One of the many outdoor activities, I’ve grown to love since moving to the atoll is sailing. I love it because it takes its passengers to another world without having to spend hours on a plane or in a car. You simply step onto the boat and sail into the sunset, so to speak, and it’s fantastic. Every time I am on a boat and arrive back home in the evenings, I feel like I have been somewhere so exotic and relaxing, and it all took place over only a few hours of one day. There’s one other place on the atoll I feel the same way about, and as odd as it may sound to those of you who are familiar with the islands, it’s Ebeye. I’ve mentioned this spot before in earlier journals. It’s an island less than 5 miles from the range on Kwajalein where the 1,000 plus Marshallese employees and their families reside, commuting to work on the range every day by boat. The boats that come over every hour on the hour from about 5-7 am to get everyone to work are filled to capacity, but going back, they are virtually empty. I am one of the lucky few who had the opportunity to “reverse commute” to Ebeye to work for my first several years on the atoll.
I was a part time English as a second language teacher for the College of the Marshall Islands satellite campus on Guegeegue for over 5 years. I took the last morning boat at 7:10 am over to Ebeye, then we would go by rickety old buses or step-vans, usually donated from the base on Kwajalein when they no longer could use them, down a man-made coral causeway past a number of islands before arriving at the campus of the college on Guegeegue 20-30 minutes later (this sometimes depended on the number of potholes on the causeway on any given day and sometimes on how much the tide has or was washing over as occasionally classes were cancelled entirely due to the impassable wash over of the causeway by the ocean). The ride was rough and bumpy, and you had to watch for rusted out holes in the floor of the bus or step-van as you entered and exited, but it was full of adventure for me, the other teachers, and for the students. It was the only college available to the kids short of moving to the capital of the Marshall Islands, Majuro, which is an hour plane ride away, so it was a great opportunity for them to get a college education they might not have access to otherwise.
Once we arrived safely on campus, I would teach 3-4 classes of English to small classes of 15-18 Marshallese students in louvered window classrooms, which were part of a barracks and recreation building formally build by some branch of the American military for a base of pre-radar operations there. Most recently, I met a former American resident who described what the building was used for back then, and I could picture what it was like in its former glory. What a trip that was! By the time, the college acquired it, the bathrooms, food service areas, and air-conditioning had been stripped, and bare classrooms with chalk and/or dry erase boards replaced all that was there before. I didn’t mind the lack of air-con as the trade winds blowing through usually kept us cool. I didn’t even mind the sound of roosters crowing throughout class time and the occasional visit by a neighborhood dog or cat to English class. It was all part of the experience. I worked, most semesters, only half a day, and I took the noon boat back to Kwajalein to go to my job at the library, and it broke up the sameness of island life for me because it really is going to another world when you leave the base and enter the “real” Marshall Islands. I miss that job and those days...
Now, I work with the Marshallese kids who commute to Kwajalein, but because of that job, I still have the opportunity to go over several times a year to have workshop meetings with the parents, and to take my 4-H Ebeye Citizenship Club students over to visit. When I arrive on the island, which is always full of life and the hustle and bustle of the city, except at a slightly slower island style pace, I can’t help but get a silly grin on my face. In some ways, I feel like I am home. I think that’s because of the people, my friends, who have made me feel so welcome, so appreciated, and so loved, just because I come over to work with them and do what I love.
It feels like I am in a different world and not merely 5 miles from my home on an Americanized military base because it is a different world. There are more than 13,000 people on a small island not much more than a mile long, if that, and less than a mile wide, so you can imagine the chaos that creates. There’s no running water most places, and if there is, you don’t want to drink it straight out of the tap. There’s no effective sewage system or even enough garbage cans to contain the trash, and they have power outages, sometimes scheduled, sometimes not, regularly. Their homes are mostly built out of plywood, pallets, and other wood they could find or savage from those who no longer wanted or needed it on other islands, and it’s very, very overcrowded, not a single palm tree in sight because there’s no room for those anymore. But, the people make do, just as we all do in times of hardship. On the outside, their homes, schools, and places of business may not look like much, but on the inside they are very cozy and well-loved and taken care of, just like the people, they have lots of heart.
This warmth makes it hard for me to stay away for any length of time. I actually will start to miss Ebeye when I haven’t had a chance to go over or be a part of something there. When I consider leaving this place, I worry about leaving these people and the work I’ve done with them, not because what I do is more than a tiny spot in their world or that I will be missed in any great capacity, but because I don’t know how I’ll survive without them. Just like sailing takes me away to another world and relaxes me for a bit, the small island of Ebeye and its people and culture enhance my world more than they could ever know. And after a long, hard day on Kwajalein, a trip to Ebeye soothes my soul. Their spirit of “Iakwe” brings a smile to my face like a rainbow after the storm. Thank you, my Ebeye friends, for making your island, one of my ideal “road trips” on the atoll.
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