It's gettin' hot in here

But we can’t take off all our clothes. So it’s no surprise that the Marshallese have bought into the idea of air conditioning in a very serious way. Practically every car I’ve ridden in and nearly every office has air-con. Fine.

But!

A lot of people don’t have a clear conception of how much juice these things drink. So it’s not uncommon for people to leave a door to the outside wide open while the air conditioning units in 10 offices are running. This is particularly the case where I work, at the Ministry of Education. About half the people shut the door and the other half just can’t be bothered. In the first two weeks I would get pretty upset. People ask: If the Marshall Islands invests the greatest amount of money into education in the entire Pacific island region, why do students perform so poorly? Well, maybe a lot of that money is going to Marshalls Electric Company.

I know it’s not people’s aim to waste the education system’s money. The head of such and such department doesn’t say to herself, “Those children have too many books!” and then plots to boost the electricity bill in order to cut the textbook budget.

The Marshallese are very considerate and polite with other people in general. Moreover, children are really at the center of the society. It’s become such a common sight for me to see older kids with the youngest ones. Tiny children are always being held. And I don’t know why, but Marshallese children don’t seem to cry.

I was told that if I have a problem with the air conditioning cooling the entire Pacific rim, I should relate the problem to people. That’s what gets the attention of Marshallese people; makes sense. When you get caught up in the budgetary and bureaucratic abyss of a government ministry, it’s no wonder that nobody really thinks about the electricity bill. I’m willing to bet there isn’t a single person at the Ministry that knows how much electricity costs month to month. Or, maybe the information isn’t disaggregated by building. So the Ministry simply has an electric bill that includes all the schools too.

I’m going to try an experiment. I’m gonna see if a sign that says something like: “Please keep the door closed so that more MOE $ goes to our children”, makes any difference. Habit is also really hard to break, so it may take a while.

It dawned on me

It dawned on me recently that Marshallese folks love to laugh. It may be genetic, because it seems a smile reactively comes to face in the space of good humour. At first I thought my favourite laugh is a girl’s giggle.

Then I had a thought while at work. Sitting one day at my desk in the Ministry, tucked away in the corner of a room called ‘Teacher Quality Office’, I stared at the Consumer Price Index for the Marshall Islands. The thought was, “Can this moment get any more boring?”

Suddenly the air in the room was sucked out the door (like when in a movie somebody shoots a hole in a flying plane). Not a moment later, the heartiest bellow of a laugh boomed out of a big lady out in the hallway. It was the healthiest laugh I ever heard. Must have taken all the air in the building to achieve that laugh.

But that wasn’t when it dawned on me that Marshallese folks love to laugh. Living for short periods of time in foreign countries is a challenge because I don’t understand what most people are saying. The conversations I’m not part of are in Marshallese, so when somebody laughs, hoots, giggles or even bellows a booming cacophony, I don’t understand why. That alone is reason enough to learn Marshallese!

That’s why it had to dawn on me slowly that it may be genetic that Marshallese people love to laugh. To learn, I had to hear it many times. And I’m glad to say I have.

Proof,

meant to be sung,

as the best laughs are.

12:35 am

The light penetrates through my drapes. The rumble of a machine vibrates in my room. I toss. In nothing but boxer shorts, I lie facing away from the window. Normally at this time I’d be asleep on a Tuesday evening. But the rumble of the machine has replaced the soothing sound of waves breaking outside my window.

I don’t feel angry. At first I’d considered going outside and indicating to the workers that people live next to this construction site. I have trouble not getting sarcastic when I’m annoyed. I once met the foreman and he’d mentioned that anytime the work became a nuisance that I should let the workers know.

The consideration is replaced by resignation. I turn over. I can’t see the construction site from my position on the bed, but the spot lights illuminating the site create the effect of a giant flashlight right on my window.

I’m resigned because I remember that they’re constructing a school building. I live on the Marshall Islands High School campus in a compound meant for expat volunteer teachers. The machine is buffing a new coat of cement laid down on the floor of the 2 classroom unit. School is supposed to start in a week, but they haven’t even started building the frame for the roof and walls. Besides, these workers are paid the minimum wage in the Marshall Islands, which is only $2/hour. They wouldn’t be here at this time if they didn’t need to be.

The next day I asked someone if they’d get overtime for working so late and got a funny look. These workers are even lucky enough to be paid $2 an hour. I’ve heard that a tuna processing plant is going into operation with a dispensation to pay its workers $1.50 per hour. That might be a lot in your average developing country, but inflation is so high in the Marshall Islands and the country is so geographically remote, that prices are higher here than in Boston or Montreal. Living on that much with a family, you’d eat little more than canned tuna and rice.

The Tragedy of Dornier and Dash

Disclaimer: For worriers out there, this preface is to assure that being situated in Majuro, the following does not affect me at all.
………………………

It many countries this is the kind of situation one might call a ‘national emergency’. The entire fleet of domestic air planes are grounded. Air Marshall Islands, what hath happened to you? It’s not the airports. International flights are incoming and outgoing on schedule. But it is not possible to get a plane to 22 of the 24 inhabited atolls. That puts a third of the population of the country reachable only by boat. That means that if there is a medical emergency beyond the scope of a clinic, people can’t be emergency evacuated to a better staffed and equipped hospital.

This is the Tragedy of Dornier and Dash. Yes, they are the ones not doing their job. But before we blame them, we can point out that they fly in salty winds and don’t get the best of maintenance work done to them. They are the two airplanes operated by Air Marshall Islands, the nationally owned and exclusive domestic carrier. The government’s looking into renting a plane and finding the parts they need (the Dash-8 needs a new engine).

Travelling exclusively by boat is highly inefficient. And so now, when school is supposed to have started already, most of the school principals and the majority of teachers are stuck on Majuro. Boats are operating, but they are few and move slowly.

Bikini atoll, the site of nuclear testing, is currently a profitable tourist attraction for shipwreck diving. However, a group of wealthy tourists are stuck there. Although radiation levels won’t affect them by being there, they can’t eat anything that grows there, or they will get radiation poisoning. Hopefully they brought enough food with them to last until either a plane is repaired or a ship on its way arrives.

It’s the Tragedy of Dornier and Dash-8. As I mentioned above, it doesn’t affect me because international flights are unaffected by this problem.

**Breaking Rumours!***

As I write this, I just heard that the Dash-8 has acquired an engine. It may take 1-2 weeks to repair, but the fleet may be back in the air this month.

Kava and Karaoke

When I used to think of old wise people sitting in a circle discussing something of great or little importance to the community, I typically imagined an Amerindian tent filled with wrinkled chiefs, passing around a pipe. The combination of the heat inside the tent, the smoky atmosphere, and the sharing of the pipe, creates calmness conducive to discussion. Throughout the Pacific Islands, from Fiji to Kiribati, drinking kava is what old men do. Kava is a powdery derivative of a root. When soaked in water it creates a dirty brown coloured drink that essentially tastes like mud. Excited to try it? What attracts a newcomer is that, like a mild narcotic, kava creates a calming sensation, and when strong enough, can make your whole mouth go numb. (Dentists take note!)

Out drinking kava with some friends at a karaoke bar, also really popular in the Marshall Islands, I started wondering whether kava also reduces inhibitions (like alcohol), because I actually started considering getting up there and singing “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurhythmics; maybe next time. (Ear plug salesmen take note!)

Speaking of music, Marshallese people like to dance as well as sing karaoke. There are a few night clubs in Majuro. 3am at “The Pub”, I found myself turning to a buddy of mine, a Harvard law student interning at the Majuro Court House this summer.

“What’s with the terrible transitions between songs? Is there only one CD player and the DJ has to pull the CD out before he inserts the next one?!”

I asked, you see, because between every single song there’d be a 5 – 12 second pause. People clear off the dance floor and it goes dark. Another friend, an elementary school teacher, was the one that replied. He’s a ripalle (white person) that grew up here in the Marshall Islands.

He said, “That’s just the way we like it here.”

After another swig of Waikato, it dawned on me (in vino veritas). The pause between songs creates this tension. If people like the next song, they enjoy jumping onto the dance floor to boogy-down. Imagine that moment when you’re sitting at a table and a song comes on that you love to dance to. You might grab a partner and practically leap onto the dance floor. The Marshallese style reproduces that feeling between every song!

Under the sea

Enjoy these underwater pictures by Mr. Steve Courchesne, underwater explorer. I've managed to snorkel 4-5 times so far and get a couple of good shots. Click on the images to see a larger version. For this first picture, the light was perfect!


Coral I spotted on the ocean side of Majuro. I was snorkeling in these craters created by an evil construction company. (Pacific International Inc.) PII digs up the coral so that they can crush it and use the sand to make cement. But just away from one of the craters, this coral was untouched.


Jeremy is spear-fishing. The metal pole is sharp at one end and has an indentation at the other. An elastic band is fitted into the indentation and pulled taut. Like a bow and arrow, when you let go of the elastic, the spear launches at the target. If it misses, you'll here a high-pitched "tick" sound as it strikes rock. The Marshallese are awesome at spear-fishing.


I followed this "Moorish Idol" for about 15 minutes off Anemanet, an island part of the Majuro atoll. In the picture, the fish is munching on a little coral.

A DIALOGUE WITH moi

Me: I really admire the Marshallese sense of community. Throughout most of history, most of the atolls had one or maybe two hundred people living together. The closest community might be weeks away by canoe. It was a time when people truly depended on each other. Everybody is your neighbour; everyone’s family. I appreciate the strong sense of togetherness that people have here.

Moi: Isn’t that part of the problem today? Can you imagine a company or government running itself if everyone in it is part of the same family? I won’t fire anybody because I won’t put my cousin out on the street. But then that means there’s a lack of incentives to work hard. And there’s certainly no punishment for incompetence.

Me: But would you rather live in a world where old people die in their apartments, only to be discovered because the stench offends the neighbours? Or perhaps we want the Marshall Islands to experience shootings in schools?!

Moi: What’s your point?

Me: My point is that a strong sense of community is a good thing, as annoying as it can sometimes be. In our part of the world, that gets lost and we see more crime, drug abuse, murder and suicide.

Moi: We may suffer from a lot of problems, but at least things work! In the Ministry of Education or other government ministries, some people sit on their hands or don’t even come into work every day. Teacher absence is a huge problem. If the system doesn’t work today, then the next generation’s gonna suffer from the same problems. Kids are missing school. When they get to high school they’ll be woefully unprepared.

Me: These are serious challenges that the Marshallese have to tackle. But does that mean we have to start canning everyone? Think about what that might do to the fabric of a society that is so intimately linked. You don’t have to see your former boss at the supermarket, at the bank, at the hardware store or at the few eateries in Majuro, not to mention at your cousin’s barbecue. Don’t imagine that we’re in a small town where everyone knows your name. Imagine that this small town is the only town.

Moi: Maybe you should get in a time machine and go to Russia, circa 1919, and see how things operate over the next 70 years.

Me: Don’t be sarcastic.

I agree that communism didn’t work in great part because people weren’t motivated to work hard. But incentives don’t only come in the form of the stick. An equally important measure is to encourage solid work through praise and financial incentives. A good tap on the back can itself work wonders. But if you add in structured bonuses for the best performers, then I guarantee we’ll raise the bar.

Moi: I’m not completely convinced. Dead weight is dead weight. Call me cynical, but sometimes the only way to gain air is to dump the ballast. Your solution won’t get rid of the coasters that benefit from a guaranteed job.

Me: My idea isn’t perfect. Certainly a carrot and a stick would work better. But we need to be realistic about the situation. We simply can’t take our western corporate mentality to the tiny Pacific islands. The personal nature of things is just too important here. It’s easy for us in North America to erase a bad job from our resume or move to a new city. On the other hand, starting fresh in the Marshall Islands is almost impossible. That’s why the society has developed numerous mechanisms to avoid conflict… or at least keep it at a bearable minimum. We may not like everybody, but we have to live with them.

ATOMIC Bikini (part I)

(Underwater Baker Test, Bikini, 1946)

Most lovers of women would today agree that the bikini is a fantastic invention. But it wasn’t always that way. When Frenchman Louis Reard first created the scanty two-piece bathing suit in 1946, no French models would wear it on the runway. It was a prudish period in both Europe and North America. In deciding what to name it, Reard knew that he needed something big. He needed to overcome the scandal by associating the new bathing suit with something grand. There happened to be a story making headlines at the same time about a place called Bikini…

Operation Crossroads

Thousands of miles away, in the lagoon of a remote atoll, half of the entire world supply of film was being used to record the first two of sixty-seven nuclear tests. A war of words was raging between the U.S. Army and Navy. WW2 had just ended and the Army was claiming that the Navy was now redundant. Why spend billions of dollars on a huge fleet of ships when a few Army bombers could deliver a payload to make any world leader quake in his boots? The admiral in charge of the navy, afraid that his boats would be stuffed with mothballs, set out to prove that nuclear detonations would have a more limited effect against ships at sea and therefore the U.S. needed its ships to fight other navies.

So it was that Operation Crossroads was born, a project to study the effects of nuclear explosions on land and underwater. The site chosen was as remote and sparsely populated at it gets, the Bikini and Enewetak atolls of the Marshall Islands.

Over the course of 12 years, 67 nukes were detonated.

For the Good of Mankind

167 people lived on Bikini atoll in 1946, so the military needed to convince them to relocate, temporarily, so that the military could conduct scientific tests “for the good of mankind and to end all world wars”. It was done with cunning, since the meeting between Commodore Wyatt and the Bikinians was held on Sunday afternoon, shortly after Church. The Commodore perversely appealed to their morality. It worked. King Juda of Bikini and his people agreed to be relocated, temporarily, so that the Americans could conduct their tests. Shortly thereafter, the people of Enewetak also agreed to be relocated.

Bravo

March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb code-named Bravo, was detonated on the surface of the reef in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. It was the 12^th test conducted in the Marshall Islands. Bravo exploded with 1,000 times the force of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, the winds were moving eastward, placing Rongelap atoll, about 125 miles away, within the fallout zone.

“The Rongelapese, not understanding what was happening, watched as two suns rose that morning, observed with amazement as the radioactive dust soon formed a layer on their island two inches deep, turning the drinking water a brackish yellow. Children played in the fallout; their mothers watched in horror as night came and they began to show the physical signs of exposure. The people experienced severe vomiting and diarrhea, their hair began to fall out, the island fell into a state of terrified panic. The people had received no explanations or warnings whatsoever from the United States government.”
-Jack Niedenthal, “For the Good of Mankind”

The demon of Rongerik

Back to the people of Bikini: Relocated to Rongerik atoll, the Bikinians faced extreme hardships, particularly starvation. It was said that a demon had died there and its body had been dumped into the ocean. Indeed, even though the same species of fish inhabit Rongerik as Bikini, they are largely poisonous due to what they eat. The people of Bikini attributed the poison to the demon’s decomposition, which had polluted the waters of the atoll. Coconuts were less plentiful because Rongerik is much smaller than Bikini, challenging the Bikinians to sustain themselves.

In Part II, a few blog entries in the future, I will relate the second relocation to Killi island and the trials that modern-day Bikinians face as refugees in their own country.

Links:

www.bikiniatoll.com

http://www.atomicforum.org/

Chillin' Marshallese Style

A girl achieves serious arc while her sisters look on below. I'm at Laura Beach, located at the wide edge of Majuro island. At the end of the longest road in Micronesia, which is 30 miles long and traverses the entirety of Majuro island, is the best place to swim on island. I've been to Laura a couple of times now on the weekend. It's an hour drive from the downtown area and I'm told, more closely resembles the outer islands. It's more leafy and the houses more spread out.

In the background of the picture you can see a couple of the other islands in the atoll. The water is therefore part of the lagooon, a coral crater sheltered by a ring of islands, including mine. On the ocean side the water is usually a lot rougher. It also goes on forever. The lagoon's calm waters and islands a short distance away serve to anchor Majuro in a way that I find calming. It makes being on a tiny island a little less intimidating.


The second picture was taken from the shore of Enecko, one of these other islands part of the Majuro atoll. Out with some friends, American and Marshallese, we anchored the boat and emptied a cooler of Budweiser. A few hours later, some friends our boat's owner arrived straight from fishing. Sashimi, raw fish, is a delicacy here. No need to cook the fish, we simply sliced a few open and munched on the insides. Enno. (Mmm... tasty.)

Snap Crackle Pop

Remember that satisfying sound Rice Crispies make as you pour milk onto the cereal? That same snap, crackle & pop can be heard from coral in the evening. Before nightfall at Enecko, another island part of the Majuro atoll, I was out with my friend Jeremy. He was spear-fishing and I was hoping to get a shot of him pulling back the elastic, bow-and-arrow like, before launching the 6ft spear at an unsuspecting fish. But the light was bad, so I contented myself with listening to snap crackle pop. It's the sound of hundreds of fish biting off bits of coral for dinner, only this supper doesn't require milk.

Jeremy, a Californian that works in the Marshall Islands, learned to spear fish as a volunteer on an outer island. The Marshallese like to go out after dark with only flashlights to see by. Sleeping fish make easy targets. Sharks also feed at night (for the same reason I suppose), so you won't catch me snorkeling after dark.

Jeremy couldn't find any edible fish during our excursion, so he contented himself with showing me how to spear-fish. Then we headed ashore.

All dogs go to heaven

Dogs on Majuro tend to be of a certain size. They need to be small enough to survive on scraps, garbage and dung. They need to be large enough to defend themselves against other dogs. In North America we generally love our pets. Some people, as much as children. I wouldn't say that dogs are man's best friend in the Marshall Islands, though.

Mangy, tick-ridden and largely unappreciated, Majuro dogs are far more likely to be kicked than petted. As a result, the dogs can be mean and territorial. I was warned before I left home that I'd have to throw rocks at dogs. I balked - I'm a dog lover after all. But when a snarling dog ran towards me with a toothy sneer, I understand that Majuro dogs are not the happy house pets familiar to me. That angry sneering dog barked at me. I turned to face it and growl back at it. I then feigned a lunge, as if to throw a rock at it (though in fact my hands were empty). That did the trick. The dog backed off and I kept walking.

It was actually the only time in nearly 3 weeks of walking around Majuro that a dog was agressive towards me. Lest anyone worry about dog bites, the dogs here don't have rabies (doesn't exist in the Marshall Islands). I'm also careful not to judge the Marshallese for mistreating "man's best friend", because people sometimes don't have enough food for the family, much less to buy premium milk bones for Spike. I've heard that when times are tough, dogs offer a source of protein. It's hard to let yourself love something you might eat.