Here we go now

Booya, I’m online. Here’s the deal. Since internet access costs so much and is pretty slow, I’m blogging into Microsoft Word and copying/pasting into this blog. It will look a little bit different but hey, you should feel lucky to hear from me. A few pictures have been uploaded to my photo album.

July 19th – 9:29 PM -- Arrival

Chicago to Denver to Los Angeles to Honolulu to Majuro. It was roughly 60 hours of travel and July 18th only lasted about three hours but I arrived in the Marshall Islands today at around 10:00 AM. We, the WorldTeach volunteers, were greeted by about 20-25 Marshallese and the Worldteach staff already on site. In addition, we were welcomed to the Marshall Islands by a wall of humidity so thick and formidable that it made Chicago’s humidity look like a little bitch in comparison. A layer of condensation instantly formed on every inch of my body. My clothes clung to my skin. My hair clung to my scalp. My backpack clung to my clothes which clung to my skin. I felt like flypaper.

In fact, the comparison to flypaper is more accurate than it originally seems because right as my epidermis gained the texture of a post-it note, the denizens of mosquitoes which inhabit the Marshall Islands were instantly alerted to my presence. In about 5 minutes I was the proud father of about four mosquito bites – some big, some small, all new, and all really annoying. Mosquitoes have always had a natural penchant for my tender flesh. In Minnesota they attacked me like piranhas in the water. In Europe they attacked me like Karl Rove on gays. And now they were attacking me like, you know, something that really sucks.

At the twenty minute mark I was already asking myself what the hell I was doing here. I mean seriously. Here I was, in the middle of the ocean, on an island that is at most half a mile wide, and being assaulted by mosquitoes and spiders as large as my hand (I kid you not). Perhaps my spirit for adventure had directed me down an inappropriate path…

But before I could think any more I found myself lei’d by a local WorldTeach supporter and whisked into a sixteen seat school bus whose seats were so close together that I had to sit sideways in order to fit. Our destination was Laura, a peninsular type formation on the opposite end of the atoll.

(Quick aside for those of you who have heard of an atoll and would use the word in a conversation but really aren’t sure what it is. Actually I’ll be brief. It’s a bunch of coral islands surrounding the lagoon in a quasi-circular formation. So when I say at the opposite end of the atoll, I mean Laura was across the lagoon from the airport on another island but we had to drive around the entire circle so to speak in order to reach it. The islands are usually close enough together that they can be connected via bridges.)

Along the way the atoll reminded me why I was here. There was no big business. There was no one selling out to big business. Trendy and hip did not exist. All I saw were people being themselves, not padding resumes, not racing to get ahead, not striving to be something that other people are or striving to possess what other people have, just husking coconuts on sticks and fishing in the waters. They had never heard of human capital and did not care about attaining it. Everyone was helping everyone else. It was as far away as possible from everything I have ever known. Despite the heat, the humidity, the man-eating spiders, the shark attacks, the death by coconut droppings, the poisonous fish, and the poisonous snakes, I knew that this was going to work.

Once we reached Laura we began orientation. It’s going to be a month long and jammed with activities every single day. All the volunteers are staying in elementary school classrooms in an arrangement that’s somewhere between a hostel and a military barracks. I am writing whilst sitting on a rusty cot (everything metallic in the Marshall Islands is rusty due to the heat and humidity) with my towel lying next to me acting as a pillow. There are six other people in my room. Four are on cots. One is on an uncovered mattress. The remaining one is on a table about to collapse. The 36 other volunteers are all housed in classrooms next to us under very similar circumstances. We’re tired, cramped, and hungry. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Today was dedicated to introductions. Tomorrow is language. Bring it on.


July 25, 2005 – 9:58 PM – The One Week Juncture

Snorkel with sharks. Check. Hack open coconuts with machetes. Check. Husk coconuts on rocks and tree stumps. Check. Eat off of a plate I wove from palm tree leaves. Check. A very skill-building first week to say the least. The initial euphoria of simply being somewhere new and different is beginning to wear off. Instead, the realities of living in a developing nation are making themselves readily apparent.

My diet has changed dramatically, or at least it will as soon as I will be forced to stop consuming the catered food I eat everyday. WorldTeach is trying to acclimate us to the tropical island diet by integrating some type of “local” cuisine into every one of our meals. Thus far I have been introduced to a fair amount of raw fish, and about a half dozen forms of coconut and breadfruit products – including but not limited to grilled, pickled, and fried.

I also had my first glimpse of “downtown” Majuro. Remember, Majuro is actually an island in an atoll which is also called Majuro (the other islands in the Majuro atoll are not named Majuro). The island of Majuro is divided into separate regions or villages. I am living in Laura during orientation while “downtown” is located in what’s called the D-U-D, which stands for something that starts with D, Uliga, and Delap. The D-U-D is a stark contrast from what I’ve experienced this far. It is developing in every sense of the word. Dirt, grime, and pollution pervade the entire area. The lovely turquoise/blue/green lagoon is covered with oil slicks and stray animals are common.

Insects are ubiquitous and quite large. While I was showering I saw a cockroach that was so sizeable that I initially thought the wall was moving. My legs have become smorgasbords for all manners of biting bugs. Ants live side by side with us along with rats and lizards.

Of course the notion that I have still yet to completely embrace is that I am not simply a tourist here. I will be living and working here for the next ten months of my life. My time spent here is not merely an extremely extended vacation. Every inconvenience I have encountered will be a permanent inconvenience unless I adapt myself and change my ways. It’s a funny idea, really. At 22 years of age I have to change myself in order to get by.

But despite the downfalls of living in a developing tropical nation, one of the benefits definitely deserves its own paragraph. The view underwater is spectacular. Lagoon side snorkeling provides a spectrum of greens and blues that I have not seen anywhere else and a myriad of brightly colored critters. They are literally everywhere. The coral grows roughly as close as five feet off shore and is simply teeming with life. On the ocean side, the coral grows just as close to shore and drops off quite dramatically about 50 feet farther. That drop off is home to schools of larger fish including, yes, sharks. Thus far I am the only one in the group to actually see a shark though we have been told numerous times that they are everywhere. The shark I saw was a white tip reef shark about four feet in length. Initially I thought, “Holy fuck! A shark!” But quite frankly I have never seen anything look for docile or placid. I have never felt so unthreatened in my life. I sat around and watched it for a minute or so before poking my head above water to try and motion for someone else to take a look. I couldn’t find anyone and descended back into the water but by then the shark had already left the area.

Back to the D-U-D tomorrow and more orientation in the upcoming week. Somehow the power adapter of my laptop was damaged during transit and I was forced to order a new one. If I’m lucky it will arrive late next week and until then I’ll have to hope that I have enough battery life to blog and what not.

PS: I shaved my head.