Wet in Ejit

The Bikinians displaced by the American nuke tests in the 1950s and 60s were relocated to a several places in the Marshall Islands. The island of Ejit is one of them. Two volunteer teachers that Ali and I are friends with both live in Ejit and teach at the elementary school. This past Sunday, some of us walked from Majuro to Ejit, 3 islands away. It’s not that on the holy day we were able to work miracles, though, and walk on water. During low-tide we were able to walk ankle deep across the reef.

Our friends were skipping out on going to church to host us. Ejit’s village has a few hundred inhabitants living in a maze of houses built before urban planning made its way to the RMI. But the village was like a ghost town when we arrived because everyone was in church. One of our friends felt guilty; not going to church leads to gossip among the locals about your morals. In the “big city” that is Majuro, there are enough churches that you can easily get away with not going and no one notices. Or perhaps people care less. But Ejit resembles the outer island communities where going to church is not an option.

So with guilty pleasure we took the long route around the church so as to be less conspicuous. The idea was to go swimming without throwing it in people’s faces.

Before hitting the reef we walked across the Ejit baseball diamond, sporting its very own scoreboard (next to someone’s house).

Then, just as our reef shoes hit the hardened and bumpy coral, the patter of drops began to fall. One of us suggested that we head back, but we were going swimming after all. Our goal was to wade to an island further along the atoll from Majuro.

Before long, the patter turned to a steady drum beat in our eyes. Rather than walk further we decided to just swim then and there, so we found an area between two islands deep enough and got in. By that point we were getting cold and the ocean water felt sublime by contrast.

After 20 minutes or so we decided to make our way back. But none of us really wanted to walk in the rain; the memory of being cold was too fresh. So we tried to swim through the lagoon to Ejit. Making little progress, we finally gave up and walked most of the way. When we got back to our friends’ house, still as soaked as when we were swimming, we decided to pack our bags in white trash bags and walk home.

It was surprisingly fun being wet in Ejit.