Surviving Paradise (18 page)

My companions recited the names of these prime fishing grounds as we passed by. There was Wodindap (“coral reef of the moray eel”), Wodkarjin (“kerosene coral”), Boran Joalon (“head of Joalon,” a legendary character), and Laloklok (whose meaning was unclear, but which the guys, in their endless lascivious creativity, were quick to mention sounded rather like the word for a woman washing her genitals.)

Finally, we were at Wodinmon (“coral reef of the squirrelfish”). Lisson cast the anchor. It was nothing more than a donut-shaped
chunk of coral rock tied to a rope. It snagged on the jagged coral, tethering the canoe. This reef had an aura of remoteness—a barely sunken island in a vast ocean. But, otherwise, it looked like any other reef. I put my mask on and prepared for some enjoyable, but unspectacular, sightseeing.

I was mistaken.

What greeted me was a Himalaya of coral disappearing into the unseen floor of the lagoon. Elkhorn coral covered the slopes like trees on a mountainside. Clouds of fish surrounded me, glinting like drops from a fountain, and darted back in unison when I extended my hand. A school of rays flew through the water like birds through the sky. One coralhead was the color of copper, and it took me a while to notice that hundreds of fish of the same color were hovering over it. Worms that looked like multicolored feather dusters disappeared instantaneously into their coral homes when they sensed me near. In the shallows, a splotch of coral growth discolored the rocks; anywhere else, I would have assumed it was neon green spray paint. The sun cast shafts of light into the clear lagoon, while walls of abruptly colder water—called thermoclines—distorted the liquid atmosphere like heat in dry air.

Coral reefs, I realized, were a microcosm of all the reasons that I had come to this country. The overpowering curiosity that had brought me, the fear and pull of the exotic, were felt all at once in a concentrated form as I looked at this resplendent coral mountain, and its drop-off into the ghostly depths. I smugly imagined the hordes of snorkelers who would flock to this place if it were even faintly accessible to tourism.

The men, unlike me, were not here for beauty. They didn't see the reef that way. Instead, they got straight to business, plopping unceremoniously into the water and tying a long fishing net between two coralheads. Then they started a ruckus. Fredlee picked up a piece of living coral and threw it violently back into the water. Lisson slapped the surface of the water with his hands, and Joja yelled and jumped in and out. It seemed hardly the time or place for a game, but then I saw what they were doing. They pulled the net into the canoe, and it was littered with so many large fish that the hull dipped noticeably in the water. It had taken five minutes to set up the net, and
another ten to scare the fish into it, and their reward was about twenty pounds of food.

We rendezvoused with another canoe, and they gave us an octopus. The creature, so graceful in the water, was limp and helpless outside of it, but colors still streamed and fluctuated eerily through its body.

Fredlee prepared a few of our fish to be eaten sashimi style—that is, raw. He made several expert cuts with his knife and then tore the skin off neatly with his teeth. It was curiously unbloody. Lest the scene not be colorful enough, Fredlee flavored the meat by smearing it with the creature's intestines. I ate some, and congratulated myself for it.

It was time to return to Ujae. To do this the men had to tack: reverse the sail's orientation in order to catch the wind. In doing so, they demonstrated one of the more surprising features of the canoe's design: the sail and the mast were attached to nothing. The base of the mast sat loosely in a small hole in the middle of the hull, allowing it to pivot. Meanwhile, the wood beams that lined two of the sail's three sides rested their intersection point on a depression on one end of the canoe. This allowed the entire sail to be removed from its resting place, reversed, and carried to the other end of the canoe. There was no bow and no stern on this boat; it was a fully reversible craft.

Marshall Islanders made almost all of their skills look easy, but tacking was an exception. From the moment my friends lifted the sail from its resting place, there was a desperate suspense. The men strained. The sail was still fully inflated, and the wind threatened to blow it over, taking the mast and riggings with it. Tacking required three strong seamen, and it was so difficult even an expert couldn't make it look easy.

But they prevailed. We beached the canoe at Ariraen, and Lisson, Fredlee, and Joja divided the fish evenly, never mentioning who had caught what. Even the useless
ribelle
got a quarter of the spoils. While the men might posture about their fishing abilities, in the end it didn't matter how many fish each had caught. Equal distribution was an island axiom.

I was in good spirits and so were they, but our reasons were entirely different. “The reef was so beautiful,” I told them repeatedly.

“We caught many fish,” they always responded.

 

 

 

 

DECEMBER WAS AS HOT AS ANY MONTH, BUT A COLD WINTER BEGAN TO
settle on my soul.

The trouble was not all mine. The island was experiencing one of its periodic food shortages. This was another difference between American food and Marshallese food: there was much less of the latter. Many families had run out of rice and flour in the two months since the last supply ship, and breadfruit was out of season. When I walked back to my house with a half-dozen squirrelfish that a man had given me, an eight-year-old girl begged me for just one of the cookie-sized creatures.

The De Brums', thankfully, were one of the families that still had rice. Even so, Lisson and Elina were working unusually hard to supplement the dwindling supplies of food. I was hardly pulling my weight, and so, in a fit of guilty generosity, I told Lisson I would
kakijen
(gather food) by learning to fish and
raanke
(scrape dry coconut
meat out of the shell). Lisson smiled at my offer, but then again he smiled at most everything I said, no matter how ridiculous. Later that day, I overheard him telling Elina what I had said, and both of them laughed. Apparently it was especially hilarious that I had said I would help
kakijen
. At least I tried.

My only
kakijen
initiative that got anywhere at all was a tiny garden behind the cookhouse at Ariraen. Lisson and I dug a rectangular pit and filled it with soil filtered through a sieve to eliminate coral rocks and, occasionally, jittery purple crabs. As we took turns shoveling dirt in the post-school afternoon sun, Lisson fired questions at me about the Iraq War. I responded with sparkling political insight in fluent, articulate Marshallese. Or maybe it was more like “Some person, uh, say . . . Bush like . . . war, uh, just for . . . to get gas.” More successful than our conversation was the progress on the garden. Once we had germinated the seeds in coconut half-shells and transplanted them, our little patch of garlic, beans, and corn didn't look half bad, considering my involvement.

Joja heard about this, and now he wanted a garden too, and would I help him? For a few days, I thought I had stumbled into a second career as an agricultural aid worker. But it was not to be. Our garden at Ariraen failed most decisively. Maybe it was because, after we had gone to so much effort to set it up, Lisson didn't bother to tend it. Or maybe it was because, after we had gone to so much effort to set it up, I didn't bother to tend it. Joja retracted his request, and my rice remained ungarlicked.

My half-hearted agricultural project wasn't the first one to fail. Just a month before, a Marshallese man from an organization in Majuro had arrived to help the villagers set up a community garden with corn, beans, squash, and some island favorites like banana. The project seemed a model of local participation: while the visitor supervised, dozens of Ujae men performed the labor. When it was finished, the garden looked beautiful and poised to flourish. Within a month, however, it was overgrown and abandoned. I learned that the urban do-gooder (now long gone) had paid the men for their work. Now it appeared the wages were all that had motivated them.

Even centuries ago, outsiders were hitting the same wall. Adelbert von Chamisso, who marveled at local seamanship, also deplored what
he perceived as local poverty. He decided that the islanders were “good, needy people,” in the same mix of compassion and paternalism that, nearly two hundred years later, spawned charities like the one that had sent me here.

Out of principle and inclination and from real sincere love we endeavored to neglect nothing that we could do for this people. On our first visit we had put our friends on Otdia [Wotje] into the possession of swine, goats, and domesticated fowl; yams were planted, and melons and watermelons had sprung up and were thriving. When we returned after a few months the garden spot on the island of Otdia was desolate and empty. Not a single strange plant remained to testify to our good intention.

It wasn't surprising that these well-intentioned ventures had failed. The soil was poor and unsuited to nonnative crops. The women were too busy to garden and the men were accustomed to getting food in irregular spurts of fishing, not daily weeding sessions, and nothing could tear them away from conversation-coffee. A garden—whether led by a German botanist, a Marshallese philanthropist, or an American volunteer—didn't fit with local routines, so it failed.

Ujae's food shortage continued. But one man, the island's radio operator, claimed that the problem was illusory. “There's no famine,” he explained. “People are just lazy. There's plenty of Marshallese food—fish,
bwiro
, coconut meat. People are just unhappy that they don't have any of the imported food left. Once they put their mind to collecting food in the traditional way, the hunger will end.” This was how it was with so many things. The islanders appreciated the convenience of Western goods. But when those goods were not forthcoming, tradition provided a viable fallback.
Bwiro
replaced rice, sap replaced sugar, thatch replaced plywood, fire replaced electricity. The islanders made do during the famine.

So it was a time not of desperation, only of harder work and fewer pleasures. It also happened to be the heart of the dry season. Although the Marshalls stayed hot and humid year-round, there was a rainier and less windy season corresponding to North American or European summer, and a drier, windier season corresponding to our winter. The
water in the rain barrel was sinking low. I fancied myself an expert at showering with a bucket, but the sudden shortage of water required me to raise the task to the level of an art form. In the heyday of my expertise, I could perform a complete head-to-toe wash with only two gallons of water. (Hint: to wash your armpit with as little water as possible, you must hold the full dipper with the same hand, apply soap with the other hand while twisting the first hand to let the water run down over its target.)

In anticipation of an empty rain tank, I resolved to acquire another one of the long list of much-more-difficult-than-it-appears Marshallese skills. This was drawing water from the well. One would expect that even the most talentless novice could lower a bucket eight feet down on a string and fill it with water. But one would be mistaken. When the bucket reached the bottom of the well, it floated lazily on the surface of the water and made no effort to fill itself. The water-drawer had to give the string a sudden pull, with a specific speed and direction, which jerked the bucket up before sending it careening back into the water at an angle. Like most everything, it was all in the wrist. (Why the wrist has acquired such a disproportionate importance in human activity is beyond me.) Alfred took pity on me and attached a weight to the bucket; now it would dip into the water without the fiendishly difficult jerking motion. I was saved from my incompetence.

The village's problems began to seep into the school. Several of the students were surly from the lack of food and resented the fact that I had rice to eat while they had nothing but
bwiro
, three meals a day. But this new reason for resentment was just a small exacerbation of a problem that had begun at day one. The children had a schizophrenic view of me: on the one hand, I was a fascinating exotic friend to talk to, play with, and please; on the other hand, I was an authority figure to be pushed and tested, taunted if weak and feared if strong. In the classroom, despite all of my efforts, the latter view dominated.

One student made a point of telling me, at the end of each day's class, “Goodbye, and by the way, I don't like you.” Those who were better at sensing my insecurities would tell me instead that they liked Patrick much better than me. One boy told me that a clumsy toddler had killed the kitten I had grown fond of—a malicious lie, delivered
with a grin. Middle fingers were raised at me (that was not the native Marshallese way to say “hello”—it was the imported American way to say you-know-what). Rocks were “accidentally” thrown in my direction. When the students got especially bad, I would yell, and when I yelled, they laughed. In myriad other charming ways, they poked and prodded my dragon scales to see where the weaknesses lay, sharpened the daggers and drove them home, punished me until I was a monster and then punished me for being a monster, and tried to convince me, for my efforts, that I was a bad person—selfish, unreasonable, inept, dishonest. And here I had thought I was being generous! School for me was a factory: in goes any mood, out comes a bad mood.