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.

Landing on Water

On the plane from Honolulu to Majuro, I initially sat next to a pair of characters from Oregon. I’d say they were in their late 50s. Bob and Steve were going way past the Marshall Islands to Truk, a member of the Federated States of Micronesia. Their mission: to scuba dive and take fancy pictures of sunken wrecks. They were admittedly in the full-swing of their mid-life crisis.

Bob said, “I made some mistakes, but that’s how you learn. But looking back, the one thing I missed out on was travel.” Clearly, Bob and Steve were making up for lost time. When my mid-life crisis arrives (in 2027), I can confidently say that making up for a lack of traveling won’t be on the list of crazy things to do.

As we approached the Marshalls, I spotted Mili and Arno atolls from above and the beauty of ring-shaped clusters of islands struck me more viscerally than a photograph could. The islands are so narrow in the midst of the vast Pacific. And together, they create donuts consisting mainly of holes. Soon enough, we spotted Majuro atoll and the plane curved around to parallel the largest island, which happens to also be Majuro (so I live on Majuro, Majuro – island, atoll). As we descended, an almost alarming sensation came over me because I stopped seeing land altogether. On both sides of the plane, all I could see was ocean. It felt like the plane was landing on water. But shortly, the plane did touch ground and I could see that there was about 30 yards of land on either side of the plane.

My first exposure to Marshallese politics occurred on the drive to the Ministry of Education (MOE) after I got off the plane. The building directly across from the MOE used to be the Chinese Embassy. However, Taiwan has thrown millions of dollars at the Marshall Islands, as Taiwan has to a handful of other countries, to get the Marshall Islands to recognize it as an independent country. China menacingly said: “It’s Taiwan or us…” The Marshallese eyed their bank account and retorted, See ya! So the guy that picked me up from the airport pointed to the building and said, “Don’t mind that building. It’s the Chinese. We’re trying to drive them into the sea.” Oy! Apparently, there’s also a general racism against the Chinese in the Marshall Islands because the Chinese immigrants tend to be industrious shop keepers, beating out the ethnic Marshallese at business. This creates resentment akin to anti-Semitism in Europe. I’ll probably write more about that later.

The Marshall Islands is a far-flung atoll nation. Most of the outer islands lack electricity and telephone lines. Therefore, when I first walked into the MOE, I made a Kramer-like double-take when I saw two reception desks. One had telephones as we’d expect; the other was a CB radio. All of the islands do have radio, so the Ministry communicates with many of the schools that way. Talk about a challenge to manage.

Majuro itself is a pretty small place. About half the population of the country, or 25,000 people, live in Majuro. The island is mostly a big shanty town dotted with such conveniences as supermarkets, 2 banks, a bowling alley, movie theatre, video store and a few bars. One thing is for sure, there’s not much in the Marshall Islands for tourists other than the ocean itself. I met with a publishing representative that sold a line of English as a Second Language textbooks to the MOE and she mentioned there were cockroaches in her hotel room. She’s staying at one of only 2 hotels. Speaking of that, my biggest trial so far has been cleaning my new house. It hadn’t been lived in since mid-April, so there were cockroaches and plenty of gecko poops everywhere. I bought yellow dish gloves and went to work. The place is liveable now.

18,272 kilometers from Ghana to the Marshall Islands

Corrugated metal rooftops that baked us as the sun shone or leaked when it rained, 50 students to a classroom without books and teachers that were often not paid on time marked my first experience with international education. For 5 months in 2004 I stayed in Kasoa, Ghana, as a volunteer teacher.

I cut my teeth in Africa's underfunded educational context. The glaring lack of resources left me wanting to build libraries in every village from the Sahara to Victoria Falls.

Now it's 2007. A year of MA coursework related to "sustainable international development" at the Heller School of Brandeis University has me focusing on teachers. (I can safely say that living with a beautiful teacher has coloured my opinion too!) If you drop books from the sky, people will not necessarily read them. (This was hard for me to understand because I'm an avid reader.) The teacher, by forcing me to read when it's difficult, by helping me understand the plot, which characters are most important, how to connect what I already know to what I'm reading and how to interpret the symbols sprinkled into the text - constructs a foundation that allows me to independently learn.

I depart June 18th for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. In the capital, Majuro, I'll work with the Ministry of Education to improve teacher education.