10/12/07
this is an article i found on yokwe.net about what was happening a few weeks ago... systematic power outages are not fun. boo dependence on foreign oil.
MARSHALL ISLANDS: Ebeye Facing More Black-outs
Ebeye, one of the most densely populated islets in the Pacific, is without fuel to keep running its power plant. Since Wednesday, the local power company, KAJUR (Kwajalein Atoll Joint Utility Resource), has been running 4-hour shifts of power, rotating to the lagoon side of the island and, then, to the ocean side. Ebeye, the second largest urban center in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), is only a quarter of a mile wide and a mile long, but home to 12,000-plus Marshallese.
There is no word as to when more fuel will be arriving at Ebeye. The other major urban center, Majuro, which is the seat of the RMI government, is also experiencing power outages.
The interruption of power, which limits water and sewer systems as well, greatly impacts the health and safety conditions of the island.
About 1,400 Marshallese workers travel about three miles by ferry to where the United States Army Kwajalein Atoll missile facility is based.
"All night long without power was a real blow to us workers because we didn’t get a good night of sleep, and yet we still come to work just like nothing happen the night before," a worker explained during last year's power outrages.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
11/22/07
Unfortunately, our internet has not been working at all for the last month or so. It’s hard to get motivated to blog if you can’t post it. The National Telecommunications Authority is the telecommunications monopoly here in the RMI, and they are the most incompetent, unreliable, ignorant organization I have ever interacted with, plagued by a dearth of technical expertise and utterly lacking any form of work ethic. Fortunately, our principal has stopped payment for our defunct internet, which makes me feel better about this country’s failure to benefit from capitalism.
Anyway, school continues. Sort of. The buses have deteriorated. We have not had a normal schedule day for the last 2 weeks, and they are few and far between. Our “emergency 1-bus schedule” has become the norm, and even it has occasionally been abandoned when neither bus is functioning, and the kids have no way to get across the 5-mile causeway. The lunch program, which was cancelled by the government because the vendor contracts were not advertised using the proper procedures (let’s punish the kids and teachers for a mistake that had nothing to do with them), has since been reinstated, but the vendors have stopped showing up, most likely because they haven’t been paid, leaving hungry kids and frustrating the teachers that have to cope with a classroom that can’t learn because they haven’t eaten all day. Our principal informed our senator of the dire transportation and lunch program issues, and he felt that the best thing to do would be to just close the school… permanently… which would mean there would be no public high school available for a city of 14,000. Our principal, however, is admirably refusing to cancel any school, (he went to a conference in guam for administrators called “Breaking Rank II” on how to reform struggling schools and came back slightly inspired) so we start whenever the first bus can limp over and adjust the schedule accordingly every day. It makes it hard to plan a lesson when your class could be anywhere from 30 to 55 minutes long, but we are still learning. My chemistry classes have mastered predicting ionic compound formulas using oxidation numbers and my honors biology class can tell you the chemical equation for photosynthesis.
We had our first report card night 4 weeks ago, and it was a very interesting experience. The meeting took place in the “library” of the elementary school on Ebeye, which is carpeted, so everyone had to leave their flip flops outside the door. At the front of the room was a table with a karaoke microphone and amp, where laura sat, and then behind that were a dozen or so chairs for the teachers. The parents, maybe about 70 or 80 of them, all sat on the floor in front of us in mumus and tank tops. After some announcements were made regarding the new no mercy attendance policy, which has turned out to be somewhat of a bluff, the teachers were each handed a stack of report cards to distribute. The parents were mostly all too afraid to say their child’s name loud enough for me to hear (clearly I am very intimidating), let alone ask questions (it was also supposed to be time for them to conference with us), but some were curious. Some “parents” picked up 5 or 6 report cards – they are all related anyway, so it really doesn’t matter… we were just happy someone cared.
A few weeks ago I went to one of the two established “bars” on Ebeye. It’s called Mon-la-Mike, or place of the handsome Mike, named after its owner, and the above mentioned senator, Michael Kabua. While interesting, I would not call my time there fun. There are tables, a dance floor, and even a bar where you can buy Budweiser, bud light, or tamiroff vodka (a Smirnoff knockoff) for $4 a drink. The music was all synthesized and in Marshallese, although some were American songs translated and set to an “island beat.” After each song, the music would stop for a minute and everyone would leave the dance floor. Then, another song would come on, and every man would get up and ask someone to dance. Staci was asked to dance every song, mostly by men who had children or grandchildren. I was asked to dance by the married women we came with, who are in their 30s and 40s, and whose husbands paid for all our drinks and drove us there. That was fun, but other than that it was sad to see the alcoholism, the grown women brawling, and the bathroom that looked like it was from the set of the horror flick Hostel. But the senator is surely making bank.
I am a coach. Sort of. I take 8 boys to the army base once or twice a week to play games in their intermural B league, which consists of us, the army high school kids, and 3 adult teams. We are 4-0, and I sometimes play and do very little advising since Marshallese people pretty much have their volleyball skills under control. Hold on, have to interrupt this by informing you that while I am sitting here writing this, Staci is scooping cups of ant-infested sugar into a pile of apples smuggled from the army base to prepare apple pie for thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Such is life on gugeegue – we need the extra protein anyway. Back to volleyball – while watching the games and seeing the 5 foot kids whomp on 6 foot white guys (most of whom are pretty ignorant when it comes to the country they are squatting in) is entertaining, the hassle of logistics is unbelievable. The scooter cannot be driven at night because the headlamp is broken already (surprise, it’s a POS “Kinetic” made in India), so I have to sit in the hot stairwell of the packed bus after school, praying I don’t fall out of the open door into one of the muddy craters, and arrange for the vice principal to pick me up at the dock after the game and drive me back to gugeegue. All in all, I leave at 330 for a 630 game and don’t get back until 1030. It’s a huge time commitment, and it would be fine but I am stressed the whole time we’re there because the kids want to wander all over the place when they aren’t on the court. I may or may not be the coach for the softball team.
I am a member of the 2nd largest scuba club in the world. And the best part is, I don’t have to pay membership fees, because the president “Cowboy,” likes that I am volunteer and decided to waive the $300 annual fees. I have the combination to the tank room and unlimited access. I did my orientation dive with Cowboy himself and was lucky enough to accomplish one of my life goals: swimming with a manta ray. He was just a 4ft baby (they get to be about 12-14 feet across), but it was still a humbling experience. I have a short video of him, but I was very distracted by the animal itself, so the camera is not usually pointed at him.
Last Sunday, I was enjoying the sun at our defunct dock on gugeegue, doing flips off the pier and watching the big fish eat the little ones, as I often do on weekends, when a small boat approached. As the people on board came into focus, I recognized a blonde head – the son of my sponsor on the army base – he and his father, a visiting boat inspector from Guam, and the captain of the Worthy (the main boat that monitors all of the missile testing and has huge radar towers on it and is away for weeks at a time) had come north to do some surfing. They saw me from the boat, realized who I was, and decided to invite me. We went to the reef they usually surf at, and I got to do some bodyboarding and snorkeling on a new reef, and then hang out on a completely deserted sandy beach. It was an unexpectedly awesome day.
Unfortunately, our internet has not been working at all for the last month or so. It’s hard to get motivated to blog if you can’t post it. The National Telecommunications Authority is the telecommunications monopoly here in the RMI, and they are the most incompetent, unreliable, ignorant organization I have ever interacted with, plagued by a dearth of technical expertise and utterly lacking any form of work ethic. Fortunately, our principal has stopped payment for our defunct internet, which makes me feel better about this country’s failure to benefit from capitalism.
Anyway, school continues. Sort of. The buses have deteriorated. We have not had a normal schedule day for the last 2 weeks, and they are few and far between. Our “emergency 1-bus schedule” has become the norm, and even it has occasionally been abandoned when neither bus is functioning, and the kids have no way to get across the 5-mile causeway. The lunch program, which was cancelled by the government because the vendor contracts were not advertised using the proper procedures (let’s punish the kids and teachers for a mistake that had nothing to do with them), has since been reinstated, but the vendors have stopped showing up, most likely because they haven’t been paid, leaving hungry kids and frustrating the teachers that have to cope with a classroom that can’t learn because they haven’t eaten all day. Our principal informed our senator of the dire transportation and lunch program issues, and he felt that the best thing to do would be to just close the school… permanently… which would mean there would be no public high school available for a city of 14,000. Our principal, however, is admirably refusing to cancel any school, (he went to a conference in guam for administrators called “Breaking Rank II” on how to reform struggling schools and came back slightly inspired) so we start whenever the first bus can limp over and adjust the schedule accordingly every day. It makes it hard to plan a lesson when your class could be anywhere from 30 to 55 minutes long, but we are still learning. My chemistry classes have mastered predicting ionic compound formulas using oxidation numbers and my honors biology class can tell you the chemical equation for photosynthesis.
We had our first report card night 4 weeks ago, and it was a very interesting experience. The meeting took place in the “library” of the elementary school on Ebeye, which is carpeted, so everyone had to leave their flip flops outside the door. At the front of the room was a table with a karaoke microphone and amp, where laura sat, and then behind that were a dozen or so chairs for the teachers. The parents, maybe about 70 or 80 of them, all sat on the floor in front of us in mumus and tank tops. After some announcements were made regarding the new no mercy attendance policy, which has turned out to be somewhat of a bluff, the teachers were each handed a stack of report cards to distribute. The parents were mostly all too afraid to say their child’s name loud enough for me to hear (clearly I am very intimidating), let alone ask questions (it was also supposed to be time for them to conference with us), but some were curious. Some “parents” picked up 5 or 6 report cards – they are all related anyway, so it really doesn’t matter… we were just happy someone cared.
A few weeks ago I went to one of the two established “bars” on Ebeye. It’s called Mon-la-Mike, or place of the handsome Mike, named after its owner, and the above mentioned senator, Michael Kabua. While interesting, I would not call my time there fun. There are tables, a dance floor, and even a bar where you can buy Budweiser, bud light, or tamiroff vodka (a Smirnoff knockoff) for $4 a drink. The music was all synthesized and in Marshallese, although some were American songs translated and set to an “island beat.” After each song, the music would stop for a minute and everyone would leave the dance floor. Then, another song would come on, and every man would get up and ask someone to dance. Staci was asked to dance every song, mostly by men who had children or grandchildren. I was asked to dance by the married women we came with, who are in their 30s and 40s, and whose husbands paid for all our drinks and drove us there. That was fun, but other than that it was sad to see the alcoholism, the grown women brawling, and the bathroom that looked like it was from the set of the horror flick Hostel. But the senator is surely making bank.
I am a coach. Sort of. I take 8 boys to the army base once or twice a week to play games in their intermural B league, which consists of us, the army high school kids, and 3 adult teams. We are 4-0, and I sometimes play and do very little advising since Marshallese people pretty much have their volleyball skills under control. Hold on, have to interrupt this by informing you that while I am sitting here writing this, Staci is scooping cups of ant-infested sugar into a pile of apples smuggled from the army base to prepare apple pie for thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Such is life on gugeegue – we need the extra protein anyway. Back to volleyball – while watching the games and seeing the 5 foot kids whomp on 6 foot white guys (most of whom are pretty ignorant when it comes to the country they are squatting in) is entertaining, the hassle of logistics is unbelievable. The scooter cannot be driven at night because the headlamp is broken already (surprise, it’s a POS “Kinetic” made in India), so I have to sit in the hot stairwell of the packed bus after school, praying I don’t fall out of the open door into one of the muddy craters, and arrange for the vice principal to pick me up at the dock after the game and drive me back to gugeegue. All in all, I leave at 330 for a 630 game and don’t get back until 1030. It’s a huge time commitment, and it would be fine but I am stressed the whole time we’re there because the kids want to wander all over the place when they aren’t on the court. I may or may not be the coach for the softball team.
I am a member of the 2nd largest scuba club in the world. And the best part is, I don’t have to pay membership fees, because the president “Cowboy,” likes that I am volunteer and decided to waive the $300 annual fees. I have the combination to the tank room and unlimited access. I did my orientation dive with Cowboy himself and was lucky enough to accomplish one of my life goals: swimming with a manta ray. He was just a 4ft baby (they get to be about 12-14 feet across), but it was still a humbling experience. I have a short video of him, but I was very distracted by the animal itself, so the camera is not usually pointed at him.
Last Sunday, I was enjoying the sun at our defunct dock on gugeegue, doing flips off the pier and watching the big fish eat the little ones, as I often do on weekends, when a small boat approached. As the people on board came into focus, I recognized a blonde head – the son of my sponsor on the army base – he and his father, a visiting boat inspector from Guam, and the captain of the Worthy (the main boat that monitors all of the missile testing and has huge radar towers on it and is away for weeks at a time) had come north to do some surfing. They saw me from the boat, realized who I was, and decided to invite me. We went to the reef they usually surf at, and I got to do some bodyboarding and snorkeling on a new reef, and then hang out on a completely deserted sandy beach. It was an unexpectedly awesome day.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
10/14/07
One of the weirdest (and coolest) parts of my life here is the causeway. It’s a 4 and a half mile stretch of coral reef that was dynamited and then mixed with garbage and stacked up to form a somewhat solid surface connecting Ebeye and Gugeegue. It is by no means a road. Even a hummer would struggle to surmount its copious sand dunes and jagged craters. It is miraculous that the school buses get here on time as often as they do… which is not often.
Last week, nature did her best to reclaim the causeway as her own. The winds reversed, and the waves from the lagoon side came splattering over the fringe of the causeway, leaving rocks, sand, coral, and tires all over the gravel. The buses had to take turns shoving and pulling each other through the thickest parts of the sand to make it through. On Thursday, we had golf as usual. It was a lot of fun – but on the way back, it was insane. The plan was for me to take the scooter back with Lorie, an 11th grader who lives on Gugeegue and needed a ride home. I am still new at riding the scooter, much less with another person on board. When we got back to Ebeye from Kwaj it started to monsoon. It was not rain. It was sheets of solid water. There isn’t a working drainage system in Ebeye. The road was soon under about a foot and a half of water. It was dark outside. Every little kid has come out to dance naked in the streets. Imagine, literally hundreds of kids screaming and dancing in the road that now looks like a swimming pool, the majority of them completely naked. Lorie and I got on the scooter, and tried to navigate through the river of children, constantly honking the scooters horn. The horn, however, only got them more excited, and a mob soon formed around the scooter, and they began to run alongside us in the pouring rain, with me not really even able to see if we were on the road or someone’s front porch (there are no yards). Finally, we got out of Ebeye, and slowly maneuvered our way back to gugeegue. Occasionally I just started laughing at how ridiculous it was – a wave would splash me as I tried to avoid a huge crater filled with water only to plow through a pile of rubble, causing my entire body to ache. Where else in the world?
Some funny stories about teaching. In biology, we learned about protists last week. One example of a protist is an amoeba – it is the textbook example, and so I had them draw the little guys in their notebooks. Halfway through their class, Jonathon raises his hand and says “Mr., it’s 9’o’clock, may I go drink my medicine?” Sure… come back immediately. After class, I asked Jonathon, who showed me his Ziploc full of antibiotics, “hey, are you okay – what did the doctor say you have?” “An amoeba.” Haha. Who says microbiology isn’t applicable to Marshallese life?
Next to my house, a little workshop has been set up by our carpenter, who usually builds desks for us, but has recently been cannibalizing our deceased truck. Students usually hang out in the workshop during the day because it’s shady and teachers avoid it. The other day, I went to check out what was left of the white whale, only to find “ionic bond” carved into the left side of the hood and “molecular bond” carved into the right side. At least my chemistry students are remembering some of the terminology….
In my biology class, we are learning about cells. One part of the cell, the cilia, are tiny hair-like structures that help the cell move and sweep food inside. On the wall of the workshop there is a pornographic drawing that was recently added. I noticed, however, that it had been labeled. The private areas of the pornography were not-so-privately labeled as having cilia….. How could I even be mad? An educated allusion – that’s just hysterical.
One of the weirdest (and coolest) parts of my life here is the causeway. It’s a 4 and a half mile stretch of coral reef that was dynamited and then mixed with garbage and stacked up to form a somewhat solid surface connecting Ebeye and Gugeegue. It is by no means a road. Even a hummer would struggle to surmount its copious sand dunes and jagged craters. It is miraculous that the school buses get here on time as often as they do… which is not often.
Last week, nature did her best to reclaim the causeway as her own. The winds reversed, and the waves from the lagoon side came splattering over the fringe of the causeway, leaving rocks, sand, coral, and tires all over the gravel. The buses had to take turns shoving and pulling each other through the thickest parts of the sand to make it through. On Thursday, we had golf as usual. It was a lot of fun – but on the way back, it was insane. The plan was for me to take the scooter back with Lorie, an 11th grader who lives on Gugeegue and needed a ride home. I am still new at riding the scooter, much less with another person on board. When we got back to Ebeye from Kwaj it started to monsoon. It was not rain. It was sheets of solid water. There isn’t a working drainage system in Ebeye. The road was soon under about a foot and a half of water. It was dark outside. Every little kid has come out to dance naked in the streets. Imagine, literally hundreds of kids screaming and dancing in the road that now looks like a swimming pool, the majority of them completely naked. Lorie and I got on the scooter, and tried to navigate through the river of children, constantly honking the scooters horn. The horn, however, only got them more excited, and a mob soon formed around the scooter, and they began to run alongside us in the pouring rain, with me not really even able to see if we were on the road or someone’s front porch (there are no yards). Finally, we got out of Ebeye, and slowly maneuvered our way back to gugeegue. Occasionally I just started laughing at how ridiculous it was – a wave would splash me as I tried to avoid a huge crater filled with water only to plow through a pile of rubble, causing my entire body to ache. Where else in the world?
Some funny stories about teaching. In biology, we learned about protists last week. One example of a protist is an amoeba – it is the textbook example, and so I had them draw the little guys in their notebooks. Halfway through their class, Jonathon raises his hand and says “Mr., it’s 9’o’clock, may I go drink my medicine?” Sure… come back immediately. After class, I asked Jonathon, who showed me his Ziploc full of antibiotics, “hey, are you okay – what did the doctor say you have?” “An amoeba.” Haha. Who says microbiology isn’t applicable to Marshallese life?
Next to my house, a little workshop has been set up by our carpenter, who usually builds desks for us, but has recently been cannibalizing our deceased truck. Students usually hang out in the workshop during the day because it’s shady and teachers avoid it. The other day, I went to check out what was left of the white whale, only to find “ionic bond” carved into the left side of the hood and “molecular bond” carved into the right side. At least my chemistry students are remembering some of the terminology….
In my biology class, we are learning about cells. One part of the cell, the cilia, are tiny hair-like structures that help the cell move and sweep food inside. On the wall of the workshop there is a pornographic drawing that was recently added. I noticed, however, that it had been labeled. The private areas of the pornography were not-so-privately labeled as having cilia….. How could I even be mad? An educated allusion – that’s just hysterical.
Friday, October 5, 2007
10/3/07
On Sunday, we took a trip to Kwaj, where the military base is. After half an hour in the bus, which is now broken because there are apparently no fan belts on island, and then an hour on a ferry, we walked through the fake metal detectors and put our bags of laundry through the x-ray machine. Welcome to Little America. Kwaj is the most non-military military base ever. I think there are 30 or so people there out of 1500 that are actually in the army. The rest are all contracted by aerospace companies. It’s kind of like Pleasantville – everyone rides around on bicycles to their cute cinderblock houses, mostly oblivious to the problems of the country that surrounds their leased plot of land – and with all the amenities of home, how could you not be. We had to be signed in by our sponsors, relinquish our passports, and then we had permission to roam the base. Our sponsors are really awesome families that are willing to help us out once every couple weeks when we want to do laundry (in a machine that actually washes clothes rather than one that pulls and pushes until things rip in half – I really liked my pink striped boxers…oh well) or get some American fast food, or call home! After talking to mom and dad from a “California” number for an hour or so, we grubbed out on some pizza and quesodillas (CHEESE!!!!) and French fries. Then I thought about working out at their awesome gym. That thought lasted about 30 seconds. Then we went to the beach, because believe it or not, we don’t have many sandy beaches in our lives. Just lots of water, sky, palm trees, and lava rock. Plus, it was the first time the girls had worn actual bathing suits since we got here. When the missionaries came here in the mid 19th century, they made sure that the one thing (and perhaps only) the Marshallese people took from Christianity was that Adam and Eve were very, very embarrassed when they realized they weren’t wearing clothes, and that they should be too. So, women here are not allowed to wear pants, or anything that shows separation between their thighs. They all wear skirts or dresses that go well below their knees, and cleavage is out of the question. It’s okay (well, maybe a little bit frowned upon) to be promiscuous with 14 year olds, or to miss work because you’re an alcoholic and haven’t stopped drinking in 4 days… but for God’s sake, woman, don’t show your navel! Anyway, it was a good day. I even got to take a hot shower. Unfortunately, we can’t shop at the base’s store to bring buckets full of cheese and real produce back with us.
Today was the 4th meeting of the health club. Instead of walking the causeway, I have been running. I let the kids (and other teachers) walk a ways ahead of me for about half an hour and then catch up to them. Today I ran the 4.5 miles in 36 minutes, which for me is pretty awesome. Since there were only 7 kids walking, I decided I would bring some money in to buy them all fruit at the grocery store (i.e. apples). I’m still not sure why, but for some reason I thought that $40 would be a good amount of money to take. I stuck it in my shoe (since my shorts don’t have pockets and I carry my shuffle in my hand) and ran off. I spent about $13 on fruit for the kids and ice cream for me, then somewhere between the store and the place we walk to in order to hitch rides back to gugeegue, $27 fell out of my shoe. There is a very happy little kid on Ebeye tonight. I was not pleased, especially when I considered I had just dropped 10% of my monthly stipend.
For those of you that have sent me packages, thank you very much!! I have gotten some from the S’s of Knoxville, Grams, A. of Va Beach, and of course my parents. I’ve also gotten a letter from the Knoxville grandparents, and a belated grad present (thanks!). You guys are all helping me help other people. Also, if you sent me a package but I didn’t get it – which apparently has happened – Aunt N! – I’m really sorry… I am just as appreciative! Hopefully it will turn up soon.
Also, if you are thinking of sending a package my way, a small amount of couscous and/or baking cocoa would be much appreciated, as these are things my personal chef enjoys cooking with and that I recently found out I enjoy eating, and that are not available on Ebeye.
On Sunday, we took a trip to Kwaj, where the military base is. After half an hour in the bus, which is now broken because there are apparently no fan belts on island, and then an hour on a ferry, we walked through the fake metal detectors and put our bags of laundry through the x-ray machine. Welcome to Little America. Kwaj is the most non-military military base ever. I think there are 30 or so people there out of 1500 that are actually in the army. The rest are all contracted by aerospace companies. It’s kind of like Pleasantville – everyone rides around on bicycles to their cute cinderblock houses, mostly oblivious to the problems of the country that surrounds their leased plot of land – and with all the amenities of home, how could you not be. We had to be signed in by our sponsors, relinquish our passports, and then we had permission to roam the base. Our sponsors are really awesome families that are willing to help us out once every couple weeks when we want to do laundry (in a machine that actually washes clothes rather than one that pulls and pushes until things rip in half – I really liked my pink striped boxers…oh well) or get some American fast food, or call home! After talking to mom and dad from a “California” number for an hour or so, we grubbed out on some pizza and quesodillas (CHEESE!!!!) and French fries. Then I thought about working out at their awesome gym. That thought lasted about 30 seconds. Then we went to the beach, because believe it or not, we don’t have many sandy beaches in our lives. Just lots of water, sky, palm trees, and lava rock. Plus, it was the first time the girls had worn actual bathing suits since we got here. When the missionaries came here in the mid 19th century, they made sure that the one thing (and perhaps only) the Marshallese people took from Christianity was that Adam and Eve were very, very embarrassed when they realized they weren’t wearing clothes, and that they should be too. So, women here are not allowed to wear pants, or anything that shows separation between their thighs. They all wear skirts or dresses that go well below their knees, and cleavage is out of the question. It’s okay (well, maybe a little bit frowned upon) to be promiscuous with 14 year olds, or to miss work because you’re an alcoholic and haven’t stopped drinking in 4 days… but for God’s sake, woman, don’t show your navel! Anyway, it was a good day. I even got to take a hot shower. Unfortunately, we can’t shop at the base’s store to bring buckets full of cheese and real produce back with us.
Today was the 4th meeting of the health club. Instead of walking the causeway, I have been running. I let the kids (and other teachers) walk a ways ahead of me for about half an hour and then catch up to them. Today I ran the 4.5 miles in 36 minutes, which for me is pretty awesome. Since there were only 7 kids walking, I decided I would bring some money in to buy them all fruit at the grocery store (i.e. apples). I’m still not sure why, but for some reason I thought that $40 would be a good amount of money to take. I stuck it in my shoe (since my shorts don’t have pockets and I carry my shuffle in my hand) and ran off. I spent about $13 on fruit for the kids and ice cream for me, then somewhere between the store and the place we walk to in order to hitch rides back to gugeegue, $27 fell out of my shoe. There is a very happy little kid on Ebeye tonight. I was not pleased, especially when I considered I had just dropped 10% of my monthly stipend.
For those of you that have sent me packages, thank you very much!! I have gotten some from the S’s of Knoxville, Grams, A. of Va Beach, and of course my parents. I’ve also gotten a letter from the Knoxville grandparents, and a belated grad present (thanks!). You guys are all helping me help other people. Also, if you sent me a package but I didn’t get it – which apparently has happened – Aunt N! – I’m really sorry… I am just as appreciative! Hopefully it will turn up soon.
Also, if you are thinking of sending a package my way, a small amount of couscous and/or baking cocoa would be much appreciated, as these are things my personal chef enjoys cooking with and that I recently found out I enjoy eating, and that are not available on Ebeye.
9/29/07
The scooter is awesome. A lot of fun. It is a surreal experience to zoom down a causeway made out of dynamited reef and garbage avoiding potholes at 45km/h and look out on one side to see a calm lagoon and some islands in the distance and on the other side huge waves and endless ocean.
We had soccer again on Tuesday. Our numbers went down to 15 or so, but that made it much easier because boomer was sick, so it was just me coaching and reffing. I have officially challenged Father Hacker’s High School to a scrimmage. It should be fun. If it doesn’t work out, the kids seem to be having a lot of fun anyway, even though they keep asking me when they are going to kwaj to play the army kids, which isn’t happening this year because of a miscommunication.
We had our Manit Day (Marshallese custom day) school picnic on Thursday. The kids and some of their parents came in and set up loud speakers that blasted Akon and that song about beautiful girls that make that guy suicidal all day. The kids played volleyball, soccer, and basketball. They are really really good at volleyball, although they play a little differently – there is no need to take all three hits to set up a good spike because none of them are tall enough to do that, so it usually goes over in one or two hits. Boomer and I went swimming at the dock after playing with the kids, and some of them joined us later. I pushed one of my 10th graders off the dock. It’s a 7 foot drop, but he was already swimming. I felt a little bad, but then 5 minutes later he pushed me off… “F in biology this quarter, eh Jojabot?” The day was followed by hours of a game called Flick that we play with the Fijians that live on Gugeegue. Flick is kind of like playing 8-ball pool, but with checker sized pieces that you slide across a wooden board by flicking a bigger checker sized piece at them and trying to knock them into holes. It’s very relaxed to begin with, but when you mix it with ritual Kava drinking, it’s a sedative. Kava is a drink that comes from a root found in some pacific islands (not RMI, I don’t think) that they grind up and then filter through a sock into a big bowl, and then scoop it out using half coconut shells. There is much rhythmic clapping each time someone receives a shell from the distributor, and you are supposed to clap once before and once after you drink it or something like that. I just clap all the time to be safe. I was kind of excited to see what effect it would have, but besides being very zen-like, it just made my throat feel like I had sprayed some vick’s chloroseptic in it.
Yesterday was actually Manit day, all of the teachers and administrators from the public schools were invited by the assistant secretary of education to take a boat out to an “outer island.” It took about an hour to cross the atoll, and when we arrived, it was literally a seen from Lost. There were abandoned radar stations and huge white spheres on towers (presumably with satellites inside) that reeked of the Dharma Institute, and a 4-story, 50 yard long rotting freighter lodged eerily against the dock. Apparently the army used to have 100 people living there, along with the 100 or so Marshallese that still do live there, but in the early 90s they were able to switch over to remote access, and now the Army just pops in once and a while on a helicopter to make sure the Marshallese people know they can’t use the antennae as clothes lines.
The picnic was alright. I’m actually not a huge fan of most traditional Marshallese food. A lot of breadfruit was consumed. The way the food was prepared and served also made me a little nervous. Before we left, everyone took their raw meat they brought, unwrapped it, and dumped it into a huge cooler on the boat to let it all marinade together in the sun…. Staci started vomiting at about 11 pm last night – 12 hours later, she’s still not out of bed.
The snorkeling was good though – clownfish, huge schools of giant rainbow parrotfish, and a few eagle rays. And while we were eating a pod of dolphins swam by. Just another day.
The scooter is awesome. A lot of fun. It is a surreal experience to zoom down a causeway made out of dynamited reef and garbage avoiding potholes at 45km/h and look out on one side to see a calm lagoon and some islands in the distance and on the other side huge waves and endless ocean.
We had soccer again on Tuesday. Our numbers went down to 15 or so, but that made it much easier because boomer was sick, so it was just me coaching and reffing. I have officially challenged Father Hacker’s High School to a scrimmage. It should be fun. If it doesn’t work out, the kids seem to be having a lot of fun anyway, even though they keep asking me when they are going to kwaj to play the army kids, which isn’t happening this year because of a miscommunication.
We had our Manit Day (Marshallese custom day) school picnic on Thursday. The kids and some of their parents came in and set up loud speakers that blasted Akon and that song about beautiful girls that make that guy suicidal all day. The kids played volleyball, soccer, and basketball. They are really really good at volleyball, although they play a little differently – there is no need to take all three hits to set up a good spike because none of them are tall enough to do that, so it usually goes over in one or two hits. Boomer and I went swimming at the dock after playing with the kids, and some of them joined us later. I pushed one of my 10th graders off the dock. It’s a 7 foot drop, but he was already swimming. I felt a little bad, but then 5 minutes later he pushed me off… “F in biology this quarter, eh Jojabot?” The day was followed by hours of a game called Flick that we play with the Fijians that live on Gugeegue. Flick is kind of like playing 8-ball pool, but with checker sized pieces that you slide across a wooden board by flicking a bigger checker sized piece at them and trying to knock them into holes. It’s very relaxed to begin with, but when you mix it with ritual Kava drinking, it’s a sedative. Kava is a drink that comes from a root found in some pacific islands (not RMI, I don’t think) that they grind up and then filter through a sock into a big bowl, and then scoop it out using half coconut shells. There is much rhythmic clapping each time someone receives a shell from the distributor, and you are supposed to clap once before and once after you drink it or something like that. I just clap all the time to be safe. I was kind of excited to see what effect it would have, but besides being very zen-like, it just made my throat feel like I had sprayed some vick’s chloroseptic in it.
Yesterday was actually Manit day, all of the teachers and administrators from the public schools were invited by the assistant secretary of education to take a boat out to an “outer island.” It took about an hour to cross the atoll, and when we arrived, it was literally a seen from Lost. There were abandoned radar stations and huge white spheres on towers (presumably with satellites inside) that reeked of the Dharma Institute, and a 4-story, 50 yard long rotting freighter lodged eerily against the dock. Apparently the army used to have 100 people living there, along with the 100 or so Marshallese that still do live there, but in the early 90s they were able to switch over to remote access, and now the Army just pops in once and a while on a helicopter to make sure the Marshallese people know they can’t use the antennae as clothes lines.
The picnic was alright. I’m actually not a huge fan of most traditional Marshallese food. A lot of breadfruit was consumed. The way the food was prepared and served also made me a little nervous. Before we left, everyone took their raw meat they brought, unwrapped it, and dumped it into a huge cooler on the boat to let it all marinade together in the sun…. Staci started vomiting at about 11 pm last night – 12 hours later, she’s still not out of bed.
The snorkeling was good though – clownfish, huge schools of giant rainbow parrotfish, and a few eagle rays. And while we were eating a pod of dolphins swam by. Just another day.
Monday, September 24, 2007
9/23/07
I’m going to try to put less comma splices in this next one. Sorry.
On Tuesday Boomer and I coached the first meeting of the club soccer team. We will be meeting once a week until basketball season starts. Usually there is an actual team that gets to go to kwaj to play the military kids, but some form of communication failure occurred and they didn’t schedule us in. So, we are playing each other, and maybe the kids that go to the much smaller private catholic high school on gugeegue. The first meeting was hysterical. There is only one place on this atoll that isn’t inside the base that is suitable for soccer. The catholic high school has a field (no goals, no lines – just lots of open space with rocks and some weeds), and since I am friends with the principal there, I just asked him if we could use it. So, there were about 30 or so kids who were interested in playing. All of them were guys. They showed up in their school uniforms. Two kids brought shirts to wear. They all were wearing pants. No one had sneakers – they all were wearing flip flops or playing barefoot. The school had some used sneakers donated to it but I told them that they needed to bring their own socks to borrow them. There were about 3 kids that could dribble the ball and pass it in the direction they wanted it to go. We used backpacks as goals. We only had one soccer ball because there is only one on this entire atoll besides what is on the base. We are meeting again on Tuesday.
This week was kind of crazy. I had the kids make models of atoms out of modeling beeswax that was sent to me by my wonderful mother. I gave each lab group a Ziploc bag with blocks of wax and some toothpicks inside and a post-it note with an element symbol on it and told them to show me the protons, neutrons, and electrons. They all seemed excited, so I went back to my desk to take attendance. When I looked up, I noticed that all of the guys in the class had pulled out switchblades to cut up even chunks of beeswax. While the resourcefulness of this was admirable, it was a little disturbing. Why are they all carrying switchblades to my class? They all got As that day. Just kidding. Sort of.
Another strange thing happened to me on Friday. I had given out a test, and a girl raised her hand and I walked over. One of the questions on the test asked specifically about the “lab” where we modeled atoms – a trick I have been using to try to get them to come to all the classes. Anyways, I knew earlier that the girl had missed the day because she was signing adoption papers at court to give her 1 year old child to her parents (she’s 16) so that it (he) can live on the army base as a dependent of her parents – if you are Marshallese but you work on the army base, you can live there… sometimes. So, her absence was technically “excused.” Should I let her skip this question because she made some unfortunate life decisions and consequentially missed school? I decided I wouldn’t… and that’s my new policy… I’m not going out of my way for kids that miss class for any reason… it’s overcompensating, but there need to be consequences. Right now my bio regular is doing better than my bio honors class because honors is first period and I only get half a class every morning because they all sleep through the first bus. Too bad they are all going to fail first quarter. Maybe an F will help wake them up.
Some awful things have happened this week as well that have reminded me that I do not in fact live in a perfect island paradise with extra helpings of garbage, but an actual real city with real problems. The school has two special education students, one of whom cannot really speak. It came up in a teacher’s current events class that on Wednesday night, that student was raped by several men, which is why she has not been to school in the past couple of days. The students did not seem particularly disturbed by this, so Staci decided to start a young women’s club to talk about these issues and nominated boomer and me as faculty advisors to the new young men’s club. Yikes.
Also scandalous and almost as appalling, it was reported in another class that one of our students’ girlfriend (who is not a student) met an American visiting ebeye from the army base on Kwaj, had sex with him, and allowed him to videotape (or perhaps it was done without her knowledge), and he is now selling the tape to people on Ebeye, and several of the students have seen it. Yikes.
Just in case anyone here is reading this – I don’t know the validity of either of those incidents, they are just things that have been said by students at the school.
In other news, today a truck delivered solar panels and a motor scooter to the school for us. The motor scooter has been supplied to replace our pick up truck with recently and mysteriously lost its front windshield after spending the day with the school’s maintenance/construction/all-purpose workmen crew. It had already lost its rear windshield, and had no brakes, and with only 26000 miles on its 2004 body, it’s very sad to think that it will not sit and rot for eternity on gugeegue because it’s not worth the cost of replacing the broken parts.
One more troubling tidbit. The country’s only newspaper (or printed periodical for that matter) headlined last week with a story that will put your sense of Marshallese Christianity into a better perspective. Apparently, there are 6 Muslims in the Marshall Islands and as far as the nitijela (government body) is concerned, that is 6 too many. Someone recently proposed a bill that would ban Islam here because of the “terrorist threat” it represents to the Marshall Islands. Then someone pointed out that their constitution, which is modeled after ours truly, provides freedom of religion. So, they decided to created a congressional committee to discuss getting rid of that clause in the constitution. Yikes.
I’m going to try to put less comma splices in this next one. Sorry.
On Tuesday Boomer and I coached the first meeting of the club soccer team. We will be meeting once a week until basketball season starts. Usually there is an actual team that gets to go to kwaj to play the military kids, but some form of communication failure occurred and they didn’t schedule us in. So, we are playing each other, and maybe the kids that go to the much smaller private catholic high school on gugeegue. The first meeting was hysterical. There is only one place on this atoll that isn’t inside the base that is suitable for soccer. The catholic high school has a field (no goals, no lines – just lots of open space with rocks and some weeds), and since I am friends with the principal there, I just asked him if we could use it. So, there were about 30 or so kids who were interested in playing. All of them were guys. They showed up in their school uniforms. Two kids brought shirts to wear. They all were wearing pants. No one had sneakers – they all were wearing flip flops or playing barefoot. The school had some used sneakers donated to it but I told them that they needed to bring their own socks to borrow them. There were about 3 kids that could dribble the ball and pass it in the direction they wanted it to go. We used backpacks as goals. We only had one soccer ball because there is only one on this entire atoll besides what is on the base. We are meeting again on Tuesday.
This week was kind of crazy. I had the kids make models of atoms out of modeling beeswax that was sent to me by my wonderful mother. I gave each lab group a Ziploc bag with blocks of wax and some toothpicks inside and a post-it note with an element symbol on it and told them to show me the protons, neutrons, and electrons. They all seemed excited, so I went back to my desk to take attendance. When I looked up, I noticed that all of the guys in the class had pulled out switchblades to cut up even chunks of beeswax. While the resourcefulness of this was admirable, it was a little disturbing. Why are they all carrying switchblades to my class? They all got As that day. Just kidding. Sort of.
Another strange thing happened to me on Friday. I had given out a test, and a girl raised her hand and I walked over. One of the questions on the test asked specifically about the “lab” where we modeled atoms – a trick I have been using to try to get them to come to all the classes. Anyways, I knew earlier that the girl had missed the day because she was signing adoption papers at court to give her 1 year old child to her parents (she’s 16) so that it (he) can live on the army base as a dependent of her parents – if you are Marshallese but you work on the army base, you can live there… sometimes. So, her absence was technically “excused.” Should I let her skip this question because she made some unfortunate life decisions and consequentially missed school? I decided I wouldn’t… and that’s my new policy… I’m not going out of my way for kids that miss class for any reason… it’s overcompensating, but there need to be consequences. Right now my bio regular is doing better than my bio honors class because honors is first period and I only get half a class every morning because they all sleep through the first bus. Too bad they are all going to fail first quarter. Maybe an F will help wake them up.
Some awful things have happened this week as well that have reminded me that I do not in fact live in a perfect island paradise with extra helpings of garbage, but an actual real city with real problems. The school has two special education students, one of whom cannot really speak. It came up in a teacher’s current events class that on Wednesday night, that student was raped by several men, which is why she has not been to school in the past couple of days. The students did not seem particularly disturbed by this, so Staci decided to start a young women’s club to talk about these issues and nominated boomer and me as faculty advisors to the new young men’s club. Yikes.
Also scandalous and almost as appalling, it was reported in another class that one of our students’ girlfriend (who is not a student) met an American visiting ebeye from the army base on Kwaj, had sex with him, and allowed him to videotape (or perhaps it was done without her knowledge), and he is now selling the tape to people on Ebeye, and several of the students have seen it. Yikes.
Just in case anyone here is reading this – I don’t know the validity of either of those incidents, they are just things that have been said by students at the school.
In other news, today a truck delivered solar panels and a motor scooter to the school for us. The motor scooter has been supplied to replace our pick up truck with recently and mysteriously lost its front windshield after spending the day with the school’s maintenance/construction/all-purpose workmen crew. It had already lost its rear windshield, and had no brakes, and with only 26000 miles on its 2004 body, it’s very sad to think that it will not sit and rot for eternity on gugeegue because it’s not worth the cost of replacing the broken parts.
One more troubling tidbit. The country’s only newspaper (or printed periodical for that matter) headlined last week with a story that will put your sense of Marshallese Christianity into a better perspective. Apparently, there are 6 Muslims in the Marshall Islands and as far as the nitijela (government body) is concerned, that is 6 too many. Someone recently proposed a bill that would ban Islam here because of the “terrorist threat” it represents to the Marshall Islands. Then someone pointed out that their constitution, which is modeled after ours truly, provides freedom of religion. So, they decided to created a congressional committee to discuss getting rid of that clause in the constitution. Yikes.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
9/14/07
So, I know this happened when I went to Japan too – my blog started out strong and then it tapered out towards the end… well, I will try my best to prevent that, but things are starting to become less shocking to me. It’s not that weird and exciting things aren’t happening, I am just getting used to the extraordinary. It doesn’t phase me when a 3 foot moray eel swims by me in open water, or when a shark comes by to check out my foot that is bloody because I scratched my mosquito bites too much, or when I get on a bus that should seat 100 but there are about 160 kids on board. Things just don’t phase me that much.
Last weekend was a very relaxing three day weekend – the Marshallese celebrate labor day too. I spent one day swimming and snorkeling at our beach, enjoying sharks and stingrays and moray eels. Another day I spent fishing on an island that is further north. We were invited by the principal of the other high school on the island (a private catholic school with much fewer students) to come out to an outer island, a short walk north of gugeegue on the reef. When we got there, we talked to “captain nemo,” the chief of that small island who lives there alone in levi’s and a tank top surviving on his chickens and pigs and breadfruit, and we asked him if it would be okay if we fished on his land. He said sure. No problem. So, we waded out on the reef, and threw out some lines with canned calamari on the end, and reeled in about 15 baby groupers (5 to 8 inches long), cooked them on a piece of scrap tin with a side of coconut, and pigged out. I caught 4 fish in 20 minutes. When the line would get stuck on the coral I would just put my mask on and go out and unhook it. Pretty cool.
Ken, the retired guy who lives here and does everything for the school and has family on the base, set up an arrangement with the base to have a few of the kids go play golf on the country’s only golf course (which is on the American base). He invited me to go, so I did. It was crazy. They have imported thousands of tons of soil to make this golf course. It is perfectly maintained. This all seems rather ridiculous when you compare it to the landscape a mile over on Ebeye. But, the kids loved it. I have never seen anyone more excited about golf – I think a lot of it was just being able to get off of Ebeye and Gugeegue. In any case, we practiced putting and chipping for an hour and a half and then got to eat at the snack bar, which is a very special privilege for people not working on the base. I ate a significant portion of the snack bar’s stock pizza. I miss cheese. Oh, I forgot, on the way there one of the two buses got a flat tire, so the whole group of kids got out and started walking while the other bus continued on…the causeway is 5 miles long…. This happens all the time.
Speaking of walking, the health club at the school met for the first time on Wednesday. Our first healthy activity? We walked from Gugeegue to Ebeye. 5 miles. I wasn’t going to go, but then 3 girl teachers went with the 20 or so co-ed students, and I didn’t want them to think that being healthy was just for girls. It was actually a lot of fun. On the way I checked out the abandoned greenhouse that I have been challenged to lead the renovations of – (your science classes should grow stuff!) the landowner has expressed interest in having it function again – it has been abandoned since the peace corps bailed on this country a decade ago, and it now nothing but an empty frame and some concrete tanks. I don’t really know what we would grow, or how, but I’m going to cruise amazon for some books on tropical gardening and greenhouse building… if the internet ever functions.
I’ve been meeting some pretty cool people visiting the Marshall Islands. People from the Government Accountability Office showed up out of no where to ask where all the money from the US government was going. I gave him a tour of my classroom, complete with 100s of useless textbooks that are too advanced for anyone in the school to read. I also ran into people from the Center for Disease Control, who were out visiting the hospital on Ebeye to check in on their HIV control program. It’s weird to run into white people you don’t know on this side of the ferry, because there are only about 10 or 12 of us.
So, I know this happened when I went to Japan too – my blog started out strong and then it tapered out towards the end… well, I will try my best to prevent that, but things are starting to become less shocking to me. It’s not that weird and exciting things aren’t happening, I am just getting used to the extraordinary. It doesn’t phase me when a 3 foot moray eel swims by me in open water, or when a shark comes by to check out my foot that is bloody because I scratched my mosquito bites too much, or when I get on a bus that should seat 100 but there are about 160 kids on board. Things just don’t phase me that much.
Last weekend was a very relaxing three day weekend – the Marshallese celebrate labor day too. I spent one day swimming and snorkeling at our beach, enjoying sharks and stingrays and moray eels. Another day I spent fishing on an island that is further north. We were invited by the principal of the other high school on the island (a private catholic school with much fewer students) to come out to an outer island, a short walk north of gugeegue on the reef. When we got there, we talked to “captain nemo,” the chief of that small island who lives there alone in levi’s and a tank top surviving on his chickens and pigs and breadfruit, and we asked him if it would be okay if we fished on his land. He said sure. No problem. So, we waded out on the reef, and threw out some lines with canned calamari on the end, and reeled in about 15 baby groupers (5 to 8 inches long), cooked them on a piece of scrap tin with a side of coconut, and pigged out. I caught 4 fish in 20 minutes. When the line would get stuck on the coral I would just put my mask on and go out and unhook it. Pretty cool.
Ken, the retired guy who lives here and does everything for the school and has family on the base, set up an arrangement with the base to have a few of the kids go play golf on the country’s only golf course (which is on the American base). He invited me to go, so I did. It was crazy. They have imported thousands of tons of soil to make this golf course. It is perfectly maintained. This all seems rather ridiculous when you compare it to the landscape a mile over on Ebeye. But, the kids loved it. I have never seen anyone more excited about golf – I think a lot of it was just being able to get off of Ebeye and Gugeegue. In any case, we practiced putting and chipping for an hour and a half and then got to eat at the snack bar, which is a very special privilege for people not working on the base. I ate a significant portion of the snack bar’s stock pizza. I miss cheese. Oh, I forgot, on the way there one of the two buses got a flat tire, so the whole group of kids got out and started walking while the other bus continued on…the causeway is 5 miles long…. This happens all the time.
Speaking of walking, the health club at the school met for the first time on Wednesday. Our first healthy activity? We walked from Gugeegue to Ebeye. 5 miles. I wasn’t going to go, but then 3 girl teachers went with the 20 or so co-ed students, and I didn’t want them to think that being healthy was just for girls. It was actually a lot of fun. On the way I checked out the abandoned greenhouse that I have been challenged to lead the renovations of – (your science classes should grow stuff!) the landowner has expressed interest in having it function again – it has been abandoned since the peace corps bailed on this country a decade ago, and it now nothing but an empty frame and some concrete tanks. I don’t really know what we would grow, or how, but I’m going to cruise amazon for some books on tropical gardening and greenhouse building… if the internet ever functions.
I’ve been meeting some pretty cool people visiting the Marshall Islands. People from the Government Accountability Office showed up out of no where to ask where all the money from the US government was going. I gave him a tour of my classroom, complete with 100s of useless textbooks that are too advanced for anyone in the school to read. I also ran into people from the Center for Disease Control, who were out visiting the hospital on Ebeye to check in on their HIV control program. It’s weird to run into white people you don’t know on this side of the ferry, because there are only about 10 or 12 of us.
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