Surviving Paradise (36 page)

Unpleasant emotions simply could not be shown in public. Even the bittersweetness of a temporary farewell was uncomfortably emotional for most Marshallese. Hence my friends' and host mother's decision to leave the island without informing me.

Affection was similarly blacklisted. Intimacy was hidden—neither spouses, nor friends, nor parents and children expressed it to one another. I had lived on Ujae for eight months, and this was the tally of public emotion that I had witnessed so far:

Man hugging man: 0

Man hugging woman: 0

Woman hugging woman: 1

Man kissing man: 0

Man kissing woman: 0

Woman kissing woman: 0

Parent kissing child above the age of three: 1

Child kissing parent: 0

Child kissing child: 1

Man and woman holding hands: 1

Man weeping: 0

Woman weeping: 1

Young men and women could date only secretively, meeting in the deserted jungle or ocean beach. (Lisson told me that “strolling in the jungle” was practically a euphemism for having sex.) If they wished to take the next step, appearing in public as a couple was tantamount to declaring an engagement. Even then, public displays of affection were strictly banned. Marriage was by a sort of common law and usually uncelebrated.

Even joyful occasions were subdued. When I came back from Majuro after the winter break, Fredlee—one of my best friends on the island—would not even allow himself to greet me. Instead he asked if I had brought back the ping-pong balls that I said I would buy in Majuro. Then he boarded the plane for Ebeye without saying either hello or goodbye. This may have said more about Fredlee's obsession with table tennis than about Marshallese stoicism, but surely the latter was also implicated. In the same way, the villagers may well have been thrilled when I first set foot on their island eight months before, but they couldn't show that.

Stoicism must have been a virtue in the precarious and often tragic world of ancient Marshallese life. In contrast to the inflation of affection in our society, in which even the phrase “I love you” could mean as little as “I think you're nice,” here in the Marshalls the slightest hint of tenderness was indescribably touching.

If Marshallese society sometimes struck me as disturbingly unaffectionate, perhaps that was only because I didn't know where to look. Love here was not a kind word or a physical caress: it was a coconut or a plate of rice. In a place where starvation had once loomed perpetually, giving food to someone meant that one cared enough to want them alive. Harsh words aside, my hosts
had
acted warmly to their children: after all, they fed them every day. They had acted with the same love toward me as well.

Conservatism

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” That was the tacit local attitude to life. If people were surviving, then why risk change? There was a Marshallese adage, “
Jab alkwoj pein ak
,” which literally meant “Don't bend the frigate bird's wing.” But the high-flying frigate bird symbolized chiefly power—the strict status quo—and the saying was often interpreted to mean “Don't refuse food that is offered to you.” Another proverb was “
Jab inojeiklok jani wa kein, ial in mour ko kein
,” which literally meant “Don't drift away from these canoes—they are your path in life.” The implication of both proverbs was, to use one of our own, “Don't bite the hand that feeds you.”

Thus, like every culture, this society's feet were just long enough to reach the ground. It had discovered a way to eke out a living in a difficult environment, and as long as this was true, only a fool would tinker. This meant that what was taken care of was taken care of well. It also meant that what was neglected was neglected completely.

This conservatism could explain my two brushes with the possibility of marriage, and the islanders' confusion with my reasons for refusing. In their society, marrying and reproducing weren't choices: they were simply the thing to do. One did not need a reason to start a family. It was telling that the country's birthrate—7.2 children per woman—was the second highest in the Pacific and almost as high as that of the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

The path of life was a straight and narrow one, fenced in on either side. The only question in the islanders' minds was not why people followed it, but rather why anyone wouldn't. No wonder, then, that my hosts on Ujae wanted a specific reason that I would not marry Jenita, just as my hosts in Arno wanted the same regarding Tonicca. The status quo had kept them alive for thousands of years; why not embrace it?

Strict Social Roles

Marshallese society contained three separate worlds: men, women, and children. Within each world, interaction was frequent and casual.
Between two worlds, interaction was infrequent and strictly formal. Same-sex groups held lengthy
bwebwenato
sessions, but cross-gender conversation was brief and utilitarian. Children played and relaxed with one another, but devolved into yes-men in the presence of adults. During church services, men and women sat separately; the children attended at a separate time altogether.

The duty of men was to provide food. The duty of women was to maintain the household. The duty of children was to obey adults. Women did not fish and men did not wash—period. Except in unusual cases where one gender was not present, or in a few tasks like child-rearing in which both men and women took part, the duties of each were mutually exclusive.

Now that men no longer fought in wars, maintained multiple canoes, or undertook open-ocean voyages, the division of labor put a much heavier load on women than on men. But this didn't necessarily entail female subservience. The women held sway in village decisions, though they exercised their power in more subtle ways than the men. The men had the overt power—they were the chief, the senators, the president—but the women had the covert power of influence and emotion. Perhaps they didn't set the agenda, but nothing could happen without their approval. Women were sometimes called the “sharpeners.” While the men did the obvious work of building, fishing, and fighting, the women held up the fort in the background. While the men built a canoe, the women arrived with refreshments. While the men built the structure of a house, the women prepared the thatch.

Marriage was another cultural script designed not for pleasure but for survival. Lisson and Elina's interactions were limited to requests, negotiations, and information sharing. They rarely laughed with each other, but they did occasionally argue with each other. Elina was angry that Lisson wasted so much time making inane chatter on the CB radio that had found its way into our house. (The conversation was usually limited to “How are things going on your side of the island?” and attempts to trick the person on the other end into thinking that he was receiving messages from Guam.) Was theirs a happy marriage? That wasn't the correct question here. In this society, marriage was more an economic pact than an emotional bond. Its
purpose was to produce and raise children and maintain a household, and intimacy between husband and wife was valuable only insofar as it contributed to those goals.

Idolization of the Old

Another outer island volunteer told me in Majuro that she had her students write letters to people in the United States. One girl had written, “I hope you are very very old.”

The value of having lived long was expressed in many situations. Elders received special parties and were the first guests to be fed at every gathering. The people of Ujae organized no welcome party in my honor, but they organized three in honor of my parents, one of which was among the year's most elaborate and extravagant gatherings. (I swear I wasn't jealous.) One volunteer in Majuro told me that one of her Marshallese colleagues gave her a Christmas present, but then explained “This is for your mother, not for you. Please send it to her.”

In the calculus of survival, this was perfectly logical. If you are old, that means you have survived a long time—and, in a relatively unchanging environment, that means you know better than anyone else how to survive. In the First World, the focus was instead on youth, the idea being that they best understand the ways of their rapidly changing societies.

Marginalization of the Young

“Children are the future” was not a phrase that originated in the Marshall Islands. The natural companion of the reverence of the old was the sidelining of the young.

This was another perfect expression of the necessity of survival. The children's lives depended on the adults, but not vice-versa. If the adults died, then everyone died; if the children died, only the children died. Therefore, if someone needed to die, better it be a child than an adult. From a strictly survivalist perspective, it was thus coldly accurate to say that adults were more important than children.

No wonder, then, that children were given the least food. They would ravenously eat the rice I had left on my plate or the oily meat of a coconut they had found. No wonder that children were not talked to except to be commanded and scolded. No wonder that corporal punishment was the first solution to misbehavior. No wonder that the unspoken American law against open favoritism toward children did not apply here. Indeed, Elina had once told me, with Easter a few feet away, “Nakwol is good. Easter is stupid.”

No wonder, too, that parenting more or less stopped at age four. In all my time on Ujae, I never saw an adult engage in a two-way conversation with a child. Alfred stated it in brutal simplicity as he shooed away three children who had come to hear us talk: “
Ajri rej jab bwebwenato ippan rutto
” (“Children don't talk with adults”). I was the only adult who ever talked to the children. Nor did the parents teach their children necessary skills. It was the child's job to learn by observation.

The message was this: physical needs matter, but emotional ones don't. In a dangerous environment, the former was a necessity, the latter a luxury. Beyond keeping their children alive, the parents focused their attention on the essential task of putting food on the table.