Christmas time in the Marshall Islands really highlighted a lot of paradoxes about what it’s like to live here; the place some call a third world country while others call it paradise.
To name a few:
-Going on the nearly broken school bus to ride around Ebeye and throw candy to kids. Simple enough. Naturally though, they had to add speakers and impressive technology to the equation. (See this old post )
They literally created a plain plywood sign, painted it white and to scale with the bus and connected two giant speakers, a laptop and a projector to the top of it. I sat on top with students throwing candy down to the masses.
-This brings me to my second paradox. Throwing candy at children who don’t have water in their homes. Ebeye’s water supply has been on the fritz for months and most homes don’t have individual rainwater catchments. Not to mention the diabetes rates in this country leave little to be desired of buying high fructose sludge to give out but who am I kidding, I was a kid once, right? I brought a box of apples the vice-principal inexplicably brought to our Christmas party to throw but the students on the bus ate every last one without asking before the bus was in Ebeye.
-I wish the picture of the lady walking were clearer. It’s a Marshallese woman walking with her friend wearing traditional Marshallese-wear from the waist down and a t-shirt that reads “I’m that dude.” I see things like this all the time but rarely have the audacity to photograph them. Once in the bank I saw a shriveled raisin of a man wearing a button down from Snoop Dogg’s clothing line that read “Do it doggy style” with a picture of it’s namesake smoking a joint.
-During church on Christmas Sunday it’s Marshallese style to throw quarters and candy at the crowd, especially children. A group of children right at Brittany’s feet had an all out brawl over a single quarter and started tearing the one kid apart who had it. How very Christian. Did the parents run over to intervene and stop it? Ha. Hahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahah. You get the point.
-I tried to decorate my classroom for the holidays with things Laura sent me. I worked tireless one day as my students were reading a story to redo my bulletin board and hang snowflakes around the room. One student decided he wanted to cut off his rattail and instead cut his finger open. I don’t know if it was a genuine accident, I think he didn’t want to be in class or wanted attention. Whatever the case, he tried to hide it by using his sweat washcloth to catch the blood which was quickly forming a puddle on my floor. I asked him what was wrong. He shook his head and looked down.
Are you bleeding?!
Soon it was revealed that he cut his finger really deep. As I was dealing with that fiasco and wondering why he’d kept cutting when he realized his finger wasn’t his hair it occurred to me that I was so fixated on this delusional idea that my students would appreciate some Christmas cheer that I lost track of the fact that some of them shouldn’t even be allowed near scissors. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
-Guns. Guns are everywhere. Especially the Christian kids whose answer to the possibility of everything scandalous is “I’m a Christian.” It’s really disturbing but also harmless. Even the police in the RMI don’t have guns. They just aren’t here. The idea of a Marshallese person needing to use a gun on somebody is laughable. It’s all those American movies they love to watch that create this desire for guns. And once again, water. Priorities people. Water is higher on Maslow’s pyramid then plastic guns and candy. Fact.
-A beautiful sunset viewed over a heaping pile of smoking trash. I don’t know a more cost effective way to get rid of the trash on Ebeye but the first few times I saw the giant trash piles at “Dumptown” burning, I nearly cried. I’ve never even been that person. Sarah has in fact. She was always the litter police. There’s got to be a better way.
The idea of an old man wearing a “doing it doggie style” shirt is perhaps the funniest thing I’ve heard this year.