The Navy is here

US Navy ship SS Peleliu just arrived in our lagoon a couple of days ago, on a humanitarian mission - giving out medical supplies, painting stuff, fixing stuff, etc. And it's got 1700 people on it! Adding that to the existing ri belle (white person/foreigner)population, this is probably the most ri belles the Marshall Islands have ever seen at one time. They helicopter their own volunteers to a bunch of the outer islands for humanitarian work during their stay here,and they'll be here for about another week. I asked one if they could give me a ride to Kili; he said no. Fortunately, the Air Marshall Islands plane should be working by Friday; I'm expected to leave then. My fingers are crossed.
There's a big basketball game tonight, the Navy team (they have a basketball team, apparently) versus the national championship team of the Marshall Islands. The Navy played the #2 team last night and beat them, although I here it was somewhat close. I missed it last night, but I'm really pumped to watch tonight's game.
I spent the last week and will spend this coming week in Laura. There's not much there for me to do, but I've tried to make the most of it. I have observed some elementary and high school teachers so I can have an idea of what Marshallese elementary school students are like. I also went on a binge of watching "The Office", blowing through the first two seasons in a week. I'm already a few episodes into the third. Other than that, I try to help out Chris (Chimpo) and Ray, my hosts and the two Dartmouth teachers stationed there.

Weekly update

We’re in our second week of school and although things are still hectic I’m having fun. Last weekend we celebrated Ray’s birthday in Majuro so we were able to swap stories about our first week of school. Laura (Ray and Chris) is in their second week also and things are progressing over there as well. MIHS (Mariko) started in-service and I think they started classes on Monday. We haven’t heard from Wotje but I hope they’re doing well.

The program cautions all of us not to come in with any preconceived notions but I’ve already fallen into the trap. I was psyched to teach the kids on Ejit karate and a bit of jujitsu but it’s most likely going to be impossible. Karate is seen as a skill of 'elukkuun murder' or 'great murder' here because their only exposure to it is through movies. One of the most popular games in the Marshall Islands is “beat the hell out of your friends” and I foresee a disaster if I teach them how to hurt each other efficiently. It is perfectly natural for kids to have a rock fight across the street or run around throwing punches and kicks in and out of the air at each other. The kids already emulate Jet Li, Jackie Chan and the guy from Ong Bok. All it would take is one properly thrown roundhouse to the face and I'd be known as the ribelle who teaches the kids how to fight. I’m a bit disappointed but in reality this just means that I need to practice karate on my own.

From Charlie Guthrie: 8/25/07

Well we’re still stranded, looks like for another week. They have to send the engines of both planes to the states for repair. However, it has been suggested that they might be renting an engine for the big plane. So I spent this past week with the volunteers of the WorldTeach program; 3 of them and I taught ourselves how to play bridge out of my Hoyle Book of Card Games (thank you Mom). Bridge is a lot of fun, you should try it.

This extra delay would be fine, except that the place we have been staying is an elementary school classroom, and they are starting school on Monday. This means we had to move out. Fortunately, I am able to stay with Chris and Ray in Laura (town at the far end of the main island of Majuro), and I have been doing that for a couple days, and will continue to do so until I leave. However, there are 20 WorldTeach volunteers that aren’t so lucky. They don’t have anywhere to go just yet, and may be sleeping on floors of other volunteers stationed in Majuro.

Today we visited Ejit, which is an island on Majuro Atoll (I should really find a map to put up here). It is accessible by boat, or land bridge – that is to say, you can walk across the reef in low tide. Coming here was a little bit tricky because we had waited a little too long and the tide was not exactly low – we had to wade through knee-deep water in the dark to get here.

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For a further update it looks like the both planes are out of commission for the foreseeable future. Erin and Sarah met with the Bikini Government Mayor and Senator to charter a boat for all of the school employees (at least 75% of the staff is in Majuro) to Kili but we don't know when any action will take place.

Stranded Update

If the small plane gets fixed (which is likely, I'm told), I'm scheduled to leave on Friday. Until then, I may be a teacher's aide on Ejit island, which is part of Majuro Atoll.

8/18: Stranded

The small plane, which was the only remaining plane, is now broken. This means the only means of inter-island travel is now by ship, but those do not come around very often. Around 18 of the original 45 WorldTeach volunteers and 9 of the original 12 Dartmouth volunteers managed to reach their teaching sites before the transportation meltdown, and the rest of us are waiting indefinitely in Majuro for the next opportunity to travel to our sites. The dormitory where I and the other Dartmouth volunteers were staying during orientation is no longer available, so I (along with Erin and Sarah) have moved in with the other stranded WorldTeach volunteers on the floors of the classrooms of the Rairok Head Start Elementary School. I am told the small plane’s problem is minor, so the wait shouldn’t be more than a few days; but one can never be too sure.
I don’t mind waiting, although it would be nice to have some closure and reach Kili so I could begin getting ready for school. And if we end up waiting for more than a week, I could help out the volunteers (such as Annie, Paul, Chimpo, Ray, and Mariko) who are teaching at Majuro schools. They are scheduled to start this week or next week. The other volunteers are also eager to reach their new homes, but are still content to pass the days idly in our camp. That contentment won’t last forever, though – we’re all bound to get antsy sometime.
It rained all day today, unusual for the Marshall Islands. Typically if it starts raining, it begins with a heavy wind, then a heavy downpour, and you just have to wait it out for a few minutes. I was doing errands when it happened and started waiting it out in some shelter, but gave up after an hour and just got soaked instead. I was hoping to play soccer with the Fijians today (they play pickup Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday afternoons), but they didn’t show up because of the rain. The rain really kills activity here; everyone just sits inside or under their eaves and wait for it to stop. School attendance drops dramatically on rainy days – kids just don’t want to have to walk through the rain to get there.

Ejit Has Moved In

Annie and I moved into our house yesterday and it's amazing. We went for a jambo last night and met a whole bunch of kids.

Today we crossed the reef for the first time and we're in between errands (grocery shopping etc)

Unfortunately my timecard for the internet is about to expire so this is the end of my post.

Paul

Jambo

The other day I went for a 'jambo' (stroll/walk/promenade) through a poor part of town (actually the poorest part of town) and came across around 8-10 kids between 5 and 12 years old. I decided to get a workout by having them climb on my back and do squats, lunges, and pushups. Then I lifted them up/threw them in the air one at a time. It was good and tiring - a fun way to work out and they had a great time. A couple kids even gave me a back massage at the end of it, I didn't even have to ask. On my way back home, i saw a room full of computers with kids playing the computer game "Counter-Strike" with each other on a local network, and then some more playing XBox and Playstation! I was so surprised that on the poorest street on the island - shacks barely standing with corrugated tin roofs and walls, no doors, kids running around without shoes, dehydrated and hungry, and here is a room full of top-of-the-line Dells running Counter-Strike. The kids were pretty good at it too, from what it looked like. The store owner said he kept it open every night until 2am except Sundays, it's open until 12.

Delayed departure

We were supposed to leave today for Kili, but the planes are delayed. They told us "Maybe we'll leave tomorrow." We'll see - it could be a week or even more. I'm not too disappointed, I had a lot of errands that I wouldn't have been able to get done if we'd left on time. Usually there are two planes operating under Air Marshall Islands - the "Big Plane" (about 50 passengers) and the "Small Plane" (around 20). The big one is out of commission - it needs a new engine - so the small one is all there is to transport people between the islands. For this reason, Air Marshall Islands is often nicknamed "Air Maybe". We won't be missing any school though - they make the schedule flexible enough that they can wait for us to get there before starting. The truth is, they don't really have a choice; my two housemates, Erin and Sarah, and I make up a good chunk of the faculty of the school, and there are no substitutes.
I'm uncomfortable about the unreliability of the planes because it may prevent me from attending my brother's wedding. My current plan is to leave Kili for Majuro on Friday Sept 21 or Monday Sept 24, then leave Majuro for Hawaii and then San Francisco on Wednesday Sept 26.
I bought a machete today - it's about 15 inches long and only cost 6 dollars. We also bought more than a thousand dollars' worth of food (canned vegetables, rice, flour, etc.) to ship out to our island to live on until Christmas. We will be coming back to Majuro during Christmas break, and we can buy more food then. We'll also be eating a lot of local fish, coconut, breadfruit, and pandanus, but there is not enough available on the island to live on without supplementary nourishment.
I'll probably have a lot less access to internet once I get to Kili, so I apologize in advance for the lack of updates. My understanding is that there is someone there with internet at his house, and that it is really slow.

Charlie

Wednesday

We started practicum, and boy is that an eye-opening experience. In the 4th grade class, we were learning names of colors and trying to form sentences like "The ____ is ____", then filling in 'ball' and 'red'. I remember reading The Witches by Roald Dahl in second grade and writing research paragraphs on a different topic every day by fourth grade. Then again, that was in my first language. I have to give these kids credit for trying to do everything in a second language.
I'm definitely learning a lot about teaching through this practice period. I'm glad I can try and fail here, where there are no consequences, before going out to Kili to teach my kids for real.

I look at the ocean differently here than at home; waves crash directly onto sharp coral, so no one really swims in the ocean. Where at home the ocean was a place of recreation, here it is a boundary.

Monday

8/6/07
Yesterday we went to Laura beach, one of the only sandy beaches on the island (the rest is sharp coral). It’s beautiful there. I went spear fishing with Jakob and Kenny, which is the same as snorkeling, but with a rubberband-powered spear – and instead of looking at the fish, you try to kill them. Most of the fish were too small to be worth catching; I caught one fish that looked big, but just turned out to be an inflated pufferfish.
Today was spent preparing for the practicum, the first day of a week of practice-teaching that starts tomorrow. Who do we teach? Well, we take a bus down the one road in Majuro and collect kids from the side of the road, telling them we are offering a summer camp from 10am to 1pm. I guess their parents just have to trust that we are not kidnapping them into slave labor.

Saturday

I have a cell phone! I will be sharing it with Sarah Mclaughlin and Erin Garnett. The number is 011.692.545.3228. I’d suggest getting an international calling card though, if you plan on calling. Texting also works.
We, the 9 Dartmouth Volunteers, are living together in a dormitory on Majuro for orientation and will head out to our respective teaching sites on August 17-18. I’m pretty excited to go out to Kili. I wasn’t at first, but I have found out a lot of great things about it. It has a sand place to swim and fish – apparently there are big pelagic fish available. Also, the education system is very well funded. This is because Kili is inhabited by descendants of those that were moved out of Bikini Island for the nuclear testing. Due to the hardship they experienced at that time, they get a lot of money from the US government as compensation – they are many of the more wealthy people in the Marshall Islands.
During these three weeks of orientation, we get Marshallese language lessons every morning, followed by lectures on pedagogy and other aspects of living and teaching in the Marshall Islands. My language instructor, a 12th grader and Marshall Islands High School, also taught me how to climb a coconut tree. Then Jakob Appelbaum, a Dartmouth Volunteer who knows more about hunting, fishing, and gathering than “Guns and Ammo” magazine, taught me how to use a machete husk and break open the coconuts we collected. He lived on Tokelau (near Samoa) for six months, so he is very familiar with Pacific Island life.
We played soccer last night with some Fijians and, before that, boot! I was proud to bring our own Ultimate Frisbee game all the way out here. During the soccer game, an American volunteer (World Teach) got hit in the nuts; we had to stop for a few minutes while everyone, American and Fijian, laughed at him. It’s nice to know that, despite differences in culture, there are some things we all share.