22 on the swell

Ali and I joined Youth to Youth in Health on a day-long trip to the Arno Atoll. We took the XXXX (named after an Australian beer) across an hour of rough open ocean. It was against the current, so the boat rocked up and down and side to side pretty significantly. I'm proud to say I didn't throw up (neither did Ali!), but I came pretty damn close. By the time we arrived, my legs and arms got tingly, I felt dizzy and a definite urge to hurl.

We rested for a bit and after recovering we went to a nearby elementary school to put on some songs and teach the young'ins about sex. We separated the boys from girls. Then the boys got a condom demonstration (some were a little to young to understand what was going on, but exposure is good!). The girls were taught about the reproductive system. Ali will write more about that (http://alisonlemoine.wordpress.com).

Then we took a a bumpy ride in the back of a flat bed truck to another school. It took about an hour to get there and it rained heavily during the trip. It was undoubtedly (in addition to the boat ride) the most uncomfortably day of my life so far! But boy was it worth it. Ali and I got to sing with the kids at 2 schools on Arno and were amazed by the atoll's beauty.

Majuro, as I've mentioned, is a really over-populated slum. There's trash everywhere in the downtown area. Arno, on the other hand, must have about 500 people occupying the same area... maybe a bit smaller. The beaches are pristine! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to really swim. So Ali and I are planning to bring my mom there in January for a long weekend.

I'm off to San Francisco to cover the Marshallese election. Since no foreign correspondants seem to be coming here to find out how well the election goes, we're sending someone abroad to get a man on the street perspective. So I volunteered to go to San Francisco for just that reason.

Just kidding. I'm actually going to San Francisco to fulfill my student visa requirement. But I will write about the election in my next entry.

Cheers,
Steve

How many angels fit on a pinhead?

"In 2007, for the first time in history, the majority of
people will live in urban areas. Throughout most of
the developing world, this will result in larger slum

populations."

-Millennium Development Goals Report 2006


What do you picture when you think of a slum?

Have you ever been in one?

During the industrial era, London could apparently be smelled from miles out. It was the first city in the world to hit a million inhabitants, but did so well before it installed plumbing. Urine, feces, and the stink of human beings without water to wash polluted the air as surely as the coal factories.

I live next to a slum called Demon Town. Cement houses with corrugated tin roofing co-exist one next to the other. Between them are spaces occupied by the occasional pandanus tree or plastic chair. The houses are clearly in need of repair. The roofs are rusting and the cement walls chipped. The ones that are painted formerly bright colours fade in the hot sun and peel in the humid salty air. Most of these houses are off the grid and lack plumbing. So most people have to do their business out on the reef.

What strikes me more than this, however, is the severe congestion of people within these conditions. When I walk down the side street running through Demon Town at 5 P.M., hundreds upon hundreds of kids are milling about, doing what kids do. Older teenagers and adults sit around and bwebwenato, conversing about anything from the upcoming election to who’s sleeping with who.

The Marshall Islands may be a tropical Pacific nation, but it’s not paradise. I’m told that many of the outer islands are paradise. But almost 70% of the population lives on either Majuro or Ebeye. Where does that put the Marshall Islands on the urbanization scale?

Really high.

Ebeye in particular is home to 10,900 people on only 0.14 square miles of land. That’s a population density of 66,750 persons per square mile. This density level rivals any place on Earth. It’s important to realize that people live in 1 or at most 2 storey level buildings (with the majority in 1 storey buildings).

Therefore, go to your living room. Now imagine no furniture. Now imagine 12 people sleeping in this space. Medieval theologians debated how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. A more useful question would be: How many people can you cram together in a small room?

43% of the population is under 14. The Ministry of Education faces a huge challenge to get all these kids in school, not least because there’s so little land available for school expansion. I jokingly proposed in my last blog entry that the Marshall Islands could import garbage to cope with global warming. But the idea was actually discussed by the Nitijela (senate) – land reclamation is huge priority here.

I mentioned that when I walk through Demon Town at 5 P.M. there are more kids than I can count. But if I walk through at 10 A.M. there are still a few walking around. I know they’re not in school because they’re dirty and don’t have uniforms on.

It gets worse. With a limited number of spaces available at the high school, only the top ranked students get in. The rest are left with few job prospects. This leads to drinking, drug abuse and hopelessness.

My favourite sociologist, Émile Durkheim, coined the term anomie to describe the sense of loss and depression that people have when they lose their roots in an impersonal urban environment. It’s an ironic idea – that at the same time that you’re more surrounded by people than ever – you feel more alone. So it’s not altogether surprising that Durkheim wrote a book called Suicide.

A 2003 study by UNICEF found that in the Marshall Islands: “Suicide is the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 years of age, and until recently occurred almost exclusively among men”.


Had enough? I hope I haven’t depressed you too much before the weekend. Lest you think I’m in a funk, you should know that I thrive on this stuff. Nothing is more fulfilling than knowing that I get to work on people’s problems and contribute, even if just a little, towards improvement.

Not enough kids going to school?

Fine.

What can I do about it?

I’m a glass is half full kind of guy – an optimist.

What’s the point of being anything else?

The highest point in the country

Atoll nations consist of tiny parcels of land surrounded by millions of square miles of ocean, but that’s not what really scares me. What is scary is that atolls are quite flat by nature. The highest point in this country is a bridge (pictured below) which connects two parts of the Majuro island. I’ve jumped off higher places into water. It’s only about 20ft high, if that - and it’s a significant rise over the rest of the land. That’s to say that if the ocean were to rise by only a few feet, most of the land in the Marshall Islands would be under water.

Now why would that happen?

Well, if what Al Gore says is true (and you must watch his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth), then this scenario is quite plausible. Large pieces of ice are melting at both poles.

Surely people have the power to reverse this trend of global warming, but people change their ways at the pace of snails. And too many corporations stand to pay a lot of money to update their factories to cleaner technologies. So the American, Canadian, Russian and Chinese governments resist implementing the Kyoto agreement, which frankly, is only a small first step in the endeavour to reverse warming.

Call me pessimist, but my bet is that the Marshallese people will be looking for new homes in the next 20 – 50 years.

It made me wonder whether the national government here has some kind of evacuation plan in the works.

It doesn’t.

20 years is an unfathomable time to a politician.

Luckily, only 50,000 people live in the Marshalls. And we won’t have to evacuate everyone right away. (So if you pictured hundreds of boats and helicopters in a convoy, you’ve watched too many movies.)

Here’s my prediction:

Over the next decades, the water will slowly rise. Land, which is already at a premium, will further increase in value (and so housing costs will rise). This will drive some people to leave the country to find places where they can drop less of their earnings into rent. So the population of people that can afford air fares will decrease.

But since the poorer people still aren’t using birth control, the proportion of people that can’t afford a plane ticket is increasing.

In addition, the Marshallese are woefully under-educated, so even those that do leave usually work at the bottom of the totem pole. In the U.S., the largest contingent of Marshallese people work at a Tyson Turkey processing plant. Others pump gas. Many are simply unemployed.

But for those that can’t afford to leave on their own, I propose 2 potential solutions:

Plan A: Recycle Offshore Drilling Platforms

Ironically enough, the very source of our global warming woes can be put to work: our dependency on fossil fuels. In a public relations project of epic proportions, the various oil giants can donate old offshore drilling platforms to the atolls. By 2020, history will be made by the first countries ever to live on completely artificial territory.

Plan B: Import Trash from America

Survival or economic good sense? The Marshall Islands can become the world’s most significant importer of trash. Most of Boston is a trash-heap-cum-city, so why not Majuro? A few hundred feet of garbage can be laid on top of the coral foundation. We can certainly count on Americans to produce enough trash to out-pace global warming! Not only trash importers would benefit from this economic boom. Tourism would get a boost as beautiful grass-coloured hills could form the back-drops for exotic golf courses and sight-seeing tours; nose-plugs included. Coke Tower (made of recycled cans and bottles) will be the tallest building in the Pacific region.

I will submit my draft proposals to the Ministry of Interior with hopes of getting a fat consulting fee to implement Plan A or B.


But seriously, my evacuation plan would focus on education. Getting people off a sinking ship is a logistical problem, yes, but even if we do get people off the islands, the next generation of Marshallese may end up a poor under-class living in the United States. We gotta get these kids some skills.

Phrases you won't see in a tourism brochure

Fly dependable Air Marshall Islands.

In-flight, we'll provide you with a handy map of underwater delights,

including planes less lucky than your own!

When you arrive, take a boat excursion to Anemanit island.

Moor at the unfinished jetty.

Lose $50 at the crab fights.

Catch your own breakfast.

Moray eel anyone?

Enjoy exotic fauna.

------

Note: No moray eels were eaten in the making of this tourist brochure.

P.S. My good buddy Jim (above) was completely non-plussed by the exotic fauna at Anemanit.

China Syndrome

People are really good at simplifying; exceedingly good. It’s one reason we’ve managed to evolve as a species. It’s helpful to look at a problem and simplify it to find the quickest route from A to B.

People are never quite so simple with the way we treat each other, though. In any culture, people who are different tend to evoke complex feelings.

We’ve all heard about the traveling boisterous annoying American causing people to roll their eyes. Americans tend to leave a huge footprint when they travel because they’re often unaware of the local culture and expect places they visit to operate the way they’re used to.

The Americans and the Chinese may share something in common. A Chinese friend of mine named Perry said that the Chinese are disliked in a number of east Asian countries. China is expanding its influence and is therefore, like the Americans, leaving a big footprint where they go.

That seems to be the case in the Marshall Islands too. There’s a large Chinese population in Majuro, working mainly in retail as shop keepers and owners of supermarkets. Pretty soon the largest private employer in the country will be a Shanghai-run tuna loining plant. It might sound like a positive thing that 600 Marshallese people will soon find employment, but it’s not as simple as that. A lot of the shopkeepers are seen as predators that put less productive locally owned shops out of business. Moreover, a number of the Chinese people seem abrasive to the Marshallese sensibility.

It seems to people here that the Chinese don’t make any attempt to learn the language. Marshallese women are supposed to keep their shoulders and knees covered. It’s considered slutty to walk around in a mini-skirt. So when some Chinese women wear shorts or skirts they are looked down upon.

I myself saw some pretty abrasive behaviour by Chinese people. A guy in front of me at the check-out of the supermarket was rude to the Marshallese cashier. Another example was a Chinese lady who sat in a taxi with Ali and me a few days ago. She spoke so loudly on her cell phone that it sort of hurt the ears. I could clearly see that the taxi driver was annoyed. He glanced at me in consternation, wordlessly saying, “f***ing Chinese, eh?” Thirty seconds into the lady’s conversation, he turned up the volume of the radio. Usually a taxi driver turns down the volume when a patron answers her phone.

The Marshallese reaction is a racist one. The Chinese are seen as an unwelcome addition to the country. I’ve seen taxi drivers give random Chinese pedestrians the finger. Sometimes a taxi won’t even stop and pick up a Chinese person.

A few friends and I were sipping beers at the Flame Tree the Friday that a Pacific Countries that Recognize Taiwan conference was being held. There are seven countries in the Pacific that, in exchange for publicly supporting Taiwan’s bid for independence from China, receive financial aid. In fact, the spanking new conference center hosting the big to-do was a $5 million donation from the government in Taipei.

As I put down my bottle, a Marshallese acquaintance of my friends said, “Don’t mind these chinkos,” referring to all the Taiwanese in town.

I should point out that the Japanese visitors don’t get quite the same treatment. That might be because they mostly consist of young people doing the Japanese equivalent of Peace Corps. Like the young visiting Americans, they learn some of the language, dress appropriately, and teach math as volunteers. It shows the power of forgiveness, and maybe how a new generation puts to rest the feelings of the last. The Japanese were pretty terrible to the Marshallese as colonialists. From 1918 till 1945 the Japanese ruled with an iron fist. The Marshallese were quite thankful when the Americans took over.

The Americans and Australians own a lot of businesses too, but they get a free pass. It’s hypocritical, but one American jerk doesn’t ruin it for the rest. 60% of the government budget, which consists of 40% of the entire GDP, consists of aid from the US government. The Marshallese certainly don’t want that to go away. But a rude Chinese person is generalized as just another a**hole Chinese.

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.

Arno: A Tropical Comedy

It was supposed to be a training, not entertaining.

UNESCO was in town to kick off a project to train teachers and MOE staff. In addition to a few meetings to iron out details and set dates, the UN staff was to conduct site visits at elementary schools in Arno, whose teachers would be trained.

You fiends have proven to me that corruption is politics by other means.

Instead, the Saturday visit was scrapped by unrelated events. A political dispute between the mayor of Arno and the Ministry of Education led to cancellation.

You beat your chest and threatened arrest.
Voice buttered by gloat, you forced us to moor our boat.

Indeed, the Arno mayor called the MOE to let us know that a visit was unacceptable and should we set foot on his soil, he would have us arrested by local police. How can this be true? Was not the purpose of the visit to help our children get a better education?

Why must we stoop to this denigration?
Can we not have an enlightened conversation?

It was not to be, and so now, embarrassed, the MOE must consider other locations for the UNESCO project. I don’t claim to understand why this happened. But rather than despair I feign a laugh that doesn’t reach my eyes. This is not fodder for a Shakespearean comedy of errors. It’s more like a comical misfortune that makes you laugh with guilt.

The silver lining is that there’s a November election and maybe this ass will get kicked out of office.

Day in the life

“Woke up; got out of bed; brushed a comb across my head.”
-The Beatles

I’m today writing in response to several requests for an account of a ‘day in my life’.

Shortly after hitting the snooze button once or twice, Ali and I turn on our short-wave capable radio to the BBC’s world news. Living in the middle of the Pacific, I don’t doubt I’m as up to date on the world as anyone back home. Down with military dictatorship in Burma!

Sometimes the toilet doesn’t flush in the morning. Unlike our faucets and shower, it isn’t fed by the cistern tank outside our house. Majuro toilets are fed by a centralized system using salt water. But they turn it off periodically. So after a cup of crappy instant coffee, a bucket flush may be in order. One thing I definitely miss is quality coffee; but Ali and I agreed to put up with it for 7 more months, since we still can get a decent cup at some of the nicer spots in Majuro.

The taxi ride to work takes about 20 minutes. The first half is particularly slow. There’s a lot of traffic. Majuro may only have about 25,000 people, but it also only has 1 road. The fare is a flat $0.75.

The Ministry of Education is on the lagoon side, but only a few offices have the potential for a good view because the building is shaped like a U. I say potential because even the offices with a direct view on the lagoon have air conditioning units that take up much of the window.

My work day is something like a solitary one, though that’s been changing slowly as I get integrated. Every month I’ve gotten to know more people on friendly and professional terms. But both the Marshallese and I are shy, so it’s a slow process.

I’m working on 3-5 projects at any given time. This is necessary because I’m highly dependent on others for information. But other people are often unavailable (or not at work). So when I get stalled on one project I gingerly shift to the next one. It’s something of a juggling act that I actually enjoy, since I have a low attention span for things work-related. I dislike focusing on a single task for an entire day; I’ve become great at multi-tasking.

Right now I’m working on the following:

Auditing the transcripts of 41 teachers doing in-service training at the College of the Marshall Islands.

-Writing a grant proposal for a conference of the 84 school principals in January.

-Thinking hard on justifying 3 flights to outer islands. I’m not being paid for this 10 month internship (other than housing), but my contract does include airfares and stipends to the 3 other atolls with high schools (Jaluit, Wotje and Kwajelein). All I need to do is figure out why the Ministry would actually send me. I have 3 ideas so far, 2 of which have good potential.

-Starting up my Masters Degree project, which will be a cost analysis comparing 3 ways the Ministry can go about printing its Marshallese language materials. Click on the “comments” tab at the end of this entry for a more detailed summary.

After work, I play soccer twice a week, read a lot, watch movies, listen to the radio and have conversations with interesting people, similar stuff to back home, but ocean-side… always ocean-side.

Cover Up!

The Marshallese term for ‘white people’ is not straightforward. In Ghana, ‘white’ means ‘obruni’, and that’s what Ghanaians call caucasians.

The Marshallese refer to white folks as ripalles (prounced: ri-BELL-ies). And no, ripalle doesn’t mean ‘white’ in Marshallese.

The original German colonial masters didn’t interfere too much with local customs. They were mostly interested in taking the coconut meat (copra), which is even today a major export. Following World War I the Japanese took over, opened some schools and made the Marshallese women cover their breasts. Since WWII, the American missionaries haven’t dissuaded the practice of dressing “modestly”. So to get back to why the Marshallese term for ‘white people’ isn’t straightforward, it turns out that ripalle means ‘people that cover up’.

Ironically, it’s now the Marshallese that cover up. We should call them ripalles instead. Marshallese women are supposed to keep their shoulders and knees covered at all times. It’s considered very slutty to walk around in a mini-skirt.

Tradition is starting to crack, however. As the wealthier Marshallese kids go to high school in the U.S., some girls come back wearing jeans. Older Marshallese are a little scandalized, but young people are hard to boss around, particularly with regards to fashion. I had an interesting conversation with a wise Marshallese man at the Ministry of Education. He pointed out how odd it is that originally the whites convinced the Pacific islanders to cover themselves more “modestly”, but today it’s westerners that wear things like bikinis and short skirts.

Editorial cartoon by Bill Bates. Originally posted in the Fiji Sun.

Manit Day

This past Friday marked the celebration of Manit (Culture) Day. From late morning till the end of the afternoon, Marshallese kids got to enjoy song, dance and storytelling. I recorded a few videos but unfortunately can't post them yet (they're too huge!). But when I go to San Francisco in November I'll have a fast enough connection to hopefully share the most EPIC tug of war battle in history. It lasted more than a minute and luckily my digital camera managed to capture the sounds! Wow! So stay tuned for Epic Tug of War by the end of November.



Traditional weaving was on showcase in the form of a couple of huts built to give a little shade to some of the kids hanging out at Manit Day.



This next photo is of a hermit crab in a re-telling of the Marshallese story of the "Hermit Crab and the Needle Fish". It was funny because several large ladies spent about 5 minutes trying to get all these kids into position for the telling of the story. It's about a race between a hermit crab and a needlefish. But the hermit crab is sneeky and gets all his buddies to line up along the route of the race. So every time the needlefish, who's obviously a lot faster, calls out to the hermit crab, "Where are you?" - the hermit crab directly ahead of the needlefish answers. So it seems that the hermit crab is always one step ahead and wins the race. Reminds me a lot of our own story about the Tortoise and the Hare... only there's less of a moral to the story (unless I missed something).

And of course, no event in the Marshall Islands is complete without BBQ chicken!