Surviving Paradise (7 page)

So I learned some important Ujae lessons: never throw away anything that could possibly be useful, look at everything as multipurpose, and never say that something is impossible with what you have. What a good feeling that was, no longer having to purchase solutions.
I could survive without that luxury now, and I found it to be an enjoyable deprivation. When my other bag arrived on day twenty-one, it felt almost intrusive—except for the letters from friends and family. I rationed these as carefully as provisions during a famine, because that's what they were.

HAVING LEARNED A BIT OF MARSHALLESE FROM MY HOST FAMILY, I
felt confident enough to approach some of the other men. Hanging out was for them an obsession and an art form. The context might be
iukkure
(“playing sports”),
kope
(“drinking coffee”),
eonod
(“fishing”),
jerakrok
(“sailing”), or
jambo
(“going on a trip”), but the main event was always
bwebwenato
(“chatting”).

I first became acquainted with the art of
bwebwenato
while I watched the men drinking coffee in the morning. They would gather at the De Brums' property and sit around their outdoor table. These men enjoyed their daily cup, but it wasn't what they came for. The beverage was just a prop, an excuse to indulge in their love of gab.
Kope
meant both “coffee” and “to sit around drinking coffee and socializing.” It was acceptable Marshallese to say “I'm coffeeing with the guys.”

The ritual always followed the same format. The boiling water appeared, the instant coffee grounds were distributed, and sugar or coconut sap was added. One man began telling a story, and soon everyone was having a grand old time. There was an intriguing sort of masculine intimacy. I understood little of their stories, delivered in quick one-two punches of wit, but the atmosphere was pleasant.

Looking around this circle of coffee drinkers was a poor man's fashion show, in more ways than one. The men had a sense of style all their own: a curious blend of eighties chic, wannabe gangsta, and Hawaii casual, tempered by practicality and poverty. Many sported rattails, and sometimes that formed a majority of their total hair. They smoked with hand-carved pipes or palm-frond cigarette holders, and wore flip-flops to the exclusion of any other footwear. Their basketball shorts doubled as swimming trunks, and the idea that someone would change clothes before or after getting into the water was considered eccentric. (Women often lagoon-bathed in their muumuus.)

The men's T-shirts displayed unfortunate English slogans that no one understood. One said “Proud to be an American.” Another said “It's Payback Time” next to an American flag and an image of 9/11. Yet another said “Herban Legend” over an image of a leaf. Lisson often wore a shirt that said “Sometimes, when I'm drunk, I make mistakes” and showed a moose humping a log. I knew a man whose favorite shirt displayed a “Can of Whoopass” and warned the viewer “Don't make me open dis.” Later, when the school opened, I learned that this man taught the fifth graders, and I saw him wear the shirt routinely on the job. Meanwhile, little boys and girls alike proudly sported shirts that announced, in frilly colorful letters, “I
Being a Princess.”

The coffee klatches made the sound of Marshallese familiar, but I began to learn the language in earnest only when I discovered my loquacious next-door neighbors, Fredlee and Joja. Fredlee paid me an impromptu visit with the youngest of his six children one night, and the next day we started a tradition of daily
bwebwenato
sessions that commenced in the late afternoon and extended until sunset.

When the sun was starting to dip lazily in the sky and the midday heat was abating, I would hike the hundred feet to Fredlee's house and find him in whatever work or leisure he happened to be engaged in. Whatever his business, it was immediately dropped. Fredlee would summon Joja, the husband of his wife's sister, and we would find a proper site for our serious task of chewing the rag. It was important to catch the cool lagoon breeze and to be shielded from the sun, and it was imperative to avoid sitting under brown coconuts. These were the older, riper fruits, and they were raring to fall. Death by falling coconut wasn't a joke in this country; the sound of one of these bowling balls hitting a tin roof after its thirty-foot drop was deafening, and Fredlee didn't want the performance repeated on my head. So we were careful to choose the shade of a palm tree with young green coconuts, which stayed firmly on their stems.

Then Fredlee would fetch the seat of honor, which was the only chair he owned. While I sat on this pink plastic throne, he would plop down on an old board and prop his back up on a tree trunk. Joja would simply lie on the gravel, impervious to that bed of nails, and use a nearby coconut as a pillow. This had to be one of the more
obscure of the fruit's many uses. (The coconut tree was a machine: a solar-powered, self-building factory that required no maintenance and cost no money—a clean-running, noiseless manufacturer of useful things. In went soil, air, and water; out came food, drink, fuel, building materials, rope, medicine, and, yes, pillows.)

Then the
bwebwenato
would begin.

During our inaugural session three weeks after my arrival, we first had to establish exactly who, and what, I was. They knew my first name—this was easy enough, since two other villagers were named Peter. My last name was a bit more difficult. They asked it only once, and after hearing it they decided it was much more trouble than it was worth.

They knew I was from America. But why was I here? They asked if I was
pijkor
. A Peace Corps volunteer? I tried to explain that I was affiliated with WorldTeach, not the Peace Corps, but their eyes glazed over during my convoluted explanations. I couldn't blame them. As far as they were concerned, a strange American showed up every once in a while and taught in their school. Until about ten years ago, these people came for two-year stints (Peace Corps). Last year, one had come for a one-year stint (WorldTeach). Did it matter to the islanders that the Peace Corps was a US government agency, while WorldTeach was an independent nonprofit organization? No.
Pijkor
didn't mean “Peace Corps volunteer.” It meant “American living on the island for a long period of time, trying to help.” So I was
pijkor
, and I was here to teach school, which was scheduled to begin in a week.

Next, they wanted to know about America. I described it, trying to pick out the relevant details: it's big, cold, and mountainous. They asked me about politics: Clinton, Bush, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan. Apparently their radios brought in more than just bastardized Western pop music. I realized I could not escape geopolitics, even on a remote island in an obscure corner of a vast ocean.

“Americans are very smart,” Fredlee declared. “They went to the moon.” I didn't know how to respond to that. But it was a testament to my improving Marshallese that I could even attempt to talk about these things, although our political discussions were limited to me calling certain presidents
emman
(good) and others
nana
(bad).

When the subject of money came up, I resolved not to lie. Yes, I admitted—the United States was much richer than the Marshall Islands. But I developed a little speech to put that fact in perspective. “Americans have a lot of money—it's true,” I would say. “But in America everything costs money. Buy a Coke—one dollar. Buy some fish—several dollars. Live in a house—hundreds or thousands of dollars every month. Sometimes you have to pay just to swim at a beach or go fishing. Here, you can pick a coconut and drink it—free. Fish in the lagoon—free. Live in your house—free. Go for a swim—free. There's little money, but also little you need to buy.” The phrase
ejjelok wonan
(“it's free”) echoed again and again, and soon they were giving me the same speech when the subject came up.

I made sure to tell them other things that were not so great about my country. In America, you often live miles from your workplace. After years, you may not know your next-door neighbor's name. Worst of all, America's oceans are a true abomination—compare a deep, rough, frigid, murky California seascape to a shallow, calm, warm, crystalline Marshallese lagoon. I told them of the lamentable absence of reef fish and coral, and I emphasized that it was impossible to fish with a spear. They looked at me like I had been very deprived indeed.

They were nearly as ignorant of my world as I had been of theirs. I wondered if the islanders were experiencing the same thing I was; while I was discarding the myth of island harmony, they were losing their own treasured illusions of an affluent paradise.

Or perhaps they were much wiser than I. They were curious about my country and impressed by some of its details, but they did not seem eager to call it home. The things that gave them joy—that leisurely ritual of conversation-coffee, a day fishing on the lagoon, the relaxed rhythm of work and play—would be difficult or impossible in my land, and they realized this. “
Emman mour in majel
,” Fredlee would often say. “Marshallese life is good.” For better or worse, they expressed more satisfaction with their way of life than Americans typically did with theirs. They were intrigued, but not awed, by the grand old USA.

Fredlee and Joja spoke with evident pride about their country and customs, and answered my questions thoroughly but with a generous simplicity of language. The Marshallese flag was displayed on my shirt,
and I asked them one day about its meaning. It had struck me as one of the more elegant national banners: a diagonal stripe, half white and half orange-red, shined from the bottom left to the top right like a ray of sun; a twenty-four-pointed star gleamed in the top left corner; and these designs floated on a field of deep blue. The orange-red ray represented
peran
, said Joja, and, from his numerous examples, I gathered it meant courage. The white ray represented
aenomman
, or peace. Each point in the star stood for an inhabited atoll, and the four longer points formed the cross of Christianity, while also representing the urbanized atolls—Majuro and Kwajalein—and the more developed outer islands—Jaluit and Wotje. The symbolism of the blue background was obvious: it was the sea, and it surrounded everything.

They taught me Marshallese songs, little ditties in major keys, accompanied languorously on the guitar. They were about as untouched by foreign influence as the name “Fredlee,” but they still expressed local sensibilities. One children's song, called
Ta Kijom in Jota
, had these words:

Ta kijom in jota, ta kijom in jota

Ma ma ma, iu iu iu, keinabbu, bu bu bu a bu

Ta limom in jota, ta limom in jota

Jekaro-ro, jekamai-mai, jekajeje, je je je a je

This could be translated with extraordinary awkwardness as:

What are you eating for dinner? What are you eating for dinner?

Breadfruit breadfruit breadfruit, sprouted coconut seedling sprouted coconut seedling sprouted coconut seedling, papaya, ya ya ya ah ya

What are you drinking during dinner? What are you drinking during dinner?

Coconut sap-sap, coconut syrup-syrup, coconut sap by-product, product product product ah product

Those terse native words next to their monstrous polysyllabic English equivalents spoke volumes about the different objects these languages had developed to describe.

Then there was the classic
Bunniin Bunun Naam:

Bunniin bunun naam, bunniin bunun naam

Iban kiki, bwe eju naam ekkan niin

This translates as:

There are zillions of mosquitoes tonight, there are zillions of mosquitoes tonight,

I can't sleep, because there are ludicrous numbers of mosquitoes and their teeth are sharp

The melody could have been composed anywhere, but those lyrics were quintessentially Marshallese.