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.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
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.
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