6/1/08
Graduation was excellent. Everything went smoothly. The only real issue was that the kids were handed empty frames because their diplomas had not yet arrived from Jostens. There really isn’t very much to describe – it was a fairly standard graduation. The valedictorian gave an impressive speech that had everyone in tears, including herself. The staff all had matching lime green aloha shirts and mumus. The “dignitaries” were all invited to the library afterwards to eat a cow out of a cooler - no idea where that came from. There were reporters from Kwaj. The buses ran back and forth all day to carry the 400 or so people out.
After graduation, we thought we were done. We were not. The juniors ask the bus driver to take everyone out to the school for them to throw the seniors and departing staff a farewell party two days later. It was mostly an excuse for the seniors to come out unsupervised to Gugeegue and drink at the school. The average age of the seniors is about 20 though, so it was hard to get too upset.
Then, the day after that, the PTA decided to throw a farewell party at the school for the departing staff. The 6 of us that are leaving sat up on the stage, got to stand in line to get meat out of various coolers first, and then stood in a receiving line while all of the students and parents shook our hands, thanked us and said goodbye, and gave us shell necklaces.
Since I am flying out tomorrow, this is my last post. If you have made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope I have managed to describe my experience here in a meaningful and entertaining way. See you all stateside.
-Mr. Matt
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
5/25/08
Prom was a week ago. We put on our best (unstained blue jeans, the button down oxford I hadn’t worn yet, and a $2 tie I borrowed from the principal of the catholic high school), took pictures in front of our limousine (the new school bus), and headed to the party (at the bar). When I got on the bus, the driver offered me some of his brandy. There were a couple of students on the bus. I said, “no thanks, I’m going to prom!” Then he said “you’re going to prom without drinking?” He’s a reliable bus driver. Most of the time.
The party started at 6, but no one was there except the faculty. We were very bored until about 730, when the sun went down. At that point, the odd student strayed in off the streets alone (even though they all had dates, or “partners”). The girls came in wearing giant potato sack mumus over their skanky prom dresses. The boys came in with jerseys and shorts on, with shirts and pants in plastic bags that they changed into after they came in. It was an interesting and revealing cultural experiment. Thankfully, we had police at the door, and nobody dared come drunk, making it much more enjoyable for the faculty.
About half an hour after they had all come in, though, I almost wished they had done some moderate drinking before they came – not really, of course, but they were completely silent the whole time and it was really boring. Their DJ played song after song to an empty dance floor, and between songs they sat in complete silence. At one point, I whispered to the students at the table where I was sitting “this is the quietest party I’ve ever been to!” Ken, sitting about 5 tables away, whispered back, “we can hear you!”
At about 9pm, an hour before closing, a few couples braved it to the dance floor (including an enthusiastic boomer and ashley), the tipping point was reached, and it finally turned into a party. I wonder how many babies were conceived afterwards…
This morning I woke up early to go to church for the first time in a year for the graduates’ baccalaureate service. In fact, the last time I went was for my own baccalaureate service, and I’m sad to say that my own was much more interesting. Probably has something to do with this one being in a language I don’t really understand. The sermon was something about a bowl of cherries. I think he said that life wasn’t one, but maybe just that they were tasty. We were ushered to the ri-belle (white people) section at the front of the church, distributed flamboyantly dyed pandanus fans, and I sat there sweating and vigorously waving a fan at my dripping face for the entire 2 hour service. There was some entertainment – the assistant minister really enjoys singing – whenever the choir (which was very talented) sang he would stand up and literally inhale a microphone and belt out the song celine dion style at the top of his lungs. It was worth the headache. Also, there were decorative cans of processed meat, like spam and tuna, decorating the alter, which I still don’t quite understand. And, at the end, our students got up and sang a song to the beat of a synthesizer, except they forgot the words and just started laughing in front of the 400 or so people in and around the church watching them. It was symbolic.
The other night, the town police officer told me that they were “this close” to finding the person who came into my house. It has been a couple of weeks since this happened, so I was surprised to hear that it was still on his mind. He continued, saying “last night, we saw someone outside your house evening time.” I asked him if he was conducting a stakeout in the bushes, and he smiled and said “yes, we are.” The question wasn’t serious, but I’m pretty sure he was. The young men that broke into Tristan’s house a month ago have been evicted from our island by the Marshallese community. These kinds of reactions have been very reassuring – I don’t have much contact with the Marshallese Gugeegue community, so it’s good to know there is support, even if it’s indirect.
Tomorrow is graduation. They have come out here every day for the last week to practice the ceremony. Their parents have come out here every day for the last 4 days to cover the new ply-wood stage in various forms of foliage. Ladies in mumus braid palm fronds while men with machetes climb trees to cut more down. We even have a red carpet, except it’s green – it’s made from the trees outside my classroom. It’s past 11pm and the bus is still here – workers are setting up tents and chairs, ladies are frantically sewing matching yokwe shirts (yokwe = Marshallese aloha) and mumus for the faculty to wear. The Americans are hiding. Even Laura has taken a back-seat approach to graduation. In this country, it’s all about the ceremonial, and tomorrow will be no exception.
Prom was a week ago. We put on our best (unstained blue jeans, the button down oxford I hadn’t worn yet, and a $2 tie I borrowed from the principal of the catholic high school), took pictures in front of our limousine (the new school bus), and headed to the party (at the bar). When I got on the bus, the driver offered me some of his brandy. There were a couple of students on the bus. I said, “no thanks, I’m going to prom!” Then he said “you’re going to prom without drinking?” He’s a reliable bus driver. Most of the time.
The party started at 6, but no one was there except the faculty. We were very bored until about 730, when the sun went down. At that point, the odd student strayed in off the streets alone (even though they all had dates, or “partners”). The girls came in wearing giant potato sack mumus over their skanky prom dresses. The boys came in with jerseys and shorts on, with shirts and pants in plastic bags that they changed into after they came in. It was an interesting and revealing cultural experiment. Thankfully, we had police at the door, and nobody dared come drunk, making it much more enjoyable for the faculty.
About half an hour after they had all come in, though, I almost wished they had done some moderate drinking before they came – not really, of course, but they were completely silent the whole time and it was really boring. Their DJ played song after song to an empty dance floor, and between songs they sat in complete silence. At one point, I whispered to the students at the table where I was sitting “this is the quietest party I’ve ever been to!” Ken, sitting about 5 tables away, whispered back, “we can hear you!”
At about 9pm, an hour before closing, a few couples braved it to the dance floor (including an enthusiastic boomer and ashley), the tipping point was reached, and it finally turned into a party. I wonder how many babies were conceived afterwards…
This morning I woke up early to go to church for the first time in a year for the graduates’ baccalaureate service. In fact, the last time I went was for my own baccalaureate service, and I’m sad to say that my own was much more interesting. Probably has something to do with this one being in a language I don’t really understand. The sermon was something about a bowl of cherries. I think he said that life wasn’t one, but maybe just that they were tasty. We were ushered to the ri-belle (white people) section at the front of the church, distributed flamboyantly dyed pandanus fans, and I sat there sweating and vigorously waving a fan at my dripping face for the entire 2 hour service. There was some entertainment – the assistant minister really enjoys singing – whenever the choir (which was very talented) sang he would stand up and literally inhale a microphone and belt out the song celine dion style at the top of his lungs. It was worth the headache. Also, there were decorative cans of processed meat, like spam and tuna, decorating the alter, which I still don’t quite understand. And, at the end, our students got up and sang a song to the beat of a synthesizer, except they forgot the words and just started laughing in front of the 400 or so people in and around the church watching them. It was symbolic.
The other night, the town police officer told me that they were “this close” to finding the person who came into my house. It has been a couple of weeks since this happened, so I was surprised to hear that it was still on his mind. He continued, saying “last night, we saw someone outside your house evening time.” I asked him if he was conducting a stakeout in the bushes, and he smiled and said “yes, we are.” The question wasn’t serious, but I’m pretty sure he was. The young men that broke into Tristan’s house a month ago have been evicted from our island by the Marshallese community. These kinds of reactions have been very reassuring – I don’t have much contact with the Marshallese Gugeegue community, so it’s good to know there is support, even if it’s indirect.
Tomorrow is graduation. They have come out here every day for the last week to practice the ceremony. Their parents have come out here every day for the last 4 days to cover the new ply-wood stage in various forms of foliage. Ladies in mumus braid palm fronds while men with machetes climb trees to cut more down. We even have a red carpet, except it’s green – it’s made from the trees outside my classroom. It’s past 11pm and the bus is still here – workers are setting up tents and chairs, ladies are frantically sewing matching yokwe shirts (yokwe = Marshallese aloha) and mumus for the faculty to wear. The Americans are hiding. Even Laura has taken a back-seat approach to graduation. In this country, it’s all about the ceremonial, and tomorrow will be no exception.
Friday, May 9, 2008
5/10/08
It’s a rainy day in Gugeegue. We are getting ready for exams next week, some planning for next year and prom the week after, and graduation of the 26th. A wave of graduation-mania has hit the school, and everyone is obsessed with preparing for it. Our principal has people out here every day (even Saturdays) building a covered stage in front of the school for the seniors to sit on. Supposedly, the atoll’s King, the RMI President, and the Colonel from the base, and the Kwajalein senators will all be in attendance, making it the most high profile event in Gugeegue history.
Last night my house was broken into. It was 230am on a Saturday morning, and Staci was still at Ashley’s watching a movie. All the lights were off, but I had left the door unlocked for Staci. I was not sleeping well, and I heard the door open. Since my bedroom door is always open (to keep a breeze coming through) I expected to see Staci head into her room…. But no one came in. So, I sleepily got up in my boxers to go close the door, which I thought may have just not been closed all the way. When I got to the kitchen, there was a man walking into the house. He stopped dead for about half a second and then sprinted out the door into the jungle towards Gugeegue’s town. Tristan and his wife had their house broken into (through the roof, while they were home) by a drunk guy at 7am last week, but my intruder was sober… I made that judgment when I decided not to run after him into the woods barefoot – there was no way I could have caught him… plus, then what? This morning I went over to our one police officer’s house and let him know what happened and that I would never be able to ID anybody (it seems silly, but when you only have 250 people living on an island, it’s pretty easy to figure out who the transgressor is) because he had a t-shirt wrapped around his head and face.
Class is going well. I will really miss a lot of the kids. And others, not so much. Speaking of kids, so far 7 girls have been discovered pregnant this quarter alone (we only have about 260 students left). This is always very depressing, and it makes class worse because a couple of them can be quite obnoxious. Teen hormones + pregnancy hormones = a headache for Mr. Matt.
I went diving last weekend on the base. Saw some Japanese boat wrecks from World War 2. Very cool.
I’m heading out on June 2nd. One day in Majuro to stock up on handicrafts and cover my body in tribal tatoos, then out on the 4th. Then I arrive in Honolulu at 3AM on the 4th (international dateline). Then I leave Honolulu at 8pm on the 4th, take the redeye to LAX, arrive at 5am, and leave at 8pm (arg) for another redeye to Newark. Not going to be a fun 4 days.
Alex, one of the Ebeye volunteers, left two days ago because of a stubborn infection of unknown origins that was causing his lymph nodes to be swollen. Hopefully I’ll leave under better circumstances. Although, right now I’m not doing so well. My throat was sore for two days and now I literally cannot make coherent sounds come out of my mouth. I don’t really feel sick… I just can’t talk. But, it doesn’t matter – I am done teaching new material for the year! Monday and Tuesday are review days, and the rest of the week is exams. And then my short career as a teacher is over.
It’s a rainy day in Gugeegue. We are getting ready for exams next week, some planning for next year and prom the week after, and graduation of the 26th. A wave of graduation-mania has hit the school, and everyone is obsessed with preparing for it. Our principal has people out here every day (even Saturdays) building a covered stage in front of the school for the seniors to sit on. Supposedly, the atoll’s King, the RMI President, and the Colonel from the base, and the Kwajalein senators will all be in attendance, making it the most high profile event in Gugeegue history.
Last night my house was broken into. It was 230am on a Saturday morning, and Staci was still at Ashley’s watching a movie. All the lights were off, but I had left the door unlocked for Staci. I was not sleeping well, and I heard the door open. Since my bedroom door is always open (to keep a breeze coming through) I expected to see Staci head into her room…. But no one came in. So, I sleepily got up in my boxers to go close the door, which I thought may have just not been closed all the way. When I got to the kitchen, there was a man walking into the house. He stopped dead for about half a second and then sprinted out the door into the jungle towards Gugeegue’s town. Tristan and his wife had their house broken into (through the roof, while they were home) by a drunk guy at 7am last week, but my intruder was sober… I made that judgment when I decided not to run after him into the woods barefoot – there was no way I could have caught him… plus, then what? This morning I went over to our one police officer’s house and let him know what happened and that I would never be able to ID anybody (it seems silly, but when you only have 250 people living on an island, it’s pretty easy to figure out who the transgressor is) because he had a t-shirt wrapped around his head and face.
Class is going well. I will really miss a lot of the kids. And others, not so much. Speaking of kids, so far 7 girls have been discovered pregnant this quarter alone (we only have about 260 students left). This is always very depressing, and it makes class worse because a couple of them can be quite obnoxious. Teen hormones + pregnancy hormones = a headache for Mr. Matt.
I went diving last weekend on the base. Saw some Japanese boat wrecks from World War 2. Very cool.
I’m heading out on June 2nd. One day in Majuro to stock up on handicrafts and cover my body in tribal tatoos, then out on the 4th. Then I arrive in Honolulu at 3AM on the 4th (international dateline). Then I leave Honolulu at 8pm on the 4th, take the redeye to LAX, arrive at 5am, and leave at 8pm (arg) for another redeye to Newark. Not going to be a fun 4 days.
Alex, one of the Ebeye volunteers, left two days ago because of a stubborn infection of unknown origins that was causing his lymph nodes to be swollen. Hopefully I’ll leave under better circumstances. Although, right now I’m not doing so well. My throat was sore for two days and now I literally cannot make coherent sounds come out of my mouth. I don’t really feel sick… I just can’t talk. But, it doesn’t matter – I am done teaching new material for the year! Monday and Tuesday are review days, and the rest of the week is exams. And then my short career as a teacher is over.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
4/11/08
The week before last was “Education Week” in the Marshall Islands. It was about as ironic as “Disability Week” (which was disabling) because we stopped all normal classes to sit around in the sun in Ebeye for five days.
The first day was the opening ceremony. All of the schools waited together (there are about 8 in Ebeye when you include all the private religious schools) on the cement in Ebeye for a keynote speaker that decided not to show up. Two hours after our planned start time, we had an opening remarks, closing remarks, and a prayer, and then no ride back to Gugeegue. Thanks for that.
Tuesday was supposed to be academic fun day at KAHS, because we decided to boycott the “parade” (i.e. walking around the Ebeye loop in the middle of the day under the sun with a bunch of teenagers). So, Laura delegated planning for academic fun day to me, and I made a schedule that had students rotating to different stations based on what teachers were talented in or passionate about. I was going to take groups up to the pass and look at dead coral and talk about marine biology. At 730am Tuesday morning, we got a note from our oh-so-involved Vice Principal, who had previously given us free reign to do whatever we wanted (he doesn’t care, he has a taxi business to worry about), that we were obligated to attend the parade because our principal was on the Education Week Planning Committee. Although, that seems rather odd given that our principal had been touring the United States for the past 3 weeks as a chaperone for “Close-Up,” a US-paid program that takes Pacific Islander students on whirlwind tours of our country. So my well thought out schedule was canned, and we (very resentfully) got on the school bus to go walk around the Ebeye loop for half an hour, and then drive back.
Wednesday was the infamous spelling bee, where students of each grade level were given a list of 40 words to memorize, and while they had no idea what any of the words meant, they sure could spell them. Each grade level ended up having 3-5 winners out of 10 contestants because, well, memorizing the spelling of 40 words is not that hard. Or educational.
Thursday the kids came out to Gugeegue and we sang songs and watched a mission group from the army base put on a play about Jesus. They did a good job, but I’m not sure how I feel about requiring kids to attend a religious play at a public school… but they are all (really, all) Christian to some degree or another, so they didn’t seem to mind.
Friday we went in for the closing ceremony and talent show. Our school sang a song our music teacher made up about Gugeegue to the tune of Heart and Soul. The Baptist high school did a step dance straight out of Stomp the Yard. The Catholic high school performed a mock spelling bee… in drag. All of this was very educational, of course.
On the flip side, my classes went really well this last week, and except for Miseducation Week, school has been excellent since spring break. In chemistry, we put away the American text books and I have been designing some tailor-made curriculum for Marshallese high school students about energy, which is highly relevant (we have had “4-on, 4-off”, which means 4 hours of power, then 4 hours of no power, for the last 5 days with no end in sight – one of the Ebeye generators is toast). Right now we are still working on fossil fuels, but I hope to make it through to alternative sources before the end of the year. And their chemistry foundation has been really helpful – they already know about combustion reactions, hydrocarbons, and carbon dioxide, so explaining climate change and why their islands are slowly disappearing is a piece of cake.
In Biology, we’re working on genetics and DNA. All of it is background for discussing evolution, which I am both excited and terrified to present to them. I’m not sure how they are going to take it.
Then in my Science “Extra Help” class, which is full of all kinds of learning disorders (ADHD, dyslexia, something dysplasia, I don’t even know…but there are kids that can’t copy down the letters of a word on the chalk board in the right order), some kids who are too-cool-for-school, and the occasional teenage mother struggling to catch up after missing a year of school, we are doing a unit on coral. I am working with the RMI Environmental Protection Agency to actually put together some useful high school Environmental Curriculum. What they had produced on coral education was indecipherable to even my most brilliant honor students, so I am restructuring it and making it more accessible for EFL students, and adding useful activities and worksheets along the way. Also, I get to show them all the awesome pictures of coral I’ve taken here, which is cool because the vast majority of them have never seen it, even they are no further than 10 feet away from it on the causeway every day.
Finally, I have found a new way to motivate students. I make a “Top 5” list of the top 5 students in each of my 5 classes, ranked and with their average next to their name. It has become quite competitive, and as a reward, I took all of last quarters Top 5ers to the Marshallese Cultural Center on the army base, which is pretty much the only museum in the country. The kids really seemed to enjoy it – they were shocked to see the missionary paintings of women without shirts on before Christianity arrived, and they loved looking at the pictures of their great-great-grandparents.
I invited last quarter’s top 5ers to be in the “Science Club.” Every Tuesday we meet after school during detention (detention days are the only days when there is a late bus for them to get home on) and do science-related stuff. Last week the kids made a model solar car from an educational kit. It worked, and the kids thought it was awesome.
The week before last was “Education Week” in the Marshall Islands. It was about as ironic as “Disability Week” (which was disabling) because we stopped all normal classes to sit around in the sun in Ebeye for five days.
The first day was the opening ceremony. All of the schools waited together (there are about 8 in Ebeye when you include all the private religious schools) on the cement in Ebeye for a keynote speaker that decided not to show up. Two hours after our planned start time, we had an opening remarks, closing remarks, and a prayer, and then no ride back to Gugeegue. Thanks for that.
Tuesday was supposed to be academic fun day at KAHS, because we decided to boycott the “parade” (i.e. walking around the Ebeye loop in the middle of the day under the sun with a bunch of teenagers). So, Laura delegated planning for academic fun day to me, and I made a schedule that had students rotating to different stations based on what teachers were talented in or passionate about. I was going to take groups up to the pass and look at dead coral and talk about marine biology. At 730am Tuesday morning, we got a note from our oh-so-involved Vice Principal, who had previously given us free reign to do whatever we wanted (he doesn’t care, he has a taxi business to worry about), that we were obligated to attend the parade because our principal was on the Education Week Planning Committee. Although, that seems rather odd given that our principal had been touring the United States for the past 3 weeks as a chaperone for “Close-Up,” a US-paid program that takes Pacific Islander students on whirlwind tours of our country. So my well thought out schedule was canned, and we (very resentfully) got on the school bus to go walk around the Ebeye loop for half an hour, and then drive back.
Wednesday was the infamous spelling bee, where students of each grade level were given a list of 40 words to memorize, and while they had no idea what any of the words meant, they sure could spell them. Each grade level ended up having 3-5 winners out of 10 contestants because, well, memorizing the spelling of 40 words is not that hard. Or educational.
Thursday the kids came out to Gugeegue and we sang songs and watched a mission group from the army base put on a play about Jesus. They did a good job, but I’m not sure how I feel about requiring kids to attend a religious play at a public school… but they are all (really, all) Christian to some degree or another, so they didn’t seem to mind.
Friday we went in for the closing ceremony and talent show. Our school sang a song our music teacher made up about Gugeegue to the tune of Heart and Soul. The Baptist high school did a step dance straight out of Stomp the Yard. The Catholic high school performed a mock spelling bee… in drag. All of this was very educational, of course.
On the flip side, my classes went really well this last week, and except for Miseducation Week, school has been excellent since spring break. In chemistry, we put away the American text books and I have been designing some tailor-made curriculum for Marshallese high school students about energy, which is highly relevant (we have had “4-on, 4-off”, which means 4 hours of power, then 4 hours of no power, for the last 5 days with no end in sight – one of the Ebeye generators is toast). Right now we are still working on fossil fuels, but I hope to make it through to alternative sources before the end of the year. And their chemistry foundation has been really helpful – they already know about combustion reactions, hydrocarbons, and carbon dioxide, so explaining climate change and why their islands are slowly disappearing is a piece of cake.
In Biology, we’re working on genetics and DNA. All of it is background for discussing evolution, which I am both excited and terrified to present to them. I’m not sure how they are going to take it.
Then in my Science “Extra Help” class, which is full of all kinds of learning disorders (ADHD, dyslexia, something dysplasia, I don’t even know…but there are kids that can’t copy down the letters of a word on the chalk board in the right order), some kids who are too-cool-for-school, and the occasional teenage mother struggling to catch up after missing a year of school, we are doing a unit on coral. I am working with the RMI Environmental Protection Agency to actually put together some useful high school Environmental Curriculum. What they had produced on coral education was indecipherable to even my most brilliant honor students, so I am restructuring it and making it more accessible for EFL students, and adding useful activities and worksheets along the way. Also, I get to show them all the awesome pictures of coral I’ve taken here, which is cool because the vast majority of them have never seen it, even they are no further than 10 feet away from it on the causeway every day.
Finally, I have found a new way to motivate students. I make a “Top 5” list of the top 5 students in each of my 5 classes, ranked and with their average next to their name. It has become quite competitive, and as a reward, I took all of last quarters Top 5ers to the Marshallese Cultural Center on the army base, which is pretty much the only museum in the country. The kids really seemed to enjoy it – they were shocked to see the missionary paintings of women without shirts on before Christianity arrived, and they loved looking at the pictures of their great-great-grandparents.
I invited last quarter’s top 5ers to be in the “Science Club.” Every Tuesday we meet after school during detention (detention days are the only days when there is a late bus for them to get home on) and do science-related stuff. Last week the kids made a model solar car from an educational kit. It worked, and the kids thought it was awesome.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
3/19/08
I’m back from a week long spring break in Pohnpei, one of the Federated States of Micronesia. No, it’s not a fictional place – it’s real and it’s pretty awesome. The trip was great, mostly thanks to my friend Michaela, who is a WorldTeacher there. I tried to jam as much in as possible, and it worked out really well.
I arrived on Saturday, met up with Michaela at the airport, and was immediately dumbfounded by the mountains. I knew that it had mountains, but I could not get over how geologically different it was from the RMI, only a 2 hour plane trip away. There were also mangroves, streams, rivers, waterfalls, and did I mention FRESH WATER?! Everywhere. The capital of Pohnpei is Kolonia, a small city comparable to Majuro in everything except its elevation, which is more than Majuro’s maximum 5 feet above sea level.
On Sunday, Michaela and I had brunch with some expats at the world famous “Village,” an ecotourist’s dream come true. The Village is about a 15 minute car ride from Kolonia, on a paved (wow!) road. It’s a bunch of grass huts built into the side of a mountain, each with two water beds, electricity, and mahogany floors. Their restaurant is completely open and overlooks the water and the famous Sokehs Rock, and probably has the best food on the island. The view was unreal, and when combined with some mouth-watering macadamia nut banana pancakes and bacon… well… life was good.
After brunch, we hit up Lididuniap Falls, one of the many waterfalls on the island. I’ve heard that Pohnpei is second only to Kauai in terms of annual rainfall, but we were lucky enough to get hit by the rain while we were swimming in the waterfall, which made it more enjoyable.
On Tuesday, I hiked Sokehs Ridge by myself, which is a huge rock formation often compared to diamond head. It overlooks Kolonia. After the hike, I met up with Ken and Debbie, the American couple that lives on Gugeegue, for dinner at the Village. They also decided to spring break in Pohnpei.
Wednesday was scuba day number 1. Diving turned out to be much harder to arrange than expected. When you get off the plane in Pohnpei, you can get a free travel pamphlet that has a directory of about 10 dive shops on the island. After going through all of them and getting nothing but disconnects and confused wrong numbers, I realized they were not real dive shops, but dive shop ideas that existed at some point in ambitious Micronesian’s mind but were never followed through with. I went to the Village to ask if they could help me out – since I would be going alone, they offered to take me on a two tank dive for $200. Ouch. That is over $100 an hour. Sorry, can’t do it. Michaela to the rescue – she knew someone who had been diving here with someone who might work at more than just a dive shop idea. Well, it was much more. Tony, a half Pohnpeian half American ex-marine ran a small business that ran out of a shack with 3 old, empty-hulled boats propped up on trailors in the front yard. We made arrangements to meet Tuesday morning and he never showed up. On Wednesday, he was more than an hour late, and we weren’t in the water until eleven. He never asked to see my certification card and he never made me sign anything. Very unusual. We were about to get in the water at our first dive site when he asks me how long I’ve been diving. Then he asks what the deepest I’d been to was. I told my certification was only to a maximum of 60 feet, but that in Majuro they’d taken me to 75. He sad okay, and flung himself over the side of the boat. I had only just managed to catch up with him under water when I started to realize something was very wrong. We were very deep. I looked at my depth gauge: 105 feet. Hmm, I thought, that’s very deep,
…… but look at that really cool sea anemone. Wow, this is soooo coooooollll…. I’m under the OOOOcean… look, you can’t even see the top!!! I wonder if I can do a back flip down here with my gear on? What a neat fishy …….
I was narc’d. The technical term is nitrogen narcosis. Basically, when you go too deep too fast and your brain doesn’t get enough oxygen. It happens often, but usually you’re expecting it and they train you for it when you get advanced diving certifications. It didn’t even register with me until we were on our way back up that I had been diving under the influence of nitrogen. Yikes. Thankfully, nothing too exciting happened on the first dive anyway – the place we went to had been largely wiped out by the invasive coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, which has been known to destroy entire reefs. The second dive of the day was at Manta road, a place with two underwater cliffs on either side of the diver that manta rays often swim through. Our boat ride there was treacherous. The boat, which was not a dive boat but just an empty fiberglass shell with tanks sliding around inside, was slamming up against the waves at high speed. At one point a life jacket flew out of the back and Tony never even noticed. When we got to manta road, I hurried into the water, worried that if I hesitated that my conscience wouldn’t let me do another dive with him. I had my gear on, floating in the water, when I noticed a black mass with a 7 foot wingspan soaring by about 40 feet below me. I told Tony to hurry please, we’re missing the show, but he couldn’t find his mask. Apparently it had blown off the boat with the jacket. He looked over the side at me and said, “well… why don’t you just go ahead.” Uh…. What? “…I’m… I’m not doing the dive alone.” He said “What are you scared? Ha ha ha ha.” I didn’t say anything. Instead I sat there floating, angrily imagining driving back in his boat at breakneck speed without diving while the mantas laughed at me from below. I waited. He finally found a spare. We descended. At a 7 foot wingspan, the midsized manta did a flyby from about 5 feet away from me. I was humbled. It is now my goal to see a full sized adult before I leave the RMI.
Thursday, my Gugeegue friends and I took a tour with the Village to see the Nan Madol ruins. It is a man-made archipelago built on a coral reef from about 500-1500AD. Each island served a difference purpose, and all of them were connect by canoe-accessible canals, making it the “Venice of the Pacific.” The coolest island was, of course, the king’s, where huge boulders of basalt had been cut out of a nearby mountain and piled on top of each other to create walls, tombs, and a meditation chamber. No one knows how the boulders were transported to the islands… some weigh over a ton, and there’s no evidence of any kind of tool being used. Island legend tells of levitation powers. At the end of the tour, I went back to the Village. My friends and I played scrabble on the outermost deck of the restaurant while watching the sunset on Sokehs Rock before ordering dinner.
Friday was scuba day number 2. This time Tony was two hours late, but he gave me a free polo to make up for it. While I knew that I was lucky to be alive after a first day of diving, he was my only connection, and I had conceded that scubadiving in Micronesia might not be such a bad way to go. He took me to a site called Black Coral, which during March is a Grouper sanctuary. When we got in, at about 70 feet you could see all of the 2-3 feet long groupers fighting over spawning territory at the bottom. It was like Planet Earth. The highlight of the trip, however, was seeing 3 rather large Gray Reef Sharks cruise by us in formation. Seeing a small white tip or black tip is pretty much guaranteed on every dive, but these Grays were a special treat. While Tony estimated them to be at about 9 feet, I guessed somewhere from 6 – 8 feet. They were not interested in us, and simply continued cruising in formation. Sharks are not aggressive. Unless you are chumming or carrying around a bloody fish in your hand, you are not likely to get noticed unless it’s a tiger shark, whom I would not be opposed to eradicating from the worlds’ oceans.
Saturday was Sokehs Rock climbing time. Sokehs Ridge is a fairly easy climb that can actually be driven most of the way, providing a good view of a massive rock between it and the ocean. The Sokehs Rock hike puts you on top of that massive rock, and is perilously dangerous. At one point in the hike I used a hanging vine to traverse a gully. At another point I was clinging to a rusting metal electrical pipe (that was once used to bring power to an antennae at the top of the rock) while trying to find a foothold on a 75 degree rock face. When we got to the top, two weary endemic owls flew off the edge. If you google pictures of Sokehs, imagine me standing on top of the huge rock.
On Sunday, a few WorldTeachers went to the south end of the island (about 45 minutes in the car) to try hiking the legendary six waterfalls. Our guide (one of the teacher’s students) wasn’t there, but we wandered around the tiny rural area until we ran into his brother and a friend, who took us. I didn’t know that places like that actually existed. All of the waterfalls looked fake, like they were CGI’d into fantasy movies. For the last one, the grand finale, we swam through an 8 foot wide and 30 yard long canal of unknown depth, with towering sheets of flat rock rising up on either side of us, in the middle of the jungle, and finally ended up in a pool fed by water coming down 20 feet from a huge heart shaped hole in a rock. It was a great way to end the trip.
I’m back from a week long spring break in Pohnpei, one of the Federated States of Micronesia. No, it’s not a fictional place – it’s real and it’s pretty awesome. The trip was great, mostly thanks to my friend Michaela, who is a WorldTeacher there. I tried to jam as much in as possible, and it worked out really well.
I arrived on Saturday, met up with Michaela at the airport, and was immediately dumbfounded by the mountains. I knew that it had mountains, but I could not get over how geologically different it was from the RMI, only a 2 hour plane trip away. There were also mangroves, streams, rivers, waterfalls, and did I mention FRESH WATER?! Everywhere. The capital of Pohnpei is Kolonia, a small city comparable to Majuro in everything except its elevation, which is more than Majuro’s maximum 5 feet above sea level.
On Sunday, Michaela and I had brunch with some expats at the world famous “Village,” an ecotourist’s dream come true. The Village is about a 15 minute car ride from Kolonia, on a paved (wow!) road. It’s a bunch of grass huts built into the side of a mountain, each with two water beds, electricity, and mahogany floors. Their restaurant is completely open and overlooks the water and the famous Sokehs Rock, and probably has the best food on the island. The view was unreal, and when combined with some mouth-watering macadamia nut banana pancakes and bacon… well… life was good.
After brunch, we hit up Lididuniap Falls, one of the many waterfalls on the island. I’ve heard that Pohnpei is second only to Kauai in terms of annual rainfall, but we were lucky enough to get hit by the rain while we were swimming in the waterfall, which made it more enjoyable.
On Tuesday, I hiked Sokehs Ridge by myself, which is a huge rock formation often compared to diamond head. It overlooks Kolonia. After the hike, I met up with Ken and Debbie, the American couple that lives on Gugeegue, for dinner at the Village. They also decided to spring break in Pohnpei.
Wednesday was scuba day number 1. Diving turned out to be much harder to arrange than expected. When you get off the plane in Pohnpei, you can get a free travel pamphlet that has a directory of about 10 dive shops on the island. After going through all of them and getting nothing but disconnects and confused wrong numbers, I realized they were not real dive shops, but dive shop ideas that existed at some point in ambitious Micronesian’s mind but were never followed through with. I went to the Village to ask if they could help me out – since I would be going alone, they offered to take me on a two tank dive for $200. Ouch. That is over $100 an hour. Sorry, can’t do it. Michaela to the rescue – she knew someone who had been diving here with someone who might work at more than just a dive shop idea. Well, it was much more. Tony, a half Pohnpeian half American ex-marine ran a small business that ran out of a shack with 3 old, empty-hulled boats propped up on trailors in the front yard. We made arrangements to meet Tuesday morning and he never showed up. On Wednesday, he was more than an hour late, and we weren’t in the water until eleven. He never asked to see my certification card and he never made me sign anything. Very unusual. We were about to get in the water at our first dive site when he asks me how long I’ve been diving. Then he asks what the deepest I’d been to was. I told my certification was only to a maximum of 60 feet, but that in Majuro they’d taken me to 75. He sad okay, and flung himself over the side of the boat. I had only just managed to catch up with him under water when I started to realize something was very wrong. We were very deep. I looked at my depth gauge: 105 feet. Hmm, I thought, that’s very deep,
…… but look at that really cool sea anemone. Wow, this is soooo coooooollll…. I’m under the OOOOcean… look, you can’t even see the top!!! I wonder if I can do a back flip down here with my gear on? What a neat fishy …….
I was narc’d. The technical term is nitrogen narcosis. Basically, when you go too deep too fast and your brain doesn’t get enough oxygen. It happens often, but usually you’re expecting it and they train you for it when you get advanced diving certifications. It didn’t even register with me until we were on our way back up that I had been diving under the influence of nitrogen. Yikes. Thankfully, nothing too exciting happened on the first dive anyway – the place we went to had been largely wiped out by the invasive coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, which has been known to destroy entire reefs. The second dive of the day was at Manta road, a place with two underwater cliffs on either side of the diver that manta rays often swim through. Our boat ride there was treacherous. The boat, which was not a dive boat but just an empty fiberglass shell with tanks sliding around inside, was slamming up against the waves at high speed. At one point a life jacket flew out of the back and Tony never even noticed. When we got to manta road, I hurried into the water, worried that if I hesitated that my conscience wouldn’t let me do another dive with him. I had my gear on, floating in the water, when I noticed a black mass with a 7 foot wingspan soaring by about 40 feet below me. I told Tony to hurry please, we’re missing the show, but he couldn’t find his mask. Apparently it had blown off the boat with the jacket. He looked over the side at me and said, “well… why don’t you just go ahead.” Uh…. What? “…I’m… I’m not doing the dive alone.” He said “What are you scared? Ha ha ha ha.” I didn’t say anything. Instead I sat there floating, angrily imagining driving back in his boat at breakneck speed without diving while the mantas laughed at me from below. I waited. He finally found a spare. We descended. At a 7 foot wingspan, the midsized manta did a flyby from about 5 feet away from me. I was humbled. It is now my goal to see a full sized adult before I leave the RMI.
Thursday, my Gugeegue friends and I took a tour with the Village to see the Nan Madol ruins. It is a man-made archipelago built on a coral reef from about 500-1500AD. Each island served a difference purpose, and all of them were connect by canoe-accessible canals, making it the “Venice of the Pacific.” The coolest island was, of course, the king’s, where huge boulders of basalt had been cut out of a nearby mountain and piled on top of each other to create walls, tombs, and a meditation chamber. No one knows how the boulders were transported to the islands… some weigh over a ton, and there’s no evidence of any kind of tool being used. Island legend tells of levitation powers. At the end of the tour, I went back to the Village. My friends and I played scrabble on the outermost deck of the restaurant while watching the sunset on Sokehs Rock before ordering dinner.
Friday was scuba day number 2. This time Tony was two hours late, but he gave me a free polo to make up for it. While I knew that I was lucky to be alive after a first day of diving, he was my only connection, and I had conceded that scubadiving in Micronesia might not be such a bad way to go. He took me to a site called Black Coral, which during March is a Grouper sanctuary. When we got in, at about 70 feet you could see all of the 2-3 feet long groupers fighting over spawning territory at the bottom. It was like Planet Earth. The highlight of the trip, however, was seeing 3 rather large Gray Reef Sharks cruise by us in formation. Seeing a small white tip or black tip is pretty much guaranteed on every dive, but these Grays were a special treat. While Tony estimated them to be at about 9 feet, I guessed somewhere from 6 – 8 feet. They were not interested in us, and simply continued cruising in formation. Sharks are not aggressive. Unless you are chumming or carrying around a bloody fish in your hand, you are not likely to get noticed unless it’s a tiger shark, whom I would not be opposed to eradicating from the worlds’ oceans.
Saturday was Sokehs Rock climbing time. Sokehs Ridge is a fairly easy climb that can actually be driven most of the way, providing a good view of a massive rock between it and the ocean. The Sokehs Rock hike puts you on top of that massive rock, and is perilously dangerous. At one point in the hike I used a hanging vine to traverse a gully. At another point I was clinging to a rusting metal electrical pipe (that was once used to bring power to an antennae at the top of the rock) while trying to find a foothold on a 75 degree rock face. When we got to the top, two weary endemic owls flew off the edge. If you google pictures of Sokehs, imagine me standing on top of the huge rock.
On Sunday, a few WorldTeachers went to the south end of the island (about 45 minutes in the car) to try hiking the legendary six waterfalls. Our guide (one of the teacher’s students) wasn’t there, but we wandered around the tiny rural area until we ran into his brother and a friend, who took us. I didn’t know that places like that actually existed. All of the waterfalls looked fake, like they were CGI’d into fantasy movies. For the last one, the grand finale, we swam through an 8 foot wide and 30 yard long canal of unknown depth, with towering sheets of flat rock rising up on either side of us, in the middle of the jungle, and finally ended up in a pool fed by water coming down 20 feet from a huge heart shaped hole in a rock. It was a great way to end the trip.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
2/24/08
The sense of relief brought to me by looking out my back window to see two giant catchments full to brim with clear, beautiful, freshwater is hard to explain. I feel like I won something. Dry season isn’t technically over, but we got hit by a relentless storm that has put most of Gugeegue under water. I was explaining how weird it was to turn on the faucet and wonder if water would come out (the catchments were down to about 6 inches before the storm) to my dad – “yeah, but when you get back, you’ll be shopping at Ralph Lauren and wondering if you should swap out your kitchen counters for granite.” While I don’t plan on owning a kitchen any time soon, I am curious about how I will reintegrate into other parts of American life. I think it will be pretty hard to spend $50 on polo after living on $300 a month for a year.
I am a softball coach. We are playing in the intramural league on Kwaj. It’s fun, and when there aren’t enough kids I play too. There’s no place to practice on Ebeye or Gugeegue though (there isn’t enough space) so we just go to the games and do our best – sometimes we have about 5 minutes for warm up before the game, and on the boat over I make them review their positions and batting order.
Times on the base are stressful. The commander is “reducing the footprint” because of budget cuts, and the axe is falling on about 30% of jobs this summer, and people are starting to find out who’s getting the boot. While it’s stressful enough for the Kwajalites, it’s also going to have a huge impact on the Marshallese in Ebeye. Everyone household employs a Marshallese maid, and most departments getting cut are serviced by Marshallese employees. In the long run, it’s probably good for the RMI not to be dependent on this unreliable service economy, but the structural adjustment is going to be harsh, as if unemployment issues weren’t bad enough already.
In other news, I’m meeting with all of the seniors at KAHS individually to discuss their plans for next year. For better or for worse (and it’s certainly arguable), almost all of them have the option to slide in to classes at the College of the Marshall Islands (CMI) in Majuro next year. I say “slide” because it doesn’t require any prerequisites – they take a placement test which determines if they can take credit classes or remedial pre-credit courses. No one is denied admission. The college has nursing, education, business administration, computer, and “liberal arts” programs, but their accreditation was just reinstated after being revoked a couple of years ago, and the quality and efficacy of the school is questionable, especially given its role as a one-stop-shop for all higher education in the country. There are very few other viable options for these kids. One is the University of the South Pacific (USP), which has a Majuro satellite campus and is based in Fiji. I’m not too familiar with it yet. About 40 kids start there every year, while 600 start at CMI (only about 9% of which will receive their AA degree in 2 years). Another 20 or so kids head out to Palau Community College (PCC), in the Micronesian island nation of Palau. PCC is more vocationally oriented, and the standards of education are generally higher in Palau than any other Micronesian country. Because this is our first year with a graduating class, most schools aren’t aware we exist. PCC responded to my request to send out a recruiter by promising to mail out admissions and financial aid info, which is a start.
What about the states? Well, there are a few problems with that. The first is – they are not academically prepared. They haven’t taken the TOEFL, or the SATs, or the ACTs, and don’t have the resources (financially or even physically) to take them. If they were prepared for a 2-year community or junior college or vocational school, which wouldn’t require those tests, there are other problems. The money is the first one. They can use American federal financial aid (like Pell Grants), but anyone who has gone through the college admissions process lately knows that compared to the costs of education those grants are a joke, especially if you can’t even scrounge up $50 for an application fee. Scholarships are available from their own government, but like everything else here, they are unreliable, inefficient, and you have to tear through a mess of beauro-web just to get any information about them. One important piece of information about RMI scholarships, however, is that students who have performed well at CMI already are given preference. Finally, even if they have the money, the cultural transition is often insurmountable. Responsibility, accountability, and motivation are not words used to characterize much in schools here, and expecting an 18-year-old to become a student over night in the midst of new temptations like broadband internet, cable tv, cheap drugs and alcohol, and seven elevens is as ridiculous as thinking the student is likely to come back to the RMI if he or she succeeds in the states.
For now, it seems like the most responsible thing for me to do is direct them into any college and encourage them to have a plan, and ask them to talk to their parents about it. The only concrete objective of the meetings is to make sure they all have an email address.
The sense of relief brought to me by looking out my back window to see two giant catchments full to brim with clear, beautiful, freshwater is hard to explain. I feel like I won something. Dry season isn’t technically over, but we got hit by a relentless storm that has put most of Gugeegue under water. I was explaining how weird it was to turn on the faucet and wonder if water would come out (the catchments were down to about 6 inches before the storm) to my dad – “yeah, but when you get back, you’ll be shopping at Ralph Lauren and wondering if you should swap out your kitchen counters for granite.” While I don’t plan on owning a kitchen any time soon, I am curious about how I will reintegrate into other parts of American life. I think it will be pretty hard to spend $50 on polo after living on $300 a month for a year.
I am a softball coach. We are playing in the intramural league on Kwaj. It’s fun, and when there aren’t enough kids I play too. There’s no place to practice on Ebeye or Gugeegue though (there isn’t enough space) so we just go to the games and do our best – sometimes we have about 5 minutes for warm up before the game, and on the boat over I make them review their positions and batting order.
Times on the base are stressful. The commander is “reducing the footprint” because of budget cuts, and the axe is falling on about 30% of jobs this summer, and people are starting to find out who’s getting the boot. While it’s stressful enough for the Kwajalites, it’s also going to have a huge impact on the Marshallese in Ebeye. Everyone household employs a Marshallese maid, and most departments getting cut are serviced by Marshallese employees. In the long run, it’s probably good for the RMI not to be dependent on this unreliable service economy, but the structural adjustment is going to be harsh, as if unemployment issues weren’t bad enough already.
In other news, I’m meeting with all of the seniors at KAHS individually to discuss their plans for next year. For better or for worse (and it’s certainly arguable), almost all of them have the option to slide in to classes at the College of the Marshall Islands (CMI) in Majuro next year. I say “slide” because it doesn’t require any prerequisites – they take a placement test which determines if they can take credit classes or remedial pre-credit courses. No one is denied admission. The college has nursing, education, business administration, computer, and “liberal arts” programs, but their accreditation was just reinstated after being revoked a couple of years ago, and the quality and efficacy of the school is questionable, especially given its role as a one-stop-shop for all higher education in the country. There are very few other viable options for these kids. One is the University of the South Pacific (USP), which has a Majuro satellite campus and is based in Fiji. I’m not too familiar with it yet. About 40 kids start there every year, while 600 start at CMI (only about 9% of which will receive their AA degree in 2 years). Another 20 or so kids head out to Palau Community College (PCC), in the Micronesian island nation of Palau. PCC is more vocationally oriented, and the standards of education are generally higher in Palau than any other Micronesian country. Because this is our first year with a graduating class, most schools aren’t aware we exist. PCC responded to my request to send out a recruiter by promising to mail out admissions and financial aid info, which is a start.
What about the states? Well, there are a few problems with that. The first is – they are not academically prepared. They haven’t taken the TOEFL, or the SATs, or the ACTs, and don’t have the resources (financially or even physically) to take them. If they were prepared for a 2-year community or junior college or vocational school, which wouldn’t require those tests, there are other problems. The money is the first one. They can use American federal financial aid (like Pell Grants), but anyone who has gone through the college admissions process lately knows that compared to the costs of education those grants are a joke, especially if you can’t even scrounge up $50 for an application fee. Scholarships are available from their own government, but like everything else here, they are unreliable, inefficient, and you have to tear through a mess of beauro-web just to get any information about them. One important piece of information about RMI scholarships, however, is that students who have performed well at CMI already are given preference. Finally, even if they have the money, the cultural transition is often insurmountable. Responsibility, accountability, and motivation are not words used to characterize much in schools here, and expecting an 18-year-old to become a student over night in the midst of new temptations like broadband internet, cable tv, cheap drugs and alcohol, and seven elevens is as ridiculous as thinking the student is likely to come back to the RMI if he or she succeeds in the states.
For now, it seems like the most responsible thing for me to do is direct them into any college and encourage them to have a plan, and ask them to talk to their parents about it. The only concrete objective of the meetings is to make sure they all have an email address.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
2/14/08
This last weekend was a 4-day weekend because of Liberation Day in Kwajalein Atoll, the day when the Americans came and killed all the Japanese occupying it during World War II. It was supposed to be a fun weekend. It did not go as expected.
The projector in my house broke. The lamp burnt out, and a replacement costs $500. The dvd-rom drive on my computer stopped recognizing discs. I now have no way to watch movies in my house. Very sad.
On Saturday morning, someone came to the door at 800am trying to use the minibus they gave Conor and Alex for the commute since they are now homeless and are sleeping on the furniture in our living rooms. It was the same guy who is a teacher at the elementary school and brings his budweisers with him to class and tried to fight the principal. I answered the door and told him to go away and then shut the door in his face.
On Sunday morning, my principal knocked on the door at 615am, wearing dress pants, a tank top, and a winter jacket, and wanted to know if he could borrow our projector. I told him it was broken but the other one was in Laura’s house. I guess he decided it would be better not to wake Laura, because he drove all the way back to Ebeye without a projector.
On Sunday, I cleaned my entire house. I did this because our WorldTeach assistant field director invited the Senator of Kwajalein, the Ambassador to the RMI from USA, and our whatever-of-education from Ebeye schools guy to my house for breakfast on Monday. The primary purpose was to discuss the future of the program with the Senator, since we haven’t been receiving much outreach from the community in terms of helping Conor and Alex do their jobs in Ebeye. Anyways, we were ready with coffee, tea, muffins, and sliced apples, and an immaculate house. No one showed. They completely blew us off. It was just as well – I have met all 3 of these people before, and no meeting involving any of them could ever be productive.
The rest of Monday was also disappointing because we were unable to get into Ebeye to see the festivities. Our school was involved in athletic events, and there were all kinds of races, tournaments, and an outrigger sailing competition that we missed because no one bothered to provide us with transportation even though we had all expressed interest.
One part of the festivities on Monday was a 7-mile run from the far end of Gugeegue to the far end of Ebeye along the causeway. I had been excited to run in it for months. Word on the street was that it would start at 3, but when I went out at 3 no one was on the causeway, so I went inside. Mr. Ken came over at 4 to say that he just saw about 30 people leaving on the run. I quickly changed clothes, put on my shoes, and grabbed my ipod after just having eaten a pb&j sandwich, and started sprinting down the causeway. I caught up with the last place person (who had already begun walking) after about 1 mile. I found out later that I started about 6 or 7 minutes after everyone else did. I finished the 7-mile race in 6th place in 50 minutes. It was fun, but I was a little disappointed because I’m certain I would have been in the top 3 if I had been able to start with everyone else. There was serious prize money involved – first place was around $100, and I received $15 for 6th. The race was mostly Marshallese men, but there were some Filipinos that ran and one enterprising American high schooler from Kwaj that came in second. I got to run parts of the race with a few students of mine who were brave enough to run, and tried to keep up in their bare feet. We offered them shoes but they are apparently more comfortable running without them. About 1/3 of the men ran without shoes. I almost broke my ankles 5 times with shoes – I wouldn’t have made it a quarter of a mile without them. About 2,000 people lined the streets of Ebeye to watch the race. They were very encouraging, which was great. My hope is that maybe some of them will now know my name, and call me Matt instead of just ripelle (American, or literally “person who wears clothes”) next time I’m in town.
This last weekend was a 4-day weekend because of Liberation Day in Kwajalein Atoll, the day when the Americans came and killed all the Japanese occupying it during World War II. It was supposed to be a fun weekend. It did not go as expected.
The projector in my house broke. The lamp burnt out, and a replacement costs $500. The dvd-rom drive on my computer stopped recognizing discs. I now have no way to watch movies in my house. Very sad.
On Saturday morning, someone came to the door at 800am trying to use the minibus they gave Conor and Alex for the commute since they are now homeless and are sleeping on the furniture in our living rooms. It was the same guy who is a teacher at the elementary school and brings his budweisers with him to class and tried to fight the principal. I answered the door and told him to go away and then shut the door in his face.
On Sunday morning, my principal knocked on the door at 615am, wearing dress pants, a tank top, and a winter jacket, and wanted to know if he could borrow our projector. I told him it was broken but the other one was in Laura’s house. I guess he decided it would be better not to wake Laura, because he drove all the way back to Ebeye without a projector.
On Sunday, I cleaned my entire house. I did this because our WorldTeach assistant field director invited the Senator of Kwajalein, the Ambassador to the RMI from USA, and our whatever-of-education from Ebeye schools guy to my house for breakfast on Monday. The primary purpose was to discuss the future of the program with the Senator, since we haven’t been receiving much outreach from the community in terms of helping Conor and Alex do their jobs in Ebeye. Anyways, we were ready with coffee, tea, muffins, and sliced apples, and an immaculate house. No one showed. They completely blew us off. It was just as well – I have met all 3 of these people before, and no meeting involving any of them could ever be productive.
The rest of Monday was also disappointing because we were unable to get into Ebeye to see the festivities. Our school was involved in athletic events, and there were all kinds of races, tournaments, and an outrigger sailing competition that we missed because no one bothered to provide us with transportation even though we had all expressed interest.
One part of the festivities on Monday was a 7-mile run from the far end of Gugeegue to the far end of Ebeye along the causeway. I had been excited to run in it for months. Word on the street was that it would start at 3, but when I went out at 3 no one was on the causeway, so I went inside. Mr. Ken came over at 4 to say that he just saw about 30 people leaving on the run. I quickly changed clothes, put on my shoes, and grabbed my ipod after just having eaten a pb&j sandwich, and started sprinting down the causeway. I caught up with the last place person (who had already begun walking) after about 1 mile. I found out later that I started about 6 or 7 minutes after everyone else did. I finished the 7-mile race in 6th place in 50 minutes. It was fun, but I was a little disappointed because I’m certain I would have been in the top 3 if I had been able to start with everyone else. There was serious prize money involved – first place was around $100, and I received $15 for 6th. The race was mostly Marshallese men, but there were some Filipinos that ran and one enterprising American high schooler from Kwaj that came in second. I got to run parts of the race with a few students of mine who were brave enough to run, and tried to keep up in their bare feet. We offered them shoes but they are apparently more comfortable running without them. About 1/3 of the men ran without shoes. I almost broke my ankles 5 times with shoes – I wouldn’t have made it a quarter of a mile without them. About 2,000 people lined the streets of Ebeye to watch the race. They were very encouraging, which was great. My hope is that maybe some of them will now know my name, and call me Matt instead of just ripelle (American, or literally “person who wears clothes”) next time I’m in town.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
1/28/08
Detention is working. Attendance is better. The best part about it is that the kids never know which experience they’re going to get – Staci teaches, Laura lets them do homework, Debbie makes them clean, Altred makes them write lines…. I make them sit there and do NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. With their eyes open and their heads up. It’s torturous. I just bring a book and occasionally glance up at them.
Alex and Boomer had their first basketball game playing in the community league on Friday night. The community basketball league is the most important thing that happens in Ebeye all year. Since Boomer and Alex live in here, they play for Gugeegue. All of Ebeye is divided up into rival neighborhoods that also have teams. The game was against Mon-ku-bok, a neighborhood that is usually the clear favorite every year. Ashley was the only woman at the game. There were hundreds, however, HUNDREDS, of little kids. And lots of men. It was the scrappiest game of basketball I have ever seen. Every time Alex rebounded, he was repeatedly slapped and jabbed and tomahawked without any calls. He described the court as “treacherous,” since it is uneven concrete and poorly lit in places, lined with little kids that usually are not paying any attention to what is going on. It was also extremely fast paced. They went for the fast break every time. Despite these challenges, Alex and Boomer led Gugeegue to do something never done before – they beat Mon-ku-bok. They may or may not have ignited a neighborhood gang war. Oh well. I said to a colleague during the game, “this is the hardest I have ever seen a Marshallese person work at anything,” which, sadly, is true (although their handicrafts are clearly very work-intensive). The colleague replied, “except getting drunk.” While cynical, it sometimes seems that basketball and getting drunk are the only talents the unemployed men on Ebeye have. Of course, there aren’t many other options for most of them.
Laura got ciguatera. Microsoft word is not yelling at me, so I hope that is how you spell it. She was poisoned by an eel she ate. Her fingers and toes became numb, and her tongue felt strange. She was admitted to the hospital in Ebeye and prescribed steroids. She seems better now, but I will not be trying eel any time soon.
One bus stopped working. The schedule is sustainable, but the bus driver whose bus still works sometimes refuses to make 6 trips a day (which is what the schedule requires), so, for example, on Friday kids were here until 6:30pm waiting for a bus that never came. They may have had to walk home.
I am making an effort to go to Pohnpei, one of the Federated States of Micronesia, for my spring break in March. The ticket is $500. It is a 1 and a half hour flight. Continental Airlines is clearly enjoying its Micronesian monopoly. Online, the ticket is $780 but I am told that it will be cheaper at the Continental counter on Kwaj. More news on that as it develops.
Detention is working. Attendance is better. The best part about it is that the kids never know which experience they’re going to get – Staci teaches, Laura lets them do homework, Debbie makes them clean, Altred makes them write lines…. I make them sit there and do NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. With their eyes open and their heads up. It’s torturous. I just bring a book and occasionally glance up at them.
Alex and Boomer had their first basketball game playing in the community league on Friday night. The community basketball league is the most important thing that happens in Ebeye all year. Since Boomer and Alex live in here, they play for Gugeegue. All of Ebeye is divided up into rival neighborhoods that also have teams. The game was against Mon-ku-bok, a neighborhood that is usually the clear favorite every year. Ashley was the only woman at the game. There were hundreds, however, HUNDREDS, of little kids. And lots of men. It was the scrappiest game of basketball I have ever seen. Every time Alex rebounded, he was repeatedly slapped and jabbed and tomahawked without any calls. He described the court as “treacherous,” since it is uneven concrete and poorly lit in places, lined with little kids that usually are not paying any attention to what is going on. It was also extremely fast paced. They went for the fast break every time. Despite these challenges, Alex and Boomer led Gugeegue to do something never done before – they beat Mon-ku-bok. They may or may not have ignited a neighborhood gang war. Oh well. I said to a colleague during the game, “this is the hardest I have ever seen a Marshallese person work at anything,” which, sadly, is true (although their handicrafts are clearly very work-intensive). The colleague replied, “except getting drunk.” While cynical, it sometimes seems that basketball and getting drunk are the only talents the unemployed men on Ebeye have. Of course, there aren’t many other options for most of them.
Laura got ciguatera. Microsoft word is not yelling at me, so I hope that is how you spell it. She was poisoned by an eel she ate. Her fingers and toes became numb, and her tongue felt strange. She was admitted to the hospital in Ebeye and prescribed steroids. She seems better now, but I will not be trying eel any time soon.
One bus stopped working. The schedule is sustainable, but the bus driver whose bus still works sometimes refuses to make 6 trips a day (which is what the schedule requires), so, for example, on Friday kids were here until 6:30pm waiting for a bus that never came. They may have had to walk home.
I am making an effort to go to Pohnpei, one of the Federated States of Micronesia, for my spring break in March. The ticket is $500. It is a 1 and a half hour flight. Continental Airlines is clearly enjoying its Micronesian monopoly. Online, the ticket is $780 but I am told that it will be cheaper at the Continental counter on Kwaj. More news on that as it develops.
1/17/08
When it rains in New York, or Los Angeles, or Hawaii (where some readers of this blog apparently live), it is generally thought of negatively. Rain is usually gloomy, cold, and sometimes depressing. Today it rained here in Gugeegue, and I was the opposite of depressed. It poured. It rained so much that a third of our students decided for themselves that school was cancelled (“Mr., we’re made of chocolate, we’ll melt”). Rain usually is not that important to me, but today it is. We are almost 1/3 of the way through with the dry season (from what I am told) and the two huge tanks of water in my backyard (think 8 foot diameter, 7 feet tall) that provide my drinking, showering, and flushing water are full. This is very good.
Unfortunately, this rainy day of truancy coincided with our new attempt to control absences – we are experimenting with a new detention system. For all of the students who missed 2 classes without an excuse (note) on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, there will be detention tomorrow afternoon with yours truly. As of tonight, I will have 99 detainees. That is literally a third of our school. Hopefully, it will get their attention, but I’m going to have to get some more people to help out or it’s going to be “fun after school party time with mr. matt.” That would not be good.
Our veteran married American teacher gave me a thermometer the other day. She left in my house, where it sat for two days. It was stuck on 90 degrees the whole time it was in there, so I brought it back and told her it was broken. She said, “Matt, it’s not broken, it really is 90 degrees in your house.” She put it in the freezer for five minutes, took it out, and it read 28 degrees. She was right. It’s so hot in my house that I thought the thermometer was broken. The funny thing is, I’m not really hot anymore. When it rains I wear a jacket and wish I’d brought PJs. Can I ever go back? (speaking of, if you do have any suggestions for future employment when I come back, I am all ears.)
Alex just asked me to guess how old this Marshallese guy we know is. I guessed, 60, but then I guessed 45 – the truth is, it’s impossible to tell. The life expectancy is in the low 60s, and they don’t really have any semblance of health-consciousness, so you really have no idea how old people are. Alex said, “Yeah, well they’re taking me down with them. I’m in the worst shape of my life.” Alex has no kitchen and lives in Ebeye, so he eats most of his meals at the fried chicken-parts-that-aren’t-breasts-but-might-be-wings-or-drumsticks-on-a-good-day vendor in the tiny little grocery store. We signed up for a one year here, but really it’s a five year commitment. What they don’t tell you is that you lose the other four years at the end… when you’re dead.
When it rains in New York, or Los Angeles, or Hawaii (where some readers of this blog apparently live), it is generally thought of negatively. Rain is usually gloomy, cold, and sometimes depressing. Today it rained here in Gugeegue, and I was the opposite of depressed. It poured. It rained so much that a third of our students decided for themselves that school was cancelled (“Mr., we’re made of chocolate, we’ll melt”). Rain usually is not that important to me, but today it is. We are almost 1/3 of the way through with the dry season (from what I am told) and the two huge tanks of water in my backyard (think 8 foot diameter, 7 feet tall) that provide my drinking, showering, and flushing water are full. This is very good.
Unfortunately, this rainy day of truancy coincided with our new attempt to control absences – we are experimenting with a new detention system. For all of the students who missed 2 classes without an excuse (note) on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, there will be detention tomorrow afternoon with yours truly. As of tonight, I will have 99 detainees. That is literally a third of our school. Hopefully, it will get their attention, but I’m going to have to get some more people to help out or it’s going to be “fun after school party time with mr. matt.” That would not be good.
Our veteran married American teacher gave me a thermometer the other day. She left in my house, where it sat for two days. It was stuck on 90 degrees the whole time it was in there, so I brought it back and told her it was broken. She said, “Matt, it’s not broken, it really is 90 degrees in your house.” She put it in the freezer for five minutes, took it out, and it read 28 degrees. She was right. It’s so hot in my house that I thought the thermometer was broken. The funny thing is, I’m not really hot anymore. When it rains I wear a jacket and wish I’d brought PJs. Can I ever go back? (speaking of, if you do have any suggestions for future employment when I come back, I am all ears.)
Alex just asked me to guess how old this Marshallese guy we know is. I guessed, 60, but then I guessed 45 – the truth is, it’s impossible to tell. The life expectancy is in the low 60s, and they don’t really have any semblance of health-consciousness, so you really have no idea how old people are. Alex said, “Yeah, well they’re taking me down with them. I’m in the worst shape of my life.” Alex has no kitchen and lives in Ebeye, so he eats most of his meals at the fried chicken-parts-that-aren’t-breasts-but-might-be-wings-or-drumsticks-on-a-good-day vendor in the tiny little grocery store. We signed up for a one year here, but really it’s a five year commitment. What they don’t tell you is that you lose the other four years at the end… when you’re dead.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
1/16/08
We have a new government. The new President made a visit to Ebeye last week. I am already skeptical, however, because one of my students was giving me a report (informally) on his speech, and he promised there would be 3 planes and 2 new boats by the end of the month, and that the “American money will pour down like rain on Ebeye.” Those are hard, if not impossible promises to keep. Oh yeah, and he said he’s really excited and happy to be President… great.
A friend of mine, an Australian who works at the Marshallese EPA in Majuro, came out to Gugeegue yesterday. He’s in town because there is a boat that is half sunk that is blocking the port at Ebeye, and the Matson stevedore company has refused to deliver some things because of it. He’s going to do a dive and recommend strategies for removing it. He is also presenting a proposal for fisheries protection, since our reef fish have been utterly depleted in this atoll by individual spearfishing – I don’t feel too guilty though, I’ve only caught about 10 fish since I’ve been here. He was telling me how the fecal chloroform levels in the ocean and lagoon around Ebeye are off the charts – basically, there’s poop in the water everywhere, and it’s not safe. I asked if while he was out here he might do the same tests at Gugeegue.
Alex and Connor will most likely be moving back in with us at Gugeegue. They discovered over Christmas break that the Ministry of Education had never paid their landlord for their apartment once over the last 3 months. They are a little dismayed with the whole situation, including WorldTeach’s lack of oversight to ensure something like this didn’t happen. Alex has already moved back in and is sleeping on our couch because he had an allergic reaction to the toxic mold that is growing there.
We have a new government. The new President made a visit to Ebeye last week. I am already skeptical, however, because one of my students was giving me a report (informally) on his speech, and he promised there would be 3 planes and 2 new boats by the end of the month, and that the “American money will pour down like rain on Ebeye.” Those are hard, if not impossible promises to keep. Oh yeah, and he said he’s really excited and happy to be President… great.
A friend of mine, an Australian who works at the Marshallese EPA in Majuro, came out to Gugeegue yesterday. He’s in town because there is a boat that is half sunk that is blocking the port at Ebeye, and the Matson stevedore company has refused to deliver some things because of it. He’s going to do a dive and recommend strategies for removing it. He is also presenting a proposal for fisheries protection, since our reef fish have been utterly depleted in this atoll by individual spearfishing – I don’t feel too guilty though, I’ve only caught about 10 fish since I’ve been here. He was telling me how the fecal chloroform levels in the ocean and lagoon around Ebeye are off the charts – basically, there’s poop in the water everywhere, and it’s not safe. I asked if while he was out here he might do the same tests at Gugeegue.
Alex and Connor will most likely be moving back in with us at Gugeegue. They discovered over Christmas break that the Ministry of Education had never paid their landlord for their apartment once over the last 3 months. They are a little dismayed with the whole situation, including WorldTeach’s lack of oversight to ensure something like this didn’t happen. Alex has already moved back in and is sleeping on our couch because he had an allergic reaction to the toxic mold that is growing there.
1/9/08
Happy New Year. Mine is.
I got to spend Christmas in Honolulu with my family. While I was there, a couple of RMI related things happened. One was sad, one was uplifting. A waitress at the hotel restaurant was also a teacher at the local Waianae homeless shelter. Apparently half of the homeless kids are Marshallese, and the other half are Chuukese (sp?), another Micronesian place (Chuuk). That was sad. Many of them save enough money to buy the plane ticket, but arrive with no skills and no connections – hence the homeless shelters. The other thing that was unexpected was finding a wall of Marshallese handicrafts for sale in the Turtle Bay Resort Gift Shop on the North Shore, all labeled “Polynesian Handicrafts,” an assaulting inaccuracy. The bags that I bought my mother and sister for $30-something were only $175…. If anyone is in the market for starting a non-profit, setting up connections between American retailers and Marshallese handicraft makers might be fruitful. The handicrafts are awesome – Oprah has purportedly listed the “Kili bag” as one of her 100 favorite things ever. Google it. Shockingly, the Marshall Islands were not able to provide 100 bags within a week for her audience as requested. Zeut.
One would think that my return to the United States would have been shocking and culturally stimulating. Alas, returning from international sojourns has become a bit old hat. Much more startling was my return to Majuro, the capital city of the Marshalls where I spent my first month here orienting. When I arrived in Majuro the first time in August, I noticed poverty, was overwhelmed by the lack of modern conveniences, and felt very uncomfortable. After having spent five months in Ebeye, Majuro is a thriving metropolis. There are stores, small businesses, hotels, restaurants, a jewelry store, handicraft shops, car dealerships, dive shops, a “college”, a conference center, and, well… it’s almost a real city.
My time in Majuro, however, was not all that exciting. In Gugeegue, I have my own bed, my own kitchen, and running water. When I got to Majuro, WorldTeach put us into an apartment that had barely enough floor space for everyone to have their own mat and no water. Not entirely their fault – we were supposed to have water – who knows what happened – the owner said it ran out. But, for the outer islanders who sleep on concrete because it’s too hot to sleep on a mat and haven’t eaten anything but rice for the last 4 weeks because of food shortages, it was awesome. For me… I wanted to go home. Thankfully, that was only for two nights. We were then relocated to the Marshall Islands Resort (formerly the Outrigger), infamous for its brief mention in The Sex Lives of Cannibals (I only had to kill one cockroach though), for the WorldTeach mid-service conference. The conference was mostly for the benefit of the outer islanders’ sanity. We got to see New Years in Majuro, though, which was … interesting. They close down the main strip and sell shots of liquor on the street while children run around throwing firecrackers up in the air and waving glow sticks in your face. After the countdown (which was 6 minutes early) all of the white people on island started dancing in front of the band, followed by eager Marshallese children on sugar highs, and observed by a distinctly non-participatory somber semicircle of Marshallese adults. The division was only broken by the occasional hammered Marshallese 30-something man attempting to sexually harass an American woman.
I just want to clarify something before continuing – while all this was going on, the nation is in the middle of a crisis. The election in November had not been sorted out yet (it made Bush/Gore in 2000 look good), so the country had no government, and the planes have been grounded since septemeber, leaving the outer islands reliant on completely unreliable shipping boats for food supplies, which (surprise) have not been reliable. On top of that, the US military has announced plans to drastically pull out of Kwajalein within the next few years, leaving GAPING holes in the Marshallese service economy on Ebeye, which is second only to the government in terms of number of Marshallese employed. But great, let’s celebrate!..
Now I’m back in Gugeegue. The buses are apparently working… although I am very skeptical. Our head-teacher has devised a bus schedule that will allow us to have school at the same time every day even if there is only one bus working, so hopefully this quarter will be more productive than the last – it wouldn’t be hard.
I’m optimistic though. Something weird happened yesterday, our first day of class - I was really happy to see the little hooligans when they got off the bus. I guess I missed them.
Happy New Year. Mine is.
I got to spend Christmas in Honolulu with my family. While I was there, a couple of RMI related things happened. One was sad, one was uplifting. A waitress at the hotel restaurant was also a teacher at the local Waianae homeless shelter. Apparently half of the homeless kids are Marshallese, and the other half are Chuukese (sp?), another Micronesian place (Chuuk). That was sad. Many of them save enough money to buy the plane ticket, but arrive with no skills and no connections – hence the homeless shelters. The other thing that was unexpected was finding a wall of Marshallese handicrafts for sale in the Turtle Bay Resort Gift Shop on the North Shore, all labeled “Polynesian Handicrafts,” an assaulting inaccuracy. The bags that I bought my mother and sister for $30-something were only $175…. If anyone is in the market for starting a non-profit, setting up connections between American retailers and Marshallese handicraft makers might be fruitful. The handicrafts are awesome – Oprah has purportedly listed the “Kili bag” as one of her 100 favorite things ever. Google it. Shockingly, the Marshall Islands were not able to provide 100 bags within a week for her audience as requested. Zeut.
One would think that my return to the United States would have been shocking and culturally stimulating. Alas, returning from international sojourns has become a bit old hat. Much more startling was my return to Majuro, the capital city of the Marshalls where I spent my first month here orienting. When I arrived in Majuro the first time in August, I noticed poverty, was overwhelmed by the lack of modern conveniences, and felt very uncomfortable. After having spent five months in Ebeye, Majuro is a thriving metropolis. There are stores, small businesses, hotels, restaurants, a jewelry store, handicraft shops, car dealerships, dive shops, a “college”, a conference center, and, well… it’s almost a real city.
My time in Majuro, however, was not all that exciting. In Gugeegue, I have my own bed, my own kitchen, and running water. When I got to Majuro, WorldTeach put us into an apartment that had barely enough floor space for everyone to have their own mat and no water. Not entirely their fault – we were supposed to have water – who knows what happened – the owner said it ran out. But, for the outer islanders who sleep on concrete because it’s too hot to sleep on a mat and haven’t eaten anything but rice for the last 4 weeks because of food shortages, it was awesome. For me… I wanted to go home. Thankfully, that was only for two nights. We were then relocated to the Marshall Islands Resort (formerly the Outrigger), infamous for its brief mention in The Sex Lives of Cannibals (I only had to kill one cockroach though), for the WorldTeach mid-service conference. The conference was mostly for the benefit of the outer islanders’ sanity. We got to see New Years in Majuro, though, which was … interesting. They close down the main strip and sell shots of liquor on the street while children run around throwing firecrackers up in the air and waving glow sticks in your face. After the countdown (which was 6 minutes early) all of the white people on island started dancing in front of the band, followed by eager Marshallese children on sugar highs, and observed by a distinctly non-participatory somber semicircle of Marshallese adults. The division was only broken by the occasional hammered Marshallese 30-something man attempting to sexually harass an American woman.
I just want to clarify something before continuing – while all this was going on, the nation is in the middle of a crisis. The election in November had not been sorted out yet (it made Bush/Gore in 2000 look good), so the country had no government, and the planes have been grounded since septemeber, leaving the outer islands reliant on completely unreliable shipping boats for food supplies, which (surprise) have not been reliable. On top of that, the US military has announced plans to drastically pull out of Kwajalein within the next few years, leaving GAPING holes in the Marshallese service economy on Ebeye, which is second only to the government in terms of number of Marshallese employed. But great, let’s celebrate!..
Now I’m back in Gugeegue. The buses are apparently working… although I am very skeptical. Our head-teacher has devised a bus schedule that will allow us to have school at the same time every day even if there is only one bus working, so hopefully this quarter will be more productive than the last – it wouldn’t be hard.
I’m optimistic though. Something weird happened yesterday, our first day of class - I was really happy to see the little hooligans when they got off the bus. I guess I missed them.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Monday, September 3, 2007
9/4/07
Laura has a job. Staci is here – and she likes to make food. YAY. Except that much of what she makes is contingent on someone else doing the baking (someone last year loved to bake) – so I am the new baking trainee. Hm… we’ll see I guess.
Yesterday was the worst teaching experience so far. I set up a measurements lab, so that we could learn how to measure length, volume, time, mass, and temperature. We don’t really have the equipment to do temperature, so I just pretended with a blackboard thermometer. Anyways, 4 out of 5 classes went really smoothly. Then the 5th, the last period of the day, was awful. The kids would not listen to the instructions but then when the lab started they would ask questions. They would get up and walk around and sing and dance and stuff, after I had repeatedly yelled at them or politely asked them to stop. So, finally, I lost it. I asked them how old they were – “15”… ”16”… and I said really?! Because you are acting like 5th graders! (which does not sound as cliché when your first language isn’t English)… then I went on to say “some of you are out getting pregnant or impregnating people – if you are old enough to do that then you are old enough to shut up and follow directions!” That shut them up. And while it may have been abrupt, it’s true – I have 5 students on my roster that haven’t come yet and have cancelled their registrations because they got pregnant or found out they were pregnant between the time of registration and the time school started. This is not because they don’t have access to birth control or don’t know how to use it – condoms are free at the hospital and the school (we have a box in our house that kids will come and ask for) and they have had sex-ed since 7th grade. So I told them, if you’re old enough to make adult decisions, you’re old enough to act like an adult. Then I cancelled the measurement lesson and made them write a composition on why they were in school. I got some interesting responses. Most of them were “I’m sorry,” or weird clichés like “education is key for our children and future.” Some were like “so I can get job on Kwaj” (the American military base that is the reason for Ebeye’s massive influx of people) or “so I am ready for family.” Anyway, at the end of class, I told them not to come back tomorrow and to stay in Ebeye unless they changed their attitude and decided to follow the rules instead of making my life miserable. I explained why I am here, how I am not getting paid, and how I think their education is important but I can’t help them unless they help me. Today was a million times better. Three or four kids didn’t show up for class, but the class actually got to learn. And now the kids in that class are terrified of me.
A friend of mine recently emailed me some questions – and I thought they were good ones, so I am going to post the answers here. You guys should all do the same thing – if you want to know, chances are other people do too and I am just forgetting to state the obvious… so email me.
Do you still feel like you made the right decision? Yes, I do. I’m glad I am here. Part of me wishes I had gone somewhere that would allow me to use more of my econ degree (instead of teaching science) but yeah, I am still excited about being here.
Is it beautiful there? Yes and no. Ebeye is a ghetto – there are virtually no trees or vegetation, people defecate in the ocean and urinate on the streets, and it is more impoverished than any American city I have ever seen. Its “beaches” are covered in trash, and the ocean around it smells of sewerage. On the other hand, most of Gugeegue is absolutely awesome – there is still some trash lining the shore – in particular old machinery is just left wherever it last worked to rot away for eternity, including a huge ship that appears to have rammed into the old dock (before the causeway was built). The beach we sometimes go to is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but it’s owned by the chief, so we have to be very discrete when we go there.
Have you made any friends? Yes. Mostly just the other American teachers, but there is a family (the mom is Phillipina, the dad is from the Gilbert Islands, but the 16 children (!!! the origin of all of them is unclear) are Marshallese since they have lived here forever. They come over and hang out every night, and vary in age from a senior in high school to little 5 year olds. Last weekend we had a little welcome party and sang karaoke with them and danced and then the adults played cards, all at laura’s apartment next door.
What do you do in your spare time? In my spare time I like to go spear fishing (usually without the intent to spear anything) or just hang out at the beach, or read Harry Potter – I started when I got here and I am halfway through year 3. Also, I eat. Lots and lots of food. The heat has made my metabolism even (unbelievably) faster
Laura has a job. Staci is here – and she likes to make food. YAY. Except that much of what she makes is contingent on someone else doing the baking (someone last year loved to bake) – so I am the new baking trainee. Hm… we’ll see I guess.
Yesterday was the worst teaching experience so far. I set up a measurements lab, so that we could learn how to measure length, volume, time, mass, and temperature. We don’t really have the equipment to do temperature, so I just pretended with a blackboard thermometer. Anyways, 4 out of 5 classes went really smoothly. Then the 5th, the last period of the day, was awful. The kids would not listen to the instructions but then when the lab started they would ask questions. They would get up and walk around and sing and dance and stuff, after I had repeatedly yelled at them or politely asked them to stop. So, finally, I lost it. I asked them how old they were – “15”… ”16”… and I said really?! Because you are acting like 5th graders! (which does not sound as cliché when your first language isn’t English)… then I went on to say “some of you are out getting pregnant or impregnating people – if you are old enough to do that then you are old enough to shut up and follow directions!” That shut them up. And while it may have been abrupt, it’s true – I have 5 students on my roster that haven’t come yet and have cancelled their registrations because they got pregnant or found out they were pregnant between the time of registration and the time school started. This is not because they don’t have access to birth control or don’t know how to use it – condoms are free at the hospital and the school (we have a box in our house that kids will come and ask for) and they have had sex-ed since 7th grade. So I told them, if you’re old enough to make adult decisions, you’re old enough to act like an adult. Then I cancelled the measurement lesson and made them write a composition on why they were in school. I got some interesting responses. Most of them were “I’m sorry,” or weird clichés like “education is key for our children and future.” Some were like “so I can get job on Kwaj” (the American military base that is the reason for Ebeye’s massive influx of people) or “so I am ready for family.” Anyway, at the end of class, I told them not to come back tomorrow and to stay in Ebeye unless they changed their attitude and decided to follow the rules instead of making my life miserable. I explained why I am here, how I am not getting paid, and how I think their education is important but I can’t help them unless they help me. Today was a million times better. Three or four kids didn’t show up for class, but the class actually got to learn. And now the kids in that class are terrified of me.
A friend of mine recently emailed me some questions – and I thought they were good ones, so I am going to post the answers here. You guys should all do the same thing – if you want to know, chances are other people do too and I am just forgetting to state the obvious… so email me.
Do you still feel like you made the right decision? Yes, I do. I’m glad I am here. Part of me wishes I had gone somewhere that would allow me to use more of my econ degree (instead of teaching science) but yeah, I am still excited about being here.
Is it beautiful there? Yes and no. Ebeye is a ghetto – there are virtually no trees or vegetation, people defecate in the ocean and urinate on the streets, and it is more impoverished than any American city I have ever seen. Its “beaches” are covered in trash, and the ocean around it smells of sewerage. On the other hand, most of Gugeegue is absolutely awesome – there is still some trash lining the shore – in particular old machinery is just left wherever it last worked to rot away for eternity, including a huge ship that appears to have rammed into the old dock (before the causeway was built). The beach we sometimes go to is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but it’s owned by the chief, so we have to be very discrete when we go there.
Have you made any friends? Yes. Mostly just the other American teachers, but there is a family (the mom is Phillipina, the dad is from the Gilbert Islands, but the 16 children (!!! the origin of all of them is unclear) are Marshallese since they have lived here forever. They come over and hang out every night, and vary in age from a senior in high school to little 5 year olds. Last weekend we had a little welcome party and sang karaoke with them and danced and then the adults played cards, all at laura’s apartment next door.
What do you do in your spare time? In my spare time I like to go spear fishing (usually without the intent to spear anything) or just hang out at the beach, or read Harry Potter – I started when I got here and I am halfway through year 3. Also, I eat. Lots and lots of food. The heat has made my metabolism even (unbelievably) faster
9/2/07
It’s been over a week without any blogs. That is not because things aren’t happening. It’s because too many things are happening. And because there is never power. And when there is power, the internet never works. So… I do it when I can.
The day after I wrote the last blog, the second day of school, school was cancelled because the schedule was not working and because the vice principal decided he wasn’t going to work. The next day, Friday, was the first real, complete, day of school. I talked about rules to 5 silent classrooms.
Last week, however, was a different story. I started out -- wait, I just want to pause for a second to say that I am sitting outside the locked school right now trying to tap into its “wireless” and two dogs are drooling all over my laptop and a kitten just jumped into my lap and another one is sticking its entire face into my pocket. Ok, so I started out the school week talking about rules in the classroom, which they seemed to be okay with, then moved on to covering chapter 1 in both of the textbooks I had been given – chemistry for my chem/physics 11th graders, and biology for my 10th graders. This was not a well thought out plan. I have no curriculum, so I can cover anything I want, and the teacher last year just listed out all of the chapters she thought I should cover. Unfortunately, these kids are in no way equipped to read, comprehend, or even physically use American textbooks, or textbooks at all for that matter, so they are pretty much a waste of space. The academic level is about 5th or 6th grade, but the problem, as one of the veteran American teachers here put it to me, is that they were never taught elementary procedures – like how to wait patiently and hand in your worksheet one at a time at the end of the class instead of all throwing your worksheets at him at the end of the class as your trample anyone and everything running out the door as soon as the hammer hits the rusted oxygen tank (the bell). So, while I am trying to do a unit on scientific measurement, it might be more useful to just practice basic procedures. Lab groups were a disaster. I set up measuring stations for mass, volume, time, temperature, and length (even though I have no thermometer and they broke the scale on the first day), but they would shout “FINISHED MISTAA” every time they wanted to move onto the next station and then would just wander around the class distracting other people. So, I have already had to lay down the law a few times and given kids the option to leave my classroom if they wanted to continue talking, singing, dancing, or whatever it was that they were doing. The problem is they all have a language that they can speak to each other in that I don’t understand, so it makes monitoring the groups really difficult. Demonstrations rather than labs may be a prominent feature in my teaching.
In terms of housing and all that fun stuff – it has been chaos. Our principal is still not on the atoll, so Laura runs the school. The problem is, the ministry of education decided they didn’t want Laura to be the guidance counselor this year, and so they hired one who hasn’t arrived yet, but if he comes, Laura is quitting – she hasn’t gotten a paycheck for the last 3 months already. And if Laura quits, so does our principal. To make things more interesting, we were grocery shopping in Ebeye last week and ran into a white guy, and so we asked him what he was doing. He said he had just flown in, and was supposed to teach at the high school on guegeegue. Hm… so, this other guy, Tristan, who no one was told was coming (it wasn’t through worldteach) just kind of showed up, and is now sleeping on my couch. And oh, by the way, his wife is coming soon, and they were promised a place of their own. Staci, my real housemate, finally got here yesterday, so Boomer, Ashley, Alex, and Connor are all crammed into housing meant for 2 without a working stove. Also, my house is a sauna without air conditioning, and while they have promised to come fix it about 4 times now, no progress has been made. I would leave the doors open but the mosquitoes think I’m tasty.
To de-stress yesterday I went spearfishing with Connor – I didn’t catch any fish, but I wasn’t really trying (we already had a dinner thing to go to so there wasn’t really a reason to kill anything). Connor, however, did catch a fish, and so while he swam the 40 yards back to shore to drop it off (Marshallese people just tie them around their wastes with hanger wires), I looked up after diving down about 20 feet and was about 15 feet away from a 4 foot whitetip reef shark. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and they aren’t dangerous unless you are bleeding or have a bleeding fish tied around your waste, but for that half a second where you don’t know what kind of shark it is, especially if you are alone, it’s petrifying.
It’s been over a week without any blogs. That is not because things aren’t happening. It’s because too many things are happening. And because there is never power. And when there is power, the internet never works. So… I do it when I can.
The day after I wrote the last blog, the second day of school, school was cancelled because the schedule was not working and because the vice principal decided he wasn’t going to work. The next day, Friday, was the first real, complete, day of school. I talked about rules to 5 silent classrooms.
Last week, however, was a different story. I started out -- wait, I just want to pause for a second to say that I am sitting outside the locked school right now trying to tap into its “wireless” and two dogs are drooling all over my laptop and a kitten just jumped into my lap and another one is sticking its entire face into my pocket. Ok, so I started out the school week talking about rules in the classroom, which they seemed to be okay with, then moved on to covering chapter 1 in both of the textbooks I had been given – chemistry for my chem/physics 11th graders, and biology for my 10th graders. This was not a well thought out plan. I have no curriculum, so I can cover anything I want, and the teacher last year just listed out all of the chapters she thought I should cover. Unfortunately, these kids are in no way equipped to read, comprehend, or even physically use American textbooks, or textbooks at all for that matter, so they are pretty much a waste of space. The academic level is about 5th or 6th grade, but the problem, as one of the veteran American teachers here put it to me, is that they were never taught elementary procedures – like how to wait patiently and hand in your worksheet one at a time at the end of the class instead of all throwing your worksheets at him at the end of the class as your trample anyone and everything running out the door as soon as the hammer hits the rusted oxygen tank (the bell). So, while I am trying to do a unit on scientific measurement, it might be more useful to just practice basic procedures. Lab groups were a disaster. I set up measuring stations for mass, volume, time, temperature, and length (even though I have no thermometer and they broke the scale on the first day), but they would shout “FINISHED MISTAA” every time they wanted to move onto the next station and then would just wander around the class distracting other people. So, I have already had to lay down the law a few times and given kids the option to leave my classroom if they wanted to continue talking, singing, dancing, or whatever it was that they were doing. The problem is they all have a language that they can speak to each other in that I don’t understand, so it makes monitoring the groups really difficult. Demonstrations rather than labs may be a prominent feature in my teaching.
In terms of housing and all that fun stuff – it has been chaos. Our principal is still not on the atoll, so Laura runs the school. The problem is, the ministry of education decided they didn’t want Laura to be the guidance counselor this year, and so they hired one who hasn’t arrived yet, but if he comes, Laura is quitting – she hasn’t gotten a paycheck for the last 3 months already. And if Laura quits, so does our principal. To make things more interesting, we were grocery shopping in Ebeye last week and ran into a white guy, and so we asked him what he was doing. He said he had just flown in, and was supposed to teach at the high school on guegeegue. Hm… so, this other guy, Tristan, who no one was told was coming (it wasn’t through worldteach) just kind of showed up, and is now sleeping on my couch. And oh, by the way, his wife is coming soon, and they were promised a place of their own. Staci, my real housemate, finally got here yesterday, so Boomer, Ashley, Alex, and Connor are all crammed into housing meant for 2 without a working stove. Also, my house is a sauna without air conditioning, and while they have promised to come fix it about 4 times now, no progress has been made. I would leave the doors open but the mosquitoes think I’m tasty.
To de-stress yesterday I went spearfishing with Connor – I didn’t catch any fish, but I wasn’t really trying (we already had a dinner thing to go to so there wasn’t really a reason to kill anything). Connor, however, did catch a fish, and so while he swam the 40 yards back to shore to drop it off (Marshallese people just tie them around their wastes with hanger wires), I looked up after diving down about 20 feet and was about 15 feet away from a 4 foot whitetip reef shark. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and they aren’t dangerous unless you are bleeding or have a bleeding fish tied around your waste, but for that half a second where you don’t know what kind of shark it is, especially if you are alone, it’s petrifying.
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