I guess this is the perfect crash-course for me for living in a new culture for the next 10 months. And I know that these feelings will pass because I have had them before. I hated Spain at first and grew to like it so much I went back, for a time in Chile, I considered coming back early but it turned out amazing and I know that I will get through this and be grateful I did.
Just right now, at this moment, I have had it up to here.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, July 30, 2007
The Daily Grind
I feel like my training in the Marshall Islands should have come with a warning label.
WARNING: While you may be in a tropical Micronesian nation, DO NOT expect to participate in any of the following activities — swimming, surfing, snorkeling, diving or spear fishing. You will simply be too busy learning how to teach the Marshallese youth of tomorrow, today. If you experience any negative emotions related to a lack of these activities find a small room where you can shout the following sentence at yourself.
I am not here on vacation, I am here to help!
Repeat as needed.
OK, I know that I am not here to just have fun, but it would have helped to have a little something to cushion my hard drop from “wow, I am in paradise,” to “geez, what does a guy have to do around here to lay in a hammock?”
The label could be big and yellow and it could have a logo of a dog chomping on a tall and skinny man’s rear (that story is for a different column).
My days here are a whirlwind from start to finish and that is fine, but when palm trees surround you, focusing can be hard...
As a
group, we usually get up around 7:30 in the morning. We brush our teeth, we take our bucket showers and we eat our plain corn-flakes with our preserved milk. Then there is a few minutes for personal time which means that people bunch up into ones and twos and chat quietly and write letters home.
group, we usually get up around 7:30 in the morning. We brush our teeth, we take our bucket showers and we eat our plain corn-flakes with our preserved milk. Then there is a few minutes for personal time which means that people bunch up into ones and twos and chat quietly and write letters home.The ocean is always close and it beats in our ears but there is no time to go to its shores because the group has to head into a small and stuffy classroom trailer designed for kindergarten students where 45 of us sit on the floor (because that is what many people do in the Marshall Islands and we need to get used to it) and we try to listen to the brush-up grammar lessons.
We listen, we take notes, we doodle and we yawn and then we are let out with enough time to go back into our crowded and smelly sleeping rooms to switch our grammar books with our language manuals and then we are back out into the muggy day to sit in small groups and have our Marshallese lessons from high-spirited teenagers who chuckle at us as our mouths stumble over the unfamiliar shapes of their Marshall words.
We listen, we take notes, we doodle and we yawn and then we are let out with enough time to go back into our crowded and smelly sleeping rooms to switch our grammar books with our language manuals and then we are back out into the muggy day to sit in small groups and have our Marshallese lessons from high-spirited teenagers who chuckle at us as our mouths stumble over the unfamiliar shapes of their Marshall words.
After that, lunch comes and we pile our plates high with slightly differing mixtures of tofu, rice, noodles, cabbage, chicken and carrots. When we are done eating we clean up and have a few moments to relax. Some people choose to go down to the lagoon, others choose to lay in the sleeping room. In half an hour we meet back up for classes stretching straight until the edge of dawn before we are set free to witness the last dying breaths of the day.
Then we go to sleep and repeat the next day.
Wake, shower, eat, study, study, eat, study, study and repeat.
The other day our schedule was mixed up.
Our group woke up and boarded a bus. We packed our snorkels and sun screen. Our driver took us further down the one road in town than we had ever been before. We got on a boat and it took us out to another island far from anything that has to do with doing.
I disembarked, and set out across the island where I found two palm trees set apart about the right amount. I tied my hammock between these trees and I laid out with Hemingway in my hand and a sea breeze running over my face. I breathed in deep and felt myself sinking into my own skin.
Now this was paradise.
Repeat as needed.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Dogging It
I used to be a dog person... USED to is the key term here...
Yesterday morning I woke up before the sun rose and stumbled my way out into the courtyard of the building where we are staying (a prison-like head start where we sleep crammed together on thin mats that do little to disguise the hard floor beneath...) and took my camera bag out to catch a glimpse of the sunrise.
Well when I got to the courtyard I found the front gate locked and I couldn’t find my keys.
This should have been a sign to me. Go back to bed. Rest, catching the sunrise is not meant for you. However I ignored it and scaled up the chainlink fence, careful to avoid the section with barbed wire, and hopped down to the dimly-lit street below.
I had been witness to the dramatic sunsets that took place every night on the lagoon so I decided that my best bet to catch the sunrise was to head down the road and over to the ocean side of the island.
Even though the difference between lagoon side and ocean side is a matter of yards in the Marshall Islands, you can only cross from the central road to the beach at certain places because everything else is someone’s front yard.
I hiked my camera bag higher on my back and set off down the road.
In the Marshall Islands there are lots and lots of dogs, and none of them are stray, they all belong to someone. Some are aggressive but most are not. My program coordinator taught us all that the best way to take care of an aggressive dog is to either pretend like you are picking up a rock to throw at them, or at least actually throw a rock at them.
Being alone I chose to carry a whole pocketful of rocks with me.
As I walked along the scenes of the young Marshallese day greeted me. Women tending to fires, men sweeping out front yards and people sitting on chairs with towels around their necks, watching the road after a morning dip in the lagoon.
I was trying to live in the moment, you know breath it all in, when I heard a chorus of barking start up down the drive of a house. Nervously I fingered the rocks in my pocket and picked up my pace. From around the corner of the drive came a pack of five or six dogs growling viciously.
I remembered my training and pretended to wing a rock at them — they barely budged. Next I actually started throwing rocks. The dogs charged on through my volleys of desperation, but somehow I managed to make them back down and was on my way.
I breathed hard and said Yokwe (hello) to the people I passed and got some good photos (I think) of a boy carrying his spear out to the beach to do some fishing.
Then the moment of truth came — I had to turn around and make it back to the head start for a morning lesson. I wanted to take an alternative route around the pack of dogs but that is just the thing, in Majuro there is only one road, so it looked like I would have to go back and battle with the pack of degenerate pooches.
I loaded up my pockets with bits of coral (that is what rocks are here, just broken and crumbled coral) and set back with my jaw set and ready.
When I reached the house of the vicious pack nothing happened so I kept walking. I started to relax. My shoulders drooped. Then, as I was almost onto the next house, I heard a distant howl that sent a shiver up my spine. From around the back of the property came a barking mass of fur and teeth like some sort of bastard creature that God had messed up on but somehow allowed to roam the Earth.
I stood tall. I shouted back. I threw rocks.
And still they came...
Seconds before the lead dog closed in with his mouth aiming for a very important part of anatomy below the belly button and above the knees, I instinctively turned away from him. The problem with this is that it exposed my rump to attack and the lead dog was more than happy to oblige.
I yelped with pain and then with my last rock I turned and threw it into the mass and struck a dog near the back full-on in the face. He shrank away yelping and the others followed suit, leaving me free to walk on nervously.
I made it home alright but something fundamental shifted inside me.
I don’t know if you could classify me as a dog person anymore.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday morning I woke up before the sun rose and stumbled my way out into the courtyard of the building where we are staying (a prison-like head start where we sleep crammed together on thin mats that do little to disguise the hard floor beneath...) and took my camera bag out to catch a glimpse of the sunrise.
Well when I got to the courtyard I found the front gate locked and I couldn’t find my keys.
This should have been a sign to me. Go back to bed. Rest, catching the sunrise is not meant for you. However I ignored it and scaled up the chainlink fence, careful to avoid the section with barbed wire, and hopped down to the dimly-lit street below.
I had been witness to the dramatic sunsets that took place every night on the lagoon so I decided that my best bet to catch the sunrise was to head down the road and over to the ocean side of the island.
Even though the difference between lagoon side and ocean side is a matter of yards in the Marshall Islands, you can only cross from the central road to the beach at certain places because everything else is someone’s front yard.
I hiked my camera bag higher on my back and set off down the road.
In the Marshall Islands there are lots and lots of dogs, and none of them are stray, they all belong to someone. Some are aggressive but most are not. My program coordinator taught us all that the best way to take care of an aggressive dog is to either pretend like you are picking up a rock to throw at them, or at least actually throw a rock at them.
Being alone I chose to carry a whole pocketful of rocks with me.
As I walked along the scenes of the young Marshallese day greeted me. Women tending to fires, men sweeping out front yards and people sitting on chairs with towels around their necks, watching the road after a morning dip in the lagoon.
I was trying to live in the moment, you know breath it all in, when I heard a chorus of barking start up down the drive of a house. Nervously I fingered the rocks in my pocket and picked up my pace. From around the corner of the drive came a pack of five or six dogs growling viciously.
I remembered my training and pretended to wing a rock at them — they barely budged. Next I actually started throwing rocks. The dogs charged on through my volleys of desperation, but somehow I managed to make them back down and was on my way.
I breathed hard and said Yokwe (hello) to the people I passed and got some good photos (I think) of a boy carrying his spear out to the beach to do some fishing.
Then the moment of truth came — I had to turn around and make it back to the head start for a morning lesson. I wanted to take an alternative route around the pack of dogs but that is just the thing, in Majuro there is only one road, so it looked like I would have to go back and battle with the pack of degenerate pooches.
I loaded up my pockets with bits of coral (that is what rocks are here, just broken and crumbled coral) and set back with my jaw set and ready.
When I reached the house of the vicious pack nothing happened so I kept walking. I started to relax. My shoulders drooped. Then, as I was almost onto the next house, I heard a distant howl that sent a shiver up my spine. From around the back of the property came a barking mass of fur and teeth like some sort of bastard creature that God had messed up on but somehow allowed to roam the Earth.
I stood tall. I shouted back. I threw rocks.
And still they came...
Seconds before the lead dog closed in with his mouth aiming for a very important part of anatomy below the belly button and above the knees, I instinctively turned away from him. The problem with this is that it exposed my rump to attack and the lead dog was more than happy to oblige.
I yelped with pain and then with my last rock I turned and threw it into the mass and struck a dog near the back full-on in the face. He shrank away yelping and the others followed suit, leaving me free to walk on nervously.
I made it home alright but something fundamental shifted inside me.
I don’t know if you could classify me as a dog person anymore.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Guide Me
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.
--------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)