Surviving Paradise (8 page)

These songs were a welcome change from the usual radio fare, which alternated between Western pop offerings and their tedious Marshallese derivations: endless ballads, lackadaisically sung and accompanied by monotonous drumbeats from an electric keyboard. (I learned ABBA's “Dancing Queen” and Britney Spears's “I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” all too well during my year in the alleged middle of nowhere, and I became equally familiar with their Micronesian knock-offs.)

I was learning many things during these
bwebwenato
sessions. I noted my companions' love of reciting lists, counting each item zestfully on their fingers. But I was floored by some of the uses they put this to. One day I asked Fredlee, “How many children do you have?” He readied his hand and said, “Well, let's see. There's little Tairina.” He counted off one on his fingers. “Then there's Tona, and Jela, and Bobson.” He kept counting. “And then I have two children in Ebeye.” He read off his fingers. “That's six, I think.”

Did he not know the number offhand? It seemed absurd, but anything was possible here. Later I would witness a lengthy debate about whether the radio operator had sixteen children or only twelve, and when I asked an old woman how many grandchildren she had, she just looked at me impassively. “
Bwijin
,” she answered (“many”).

I began to notice and adopt Fredlee and Joja's native body language. Raising the eyebrows meant “yes.” Furrowing the face into an exaggerated frown meant “no.” Grimacing by pulling the face muscles
back until the tendons showed alarmingly on the neck meant nothing more menacing than “I don't know.” When they told big-fish tales, they always reported the size of the animal by karate-chopping the left forearm with the right hand and measuring the distance between the right hand and the tips of the left fingers.

If the women had a monopoly on outrageous public humor, the men held their own in the category of dirty jokes. “American men have big penises,” declared Joja, putting his two fists end to end. “Much bigger than Marshallese penises,” and he stuck his index finger out limply. Agreeing and disagreeing both seemed in poor taste. Fredlee was also fond of espousing the theory that the United States funded the Peace Corps not as charity but as a ploy to spread the Yankee seed, leaving half-American babies across the globe.

There was another joke that Fredlee and Joja never got tired of. Thousands of Marshallese immigrants had settled in Hawaii, California, Washington, Utah, and, of all places, Arkansas. In Springdale, Arkansas, Marshallese transplants—most of whom worked at a local chicken processing factory—were so numerous that one of the ethnicities that could be checked on official forms was “Marshallese.” So it was conceivable that I would run into a Marshall Islander when I returned home. Wouldn't he be surprised when this white American spoke Marshallese to him? Wouldn't he be perplexed when he heard a Marshallese word, looked around and saw only nonchalant Caucasian faces? So the jokes ran freely: see a Marshallese man, yell
yokwe
when his back was turned, and then casually blend into the crowd while the man looks around in bewilderment. Or better yet, suggested Joja, shout
kijo bwiro
(“give me some preserved breadfruit”) and see his reaction to
that
.

Talking was still challenging, but I found that I enjoyed the directness and unpretentiousness that resulted when communication was not automatic. The difficulty of conversation meant that even a rudimentary exchange of information qualified as an accomplishment. This was a new concept. Back in my own country, a conversation was successful only if it was witty and fluent and devoid of any awkward pauses. It was a hefty task. This new kind of talking was much easier.

Conversation here was often a sort of scripted recital. My conversation partner and I would default to familiar, unoffensive formulas
to avoid the embarrassment of silence or incomprehension. I learned to expect and correctly answer questions such as “Do you like eating breadfruit?” (correct answer: “yes—it is tasty”) and “Do you like eating pandanus?” (correct answer: “yes—it is tasty”) and “Do you like Ujae?” (correct answer: “yes, it is really good, because we eat breadfruit and pandanus, and they are tasty”). Paradoxically, my inarticulateness made me a natural comedian. If humor depends on surprise, then I no longer needed to rely on the surprise of an offbeat observation, because the shock of me saying anything at all in Marshallese was enough. If the statement was whimsical or, better yet, naughty, I would get an even better response. I could produce gales of laughter with such brilliant zingers as “on Ujae, there are pretty girls” and “Marshallese men like to have sex.”

In the midst of all these happy discoveries, there was one thing that bothered me: my new Marshallese friends hated Chinese people. This wasn't an unspoken attitude that I gleaned from close observation. It was a sentiment they voiced openly and unapologetically. Since I was curious to know the reason, I hid my disagreement and asked them innocently why. It seemed that a number of Chinese immigrants had settled in Majuro and started businesses, and the Marshallese believed they were taking away income from the islanders and disrespecting native custom. The natural conclusion from this, of course, was that the 1.3 billion other citizens of China were also evil. I was reminded of my time spent in Spain, where I discovered that even the well educated often displayed open contempt for
los moros
(“Moors,” or Arabs). In both countries, the prejudice had become fashionable and beyond scrutiny. I was disturbed by the sentiment, but fascinated to see these countries' ethnic tensions in plain view, without the doublespeak of political correctness.

ONE DAY, FREDLEE ACCIDENTALLY INTRODUCED ME TO AN ESSENTIAL
bit of island lore. We were planning the next day's
bwebwenato
session, and he told me to come to Loto in the afternoon. Loto? The name of a person, perhaps? No, it was the name of a property, specifically Fredlee's. Without much coaxing, he told me more.

Since ancient times, Ujae and every other Marshall Island had been
divided into
wato
, or land tracts. In this country, islands were oases of dirt in a desert of water. Land was so precious that, before conversion to Christianity, only royalty had the privilege to be entombed in the ground; commoners were buried at sea to conserve land. The usual
wato
was a cross section of the island running from the ocean side to the lagoon side, thus giving each household access to every kind of resource the island offered. Ujae was sliced into about two dozen of these land tracts, which still bore their ancient names and boundaries. I had no address; instead I lived at “Ariraen.” Fredlee's property was Loto (“Rope House”), and my neighbors to the west lived at Mwiddik-kan (“Small Houses”). Other
wato
on Ujae included Monkaruk (“Crab House”), Monujooj (“Grass House”), Monalwoj (“Watching House”), Monumen (“Oven House”), Baten (“The Hill”), Anedikdik (“Small Island”), and a lovely estate on the far side of the island, next to the roar of the ocean waves, called Likiej (“Windward Side”).

That night, I browsed the Marshallese-English dictionary that I had brought. I was delighted to find that I could look up my own house in the book's appendix of place names. While perusing that long list, I found some
wato
names from other islands:

Batilijarron:
Deaf Woman's Hill

Jab-ajeej:
Do Not Divide

Rere-bajjek:
Just Looking Around

Toeak:
Feces

Mojaninbod:
House of the Sound Made When Hitting a Turtle Shell

Given that the dictionary listed four thousand place names for a country of only seventy square miles of land, it was obvious that the Marshallese were fond of naming things. What the dictionary suggested, my friends confirmed. Every scrap of land, from the largest atoll to the smallest islet or barren sand spit, deserved its designation. Every landmark or oceanmark of any significance—outcrops of coral, deeper pools in the reef, rocks higher than a few feet—had a name. And so did every person, pet, canoe, and variety of fish, crab, bird, and plant. Only coral was omitted from this enthusiastic classification, and I guessed that this was only because coral was so difficult to see before the advent of snorkel masks.

Taking a dictionary tour of this nomenclature was as entertaining as it was enlightening. I spent long hours marveling over just how many words this language had devised for island commonalities.

There were at least eleven words for coconut, specifying different stages of growth:

kwalinni:
just beginning to grow on the tree

ubleb:
larger but still immature

ajin aulaklak:
almost ready to drink

uronni:
ready to husk and drink

mejoub:
a bit too late to drink

manbon:
starting to get brown, with the meat starting to harden

waini:
ready to be husked and the meat removed

tobolaar:
fallen off the tree, starting to sprout

iu:
sprouted, with the spongy innards now edible

debweiu:
sprouted more, too late to eat the inside

jokiae:
turned into a coconut sapling, much too late to eat

There were 159 other coconut-related terms, including:

emmal:
heartburn caused by drinking fresh coconut sap on an empty stomach

ojoj:
husk a coconut with one's teeth

jekeidaak:
steal and drink coconut sap

emmotmot:
sucking noise made in drinking green coconuts

ninikoko:
two or more persons sharing one coconut

There were eighteen words for different varieties of breadfruit, eight terms relating to ripeness that were used only for breadfruit, and forty-seven other terms that had to do with breadfruit, including:

mabun:
breadfruit blown down by the wind

For pandanus, there were seventy-nine words for different varieties and seventy-four other terms, including:

lajden:
smallest breadfruit or pandanus remaining on tree at end of season

There were thirty-three terms for waves, including:

jipikra:
waves receding from shore slapping against incoming waves (I had seen this—it looked like reversed film footage of the sea.)

Wind generated thirty-five terms, including:

aninraanjitbonmar:
wind that gathers strength as it reaches the treetops

There were twenty-nine names for parts of a canoe and seventy-six other canoe-related terms, including:

keilupako
: fastest method of righting a canoe after it has capsized in order to escape sharks

korkaak:
paddle a canoe for pleasure

Sailing had forty-six terms, including:

tomean:
sail downwind with the sail on the south and outrigger on the north

wato:
unable to sail close to the wind

There were 229 words for different species of fish, and ninety other fish-related terms, including:

batur:
to crave fish

ikonalkinmwio:
fish that wanders outside coconut leaf chain scarer

pal:
to get a fish bone stuck in your throat

The dictionary also listed a dizzying variety of fishing methods. I was struck by the contrast between these short words and the extreme specificity of what they referred to:

dentak:
striking needlefish with a long piece of wood or a paddle as they float on the surface of the water on moonlit nights

rojep:
line fishing outside lagoon, usually on lee side and fairly close to shore, for flying fish, using sand crab for bait

juunbon:
pole fishing on a barrier reef edge at low tide on dark nights

apep:
using woven brown coconut fronds to catch sardines and minnows as they are chased ashore by bigger fish

diil:
fishing for squirrelfish in small holes on reef during low tide using a two- or three-foot-long leader fastened onto a piece of wood about the same length

Marshallese also had some words for smells and sounds that I believe I am safe in assuming are not shared by many other languages:

mallipen:
smell of rotten copra on body

ebbwilwodwod:
smell of exposed reef

non:
popping sound made when squashing lice

rukruk:
sound of a coconut bouncing

In fitting with the profusion of place names, the Marshallese language was unusually specific when referring to location. There were six words for “here,” depending on whether you were referring to here where I am, here where both of us are, around here where I am, and so forth. There were twelve words for “there,” distinguishing between there near you, there near neither of us, there far away, and other variations. Whereas English had four words for “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those,” Marshallese had twenty-four. There were seventeen directionals, including such environment-specific terms as “toward the interior of the island,” “toward the lagoon side,” and “toward the ocean side.”